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Milwaukee city council member calls for inquiry into Uline's previous ‘shuttle program' to bring in Mexican workers
A Milwaukee city council member has called for an investigation into the immigration policies at Uline, the office supply company owned by Liz and Richard Uihlein, two of the biggest donors to Maga Republicans in the 2024 election.
The statement by JoCasta Zamarripa, who is running for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin secretary of state ahead of November's election, follows an investigation by the Guardian into Uline's previous use of a so-called “shuttle program”. It involved the company bringing workers from its facilities in Mexico to staff warehouses at its headquarters in Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania, for weeks and even months at a time, using visas that are meant for workers who are being trained – not working regular full-time jobs.
Uline is privately held but is estimated to generate $8bn in revenues per year, and employs about 9,000 people.
“Billionaires fund the crackdown, then exploit the very people targeted by it – because they think money shields them from consequences,” Zamarripa wrote on a post of Facebook. “Wisconsin needs transparency, a real investigation, and accountability that applies to everyone.”
Uline declined to comment on Zamarripa's remarks. The company has previously declined to comment on detailed questions about the shuttle program, which sources with knowledge of the matter said was abruptly halted in late 2024, when the Guardian first reported on the practice.
A story published by the Guardian earlier this month featured an interview with one Mexican worker, Christian Valenzuela, who came forward to share his previous experience in the shuttle program, including how he was injured while working in Wisconsin, sent back to Mexico and ultimately lost his job.
“We were just going to work,” he said. “They always gave us more work, because we were stronger workers. Because the Americans perhaps work at their own pace, going little by little. Whereas we Mexicans are faster, more productive, more everything.”
Zamarripa did not respond to a request for an interview. She told the Wisconsin Examiner, the first newspaper to report on her statement, that she would call on state officials to investigate the company's practices and potential legal violations.
“The billionaire Uihlein family – among the biggest Republican mega-donors in the nation – have helped bankroll the very politicians, including Donald Trump, behind today's out-of-control immigration crackdowns,” she wrote in her Facebook statement, which is dedicated to her campaign.
“Now we learn that workers in Pleasant Prairie say Mexican employees were pushed into dangerous, exhausting conditions and punished for speaking up – all while fueling Uline's enormous wealth,” Zamarripa wrote.
Zamarripa is a former Wisconsin state representative from Milwaukee and now represents a South Side district in the Milwaukee city council. She has declared her intention to seek the Democratic nomination to run for Wisconsin secretary of state ahead of the primary election in August.
The Uihleins have continued to serve as major donors to the Republican party. The couple donated a total of $1m in the first six months of 2025 to a Wisconsin college Republicans group called the Wisconsin Federation of College Republicans, according to a report by Wisconsin Public Radio.
The president of the college fund, Nick Jacobs, previously received $1m from Elon Musk. The group has endorsed Tom Tiffany, a US congressman, for the Republican nomination for governor. He was also endorsed by Trump, a move that prompted Josh Schoemann, another early candidate for the Republican nomination, to step down from the race.
The FBI was serving search warrants Wednesday at the Los Angeles Unified School District's headquarters and the superintendent's home.
Federal officials in Los Angeles served the warrants as part of an ongoing investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the probe. The nature of the investigation and what allegations were being examined was not immediately clear.
Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for the US attorney's office in Los Angeles, confirmed that court-authorized searches were underway Wednesday.
The district and the superintendent's office did not immediately respond to emails and a voicemail requesting comment from The Associated Press.
TV news footage showed agents in FBI shirts and jackets outside Superintendent Alberto Carvalho's modest home in the San Pedro neighborhood about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. There was no visible sign of agents outside the district headquarters as of mid-morning.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass's office said it had no information about the search and noted the district operates independently of city government.
The sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District is the nation's second largest, with more than 500,000 students and covering more than two dozen cities.
Carvalho has been its superintendent since February 2022. Before that, he was the longtime superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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Afrofuturism takes us to strange futures. In its kaleidoscope lens, the future is a canvas to imagine free Black life.
Afrofuturism takes us to strange futures. In its kaleidoscope lens, the future is a canvas to imagine free Black life.
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Years ago, I stood at the Black Fist statue, and felt the heaviness of George Floyd's death. I also felt hope from the protests in his name. The corner of 38th St. and Chicago Ave. in Minneapolis was liberated by the people into an art-filled, open space. The joy was electric. Maybe, I thought, maybe this is a glimpse of a Black future.
Now, nearly six years after Floyd's murder, the state violence that took his life has expanded its targets to include white protesters, journalists, and politicians. Two new memorials have been built in Minneapolis. One is for Renee Nicole Good, a lesbian mother and poet, and another for Alex Pretti, a nurse. Both were killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Right-wing state violence, on every level, is trying to stomp out the vision of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy and replace it with plans for a white ethnostate. If the right wing wins, its victory will come at a cost. The United States will likely implode. Already, millions of people in the U.S. have lost faith in the rule of law, a faith that was shaky to begin with. Already, the U.S. has transformed into an early-stage authoritarian state with President Donald Trump threatening the integrity of the midterm elections.
In the face of increasing right-wing violence and national implosion, Black America has to ask questions: What does freedom look like after the U.S.? How does the Black freedom struggle reimagine the “promised land”? Black writers have long mapped alternative futures that led away from the “American Dream.” Some are Pan-African. Some envision a worker's democracy. Some articulate a new religion of change. What they share in common is a vision for a Black future free of racism that builds community on the lessons learned from surviving slavery. It is a vision of a new world struggling to be born from the ruins of this one.
A Burning House
“I will fucking kill you,” the Indianapolis cop told 17-year-old Black teen Trevion Taylor, dragging him from his car. The young man's eyes filled with fear. He and his friends were at an anti-ICE rally when police stopped them, claiming they “smelled weed.” The cop's casual threatening of Taylor's life is just one example of the current widespread increase in state violence. This growing violence includes ICE killings of migrants and protesters.
Today it is ICE or police. Yesterday it was the FBI's COINTELPRO or the National Guard killing student protesters at Kent State. When the people mobilize to protect their rights or each other, they are killed. The tear gas used looks like smoke from a nation on fire.
Right-wing state violence is trying to stomp out the vision of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy and replace it with plans for a white ethnostate.
“I suspect [we're] integrating into a burning house,” Martin Luther King Jr. told fellow civil rights activist Harry Belafonte in 1968. Belafonte recalled King's warning at a 2005 town hall with Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. In the decades since, the flames have risen higher and higher. They rose during the Reagan era. They rise higher in the Trump era. The right has been so intent on destroying the seeds of diversity and tolerance planted by the civil rights movement that it is willing to destroy the U.S. and rule over its ashes.
Right now, we face a political crisis. President Trump wants to “nationalize” the midterm elections. He sent the FBI to raid a Georgia voting center and take ballots and records. He transformed ICE into a paramilitary force and more than doubled its personnel from 10,000 to 22,000, luring new recruits by using white supremacist ads. Trump has called Democrats “traitors,” threatened to kill them, and labeled “antifa” a terrorist threat. Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, Trump's former strategist, has urged him to use ICE to “surround the polls” in order to stop Democrats from “stealing the election.” There's a very real constitutional fight ahead.
Right now, Black America is in the crosshairs. Trump waited for Black History Month to unleash a racist video of the Obamas portrayed as monkeys. This follows his executive order to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and the “Department of Government Efficiency” cuts that led to a dramatic increase in Black women's unemployment, with nearly 300,000 losing work. Overlap that data with the 25 percent of Black families with single mothers, and it becomes clear that these actions will push whole families and neighborhoods toward collapse. In October 2025, the Supreme Court heard a case that could disembowel the Voting Rights Act. For now, the court dodged on fully ending it — currently, the case is being actively reviewed, which means the Voting Rights Act is on a knife's edge. Then, on February 13, Trump said on Truth Social he will issue an executive order mandating voter ID for the midterms. What we see is only the visible part of the larger Project 2025 agenda that also includes rigging the census to undercount Black people, eliminating student loan forgiveness, ending federal consent decrees, shifting oversight of housing programs to the states, and giving a free hand to polluters to poison Black communities.
Black America is in the crosshairs. Trump waited for Black History Month to unleash a racist video of the Obamas portrayed as monkeys.
In the years to come, Trump's wacky handling of the economy is poised to put the U.S.'s decline into hyper-speed. The disingenuously named Big Beautiful Bill is projected to increase the federal debt by $3.4 trillion over the next decade while cutting health care for 10 million people and starving millions more. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) cited a study that found 51,000 will die annually because of these policy chances. What's more, U.S. allies like Canada are openly saying that U.S. hegemony is over, and their governments intend to make trade deals with China. The inevitable decline of the dollar as the global reserve currency threatens to lead to deep cuts to social services to pay interest on the U.S. debt. Politicians may then print money, which could accelerate hyperinflation and financial collapse. Oh, yes, add to that the massive layoffs as businesses adopt AI. MS NOW analyst Chris Hayes said, “The project of the Big Tech oligarch billionaires is to do to white-collar workers what globalization and deindustrialization did to blue-collar workers.”
Here is the burning house that King predicted nearly 60 years ago. The U.S. threatens to become a charred hollow shell. Black people are stranded in a jobless nation run on algorithms. The government cannot afford welfare or social services. Its elections are rigged. The police are militarized, and you and everyone you know are under AI-enhanced state surveillance. You can be thrown into one of the new, high-tech detention sites for protesting. The American Dream, which has always been mostly fiction, is officially dead.
Carrying the Cross
So how did we get here? How did the “promised land” become a burning house? Maybe because the very idea was a dead end.
“Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream,” MLK Jr. intoned at the 1963 March on Washington. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream.” His words washed over the massive crowd. Yet in his beautiful vision was a trap.
Much of Black America chose integration as the dominant strategy for freedom. Many chose the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Sometimes, segments of Black America chose to adapt to and even adopt white culture. All this is understandable for a people stolen from their homes and enslaved in a strange land. Imagine stumbling from a slave ship, blinking in the sun, rubbing red welts from chains. You are forced to an auction block. People buy you. At night, you look at the stars and know your family is gone forever. You see other slaves whipped and killed by the Christian owner who prays to Jesus. Maybe if you pray to Jesus too, the Christian will treat like you like a human being.
Much of Black America chose integration because of being a terrorized people who hoped to achieve safety by adopting the symbols and culture of white America. We see this in the internalized racism expressed by Phillis Wheatley, the first published Black American poet of modern times, who wrote in 1773, “Remember Christians, Negros Black as Cain / May be refined, and join the angelic train.”
Seventy-nine years later, after the American Revolution, in 1852, just shy of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass gave his speech, “What to the Slave Is the 4th of July,” where he said, “your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless.” In his speech, we see Black leveraging of national symbols to force empathy.
Meanwhile, in a 1926 essay titled, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes wrote on “this urge within the race toward whiteness … and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.” Again, an artist tells us the terrible cost of being American. The price of integration was internalized racism, classism, and nationalism.
In the 250 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, Black America grew from approximately 500,000 to now 42 million. It has also grown apart. Integration sped up a serious class division that is now agonized over by academic Henry Louis Gates Jr. and that was made into a comedy skit by Chris Rock in his 1996 “N***as vs. Black People.” The giant split between the upper-class Black elite and the poor and working classes enables the Democratic Party to use the Black freedom struggle like a poker chip.
The civil rights movement's legacy is exhausted. President Obama's election was sold to us as King's dream come true. It wasn't. Obama waxed poetic on King, saying in 2009, “One of my favorite expressions was Dr. King's expression that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” This from a man who killed 3,797 people with drones, including 324 civilians, and bragged, saying, “Turns out I'm really good at killing people.” He deported more than 3 million people. His housing policy destroyed Black wealth by saving banks rather than homeowners. He was willing to gut Social Security in a “grand bargain” with Republicans. He and the utter failure of Sen. Kamala Harris's campaign are the nails in the coffin of the hollow version of Black history.
I've Known Rivers
“I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human / blood in human veins” Langston Hughes wrote in his 1921 poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” I read it at the African Burial Ground in New York, and the imagery resonated in the hushed air. Free and enslaved Africans were buried here before the United States was a nation. We came to pay respect to the ancestors. The act made one thing clear: Black history did not begin in the U.S. and it will not end here.
Our ancestors lost everything but not their humanity. They were sold and bought but were never objects. They had a vision of freedom that arced over their lives into ours today.
Not all of Black America saw the U.S. as the promised land — it had two main alternate visions. One looked to the past to recreate a golden age in Africa. The other gazed into Afrofuturism. For a long time, more people were drawn toward the first vision, advocating for a Pan-African right of return. This vision flickered in the Black antebellum folklore of slaves who remembered their true language and flew home to Africa. The story was richly sung by Paul Robeson. Versions of it were passed down through generations. You hear it in the speeches of Marcus Garvey. You hear this vision in Malcolm X's call to form a Black nation with the U.S. by “any means necessary.” And most recently we “flew” home during the Black Panther movies. I remember cheers when T'Challa arrived in Wakanda and the holographic curtain was pulled back to reveal a glittering high-tech and free African city.
The dream of return can reinforce integration if it just serves as a catch-basin for our rage at fighting racism while integrating. James Baldwin pointed out that whole ways of thinking would have to change in order for Black separatism to become reality. In his famous 1963 essay, “The Fire Next Time,” Baldwin was driven home after meeting with the Nation of Islam's leader Minister Elijah Muhammad. He questioned his driver, “How we were — Negroes — to get this land?” Quietly, Baldwin thought, “I was thinking, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you know scarcely know you have.”
The other vision, Afrofuturism, instead takes us to strange futures. It is rooted in the arts — from the jazz explorations of Sun Ra's 1974 film Space Is the Place, to the eclectic works of Janelle Monae. It comes in the novels of Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler. Its themes were crystallized in Mark Dery's 1993 essay, “Black to the Future” that coined the term “Afrofuturism.” In its kaleidoscope lens, the future is a canvas to imagine free Black life: Free from white supremacy. Free from capitalism. Free from racial romanticism. Free from homophobia and binary thinking. Everything and anything is questioned — even old dreams of liberation, like the American Dream.
In Afrofuturism, one work stands out: Octavia Butler's 1993 novel Parable of the Sower. Imagine the U.S. has collapsed. Global warming has set the land on fire. Pyromaniac junkies loot and burn. In this hellscape, the protagonist, a Black teen named Lauren, develops a hyper-empathy that gives her a near-telepathic ability to feel others' feelings. After her gated community is ransacked, she and a small band strike out in search of safety. Lauren develops a religion called Earthseed that celebrates change, saying, “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.” Earthseed is a fusion of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus's ideas of endless flux (hence his saying, “You never step into the same river twice”) and MLK Jr.'s concept of “soul force,” or using nonviolent resistance to transform violence into mutual recognition of each other's humanity. The novel ends with Lauren's religion spreading in the ruins of the U.S.
When I returned to the African Burial Ground, I brought Parable of the Sower, as if to measure its message against the nightmare our ancestors endured. Is Afrofuturism a way forward? Does our imagination honor their lives? I stood where they were buried, and asked: What does home mean now? Is there a promised land left?
I believe there is. Our ancestors lost everything but not their humanity. They were sold and bought but were never objects. They had a vision of freedom that arced over their lives into ours today. We are more precious than any nation or religion. We are a river flowing from the beginning of humanity to its end. It's time to wash away the old dream and imagine new ones. It's time for a new Black future.
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As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine has been drafting military options for potentially striking Iran, a steady stream of top officials from the Army, Navy and Air Force have been quietly summoned directly to his office.
Typically, sensitive military operations are debated in the highly fortified conference room in the Pentagon known as the Tank. But in an administration that is focused on avoiding leaks, Caine — who is also known for his intensive secrecy — worried that assembling the top brass in the Defense Department's nerve center on very short notice would draw suspicion, according to several sources familiar with the matter.
In those meetings and others at the Pentagon, Caine has been vocal about the potential downsides of launching a major military operation targeting Iran, raising concerns about the scale, complexity and potential for US casualties of such a mission, according to sources familiar with his advice.
Those concerns have not matched the rhetoric coming out of the White House, where President Donald Trump has been bullish on how easily the US military could achieve victory, though the exact dimensions of that success haven't been defined.
But Caine is determined to avoid what he believes were the mistakes of one of his predecessors, Gen. Mark Milley, and maintain his influence with Trump, according to sources familiar with his thinking.
Milley often clashed directly with Trump during his first term on issues such as deploying the military domestically to quell protests, and sometimes undermined Trump's inflammatory rhetoric privately to reassure nervous allies and foes.
For Caine, avoiding the Milley approach has meant being more reserved around Trump, and avoiding weighing in too directly on decisions, including what to do in Iran. It's a tightrope that Caine has been attempting to walk during his year as Trump's top military adviser – avoid direct conflict with a notoriously mercurial president, while still providing professional military guidance.
Some say Caine hasn't been assertive enough with Trump. “He's definitely pulling punches,” a source familiar with Caine's interactions with Trump said when comparing his White House conversations with his private discussions with military leaders.
Despite any concerns Caine has raised internally, over the last month he has also orchestrated assembling the largest collection of US military hardware assembled in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq.
This account of Caine's efforts to navigate his tenure as chairman is based on interviews with 10 current and former officials.
Joint staff spokesperson Joe Holstead told CNN in a statement that Caine “never ‘pulls punches' when discussing military options which could send our troops into harms way.”
“The role of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the approach of this Chairman is based on the Chairman's statutory role to provide military advice to the President, the Secretary of War, and the National Security Council,” he said. “This Chairman fulfills these responsibilities by providing these leaders with a full spectrum of military options, along with precise and thoughtful consideration of the secondary effects, implications and risks associated with each option. He does so confidentially.”
Caine, a former F-16 fighter pilot who spent time as a military liaison to the CIA, rarely divulges his personal opinions on a policy, and his supporters say he's doing exactly what a chairman is supposed to do — give the president the best military advice that will facilitate his agenda, policies the country's top general has no business dictating.
Trump has pushed Caine for weeks to develop a wide range of military plans, which now include everything from strikes on Iranian ballistic missile and nuclear facilities to wiping out Iran's top leadership as a way to force regime change. Those options are being planned in parallel with diplomatic talks set for their next exchange on Thursday.
But in a Situation Room meeting last week about plans for Iran that went three times longer than scheduled, Caine was unable to predict what the result of a regime change operation would be, sources said. Caine had seemed more confident several months ago about the success of such a mission in Venezuela, whose leader was captured by the US military in a swift and decisive operation in January.
It's part of Caine's delicate balancing act, telling people privately that he wants to restore trust in his position as the country's top general and in the military more broadly even as Trump has politicized both.
In response to questions for this story, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly described Caine as “a highly respected professional whose job requires providing unbiased information to the Commander in Chief, which he does perfectly.”
“Any suggestion that the Chairman is providing his personal or political opinion, one way or another, is completely false,” Kelly said. “On all issues, President Trump listens to feedback from all members of his national security team, and he is always the final decision maker.”
Caine has worked hard in his time as chairman to make sure he has Trump's ear, at one point even trying to secure an office at the White House so he could brief the president more regularly and have a highly secure space to work from when he's there, according to people familiar with the matter.
A soft-spoken and self-deprecating airman who spent much of his career in the secretive world of spies and special operators, Caine is a member of Trump's most-trusted inner circle, which includes Vice President JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff. He is even more trusted by Trump than Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, multiple people familiar with their relationship said, particularly when it comes to sensitive operational matters.
If Hegseth is frustrated with Caine, there is little he can do about it. “Caine has a direct line to Trump,” said one of the people familiar with the dynamic. “He has to respect the chain of command, but he's the president's guy. Hegseth can't just shove him in a corner.”
As Pentagon concerns about the fallout of a potential major military operation in Iran began to make their way to the press, Trump took to social media Monday to reinforce his faith in Caine and to make it clear his weeks of threats of strikes haven't been empty.
“General Caine, like all of us, would like not to see War but, if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won,” Trump wrote. “He only knows one thing, how to WIN and, if he is told to do so, he will be leading the pack.”
When asked about Caine's deliberations on Iran, Holstead said Caine “does not advocate for a single course of action, nor does he inject personal preference into operational deliberations.”
A recently retired senior officer who previously worked with Caine told CNN that officers wondered why he'd been chosen in the first place, when there's “obviously some expectation of loyalty” by Trump, and Caine is not the type to prioritize that over his loyalty to his oath as an officer.
“Caine is a person of high emotional intelligence,” the recently retired senior officer said, “because he hasn't gotten sideways with anyone, and he's generally recognized as a team player.”
One official who's worked with Caine put it simply: “How has Caine made it this long? He is a genius at getting himself to be the person someone needs him to be in any setting.”
Last September, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abruptly summoned hundreds of the most senior US military officers to Virginia to hear him and Trump give a speech, Caine knew the event had the potential to veer into deeply political territory—something he'd promised Congress during his confirmation hearings that he would guard against.
So he privately gave the assembled generals and admirals advice he knew Hegseth and Trump might not like, according to people familiar with his remarks, including two military officials close to Caine: Don't cheer, don't react, and act as stoic as you would at the president's annual State of the Union address, in keeping with the norms of a nonpartisan military.
He then introduced Hegseth and Trump, saying it was “vital” to hear from them. Trump seemed irked by the generals' lack of reaction. “I've never walked into a room so silent before,” he said. “If you want to applaud, you applaud.”
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell disputed this account of Caine's actions before Trump's speech.
“There is no tension between these great leaders,” he said. “They are both in agreement and focused on executing President Trump's agenda to make our military the greatest fighting force in the world.”
Caine's path to becoming the country's top general and sharing a stage with Trump was highly unusual. He retired in December 2024 as a three-star lieutenant general but was recalled to active service by Trump despite never having led a combatant command or serving as a service chief. That is how most previous chairmen have received their fourth star, before being elevated to the role of the US' most senior military officer. In the end, Caine was promoted ahead of 38 eligible active duty four-star generals and admirals.
In Trump's telling, Caine had shown he was committed to the president when they first met in 2018 while Caine was serving in Iraq, with Caine telling Trump that he “loved” him and would “kill for you” while wearing a MAGA hat.
Caine said during his confirmation hearing last year that the incident had never happened. He also said that defending against the politicization of the military “starts with being a good example from the top and making sure that we are nonpartisan and apolitical and speaking the truth to power every day.”
And yet, even as Trump has regularly pushed the legal limits of how the US military can be deployed — sending troops into American cities over the objections of governors, bombing suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Pacific, and attacking Iran and Venezuela without congressional authorization — Caine has dutifully given him options to execute these operations, sources told CNN.
“Milley always wanted to be seen as the adult in the room, protecting the world from our democratically elected president,” said one Republican congressional aide. “It struck me as wildly inappropriate.”
Caine works closely with one of the most politically polarizing figures in the Trump administration, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, on how to best carry out the US military's operations inside the US and around Latin America, the sources said. Miller often phones Caine directly, asking for ways to put a plan into action.
Caine's careful planning to deliver options and not push decisions stands in contrast to the way Trump now views Milley, whose portrait was taken down from a wall in the Pentagon on day one of the administration and had his security detail revoked by Hegseth — on Trump's orders — days later.
Defense officials broadly see Caine as a useful counterbalance to Hegseth, whose inexperience and focus on culture war issues contrasts with Caine's long military career and operational experience.
One example officials point to came in September, when Caine hand-delivered memos to Hegseth and the Pentagon's policy chief Elbridge Colby outlining his disagreements over the new National Defense Strategy that Colby's office had drafted, one of the sources said. Among Caine's concerns with the document, which prioritizes homeland defense and the western hemisphere, was that it underplayed the threat posed by China and the US military's need to prepare for a potential future conflict in the Indo-Pacific, sources said.
A senior defense official declined to confirm that Caine had raised issues with the strategy, but said “the instances as you described them would simply be those of a Chairman and the Joint Chiefs doing their jobs.”
Caine also appeared skeptical early on of the effectiveness of the US military's extremely expensive operation, championed by Hegseth, to counter the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen last year. He ultimately recommended to Trump that the campaign be wound down, the sources said, and the president announced shortly thereafter that the US had reached a ceasefire deal with the Houthis.
Nonetheless, Caine's reticence to strongly deliver his opinion on certain issues has left many military officials struggling to understand where he stands, especially considering the number of senior military officials who have been forced out for disagreeing with Trump and Hegseth.
Last fall, Hegseth summoned then-US Southern Command Commander Adm. Alvin Holsey to a meeting with him and Caine. The meeting was tense — Hegseth did not believe Holsey was moving quickly or aggressively enough to combat drug traffickers in the Caribbean, and he complained about not being given the information he needed about operations there, sources said. But SOUTHCOM was concerned about the operations not being lawful. Caine remained largely quiet during the meeting, sources said.
Ultimately, Hegseth ousted Holsey, who retired early and just one year into his tenure as commander. But underscoring the persistent balancing act he's played, Caine then presided over Holsey's retirement ceremony and showered him with praise, in what some officials perceived as a subtle act of protest against Hegseth's decision.
“It's never been about you, it's been about people, it's been about others,” Caine said of Holsey at his ceremony. “You've never said ‘I' in all the conversations we've had. You've always said ‘we.' … The impact you've had will last for a long time.”
Unlike previous chairmen, Caine has avoided interacting with the press and has spoken publicly only from podiums. Late last year, some officials who work closely with Caine suggested he begin cultivating his own public persona, people familiar with the matter said.
Caine has resisted that, preferring to stay as invisible as possible. But Trump has undoubtedly pushed him to the limits of his comfort zone. The most obvious example of this came last June, when Trump demanded Caine and Hegseth give a press conference aimed largely at discrediting an early Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that had downplayed the long-term impact of the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Trump had touted the attack as a “total obliteration” of Iran's nuclear program.
Hegseth spent most of the press conference attacking the press for reporting on the assessment. But Caine pivoted, instead choosing to give a technical explanation of the bombings — complete with graphics of the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators used to hit the facilities — and the pilots who dropped the munitions from B-2 bombers following an 18-hour flight from Missouri to Iran.
Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Saturday, however, that Iran is now “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bombmaking material.”
Caine was also thrust front and center after the US military operation to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro from his compound in Caracas in the early hours of January 3.
Caine's summary of the operation during a press conference the next day read like a screenplay for an action movie, describing American helicopters and troops coming under fire both as they approached Maduro's compound in the dead of night and as they extracted him out to an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean.
“I want to thank General “Raizin” Caine,” Trump said at the press conference. “He's a fantastic man. I've worked with a lot of generals. I worked with some I didn't like, I worked with some I didn't respect, I worked with some that just weren't good, but this guy is fantastic.”
Apart from his appearances at press conferences and industry events, Caine has maintained a very low profile. Hegseth has made it clear that he does not want Caine interacting with reporters without his signoff, sources said. The Joint Staff is now required to get permission from the secretary's office before speaking to the media, and reporters no longer travel with the chairman, in a break with tradition.
Caine obliges Hegseth's requests, largely because he has spent months trying to repair the joint staff's relationship with the defense secretary. Prior to Caine's confirmation in April, Hegseth harbored deep suspicions that the Joint Staff was leaking information to make him and his team look bad.
Still, some officials believe Caine has sometimes gone too far in his efforts to please Hegseth and point to one episode last October.
That month, Caine rushed to get recertified to fly the F-16 fighter jet — including making room in his schedule for frequent flight training at Joint Base Andrews, according to a person with knowledge of the situation — so that he could fly alongside Hegseth in the jets while visiting Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada, where he'd completed Air Force Weapons School decades earlier. The chairman moved forward with the event despite the government shutting down and all those required to support the trip having to go without pay, this person said.
The biggest source of tension between Caine and Hegseth has been over personnel, multiple sources said, and Caine has routinely lost those battles with the secretary. Caine tried to convince Hegseth not to push out several senior military officials last year, including the former director of the Joint Staff Lt. Gen. Doug Sims and the former director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Joint Staff Lt. Gen. Joe McGee, who Hegseth accused of leaking against him and being insufficiently aligned with his agenda, sources said. Both were forced to retire early.
Caine has tried to appeal to Hegseth, telling him the abrupt and seemingly retributive firings, the delayed promotions, and the forced retirements that have seen dozens of top generals and admirals pushed out have not been good for the secretary's standing with the force, the sources said.
The move to relieve senior military officers over their perceived alignment with a political agenda or other unspecified reasons has been challenging for Caine and other leaders in the services, the recently retired senior officer said. But ultimately it falls back on the constitutional principal of civilian control of the military, whether the military likes their decisions or not.
“At the end of the day, guys like Caine and service leaders haven't been happy about it …. but [Caine] understands it's fair and it's just the way of things. To do anything else, it's like, what else are you going to do? It'd kind of a tough situation,” the recently retired officer said. “But I do think there's moral injury taking place with our senior leaders.”
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Ignoring the economic reality of most Americans is an incredible gamble for the president.
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President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union speech since returning to the White House for a second term, largely ignoring the real economic conditions of the American people.
Trump declared economic success, claiming “the interests of hardworking American citizens are always our first and ultimate concern.”
“The roaring economy is roaring like never before,” Trump said.
During his speech, Trump claimed there was “no inflation,” only to state later that “inflation is plummeting.”
In reality, the 2.7 percent rate of inflation seen in 2025 is only 0.2 percent lower than it was in the year prior to Trump re-entering the White House. Food prices are also up by 2.4 percent overall during the first year of Trump's second term.
The president also touted tax cuts in his so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act as beneficial for most Americans. However, the law's tax cuts largely benefited the wealthy, and the bill made significant cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Trump also praised his tariffs and blasted the Supreme Court decision last week that declared them unlawful and unconstitutional. He promised to institute more tariffs, using different mechanisms, and falsely claimed that American consumers wouldn't bear the costs.
He absurdly claimed tariffs could replace income taxes one day, too.
“I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love,” Trump said.
Experts regard tariffs as a regressive form of taxation, affecting people with lower incomes much more than the wealthy. Trump's tariffs are also the largest increase in taxes seen since 1993. Some economists believe that Trump's tariffs have negatively impacted job growth in the U.S.
Trump's comments were absurd at times.
“Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much,” Trump said at one point.
“We can't take it anymore. We're not used to winning in our country. Until you came along, we were just always losing, but now we're winning too much,” he continued, adding that he's not going to stop, and the U.S. will supposedly “win bigger than ever.”
Trump introduces the US men's hockey team: "We're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, 'Please, Mr President, we're winning too much! We can't take it anymore! We're not used to winning in our country! Until you came along we were just always losing.'"
Throughout his speech, Trump celebrated an economy that the majority of Americans think he is mishandling.
“We are the hottest country anywhere in the world,” he said.
A majority of Americans do not share that sentiment, several polls have found.
Trump entered the State of the Union Address with some of the worst polling numbers he's seen in his two terms in office. A CNN/SSRS poll, for example, showed that only 36 percent of Americans approve of how Trump is handling his presidency, with 63 percent saying they disapprove.
A recent Pew Research poll found that only 28 percent of Americans believe the president's economic policies have improved the country, while 52 percent believe his administration's actions have made things worse.
An Economist/YouGov poll published on Tuesday also found that only 28 percent of Americans rate the current state of the economy as “excellent” or “good,” while 69 percent only rate it as “fair” or “poor.”
Most respondents in that poll were pessimistic about how the economy is trending, with 50 percent stating that things are “getting worse” overall.
Trump's speech on Tuesday night is unlikely to ease the concerns of most Americans, as most State of the Union addresses fail to provide more than a statistical “bump” in presidents' polling numbers. But if Trump continues to celebrate the economy while Americans by and large do not share the same rosy outlooks, the president's risky gamble could affect how well the Republican Party does against Democrats in the midterms this fall.
In the last weeks, we have witnessed an authoritarian assault on communities in Minnesota and across the nation.
The need for truthful, grassroots reporting is urgent at this cataclysmic historical moment. Yet, Trump-aligned billionaires and other allies have taken over many legacy media outlets — the culmination of a decades-long campaign to place control of the narrative into the hands of the political right.
We refuse to let Trump's blatant propaganda machine go unchecked. Untethered to corporate ownership or advertisers, Truthout remains fearless in our reporting and our determination to use journalism as a tool for justice.
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Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.
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Many tribal nations say the pipeline threatens their waters, treaty rights, and ways of life.
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The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday about whether state or federal court will have the final say on the future of the controversial Line 5 pipeline, which carries crude oil and natural gas liquids across the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan.
The case dates to a 2019 lawsuit by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who moved to shut down the pipeline by revoking the easement that allows it to cross the Straits, citing risks to the Great Lakes. (Over its 73-year lifetime, Line 5 has spilled over a million gallons of oil along its inland route.) A shutdown is supported by all 12 federally recognized tribes in Michigan, though they are not involved in the suit. Many tribal nations say the pipeline threatens their waters, treaty rights, and ways of life.
On Tuesday, the justices asked tough questions of both the attorney general's team as well as lawyers representing the Canadian pipeline company, Enbridge Energy, on the opposing side. Though the question before the Supreme Court is a procedural one — whether courts can excuse Enbridge from missing the deadline to request moving the case to federal court — the justices recognized that the decision could have far-reaching ripples, including for U.S.-Canada relations. (The Canadian government opposes the pipeline's shutdown, as Line 5 provides half of the oil supply for Ontario and Quebec.)
“If this proceeds in state court, and the state court issues a preliminary injunction against continued operation of the pipeline, it could be a long time before this issue involving treaty rights, which is a federal question, could be reviewed here,” noted Justice Samuel Alito.
Since 1953, Line 5 has transported oil and natural gas liquids 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario — with a critical 4 1/2-mile segment along the bottomlands in the Straits between Lakes Huron and Michigan. Enbridge wants to move the case to the federal court, which the company argues is better suited to weigh in on federal pipeline safety regulations and international agreements.
On the opposing side, Nessel argues that Line 5 belongs in state court because the pipeline concerns state laws around the use of natural resources for the good of the public. Nessel and anti-pipeline groups worry about the environmental, economic, and health consequences of an oil spill in the Great Lakes.
Ryan Duffy, a spokesperson for Enbridge, said in a statement before the oral arguments that there would be “significant implications for energy security and foreign affairs if the attorney general continues to pursue the lawsuit now in state court.”
Enbridge first argued that the case should be moved to federal court in 2021, sparking litigation around whether the company had missed the typical 30-day deadline to change venues. A federal district court judge in western Michigan ruled in favor of Enbridge due to “exceptional circumstances” around related lawsuits involving the pipeline. However, later the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the state.
On Tuesday, Enbridge lawyer John Bursch compared the deadline to a statute of limitations and argued that exceptional circumstances could justify an extension.
“I don't think it was clear to anyone that there was necessarily federal jurisdiction at the outset of the state court case,” Bursch said.
Ann Sherman, a lawyer representing the state attorney general, argued that the 30-day deadline is a firm rule on court venue, unlike the statute of limitations. “Enbridge seeks an atextual escape hatch,” she said.
A decision from the Supreme Court on Line 5's jurisdiction is expected before the court term ends in summer. If the court rules in favor of Michigan, it would uphold the Sixth Circuit's decision that Enbridge missed the deadline and make Line 5 an issue for state court, said Andy Buchsbaum, a lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School.
However, “if the court decides that there is wiggle room in the 30-day deadline, there's lots of ways this could go,” he said. The justices would likely settle on a standard allowing the deadline to be excused. From there, they could ask the Sixth Circuit to reevaluate the facts of the case with the new standard in mind, as Enbridge's lawyer argued before the Supreme Court. Or the justices could apply their own standard and come to a decision for or against the state.
“To know what's at stake and hear the court considering that just on a procedural basis, gives me a lot of concerns,” said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, after oral arguments. The tribal nation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is involved in separate litigation against Line 5.
“Line 5 continues to remain a clear and present danger to the Great Lakes and every tribal nation in every community that relies on them,” Gravelle said.
While the Supreme Court case plays out, Enbridge is moving ahead with plans to replace the existing dual-pipeline infrastructure in the Straits with a tunnel that would house a new segment buried under the lakebed. The company is awaiting permits from federal and state agencies. Separately, next month the Michigan Supreme Court will consider a lawsuit from tribes and environmental groups seeking to overturn an existing state permit.
Enbridge insists that Line 5 is safe and the tunnel project would make the pipeline segment even safer. Line 5 opponents like Liz Kirkwood, executive director of the Michigan-based legal nonprofit For Love of Water, disagree.
“We should be thinking about the future and the transition away from fossil fuel. And move towards a future that is sustainable and more equitable,” Kirkwood said.
In the last weeks, we have witnessed an authoritarian assault on communities in Minnesota and across the nation.
The need for truthful, grassroots reporting is urgent at this cataclysmic historical moment. Yet, Trump-aligned billionaires and other allies have taken over many legacy media outlets — the culmination of a decades-long campaign to place control of the narrative into the hands of the political right.
We refuse to let Trump's blatant propaganda machine go unchecked. Untethered to corporate ownership or advertisers, Truthout remains fearless in our reporting and our determination to use journalism as a tool for justice.
But we need your help just to fund our basic expenses. Over 80 percent of Truthout's funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors.
Truthout has launched a fundraiser, and we have a goal to add 200 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger one-time gift, Truthout only works with your support.
Vivian La is the Michigan regional reporter for Grist and Interlochen Public Radio. Her work has appeared in WBUR, Science Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and Illinois Public Media. Originally from the Chicago suburbs, she holds a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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The president's lengthy speech to Congress contained myriad inflated, misleading or simply false claims
Analysis: Why longest-ever State of the Union address was most inconsequential
US politics – live updates
Donald Trump officially made the longest State of the Union address in history on Tuesday night, with broad claims about the successes achieved during the first year of his second term.
But the speech that stretched across more than an hour and 41 minutes was filled with strong statements, many of them inflated, misleading or simply untrue.
Here are some of the claims made by the president during his address:
Trump repeatedly touted his economy, boasting “we are the hottest country anywhere in the world” and claiming “we have more jobs, more people working today than ever before in the history of our country.”
But data shows job gains under Trump slowed in 2025, and were far smaller than any other non-pandemic year.
According to revised data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this month, the US gained just 181,000 jobs in 2025.
That number, PolitiFact notes, is “well below the 1.5 million to 2.5 million typical under both Trump during his first term and former President Joe Biden”.
Trump also said the US had, under his leadership, secured $18tn in investments “pouring in from all over the globe”. But a review from CNN last year found that the White House was counting pledges – vague amounts promised – rather than actual investments. The White House website on investments lists total US and foreign investments at $9.7tn.
When Trump introduced the mother of Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian woman killed on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, last year, he falsely claimed the man who stabbed Zarutska was “a hardened criminal set free to kill in America came in through open borders”.
However, DeCarlos Brown Jr, the man arrested and charged with killing Zarutska, is not an immigrant. Trump has long insisted that non-citizens are responsible for violent crime throughout the US. Data shows that relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes, and 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes.
Trump suggested that energy prices are decreasing. “When they see energy going down to numbers like that, they cannot believe it,” he said.
But the average household energy bill went up by 6.7% from 2024 to 2025 in the US. That's despite Trump's oft-repeated promise to cut electricity costs in half within his first year back in office.
Since Trump retook the White House, utility companies have raised or sought to raise rates on American families by at least $92bn, raising bills for 112 million electric customers and 52 million gas customers, according to an analysis from the liberal thinktank the Center for American Progress. The president's attacks on clean energy expansion are also expected to increase electricity rates by up to 18% by 2035, data from the power research group Energy Innovation shows.
The Trump administration has also gutted energy assistance for US families. Last year, the administration eliminated tax credits for cost-cutting home energy-efficiency upgrades. It also attempted to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps 6 million low-income Americans with their energy bills each year. The program survived, but has been significantly hindered after the administration laid off the program's entire staff. The cuts and a government shutdown caused unprecedented delays in the disbursement of aid.
Trump touted low gas prices during his State of the Union speech, saying they are “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states and in some places, $1.99 a gallon”. But a major environmental rollback his administration enacted two weeks ago could push gas prices up.
The repeal of the endangerment finding – the legal underpinning for all greenhouse gas regulations in the US – is expected to create a rise in gas prices, as the Guardian explained in an analysis last week. That's according to the administration's own data. Check it out here.
Gas prices are also higher than the president claimed. According to AAA, which logs prices across the country, Oklahoma is the only state offering gas at $2.30 a gallon – or $2.374, to be precise. Prices in some states exceed $4.60.
The president claimed he ended eight wars in his first 10 months, a bold exaggeration. The US has been party to six peace agreements and several of them do not credit Trump specifically. Others were not considered wars to begin with.
While he was involved in efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel has continued to kill Palestinian civilians and carry out airstrikes since last October's truce was announced.
The century-long border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia is one of the conflicts Trump claims to have resolved. Trump presided over the signing of a ceasefire deal between the two sides in October, calling it “a monumental step”.
He had pressured leaders from both countries to make a deal by warning trade talks with the US would otherwise be put on hold. However, the underlying causes of the conflict, which is rooted in longstanding disagreements over colonial-era maps, has never been resolved. The ceasefire broke down just weeks later in November, and fighting erupted again in December, forcing half a million people to flee their homes.
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Anthropic, a company founded by OpenAI exiles worried about the dangers of AI, is loosening its core safety principle in response to competition.
Instead of self-imposed guardrails constraining its development of AI models, Anthropic is adopting a nonbinding safety framework that it says can and will change.
In a blog post Tuesday outlining its new policy, Anthropic said shortcomings in its two-year-old Responsible Scaling Policy could hinder its ability to compete in a rapidly growing AI market.
The announcement is surprising, because Anthropic has described itself as the AI company with a “soul.” It also comes the same week that Anthropic is fighting a significant battle with the Pentagon over AI red lines.
It's not clear that Anthropic's change is related to its meeting Tuesday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei an ultimatum to roll back the company's AI safeguards or risk losing a $200 million Pentagon contract. The Pentagon threatened to put Anthropic on what is effectively a government blacklist.
But the company said in its blog post that its previous safety policy was designed to build industry consensus around mitigating AI risks – guardrails that the industry blew through. Anthropic also noted its safety policy was out of step with Washington's current anti-regulatory political climate.
Anthropic's previous policy stipulated that it should pause training more powerful models if their capabilities outstripped the company's ability to control them and ensure their safety — a measure that's been removed in the new policy. Anthropic argued that responsible AI developers pausing growth while less careful actors plowed ahead could “result in a world that is less safe.”
As part of the new policy, Anthropic said it will separate its own safety plans from its recommendations for the AI industry.
Anthropic wrote that it had hoped its original safety principles “would encourage other AI companies to introduce similar policies. This is the idea of a ‘race to the top' (the converse of a ‘race to the bottom'), in which different industry players are incentivized to improve, rather than weaken, their models' safeguards and their overall safety posture.”
The company now suggests that hasn't played out. A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anthropic's new safety policy includes a “Frontier Safety Roadmap” that outlines the company's self-imposed guidelines and safeguards. But the company acknowledged the new framework is more flexible than its past policy.
“Rather than being hard commitments, these are public goals that we will openly grade our progress towards,” the company said in its blog post.
The change comes a day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a Friday deadline to roll back the company's AI safeguards, or risk losing a $200 million Pentagon contract and being put on what is effectively a government blacklist.
Anthropic has concerns over two issues that it isn't willing to drop, according to a source familiar with the company's meeting with Hegseth: AI-controlled weapons and mass domestic surveillance of American citizens. Anthropic believes AI is not reliable enough to operate weapons, and there are no laws or regulations yet that cover how AI could be used in mass surveillance, a source said.
AI researchers applauded Anthropic's stance on social media on Tuesday and expressed concerns about the idea of AI being used for government surveillance.
The company has long positioned itself as the AI business that prioritizes safety. Anthropic has published research showing how its own AI models could be capable of blackmail under certain conditions. The company recently donated $20 million to Public First Action, a political group pushing for AI safeguards and education.
But the company has faced increasing pressure and competition from both the government and its rivals. Hegseth, for example, plans to invoke the Defense Production Act on Anthropic and designate the company a supply chain risk if it does not comply with the Pentagon's demands, CNN reported on Tuesday. OpenAI and Anthropic have also been locked in a race to launch new enterprise AI tools in a bid to win the workplace.
Jared Kaplan, Anthropic's chief science officer, suggested in an interview with Time that the change was made in the name of safety more than increased competition.
“We felt that it wouldn't actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models,” Kaplan told the magazine. “We didn't really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments … if competitors are blazing ahead.”
CNN's Hadas Gold contributed to this story.
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Critics concerned as Casey Means, aligned with RFK Jr on vaccine stance, does not have active medical licence
Casey Means, Donald Trump's nominee for surgeon general of the United States, appeared before lawmakers on the Senate committee for health, labor and pensions on Wednesday, after her initial confirmation hearing was postponed in October when she went into labor hours before she was set to testify.
Means is the president's controversial pick for the role of the nation's top doctor, responsible for disseminating the latest public health guidance.
Democrats on the committee quickly expressed their concerns about Means's ability to push back against Kennedy's misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, which public health experts says is endangering the wellbeing of the American public.
“I have very serious questions about the ability of Dr Means to be the kind of surgeon general this country needs,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, the committee's ranking member.
Although Means graduated from Stanford School of Medicine, she did not complete her head and neck surgical residency at Oregon Health and Science University, is not board-certified, and does not have an active medical license. Her scientific experience is mainly focused around her work as a wellness influencer, and a leader within the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) space – which has become the key pillar of the Trump administration's health policy under Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Means declined to give a simple yes-or-no answer when the committee chair, Republican senator Bill Cassidy, pressed her on whether, as surgeon general, she would encourage parents to vaccinate their children with routine shots such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
“I'm supportive of vaccination. I do believe that each patient, mother, parent, needs to have a conversation with their pediatrician about any medication they're putting in their body and their children's bodies,” Means said.
When Cassidy asked whether she would state her position more clearly if confirmed, she replied: “I'm not an individual's doctor, and every individual needs to talk to their doctor before putting a medication in their body.”
Means's comments come as measles outbreaks continue across the country, with South Carolina experiencing the worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years amid declining childhood immunization rates. In response, Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), urged Americans to “take the vaccine, please” earlier this month. In an interview with CNN, Oz issued a rare plea from the Trump administration to insist upon inoculation. “Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” he said. “But measles is one you should get your vaccine.”
While Means insisted that anti-vaccine rhetoric “has never been a part” of her message and said she was “not here to complicate the issue on vaccines”, she repeatedly sidestepped direct questions from lawmakers about whether vaccines cause autism – a theory long discredited by the scientific community and promoted by health secretary Kennedy.
“The reality is that we have an autism crisis that's increasing, and this is devastating to many families, and we do not know as a medical community what causes autism,” she said, while acknowledging that there is an overwhelming body of evidence refuting claims that vaccines cause the condition. “I also think that science is never settled, and I think that the effort to look at comprehensive, cumulative exposures into what is causing autism is important.”
Means has spurned the medical establishment, noting that she dropped out of her residency because she grew “disillusioned with traditional healthcare”, which, she claims, focuses on diagnoses and prescriptions instead of diet and lifestyle.
During her opening remarks before lawmakers, she praised Trump and Kennedy for inviting “a mature, candid, grand conversation about how our medical education and fixing perverse incentives can pull us back from the brink”.
In 2024, Means co-authored a book, Good Energy, with her older brother Calley, an entrepreneur who currently serves as one of Kennedy's close advisers and has also railed against the US medical establishment. The siblings argue in their book that metabolic health is the key to reversing chronic illness, a framing that critics say verges into pseudoscience. “Many doctors are doing the wrong things, pushing pills and interventions when an ultra-aggressive stance on diet and behavior would do far more for the patient in front of them,” Means writes in the book.
The prospective surgeon general also co‑founded Levels, a health tracking company built around continuous glucose monitoring, as part of her belief that people need real‑time data to understand what's driving their symptoms.
In the past, Means has trodden lightly when it comes to the efficacy of vaccines, she is aligned with Kennedy's routine skepticism of the number of vaccines children are recommended.
“I also find it perplexing that people are often shamed for asking any questions about the 70+ injected medications going into their children's bodies before the age of 18,” she wrote on her website. “I am not making a statement about the utility of vaccines; I am making a statement about an $80bn industry getting to have legal immunity from wrongdoing and having the American population in a chokehold that forces them to comply with the complete schedule or face consequences.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced it would slash routine vaccine recommendations during childhood from 17 to 11 jabs, a move that public health experts said would erode trust in inoculations and allow infectious diseases to spread.
Means's nomination has received significant backlash from the US scientific community. Former surgeon general Richard Carmona, who served under George W Bush, told the Guardian that Means's nomination was a “disgrace” to the future of America's public health system. “She has no significant public health background experience. She has no scalable leadership experience,” he said.
Under Kennedy's leadership, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been beset with chaos. Grants have been terminated, there has been a mass exodus of officials from key agencies, and anti-vaccine loyalists have been installed to the advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP). Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who ultimately cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy as Trump's health secretary last year, did so despite expressing concern about Kennedy's anti‑vaccine record. Kennedy assured him during the confirmation process that he would not interfere with the make-up of the ACIP. He has since reversed course, reshaping the department and sidelining career public‑health experts.
Last year, the Senate-confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, was ousted from her role less than a month after starting. In September, she told health committee senators that she was forced out of the CDC for her unwillingness to comply with Kennedy's vaccine agenda. This month there was even more turnover at the CDC when Jim O'Neill, Monarez's replacement, left the agency. His number two, principal deputy director Ralph Abraham, stepped down from his position this week.
Means is Trump's second nominee for the surgeon general position. Last year he put forward Dr Janette Nesheiwat, but withdrew her name before her Senate confirmation hearing amid criticism from the right and reports of misleading medical credentials.
Carmona said that his optimism that lawmakers will push back against Means's credentials was “muted”.
“We see too much ideology and not enough science,” he said. “You're putting an untrained person in the position … at a time when we probably need a real leader more than ever because of the mis- and disinformation that's out there.”
MOSCOW, February 25. /TASS/. The intention of Paris and London to transfer nuclear weapons to Kiev suggests their desire to disrupt the peace talks; Slovakia and Hungary oppose Ukraine's EU accession; and American companies may begin to file large-scale lawsuits against the authorities to recover the national tariffs they have paid. These stories topped Wednesday's newspaper headlines across Russia.
The intention of Paris and London to transfer nuclear weapons to Kiev suggests their desire to disrupt the peace talks. Experts agree that providing Ukraine with nuclear warheads would make European countries direct participants in the conflict and violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), these countries intend to bolster Kiev's military capabilities to enable it to seek more favorable terms for ending hostilities with Russia.
"The UK and France want to step up their efforts to ensure that the Ukrainian conflict lasts as long as possible. However, negotiations must continue, bearing in mind that common sense will ultimately prevail among our opponents. Perhaps we need to appeal to the parliaments of the relevant countries, including the EU, so they understand where their leaders are taking them," Grigory Karasin, the head of the Russian Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, told Izvestia.
According to the European Parliament, this issue "needs to be discussed with the countries concerned before any conclusions are drawn." "So far, I have not heard anything in parliament on this matter. However, given the seriousness of everything related to nuclear weapons, it is necessary to remain attentive to this matter," Fernand Kartheiser, a member of the European Parliament, told Izvestia.
A similar position was expressed in the British Parliament. Richard Balfe, a member of the House of Lords, said he had not yet heard anything on the subject, adding that, if true, it would be an irresponsible and bad idea that should be examined.
The possible transfer of nuclear weapons or their components to Ukraine by Western countries will not go unanswered by Russia or other nuclear powers, Valdai International Discussion Club expert Andrey Kortunov told Vedomosti. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the presence of these weapons could have prevented the conflict with Russia, but Kiev lacks the technical infrastructure to maintain them, the expert noted.
The delivery of nuclear weapons or so-called dirty bomb components to Ukraine is possible because France and the UK want the Ukrainian conflict to continue, Alexander Kamkin, associate professor at the Russian Financial University, pointed out. In his opinion, this would theoretically make Europeans raise the stakes in the event of a threat to the Zelensky regime or Russian troops advancing towards Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk. "Paris and London have invested too many resources and do not want to allow Russia to win the armed conflict," the political expert emphasized.
Bratislava is against Kiev's immediate admission to the EU. Hungary will also continue to oppose Ukraine's European integration. Budapest blocked the adoption of the 20th package of sanctions against Russia, as well as the allocation of a 90-billion-euro loan to Ukraine. To avoid leaving Kiev empty-handed, Brussels is considering granting partial membership without the right of veto. However, experts agree that Kiev's accession to the EU is impossible without lifting martial law and holding elections.
"Slovakia supports Ukraine's gradual rapprochement with the EU, including financial and technical assistance, but will not promote circumvention of basic conditions such as fighting corruption, ensuring the rule of law, and protecting minority rights. Ukraine has made some progress, but the accession criteria have not yet been fully met," Slovak National Council Deputy Speaker Tibor Gaspar told Izvestia.
Despite pressure, Budapest will also continue to oppose Ukraine's membership in the EU, the country's government press service said in a commentary to the newspaper. "Ukraine demands that Hungary abandon Russian energy sources, allocate funds to Kiev, and support its EU membership. The government will not back down from its program under any threat. It acts solely in the interests of the Hungarian people and does not yield to the demands of any foreign power," the statement noted.
Experts told Izvestia that the likelihood of Kiev joining the EU in 2027 is minimal. In particular, Ukraine remains under martial law, which is unlikely to be lifted in the near term. In addition, there are no elections and no proper rule of law, Ivan Loshkarev, associate professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), noted.
Last year, Vladimir Zelensky stated that Ukraine would only agree to full EU membership. The Kiev authorities are particularly interested in security guarantees, such as the deployment of European forces and funding for the defense sector. However, due to opposition from Hungary and Slovakia, Brussels is unlikely to be able to agree on such measures. "I am not sure that the EU will be ready to publicly commit to security guarantees. Perhaps the matter will not go beyond offers of asylum from one of the European countries for the Ukrainian leadership," Loshkarev pointed out.
Political expert Denis Denisov, in turn, emphasized that the EU was originally created as an economic union. This is why the issue of military guarantees for Kiev has not yet been officially reflected in the association's documents. He also considers Ukraine's accession to the EU to be virtually unfeasible.
American companies may begin to file large-scale lawsuits against the authorities to recover the national tariffs they have paid. The logistics company FedEx has already filed a claim after the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump's tariffs were illegal. However, experts believe the administration will delay refunds for as long as possible. The government will verify whether businesses actually incurred losses or passed the costs on to consumers. Against this backdrop, there have been reports of new broad tariffs being introduced.
Usually, 180 days are allowed for the refund of excess tariffs paid on already closed declarations, Yury Ichkhtidze, an analyst at Freedom Finance Global, told Izvestia. This means that only those amounts that were transferred to the budget no later than six months ago can be refunded — thus, this rule only applies to payments made after August 22. At the same time, the expert recalled that there have been no precedents for the refund of nationwide tariffs set by the US authorities.
The first decisions on compensation should not be expected before the November congressional elections, Mikhail Nikitin, head of international business and finance practice and partner at 5D Consulting, noted. It is not in the Democrats' interest to give money to the Republican administration, nor is it in the Republicans' interest to set a precedent for mass payments.
Oleg Abelev, head of the analytical department at Ricom Trust, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that he expects increased uncertainty and a slowdown in trade, causing businesses around the world to pause operations in anticipation. "The main loss is the loss of trust, as no one will rush to sign long-term deals with Washington because they will understand that the court could overturn them," the analyst said.
The tariffs that Trump introduced to replace the old ones are not so much an escalation as a forced maneuver, Nikitin noted. Considering that, in the spring, tariffs against some countries were over 50%, the current 15% tariffs seem quite reasonable, he said. However, they will also affect Russia, albeit less so, as trade between Russia and the US remains limited. In the first ten months of 2025, trade turnover reached $4 billion, Nikitin recalled. In this sense, even the current turbulence is an opportunity to establish a new, pragmatic dialogue with the world's largest economy. It would be shortsighted to reject such an opportunity, the expert emphasized.
Experts also praise the removal of tariff pressure on key oil buyers, which has a positive effect on Russia. "The canceled tariffs no longer threaten India and China," Abelev pointed out. "This means that Trump will now be unable to unilaterally impose secondary tariffs on third countries for trading with Russia or Iran, for example, under current legislation," Olga Belenkaya, head of macroeconomic analysis at Finam, explained.
As expected, EU countries were unable to quickly agree on the 20th package of sanctions against Russia due to disagreements over banning the transport of Russian oil by EU ships. Meanwhile, the EU is discussing the possibility of completely restricting the transit of tankers carrying our raw materials through the Danish straits connecting the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
Such a measure is difficult to approve at the level of all EU countries. According to experts, it contradicts the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). However, there are loopholes in this document that could be used to target tankers carrying Russian oil.
A complete closure of the Baltic Sea to Russian tankers seems highly unlikely, as it would look like a naval blockade, which is very difficult to implement legally and economically, Finam analyst Alexander Potavin told Rossiyskaya Gazeta. EU countries are trying to exert maximum pressure on the Russian shadow fleet while acting within the bounds of international law.
Regarding the nationality of the vessels, Valery Andrianov, an associate professor at the Russian Financial University, noted that the shadow fleet initially used flags of convenience under which three-quarters of the world's fleet sails: Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands. Due to US pressure, the shadow fleet has had to change jurisdictions and use the flags of Gabon, the Comoros, and a number of other countries that do not even have access to the sea. Recently, the shadow fleet has been actively switching to the Russian flag. There can be no legal grounds for detaining ships in this case. By raising the Russian flag, a tanker ceases to be a shadow vessel, and attempts to detain it would constitute an act of aggression against Russia.
Andrianov believes that, if it happens, the closure of the Baltic Sea to the shadow fleet will not be total. Loopholes in UNCLOS allow only a limited number of tankers with clearly suspicious flags to be stopped. Moreover, there are fewer and fewer of them.
According to Potavin, pressuring the shadow fleet with environmental requirements, insurance restrictions, and stricter inspections of vessels with questionable status will not significantly decrease Russian oil exports through the Baltic Sea. However, it will increase inspection costs, transportation time, and regulatory risks for buyers. This could result in a higher discount for Russian Urals export oil (which is primarily supplied via the Baltic Sea) compared to Brent. Under maximum EU pressure, exports through the Baltic Sea could temporarily decline by 10-20%, and the Urals discount relative to Brent could increase by an additional $3-5 per barrel.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that the unrest caused by drug cartels had been quelled. According to media reports, this is an exaggeration. The US may participate in suppressing the turmoil. The unrest itself began when, under pressure from Washington, the Mexican Defense Ministry carried out an operation against the head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known by the alias El Mencho. It was his murder that sparked the wave of violence that has swept the country. Mexico is returning to war with the drug cartels. This is happening on the eve of the FIFA World Cup, which will be held in Mexico, among other countries.
Mexico's past experience shows that fighting drug cartels that have gone to war with the state is extremely difficult. The cartels are as well armed as the Mexican military. Furthermore, many high-ranking officials are often members of drug gangs, or even form them themselves. Typically, the death of a Mexican drug cartel leader does not result in the dissolution of the entire criminal group. Instead, after some time passes, a bloody power struggle begins, intensifying the chaos in the country. Experts say it is possible that this will be the case with the CJNG. According to the media, the cartel is now headed by El Mencho's stepson, Juan Carlos Valencia Gonzalez, nicknamed El 03.
In this sense, the FIFA World Cup to be held in the US and Mexico on June 11-19 will be telling. By then, it will be clear whether infighting will break out within the cartel and if the authorities can negotiate a ceasefire with the CJNG during the tournament. Experts say that defeating the group before then seems unrealistic. FIFA itself is hoping for a quicker resolution.
"Mexican President Felipe Calderon relied on the physical elimination of drug cartel leaders. He was in power from 2006 to 2012. At that time, it became clear that this approach would lead to increased violence and, in the long term, a loss of control," Tatyana Rusakova, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Latin American Studies told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. She added that it is telling that Sheinbaum stated in her speech that state governments would make decisions regarding the unrest, essentially shifting responsibility for the situation to the regions.
"The Mexican government is doing everything it can to smooth over differences with Washington. Under Sheinbaum, there has been a sharp increase in the number of Mexican citizens extradited to the US who are wanted there. This has never happened before," Rusakova pointed out. In her opinion, it is too early to conclude that the US will intervene in Mexico's fight against the drug mafia.
TASS is not responsible for the material quoted in these press reviews
MOSCOW, February 25. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his Vietnamese counterpart Le Hoai Trung discussed measures to further deepen comprehensive strategic partnership, including upcoming contacts at various levels, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated following the top diplomats' meeting in Moscow on February 24.
"In a traditionally friendly atmosphere, the sides discussed steps to further strengthen comprehensive strategic partnership, including the upcoming contacts at various levels, issues of inter-ministerial cooperation, as well as current items on the international agenda," the Foreign Ministry said.
Le Hoai Trung visited Russia as a special envoy of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam.
President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address Tuesday to slam the Supreme Court's decision against his sweeping emergency tariffs, repeatedly calling the ruling “unfortunate” even as he suggested his administration would quickly move past it.
With four justices sitting mere feet away, their hands folded over their robes, Trump touted what he described as a vast economic benefit from the global tariffs before lamenting the “unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court.”
“It just came down,” the president said. “Very unfortunate ruling.”
Though it was likely an awkward moment for the justices, Trump's criticism of the court was far more tempered than on Friday, when he railed against the justices who voted against his tariffs. In an angry press conference at the White House, he described the court's decision as a “disgrace” and at one point said that justices in the majority were an “embarrassment to their families.”
Four justices showed for the president's speech: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, a first-term Trump appointee. Three of them — Roberts, Kagan and Barrett — voted against his tariffs. Kavanaugh, whom Trump also appointed to the high court in his first term, wrote the dissent from that decision.
The justices themselves have made clear for years they would prefer to be almost anywhere besides a State of the Union address. Stone-faced and silent, their front-row presence is an oddity at an event where lawmakers repeatedly erupt into applause or jeers.
The late Justice Antonin Scalia once described the speech as a “childish spectacle.” Justice Samuel Alito acknowledged the awkwardness and in 2010 complained that jurists essentially had to sit in the chamber “like the proverbial potted plant.”
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that Trump could no longer rely on an emergency law enacted in the 1970s to impose his tariffs on a whim. Nothing in the court's decision barred Trump from relying on other laws to raise tariffs, though many of those other measures come with strings attached.
Trump last week praised Kavanaugh, who penned the dissent in the case, but called those who voted against him a disgrace and suggested without evidence that their decision may have been driven by foreign influence.
But Trump said the justices were still invited to his speech.
“Barely,” he added.
On Tuesday, Trump exchanged pleasantries and shook hands with all four justices in attendance as he worked his way through the chamber before the speech.
After calling the decision “unfortunate” and “disappointing,” he framed its impact as limited.
“The good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made,” the president said.
Sixteen years ago, President Barack Obama during his State of the Union took a similar swipe at the court for its decision days earlier in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited sums in candidate elections. Six justices who attended the speech offered little reaction at first as Obama began speaking about that decision.
“With all due deference to separation of powers,” Obama said, “last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.”
Obama's scolding is perhaps best remembered for one justice's reaction. Alito, a conservative who supported that decision, could be seen shaking his head and mouthing the words, “Not true.”
A media firestorm followed and Alito never returned to another speech, saving his expressions of agreement or disapproval for the bench.
But even when the president — any president — is not reeling from a significant legal loss, the presence of the justices can often make for awkward moments on the House floor. Last year Trump was caught on a microphone giving a hearty thanks to Roberts months after the court granted the president immunity from criminal prosecution for some official actions.
“Thank you again,” Trump could be heard telling Roberts on the House floor. “I won't forget it.”
The president later said on social media that he was thanking the chief justice for swearing him in at his inauguration.
In 2018, Trump touted his “great new Supreme Court justice,” referring to Neil Gorsuch, who sat so expressionless that his locked face became a social media meme. Two years later, Trump boasted about Gorsuch and Kavanaugh as the camera panned to both men as they offered tight-lipped smiles to each other.
“To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally,” Roberts said in 2010, “I'm not sure why we're there.”
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The Associated Press
11:24 JST, February 25, 2026
GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) — Hugo Alejandro Pérez was in his house a few miles from the Mexican stadium that is slated to host FIFA World Cup games when gunfire and explosions erupted just outside his door.
The 53-year-old restaurant owner was already skeptical about his city, Guadalajara, hosting the international sporting event.
He saw a government that failed to fix basic things, like water service to his home, along with cartel violence in the surrounding state of Jalisco and shook his head. The surge of bloodshed this week following the Mexican military's killing of the country's most powerful cartel boss offered more confirmation of his doubts.
“I don't think they should host the World Cup here,” Peréz said. “We have so many problems, and they want to invest in the World Cup? With all the violence, it's not a good idea.”
Peréz joined other people Tuesday in questioning Guadalajara's capacity to be a host city for the summer soccer competition, even as the Mexican government vowed that the international event — hosted jointly by Mexico, the United States and Canada — will not be affected.
President Claudia Sheinbaum was asked at her daily news briefing what guarantees there are that World Cup matches will be held in Jalisco. “Every guarantee,” she said, adding that there was “no risk” for fans coming to the tournament.
Jalisco Gov. Jesús Pablo Lemus said he had spoken with local FIFA officials, who have “absolutely no intention of removing any venues from Mexico. The three venues remain completely unchanged.”
The same day, the Portuguese soccer federation said it was “closely monitoring the delicate situation” in Mexico.” Its national team was scheduled to play Mexico's team in a friendly on March 28 at the newly renovated Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, which is scheduled to host the opening World Cup match on June 11.
Jalisco, in western Mexico, was already facing scrutiny. The state has been plagued by some of the starkest examples of cartel violence in recent years, including the discovery of a cartel killing site at a ranch last March and a crisis of disappearances.
The state, with Guadalajara as its capital, is the central hub for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, whose leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho,” was killed Sunday in a capture attempt by the military.
The operation and waves of violence killed 70 people. Cartel gunmen set fire to cars to block streets in states across the country, namely Jalisco, and fought with Mexican forces into Monday as the government said the conflict was under control.
The death of Oseguera Cervantes came as Mexico's government has stepped up its offensive against cartels in an effort to meet demands by U.S. President Donald Trump to crack down on criminal groups. The cartel, also known as CJNG, is one of the fastest-growing criminal networks in Mexico.
The White House confirmed that the U.S. provided intelligence support to capture the cartel leader and applauded Mexico's army for taking down a man who was one of the most wanted criminals in both countries.
Peréz, the restaurant owner, also commended Sheinbaum's efforts to go after cartels, saying the government has taken cartel violence more seriously than her predecessors. At the same time, he said, local authorities in Jalisco have fallen short in protecting civilians.
The root concern for many is that the death of “El Mencho” could pave the way for more violence. Killing capos, in what's become known as the “kingpin strategy,” has been criticized by Sheinbaum herself because it can often spark internal conflict between cartel factions and push rival cartels to make territorial grabs.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, an academic at the Brookings Institution, said she doesn't see more acts of “revenge” by the cartel as likely, but the future remains uncertain, especially after leading figures in both CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel have been knocked out in recent years.
“If there is no clear line of succession (in CJNG), we might see a lot of fighting within the cartel, its breakup, and there are a lot of scenarios,” she said.
On Sunday, when firefights broke out between the cartel and soldiers, and gunmen began to burn a car just feet in front of Peréz's house, he let people on the street scramble inside his home to seek cover. The fighting raged for an hour.
Now he says he doesn't see the point of holding the games, adding that he doubts any of the money from the games will trickle down to businesses in working-class neighborhoods like his, even if they are just a 10-minute drive from the stadium. Similar tensions have simmered in Mexico City.
The World Cup is expected to be a $3 billion economic engine in Mexico, according to the Mexican Soccer Federation.
“It doesn't help us residents at all, honestly. They should move it to Monterrey or Mexico City. But right now here, we're not convinced,” he said. “Things aren't in good enough shape for foreigners to be coming to Jalisco for an event like this.”
On Monday, some foreign tourists trapped in the violence in the city of Puerto Vallarta took to social media to warn of the violence, with a few remarking that they didn't plan to return.
Despite that, Guadalajara was snapping back to its normal rhythm Tuesday. Many businesses opened their doors for the first time in two days, and streets were packed with traffic.
Workers were busy fixing up the exterior of the soccer stadium that will host World Cup matches. Cyclists zipped around outside the stadium, and parents played with children in parks.
Heavily armed police officers and National Guard members roamed the city, a sign for some that the government had the situation under control.
Juan Carlos Pila, a 55-year-old taxi driver, rolled his eyes at the reports of violence after spending two days waiting with his family for things to calm down. He said social media and local news outlets were overplaying the extent of the violence.
“People should come, man. Everyone is welcome,” he said.
Others, like Maria Dolores Aguirre, simply hoped for the best. Aguirre runs a small corner story in the cobblestoned tourist town of Tapalpa tucked away in Jalisco's mountains, where Mexico's military killed “El Mencho.”
Aguirre's family business of over 50 years depends on the flow of tourists to the normally sleepy town. Now she worries bloodshed will deal a blow to her livelihood and change towns like hers.
“It's going to affect us. It's collateral damage,” Aguirre said. “The government is going to have to have a lot of security. … The entire world just saw what happened and, of course, people are going to think twice about coming.”
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Criminals set this bus in fire in Jalisco state this past weekend, part of a wave of reprisals for the killing of a Mexican cartel leader on Sunday.Ulises Ruiz/AFP via Getty Images
The Mexican government has moved swiftly to project a sense of control after the killing of the long-time leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
In Guadalajara, Puerto Vallarta and other major population centres, extra patrols can be seen around key intersections, and armoured vehicles have been stationed near strategic buildings to protect airports and tourist areas.
But outside the metropolitan spotlight, in towns along the borders of the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Colima and Zacatecas, highways have been blocked by cartel members, limiting travel between smaller cities and along rural corridors ever since Mexican special forces killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” on Sunday.
The biggest toll has been borne by the residents of Michoacán, El Mencho's birthplace, where a rolling wave of retaliation and intimidation continues.
Father Gilberto Vergara García, a former parish priest of Aguililla in Michoacán, said the small town had endured more than 48 hours of terror. It wasn't until Tuesday that members of the National Guard appeared in the streets. “It is understandable the government is prioritizing emblematic places like Guadalajara and other large cities, which may leave towns like Aguililla in second place,” said Father Vergara, who wondered who would pay citizens for the damages to their cars and businesses.
By Tuesday, reports began emerging of the fear and violence in towns and villages. Over two days in Coalcomán, Michoacán, unknown assailants blocked the highways toward the coast of Aquila and Tepalcatepec, effectively cutting off the municipal seat by land. The unrest escalated as cars, a passenger bus, a gas station, a government bank branch and store were set ablaze.
Residents responded with panic buying, forcing grocery stores to close after selling out of basic goods. Most workshops, small businesses, tortilla shops and eateries shut down, and even the local radio station suspended regular programming to protect staff.
Alberto Noboa, 34, drives an Uber during the week in Mexico City and spends time with his family in Epitacio Huerta, Michoacán, almost every weekend. “I couldn't get back to the city yesterday,” he said, adding that members of his family reported blocked roads in small towns in the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro.
At a news conference Tuesday, President Claudia Sheinbaum said that the country was “under control and returning to normalcy.”
“In the vast majority of the national territory, activities are proceeding with complete normalcy,” she said.
Federal officials have promised that the operation that killed El Mencho will be followed by sustained pressure on the cartel's networks – financiers, logistics operators and local bosses. But Julio César Franco Gutiérrez, a human security specialist and a collaborator with the security council in Apatzingán, Michoacán, said residents in the hardest-hit towns say what they want most is not a news conference but permanence: reliable policing, protected roads and prosecutors who can pursue cases without being threatened out of office.
Mexico's security strategy in recent years has often leaned heavily toward protecting major cities and economic nodes – where disruption is visible and politically costly – while leaving smaller jurisdictions to municipal forces with insufficient resources.
Mr. Franco said “this moment is a window of opportunity, and we don't know which of the actors in positions of power will take advantage of it.”
While the retaliatory action from the cartels has been blockades, communities that have long lived under the rule of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are more concerned about how the organization will reorder itself.
Father Vergara was skeptical.
“This event marks a historic moment, but it does not mean all the work is finished,” he said, referring to El Mencho's death. “On the contrary, now we must watch how the cartel reorganizes and what consequences will follow, internally and externally.”
He said regular people have always been caught in the middle.
“We do not see in the official discourse a strategy that seeks to use this moment to dismantle criminal organizations,” he said. “We have a long history of ‘decapitating' these organizations – that is, capturing or killing the leaders who head them – but this does not stop the criminal machinery.”
After years of dealing with cartels like El Mencho's – sometimes with violence, sometimes not – Mexico is under increasing pressure from the Trump White House to show results. Freelance journalist David Agren spoke with The Decibel about the politics involved. Subscribe for more episodes.
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Photos of board members decorate the walls inside LAUSD headquarters Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
The exterior of the home of Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is shown on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in San Pedro, Calif. (AP Photo/William Liang)
Media stages outside LAUSD headquarters Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Los Angeles District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, at podium, holds a news conference as SEIU Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias, left, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, right, listen, in Los Angeles City Hall, Friday, March 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
The exterior of LAUSD headquarters is shown Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The FBI was serving search warrants Wednesday at the Los Angeles Unified School District's headquarters and the superintendent's home.
Federal officials in Los Angeles served the warrants as part of an ongoing investigation, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the probe. The nature of the investigation and what allegations were being examined was not immediately clear.
Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, confirmed that court-authorized searches were underway Wednesday.
The district and the superintendent's office did not immediately respond to emails and a voicemail requesting comment.
TV news footage showed agents in FBI shirts and jackets outside Superintendent Alberto Carvalho's modest home in the San Pedro neighborhood about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of downtown LA. There was no visible sign of agents outside the district headquarters as of mid-morning.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass's office said it had no information about the search and noted the district operates independently of city government.
The sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District is the nation's second largest, with more than 500,000 students and covering more than two dozen cities.
Carvalho has been its superintendent since February 2022. Before coming to Los Angeles, Carvalho oversaw Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida's largest school district, from 2008 to 2021, when he was credited with improving graduation rates and academic performance.
__
Tucker reported from Washington.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Neighbors, government workers, storeowners across New York have been digging out from a brutal storm that forecasters are calling the strongest in a decade. That has also brought out acts of kindness and generosity. (AP video: Ted Shaffrey/Emily Wang Fujiyama)
AP reporter Kimberlee Kruesi shows snow removal efforts in Providence, Rhode Island, following a record-breaking storm that brought more than 3 feet of snow to the state. (AP Video by Kimberlee Kruesi)
New Yorkers are continuing to dig out after heavy snow inundated the northeast on Monday. In New York City, more than a million students in the nation's largest public school system had a regular day, Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared, inviting kids to pelt him with snowballs over his decision.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani says New York City is “back up and running” after a powerful snowstorm. He also commented on an incident Monday where NYPD officers were pelted with snowballs in a city park.
A man carries his daughter over a snowbank outside a day care center in the Brooklyn borough of New York, on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Drew Callister)
A woman pushes a stroller through plowed snow, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, left, lends a hand shoveling snow from around a fire hydrant, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in South Boston. (AP Photo/Sophie Park)
A Brooklyn Bridge Park worker clears snow from a sidewalk near the park, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
A man walks his dogs on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
NEW YORK (AP) — Light snow fell over parts of the Northeast on Wednesday as people navigated to work and school after a massive storm that dropped piles of powder on streets and sidewalks from Maryland to Maine.
One to 3 more inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) of snow was expected, much less than the last storm, but whatever melted likely froze again overnight, resulting in patchy black ice to make for some slippery roads, the National Weather Service said. As temperatures rose by mid-morning in some places, much of that became a slushy mess.
The gigantic snowstorm this week has cities working overtime to clear towering heaps. In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani got creative: in addition to spreading 143 million pounds (65 million kilograms) of salt by Tuesday evening, the city signed up at least 3,500 people as emergency shovelers, working $30-per-hour shifts to clear snow from bus stops and streets.
Power had returned for many of the hundreds of thousands who had lost electricity in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island. But nearly 160,000 customers in Massachusetts were still without power early Wednesday. Cape Cod, which accounted for most of the outages in the state, slowly began to see power return Wednesday, with utility Eversource promising that “99% of customers” would have electricity restored by Friday.
In an AP interview, National Weather Service forecaster Bob Oravec says additional light snow moved out across the Great Lakes and into the Northeast overnight.
In Newport, Rhode Island, first responders found 21-year-old Salve Regina University student Joseph Boutros unresponsive in a car parked outside a university building. Newport Police Capt. Joseph Carroll said the area had lost power and Boutros told another student he was going to his car to charge his phone. The vehicle's exhaust pipe was obstructed by snow, police said, calling his death from carbon monoxide poisoning accidental.
Many Rhode Island residents faced a third straight third morning stuck in their homes as residential streets remain unplowed. Those who did get out often had to trek by foot to the nearest major roadway.
There was plenty more work left to do. Parts of New York have people feeling like they're marooned on islands, according to Jeff Peters, spokesperson for the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York.
“You'll find a portion of a sidewalk that is clear, and then there's maybe a 6-inch (15-centimeter) pathway that can only be walked with one foot in front of the other and no room for a stroller, rollator, walker or crutches,” Peters said. “Then you get to the corner and not only is it unshoveled, but you have basically a glacier at the end of it.”
Tina Guenette, who uses a motorized wheelchair, had to shovel out her yard this week after more than 33 inches (84 centimeters) fell in Harrisville, Rhode Island, a town about 17 miles (27 kilometers) northwest of Providence.
“I really have no choice if my service dog wants to go outside,” Guenette said. Harrisville's volunteer snow-shoveling program hasn't had volunteers for years, she said.
Monday's storm blanketed the region with snow, canceled flights, disrupted transit and downed power lines. More than 3 feet (0.9 meters) fell in Rhode Island — surpassing snow totals from the historic Blizzard of 1978 that struck the Northeast, the weather service said.
Meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, crunched the numbers, which show that if all the snow that fell from Maryland to Maine fell just on Manhattan, it would have towered over a mile high. If the snowfall blanketed only on Rhode Island, which got hit hardest, it would bury the entire Ocean State in more than 92 feet of snow.
All that snow held a total of 2.5 trillion gallons of water, Maue calculated. Melted, it's enough to fill the Empire State Building with water more than 9,000 times. New York State got the water equivalent of 680 billion gallons, while Pennsylvania got 410 billion gallons and Massachusetts got 28 billion.
When it eventually melts, it will help mitigate the drought affecting parts of the Northeast, he said, but right now it's adding misery to an already punishing season.
“I think this storm took a severe winter and turned it into an extreme winter or a record extreme winter,” he said.
In New York City, workers will use massive basins of warm water where large amounts of snow and ice will be dumped, acting Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan said. They helped melt 23 million pounds (11.5 metric tons) of snow during last month's storm.
In snowbound Providence, Rhode Island, the city is taking snow to five locations, according to Josh Estrella, communications director for the city government. The challenge is so great that additional dumping grounds may be added, Estrella said.
Some large school districts moved back to in-person classes on Wednesday, including Philadelphia, which had switched to online learning during the first two days of the week. Schools reopened in Boston. They had been closed since last week for the winter vacation break. But in hardest-hit Rhode Island, Providence schools were closed for a third snow as the district moved into “virtual learning” on Wednesday.
In New York City, it's another regular school day for more than 900,000 students in the nation's largest public school system, but many students and their caregivers had to scramble over mountainous snow banks and dodge salt spreaders during the morning drop-off.
Thousands of flights in and out of the U.S. have been canceled in recent days. By Wednesday, the disruptions seemed to be subsiding, with nearly 200 grounded, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. Rhode Island's T.F. Green International Airport reopened Tuesday. Some flights departed Wednesday, while others were canceled.
When Jamie Meyers' flight landed in New York from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday evening, the cabin full of relieved passengers burst into applause. The Manhattan resident was supposed to arrive home Sunday but faced a cancellation and significant delay.
___
Golden reported from Seattle and Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. Associated Press writers Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island; Kimberlee Kruesi in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts; Leah Willingham in Boston; Seth Borenstein in Washington, D.C.; Jennifer Peltz, Michael R. Sisak and Philip Marcelo in New York; Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pennsylvania; Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
In a marathon State of the Union address, President Donald Trump ticked through claimed victories, insisting the U.S. is “winning so much” even as his approval slips, and blasting Democrats as “crazy” for remaining seated rather than standing to applaud.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has delivered the State of the Union. Now the challenge for him is to make that message stick.
His address Tuesday was a declaration of pride in the achievements of his still-young second term, as he boasted of an economic renaissance at home while he's imposed a new world order abroad. Trump is getting his first opportunity to test drive that midterm year message later this week, when he travels to Texas, where the Latino voters whose shift toward Trump in his successful 2024 reelection campaign highlighted how he had reshaped the Republican coalition.
President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The White House aims to promote that message to a broader electorate that's largely disenchanted with Trump's job performance, while a looming conflict in the Middle East threatens to shift focus from his domestic priorities. Trump also has a proclivity to go off-script during political rallies, such as during a speech last week in Rome, Georgia, asserting he's “solved” affordability when high prices remain a chief concern for voters.
Still, the themes of economic prosperity and a more secure America that Trump emphasized in his 108-minute speech Tuesday will underpin the broader narrative he and his fellow Republicans will seek to sell to voters this November. A slew of Cabinet officials — including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins — blanketed the airwaves Wednesday, promoting the highlights from Trump's address.
“This is going to be setting the tone for the following year,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who has close ties with Trump, told The Associated Press.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., arrives before President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Presidents often travel immediately after delivering the State of the Union to amplify their agenda. President Joe Biden, for instance, went to swing states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania the day after his speech in the last two years of his term.
Vice President JD Vance will be first to hit the road with a Thursday visit to a Wisconsin factory. Trump won't leave the Washington area until Friday, when he heads to Texas, to talk about the economy and energy policies just days ahead of the state's March 3 congressional primaries. On the day after the State of the Union, the president will spend much of his time participating in meetings at the White House, including policy sessions and a sit-down with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
But Trump — who wove a series of made-for-social media surprises into his address — is known for being able to command attention in a fractured news environment, and he's likely to find other ways to break through aside from the usual post-State of the Union blitz.
“Donald Trump is a master at the big moments, so he obviously cares a lot about how the speech goes, but what he cares a lot about are the clips that get replayed over and over again from the State of the Union,” said Austin Cantrell, who served as an assistant White House press secretary in Trump's first term.
Cantrell, who's now with the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based firm Bridge Public Affairs, said: “I don't expect this to be some Aaron Sorkin-esque, perfectly choreographed post-State of the Union media fan-out.”
Six years ago, it was Trump's move to award conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, that surprised the audience. Tuesday's address — record-breaking in its length — included similar attention-grabbing moments. He said he'd give the same honor to Connor Hellebuyck, goaltender for the U.S. men's hockey team, fresh off winning a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, Italy. Trump called Hellebuyck and his teammates into the House chamber, where they were greeted with applause.
Trump also used his speech to roll out new proposals to address affordability concerns, while castigating Democrats for opposing policies he said have led to a more prosperous, safer America. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, in Democrats' response, argued costs remain high for many Americans and families are still struggling under Trump's policies.
Trump called on both parties to “protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” and pushed for measures to limit mail-in ballots and tighten voter identification rules, while warning about the dangers of unchecked, illegal migration.
“I do think a lot of the success outlined in the State of the Union will be a part of the Republican message in the fall,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., another close Trump ally, told the AP, pointing to the GOP's achievements on tax policy and border security. “As far as the president is concerned, I think he'll be anxious to get on the road and talk about the success.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., speaks to members of the media at the Capitol, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Senior White House officials have promised that Trump will travel the country regularly until the midterms. He so far has hit critical battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina on his economy tour, but he also traveled to reliably conservative Iowa and the congressional district of former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. He has boosted candidates — in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he bantered with Republican Michael Whatley and promoted his Senate run — while sometimes veering far away from the economic points the trips are meant to emphasize.
Just the optics of leaving Washington can help telegraph to voters that a president cares about connecting with them. Edward Frantz, a historian at the University of Indianapolis, said Herbert Hoover — an engineer, self-made millionaire and technocrat — believed he could solve the nation's ills by working with his team in isolation and rarely leaving Washington. That led to a perception among voters that Hoover simply didn't care, because they didn't see him connecting with Americans.
“If you think about a call and response ... the call is the State of the Union, and if you really do care about being in touch with others, then what's the response?” Frantz said. “The best way to be able to see that is by hitting the road.”
How Americans feel about Trump has remained relatively stable throughout his second term, making it unlikely that one speech will meaningfully shift the way he's perceived. His approval rating has changed very little during his second term, Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polling has found, falling only slightly from 42% in March 2025 to 36% in early February.
Nevertheless, the annual address offers Trump the chance to reframe his message, just as it has for presidents who came before him.
Presidential historian Timothy Naftali pointed out that in 1996, Bill Clinton used his State of the Union to set the themes of his Democratic reelection campaign. After George W. Bush's midterm drubbing in November 2006, the Republican struck a noticeably more conciliatory tone toward the new Democratic leadership that had just taken charge on Capitol Hill.
“The State of the Union, they're less important than they once were because with a president like Trump, he's always available,” said Naftali, a senior research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. “But the State of the Union is an opportunity to reset the president's agenda or to reaffirm it, and resetting an agenda in the social media era is different from resetting it in previous times.”
___
Associated Press polling editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux 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.
Phil Collins performs at Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City on March 9, 2018, left, Lauryn Hill performs during the draw for the 2026 soccer World Cup in Washington on Dec. 5, 2025, center, and Shakira performs during the Global Citizen Festival in New York on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo)
Luther Vandross accepts the award for favorite soul or R&B male artist at the 29th American Music Awards in Los Angeles on Jan. 9, 2002. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)
British singer Sade Adu performs during her “Soldiers of Love” concert in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Oct. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)
Liam Gallagher, left, and Noel Gallagher of Oasis appear during their reunion tour in Toronto on Aug. 24, 2025. (Sammy Kogan/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
Members of the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden, from left, Dave Murray, Nicko McBrian, Bruce Dickinson, Steve Harris, Janick Gers and Adrian Smith hold up their hands after being inducted into Hollywood's Rockwalk in Los Angeles on Aug. 19, 2005. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Members of the Australian rock group INXS, from left, Garry Gary Beers, Andrew Farriss, Jon Farriss, Michael Hutchence, Kirk Pengilly and Tim Farriss appear at the 7th annual American MTV Video Music Awards in Universal City, Calif., on Sept. 6, 1990. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Phil Collins, Mariah Carey, Lauryn Hill, INXS, Iron Maiden, Luther Vandross and Shakira are some the 2026 nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a wide net that includes rap, metal, R&B, hip-hop, Britpop, blues rock and pop.
The hall revealed the list of 17 performer nominees Wednesday, a list that also includes Melissa Etheridge, Jeff Buckley, Pink, New Edition, Sade and the Wu-Tang Clan.
Billy Idol, Joy Division/New Order return to the nominations after missing induction last year. The list this time also repeats two sets of musical brothers who have had public feuds and recent reunions — The Black Crowes and Oasis.
Collins, who already is in the Hall as a member of Genesis and had such solo hits as “In the Air Tonight” and “One More Night,” has earned eight Grammys, including album of the year in 1985 for “No Jacket Required.” Hill's “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” made history as the first hip-hop album to win the Grammy for album of the year in 1999.
Carey, nominated in 2024 and 2025, has had 19 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, while soul-jazz vocalist Sade, also nominated in 2024, had such soft rock hits as “Smooth Operator” and “The Sweetest Taboo.” The Wu-Tang Clan have been hailed as rap innovators since their game-changing 1993 debut album “Enter the Wu-Tang.”
INXS ruled the late 1980s charts with hits like “Need You Tonight,” “Devil Inside” and “New Sensation.” Two-time Grammy winner Etheridge is best known for her songs “Come to My Window” and “I'm the Only One.” Iron Maiden helped power the new wave of British heavy metal with iconic albums like “The Number of the Beast.”
New Edition had the hits “Cool It Now” and “Candy Girl,” while Shakira has been lauded for her ability to bridge Latin music with rock and pop. Pink has had four No. 1 songs and three No. 1 albums, including “The Truth About Love.”
Ten of the 17 nominees are on the ballot for the first time: Buckley, Collins, Etheridge, Hill, INXS, New Edition, Pink, Shakira, Vandross and Wu-Tang Clan.
Vandross, who sold more than 25 million albums and had the hits “Here and Now” and “Any Love,” died in 2005. Buckley, whose 1994 debut album “Grace” is widely acclaimed, died in 1997.
“This diverse list of talented nominees recognizes the ever-evolving faces and sounds of Rock & Roll and its continued impact on youth culture,” John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said in a statement.
The 2026 inductees will be revealed in April, along with inductees entering the hall under three special committee categories: Musical influence, musical excellence and the Ahmet Ertegun Non-Performer Award.
Artists must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years before they're eligible for induction. Nominees will be voted on by more than 1,200 artists, historians and music industry professionals.
Last year, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Bad Company, Chubby Checker, Soundgarden, Joe Cocker, Salt-N-Pepa, The White Stripes, Carol Kaye, Nicky Hopkins, Lenny Waronker, Thom Bell and Warren Zevon all were inducted.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2026 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG.
Republican, Democrat and Independent voters reacted to President Donald Trump calling Democrats "crazy" for not applauding his call to ban secret teen gender transitions. (Maslansky & Partners for Fox News Digital)
President Donald Trump's decision to rip Democrats as "crazy" during his State of the Union address on Tuesday — after they remained seated while he demanded a ban on socially transitioning minors without parental consent — drew sharply divided reactions from a live panel of voters.
The panel, assembled by polling group Maslansky & Partners, included 29 Democrats, 30 Independents and 40 Republicans. Their real-time reactions were displayed as colored lines on a graph, with higher values representing positive reactions and lower values indicating negative ones.
"But surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents' arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents' will," Trump said. "Who would believe that?… We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately."
As Trump delivered the remarks, the Republican line, shown in red, climbed sharply into positive territory. Independents, represented in yellow, also ticked upward, while Democrats, shown in blue, trended downward into negative territory.
President Donald Trump speaks during his State of the Union address as a live reaction panel assembled by Maslansky & Partners tracks voter responses to his remarks on banning school gender transitions without parental consent. Republicans are shown in red, Independents in yellow and Democrats in blue. (Fox News)
The comments drew applause from Republicans in the chamber, but the president became incensed when he realized that Democrats refused to stand.
"Look, nobody stands up," Trump said.
"These people are crazy. I'm telling you. They're crazy," Trump said, pointing his finger at Democratic senators and House members who remained seated.
Republican reactions stayed elevated during the remarks, while Democratic responses remained negative and independent voters held relatively steady.
Sage Blair and her mother, Michelle Blair, stand in the gallery during President Donald Trump's State of the Union address after he highlighted her case involving alleged school gender transition policies. (Pool)
Trump made the remarks as he called on Sage Blair, a Virginia teenager whose family filed a 2023 lawsuit alleging that Appomattox County High School staff socially transitioned her without parental knowledge.
According to a lawsuit filed by her family, Blair began identifying as male at school, where staff used male names and pronouns and allowed her to use male facilities without informing her parents.
WATCH: Trump highlights teen whose family says school hid her gender transition during State of the Union
TRUMP TAKES DIRECT SOTU SWIPE AT DEMOCRATS OVER TAXES: 'TO HURT THE PEOPLE'
The family alleges the situation escalated after Blair ran away from home and later became a victim of sex trafficking, with the lawsuit alleging she was kidnapped and raped in multiple states.
Highlighting the case during his address, Trump said Blair was 14 when school officials sought to socially transition her "to a new gender," treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents.
"But today, all of that is behind them because Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full-ride scholarship to Liberty University. Sage and Michelle, please stand up," Trump said as Republicans in the chamber cheered.
"Thank you for your great bravery," he added.
The gender policy segment generated some of the strongest reactions of the night from the panel.
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President Donald Trump demanded a ban on schools socially transitioning minors without parental consent at Tuesday's State of the Union. (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
Among supporters, several comments focused on protecting children and parental involvement, including: "Protect children," and "Parents should be informed."
Opponents pushed back on the scope of the proposal, writing comments such as: "Every case is unique," and "A total ban is not good."
The issue appeared to trigger deeply personal reactions on both sides.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives before President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts and Nevis (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has flown into the Caribbean country of St. Kitts and Nevis for talks Wednesday with regional leaders who, like others around the world, are unsettled and uncertain about Trump administration policies.
After President Donald Trump ordered a military operation last month to remove and arrest Venezuela's then-leader, Nicolás Maduro, stepped up aggressive tactics to combat alleged drug smuggling and turned up pressure on Cuba, Rubio is attending a summit of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM.
During his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Trump called Maduro's capture “an absolutely colossal victory for the security of the United States” and said it “opens up a bright new beginning for the people of Venezuela.”
Rubio left Washington, which is increasingly preoccupied by the possibility of a U.S. military attack on Iran, immediately after the Republican president wrapped up his marathon speech.
Leaders from the 15-nation bloc are gathering to debate pressing issues in a region that Trump has targeted for a 21st-century incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine meant to ensure U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Trump said his administration is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference.”
CARICOM leaders have complained about Trump administration measures that include demands for nations to accept third-country deportees from the U.S., reject Cuban medical missions and chill relations with China.
Godwin Friday, newly elected prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, echoed the fears of many European leaders when he said the Caribbean is “challenged from inside and out.”
“International rules and practices that we have become used to over the years have changed in troubling ways,” Friday said.
During Tuesday's opening ceremony, Terrance Drew, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and CARICOM chair, said the region “stands at a decisive hour.”
“The global order is shifting,” he said. “Supply chains remain uncertain, energy markets fluctuate and climate shocks intensify.”
Like other leaders, Drew spoke about changing geopolitics and said the humanitarian situation in Cuba must be addressed and taken seriously, something also stressed by Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
“It must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba,” Holness warned. “It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin.”
Holness said that Jamaica “stands firmly for democracy” and that his country also “supports constructive dialogue between Cuba and the U.S. aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability.”
Bahamian Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell told The Associated Press on Tuesday ahead of the summit that he doesn't know if individual topics will come up in talks with Rubio but said he expects a full discussion on the nature of the relationship with the U.S.
“It is about mutual respect and a rules-based order,” he said. “Those are some of the things we would expect from the meeting, and we are also available for any private dialogue with Mr. Rubio.”
Besides group sessions, Rubio plans to meet separately the meeting host, Drew, and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister, among others, according to the State Department, which said he intends to discuss ways to promote regional security and stability, trade and economic growth.
The U.S. has for many years backed regional security and anti-gun and -narcotics initiatives for small Caribbean island states.
Caribbean leaders also are expected to talk about other issues like security, reparations, climate change and financing, and a single market economy.
Rubio's visit comes more than a month after the U.S. captured Maduro and took him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges. Maduro has pleaded not guilty, protesting his capture and declaring himself “the president of my country.”
The U.S. also has killed at least 151 people in strikes targeting small boats accused of smuggling drugs since early September. The latest attack Monday killed three people in the Caribbean Sea. The U.S. has not provided evidence that the targeted boats are ferrying drugs.
Persad-Bissessar of Trinidad and Tobago has previously praised the attacks. On Tuesday, she repeated that sentiment, thanking Trump, Rubio and the U.S. military “for standing firm against narcotrafficking” and for their cooperation in national security matters.
“The crime is so bad, I cannot depend on just my military, my protective services,” she said.
Cuba's situation also is expected to dominate talks at CARICOM's summit.
Cuba's U.N. resident coordinator Francisco Pichón told AP on Monday that the U.S. oil embargo is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching those still struggling to recover from Hurricane Melissa, which struck eastern Cuba in late October as a Category 3 storm.
He noted that the energy blockade and fuel shortages “affect the entire logistics chain involved in being able to work in Cuba at this time, anywhere in the country.”
___
Lee reported from Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Coto from San José, Costa Rica. Associated Press reporters Bert Wilkinson in Georgetown, Guyana, and Andrea Rodríguez in Havana contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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America's slaughterhouses could become even more dangerous for workers and animals.
Last week, the US Department of Agriculture proposed a strikingly cruel policy, even for this administration: speeding up the kill lines at America's chicken, turkey, and pig slaughterhouses. The plan will make one of the country's most dangerous jobs — working in a meat processing plant — even more unsafe, labor advocates argue.
The new draft rules would allow slaughterhouses that participate in certain inspection systems — which account for the majority of poultry and pork processing in the US — to move even faster than they already do. Chicken slaughterhouses would be able to increase kill line speeds from 140 birds per minute to 175 — a 25 percent increase. Turkey slaughterhouses would be able to accelerate from 55 birds per minute to 60. Pig slaughterhouses currently have a maximum line speed limit of 1,106 pigs per hour, but under the new rule, there will be no speed limit.
The USDA has also proposed ending the requirement for these slaughter plants to publish annual reports on worker safety.
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If finalized, the rules will apply to 94 percent of chickens slaughtered, 79 percent of turkeys slaughtered, and 64 percent of pigs slaughtered.
The nearly 500,000 people who work in meat processing plants in the US — one-third of whom are immigrants — use sharp knives to quickly cut up animal carcasses over long shifts, already making them susceptible to high rates of cuts, lacerations, amputations, and carpal tunnel syndrome. The work can take a heavy toll on their mental health, too, as many suffer from anxiety, depression, and a form of PTSD they often didn't carry before taking up the job.
The proposed rules are all but certain to increase injury rates for these workers, who already have some of the highest in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (and which, according to numerous federal government sources, are likely severe underestimates).
Animal welfare groups worry the draft rules could increase botched slaughter, too, as faster lines can make it more difficult for workers to properly stun animals, leading to further suffering.
The trade groups that represent meatpackers, however, are cheering on the USDA's proposed rules.
“Thank you, Secretary Rollins and the Food Safety and Inspection Service, for taking steps to unleash the potential to process pork more efficiently,” reads part of a statement from Duane Stateler, president of the National Pork Producers Council.
On top of the worker and animal welfare issues, Trump's USDA has also withdrawn a Biden-era rule to reduce salmonella in poultry and has reduced its number of slaughterhouse inspectors.
Magaly Licolli, the cofounder and director of the poultry worker advocacy group Venceremos, said that increased line speeds can further compromise food safety: “Many workers explain that they simply cannot check for contamination, defects, or improperly processed meat when items pass by them in a blur.”
The Trump administration has, over and over again, vowed to improve the food system on behalf of the American people, but its latest proposal is one in a series of actions that demonstrates its allegiances lie on the side of the large businesses that run much of that food system.
However, the blame doesn't entirely rest on the Trump administration; the effort to speed up slaughter lines is a bipartisan project decades in the making.
The effort began in 1997 when, under President Bill Clinton, the USDA allowed a small number of poultry and pig slaughterhouses to operate faster.
In 2012, President Barack Obama's USDA proposed increasing the chicken slaughter rate from 140 birds per minute to 175. After strong pushback from labor and food safety groups, the agency dropped it.
But everything accelerated during the first Trump administration. Trump's USDA expanded the number of poultry slaughterhouses that could speed up their lines and finalized a rule to allow for some pig slaughterhouses to do the same.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union sued over the pork line speed increase and a judge ruled that the USDA had to abandon the measure because it had failed to consider how it would impact worker safety.
Still determined to increase slaughter line speeds, the USDA — during the Biden administration — hired third-party researchers to conduct experiments on how line speed affects worker safety. The study found that 81 percent of line workers at poultry plants and 46 percent at pork plants are at high risk for musculoskeletal disorders, like tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.
But the results were also counterintuitive. The risk wasn't correlated with how fast the kill line moved; it was correlated with the employee's workload — what's called the “piece rate,” or the number of animals or amount of meat they're required to process in a given amount of time.
To compensate for the increased workload that came with faster line speeds, some chicken plants in the study also increased staffing, which prevented further injury risk. The chicken plants that didn't add extra staff did see injury risk increase.
The researchers made it clear that this finding should be implemented in meat processing plants: “Any establishment anticipating an increase in evisceration line speed should proactively mitigate MSD [musculoskeletal disorder] risk by increasing job-specific staffing levels and/or decreasing job-specific line speeds.”
But the USDA didn't incorporate any rules about increasing staffing to compensate for increased line speeds into its new draft proposals.
When asked about this, an agency spokesperson told me that the USDA does not “have the power to regulate piece rates or how private companies manage their staff.”
Debbie Berkowitz, who served as a chief of staff and senior policy adviser at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under Obama, told me that she and other labor advocates have long urged the USDA to require companies to add workers to the line if they're going to increase line speeds. But, she said, “they refuse because the [meat] industry runs the agency and they don't want to spend money where they don't have to.”
The National Pork Producers Council declined to answer questions about whether it would encourage its member companies to increase staffing when line speeds go up. The National Chicken Council and the National Turkey Federation didn't respond to a request for comment.
Berkowitz said the two USDA proposals represent an effort on the agency's part to relinquish its responsibility to protect workers. During past rulemaking processes on line speeds, the agency — under both Obama and Trump administrations — asked the public for input on worker safety. This time around, it is not, even though a judge told the agency it has to consider worker safety.
The move sets a “huge” precedent, Berkowitz said. And they're doing this “knowing full well that the Trump administration is hollowing out OSHA and the number of inspections has already fallen precipitously.”
Taken together, the draft rules are a “very telling sign of this administration and how they view blue-collar workers…they have decided that they no longer have to care about workers at all.”
It's unclear when the USDA will finalize its rules, though the public can weigh in until April 20. But given the USDA's longrunning deference to the meat industry, its final rules are unlikely to look much different than its drafts.
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Republican, Democrat and Independent voters reacted to President Donald Trump introducing the gold medal-winning Team USA men's hockey team during the State of the Union address. (Credit: Maslansky & Partners for Fox News Digital)
President Donald Trump's introduction of the gold medal-winning USA men's Olympic hockey team during the State of the Union address on Tuesday night was met with largely positive bipartisan reactions among voters.
Lee Carter, of the polling group maslansky+partners, said Independent voters especially loved the moment when the players entered the House Chamber wearing their gold medals and USA sweatshirts, and were met with thunderous "U-S-A" chants.
"The USA hockey team and military recognition moments were widely noticed," Carter said. "Visual, patriotic moments landed more consistently than policy-heavy segments."
According to the polling group, visual dials showed Independent voter reaction had the largest spike during the moment. Dials showed reaction from Republican voters, who were already energized by the speech, also increased, while reaction from Democrat voters, who were overall the least enthused during Trump's speech, also saw a slight bump.
Members of the United States' Olympic gold medal hockey team cheer as President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
The polling group said some of the positive reactions from voters who took part in the polling included, "What a great moment!" and, "Love it!" Even some critics acknowledged, "They deserve recognition," and, "It's a nice moment."
Trump had invited the team to the State of the Union address Sunday night as they celebrated their 2-1 win over Canada in the finals of the Winter Olympics.
President Donald Trump applauds with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson as he delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Trump introduced the team during the address to resounding applause from those in attendance.
"Here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud. The men's gold medal Olympic hockey team," Trump said. "Come on in!"
'U-S-A' CHANTS BREAK OUT IN HOUSE CHAMBER AS US MEN'S HOCKEY GOLD MEDALISTS ATTEND TRUMP'S STATE OF THE UNION
"They beat a fantastic Canadian team in overtime as everybody saw, as did the American women who will soon be coming to the White House," the president said.
Members of the United States' Olympic hockey team attend President Donald Trump's State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Trump added that he would honor goaltender Connor Hellebuyck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Members of the United States' hockey team attend as President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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The polling group said 29 Democrat voters, 41 Republican voters and 30 Independent voters were involved in the voter dials.
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At around 2 a.m., 7-year-old twin brothers arrived at Mission Hospital in Asheville. Both had a fever, a cough, a rash, pink eye, and cold symptoms.
The boys sat in one waiting room and then another. Two hours and 20 minutes passed before the two were isolated, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services records obtained by KFF Health News. Then two more hours ticked by.
As the sun rose, an emergency room doctor called the state epidemiologist and described the symptoms. The public health official told him to keep the kids in the hospital and quarantine them. Shortly after that call, the patients were diagnosed.
It was measles.
Hospital staff gave the father instructions on how to quarantine the family and sent them home.
The virus exposed at least 26 other people in the hospital that January day, federal investigators determined. Health inspectors for CMS investigated the measles infections and other failures in care and concluded that the twins' symptoms should have triggered an isolation procedure for which Mission Hospital staffers had trained seven months earlier. CMS designated Mission in “Immediate Jeopardy” for the exposures and other unrelated issues, one of the most severe sanctions a hospital can face, threatening to pull federal funding unless it remedied the problems.
A spokesperson for Mission said its staff was trained to manage airborne sickness and is following federal rules.
As U.S. hospitals face an increasing risk of encountering measles, and pressure to immediately spot it, health care workers face an unusual barrier: Many don't know what it looks like.
“There's a word, ‘morbilliform' — it means measles-like, and there are lots of viruses that can cause a rash that looks like a measles rash in children,” said Theresa Flynn, a pediatrician in Raleigh and the president of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. In 30 years in health care, she's never seen a measles case, she said.
North Carolina has reported more than 20 cases since mid-December, and more than 3,000 people nationwide have been infected since the beginning of 2025.
Children in areas with low immunization rates have been especially susceptible to outbreaks, triggering public health campaigns to promote the measles vaccine. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz encouraged vaccination in a CNN interview on Feb. 8.
With two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, a person has a 3% chance of getting the virus after exposure. If exposed, an unvaccinated person has a 90% chance of being infected, according to the CDC. It can take a week or two before someone infected with measles shows symptoms.
But for the past year, the Trump administration has sown doubt about vaccine effectiveness. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a longtime anti-vaccine activist before taking office, and under his leadership the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reduced the number of shots recommended to children.
After measles erupted in West Texas last year, Kennedy publicly recommended unconventional and unproven treatments for the virus, including steroids, antibiotics, and cod liver oil.
Infectious disease experts and doctors said federal policies have left health care workers to lean on their own experience or guidance from their state public health systems to fight a disease that many are preparing to see for the first time and that initially may behave like the common cold.
“As measles becomes more common, all of us are leveling up in our ability to recognize and immediately respond to suspected measles,” Flynn said.
Officially, the U.S. has maintained “measles elimination status” since 2000, meaning the U.S. has avoided significant spread of the virus. After outbreaks in Texas, Arizona, Utah, and now South Carolina, the nation is on track to lose that designation before the year is out. Its own adopted regulations tie elimination status to a lack of a continuous viral spread persisting for 12 months.
One county in South Carolina, an hour's drive from Asheville, has had more than 900 cases in the current outbreak — more than Texas reported in all of 2025.
Symptoms of measles, a virus that attacks the lungs and airways, can include fever, cough, a blotchy rash, and red, watery eyes. Researchers consider measles among the most contagious diseases, and the virus may remain active for up to two hours after an infected person leaves a room.
It can be lethal, with 1 to 3 deaths per 1,000 cases in children.
In 2025, two children in Texas and one adult in New Mexico died of measles.
Along with tracking data, the CDC provides detailed summaries on its website for diagnosing measles. State public health agencies and some counties have developed dashboards tracing the disease as it surfaces in such places as hospitals, schools, grocery stores, and airports. Large hospital systems developed staff training protocols last year and shared them with area clinics.
Look for the three C's, that guidance said: cough, coryza (cold symptoms), and conjunctivitis (pink eye). According to CMS inspection records, HCA Healthcare, which owns Mission Hospital, trained Mission staff on the three C's early last year. On top of failing to isolate the twin patients right away, Mission staff didn't have a designated area for patients with respiratory symptoms, federal inspectors found.
The CDC advises health workers to immediately place patients with measles or suspicious symptoms in a special isolation room, where airflow is controlled inward. The Mission patients were separated from other patients only by plastic partitions, according to the CMS records.
Mission spokesperson Nancy Lindell said the hospital was equipped and staffed to manage airborne illnesses like measles.
“Our hospital has been working with state and federal health officials on proactive preparedness, and we are following guidance provided by the CDC,” Lindell said.
(Dogwood Health Trust, a private foundation established as part of HCA's purchase of Mission Health, helps fund KFF Health News coverage.)
Most U.S. clinics and hospitals have never experienced measles cases, said Patsy Stinchfield, a former president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and a nurse practitioner. She called CMS' Immediate Jeopardy penalty for Mission “extreme,” given the virus can be so difficult to identify.
“In the middle of winter right now, measles looks like every other viral respiratory infection that kids come in with,” Stinchfield said.
The CDC has been less communicative in the past year with clinics about their response to outbreaks, said health workers and infectious disease experts. This disconnect began soon after Trump took office, according to a KFF Health News investigation finding that health officials in West Texas were unable to talk with CDC scientists as measles surged last February and March.
“We certainly do not feel the support or guidance from the CDC right now,” said Brigette Fogleman, a pediatrician at Asheville Children's Medical Center, where staff members have come up with their own method of staving off the virus: screening patients over the phone and in their cars before a visit.
In response to questions about how the CDC is supporting health care organizations during the measles resurgence, spokesperson Andrew Nixon said that “state and local health departments have the lead in investigating measles cases and outbreaks” and that the CDC provides support “as requested.” He pointed to numerous guides and simulation tools the agency has developed as the virus has spread.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, acknowledged that diagnosing measles is a major challenge, emphasizing that coordination among public health agencies is critical in overcoming that challenge.
Stinchfield attributed the spread of measles to CDC leaders' lack of communication to clinics and to the public — no ads on buses, no social media campaigns, no sense of urgency. “When you are at the highest level of measles cases in 30 years, we should be seeing lots more from our federal government,” Stinchfield said. “And I think it's harming kids and causing an inordinate amount of work and expense that really doesn't belong in health care right now.”
In North Carolina's Buncombe County, home to Asheville and Mission Hospital, health officials had counted seven measles cases by mid-February and anticipated many more, according to state epidemiologist Zack Moore. It's unclear how many of those are connected to the Mission exposure.
“We are preparing for a future in which we follow a trajectory like South Carolina,” Moore said, “where we see sort of a gradual accumulation of cases, and then all of a sudden it reaches kind of a tipping point, and we see a more explosive growth in the outbreak and spread across the state.”
Fogleman, who is also a pediatrician, and Buncombe health department director Jennifer Mullendore spoke during a recent Facebook livestream hosted by the county, urging families to get their children vaccinated, debunking vaccine misinformation, and updating parents on local case numbers.
Days before, a local private school had quarantined about 100 students after an exposure. Only 41% of students there were immunized, according to state data.
At Fogleman's clinic, parents are asked to wait in their vehicles with their children, and staffers come out to screen them there. Some parents resist vaccination and note recently weakened federal recommendations around measles vaccines for children under 4, she said.
Kennedy handpicked the committee members who made those recommendations, with several members having spread medical misinformation in the past.
One parent recently told a nurse, “It's only measles. It doesn't kill anybody,” Fogleman said.
That's not true, her team must explain.
As the clinic holds families in the parking lot, trying to figure out whether symptoms point to the dangerous virus, it's difficult to get the message across, Fogleman said, especially when the nation's top disease agency hasn't conducted a widespread information campaign about the risks from measles — or the vaccine's ability to almost entirely prevent it.
“We can't change the past,” Fogleman said. “All we can do is try to educate and move forward.”
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Paul Perez, who attended the State of the Union, joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss how President Donald Trump's State of the Union showcased border achievements and his plea to Congress on CDLs.
A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court's justices were absent from President Donald Trump's 2026 State of the Union address Tuesday night — a conspicuous move coming just days after the high court struck down his signature global tariff policy.
Only Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Associate Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett attended the speech. Justices Samuel Alito., Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson were not present.
The absences followed a 6–3 Supreme Court decision ruling that Trump's sweeping tariff plan exceeded presidential authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — a major setback for the administration's economic agenda.
In the wake of the ruling, Trump sharply criticized the justices who sided against him, saying he was "ashamed of certain members of the court" and accusing them of lacking "the courage to do what's right for the country." His criticism included members of the conservative bloc, among them two justices he appointed during his first term.
John Roberts, chief justice of the US Supreme Court, from left, Elena Kagan, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Amy Coney Barrett, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, during a State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Supreme Court justices are not legally required to attend the State of the Union. Invitations are extended as a matter of tradition, and participation is left to individual discretion. Those who do attend typically enter the House chamber together in their black judicial robes and sit prominently in the front row — a visual symbol of the judiciary's coequal status alongside the executive and legislative branches.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the Capitol on February 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)
Still, attendance has long been uneven, reflecting discomfort within the judiciary about appearing at what has increasingly become a partisan spectacle.
Trump delivers the first official State of the Union of his second term. (Getty Images)
Alito has not attended a State of the Union since 2010, when he famously shook his head and appeared to mouth "not true" as then-President Barack Obama criticized the Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Months later, Alito said publicly that sitting through the address made him feel like "the proverbial potted plant," and he suggested he would not return in the near future.
TO GO OR NOT TO GO? SUPREME COURT AT THE STATE OF THE UNION
Roberts at the time described the political atmosphere surrounding the address as "very troubling," and questioned whether it remained appropriate for the justices to attend if the event had devolved into what he characterized as a political "pep rally." Despite those concerns, Roberts has attended every State of the Union since becoming chief justice in 2005.
United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito on October 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Thomas has also largely stayed away in recent years. After attending President Obama's first address in 2009, he did not return, later describing the experience as uncomfortable for members of the judiciary given the partisan reactions inside the chamber.
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While some justices have consistently opted out — including past members of the court — others have continued to attend as a matter of institutional tradition.
Fox News' Shannon Bream and Bill Mears contributed to this report.
Bradford Betz is a Fox News Digital breaking reporter covering crime, political issues, and much more.
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A prominent voice in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement is facing sharp questions from senators in a bid to become the nation's top doctor.
Dr. Casey Means, best-selling author, wellness influencer and Stanford medical graduate, became an early ally of now-Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s MAHA campaign and has several important backers within the Trump administration.
Along with her brother Calley, who serves as an adviser to Kennedy at the Health and Human Services department, Means has championed healthy eating, limited pharmaceutical use and alternative remedies. Means is also a co-founder a health tech company, Levels, that connects glucose monitors to a health tracking app on users' phones.
Means' influence made the 38-year-old a recognizable, early advocate of the MAHA movement. President Donald Trump selected Means to be surgeon general last May, the same day the White House withdrew its nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat. Means was originally scheduled to appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last October, but went into labor with her first child in the hours before the hearing. She said Wednesday that her baby boy was born on the day of her original hearing.
In her opening remarks, Means described the “unraveling” of mental and physical health” in the United States, a “nation with a broken heart” and “a society losing its mind” to dementia and depression.
“As a physician, I have always been inspired that the root of the word healing means to return to wholeness,” Means told senators on Wednesday. “Nothing is more urgent than restoring wholeness for Americans, physically, mentally and societally.”
Means immediately faced questions from senators about her stances on mifepristone, one of the pills used in abortion, contraception and vaccines, and about her qualifications.
Advocates and some former officials have criticized Means' nomination because the surgeon general is typically a physician with clinical experience; Means had dropped out of her medical residency program and her Oregon medical license is inactive. She explained her decision to leave residency in her 2024 book, “Good Energy,” as disillusionment with the medical system and its incentives.
“I felt an overwhelming conviction that I couldn't cut into another patient until I figured out why — despite the monumental size and scope of our health care system — the patients and people around me were sick in the first place,” Means wrote in the memoir, published in 2024.
Means acknowledged on Wednesday that her license is not active and she cannot write a prescription. She said she has no plans to reactive it.
Can Trump's surgeon general pick convince the country that RFK Jr. is Making America Healthy Again?
Means has critics within Trump's circle, too. Self-appointed “loyalty enforcer” Laura Loomer has frequently criticized Means, questioning her support for Trump and her qualifications for the job. Loomer also suggested Means could harness the surgeon general position to tip federal policies in favor of commercial interests in which she has personal stakes, such as her tech company.
Means said in her financial disclosures that she left her position with Levels in 2023, and would divest any interest in the company.
Means testifies during a fraught moment for the administration's health agenda. A string of high-profile departures and shakeups have renewed questions about the direction of vaccine policy under Kennedy. An ongoing measles outbreak, already the largest since the US declared the disease eliminated, is threatening to reach 1,000 cases in the near future. Republican senators, including health committee chairman Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, have publicly pressured the administration to curb access to abortion pills. MAHA advocates, meanwhile, are railing against Trump's executive order to shield pesticide manufacturers.
While the role of surgeon general does not carry policy or regulatory authority, surgeons general often help shape the national health conversation and build public momentum for policy change. Most famously, past surgeons general led the push to add warning labels to cigarettes.
Means said Wednesday that she would push to address root causes of chronic illness through nutrition, steering away from “frankenfoods made in factories.” She said she wants to focus the health care system on understanding “why we are sick and not just reactive sick care.”
However, she faced sharp questions on several key health topics.
On vaccines, Means has advocated for “unbiased research” into the childhood vaccine schedule and questioned the safety of giving a hepatitis B vaccine shortly after birth.
“I bet that one vaccine probably isn't causing autism, but what about the 20 that they're getting before 18 months?” she said on Joe Rogan's podcast in 2024. While Means' comments echo the skepticism of Kennedy and others in the administration, there is no evidence linking the childhood vaccine schedule to autism diagnoses.
On Wednesday, Means said “anti-vaccine rhetoric has never been a part of my message.” She added, “don't think it's responsible to say that we're not going to study when kids are getting many medications.”
Means said she believes vaccines save lives, but wouldn't directly answer whether the flu vaccine reduces illness or hospitalization, despite longstanding evidence of its impact.
In response to questions on Wednesday about abortion and mifepristone, the pill that has prompted Republicans' ire and multiple lawsuits about prescribing it remotely, Means said “all patients need to have a thorough conversation with their doctor and have true informed consent before taking any medication.” She said the current health care system often doesn't allow that.
The nominee also said “oral contraception should be widely accessible,” but said patients need “informed consent before getting on a medication that's often prescribed for several years without follow up.”
Speaking on Tucker Carlson's show in August 2024, Means said widespread contraception use is a sign that “we have lost respect for life.”
Those comments brought consternation from public health advocates, such as Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, who told CNN last year that she is unqualified for the surgeon general position.
Means' hearing comes as MAHA acolytes rally for the administration to take strong action against pesticides such as widely used glyphosate, commonly known by the brand name Roundup. Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring glyphosate “central to American economic and national security.”
The order unleashed criticism and blowback from the MAHA movement. In the past, Means has likened widespread pesticide use to the damage she sees from long-term contraception.
“You've got the pill, and it just goes hand in hand with the rise … of industrial agriculture, the spraying of these pesticides,” she said on Carlson's show. “The things that give life in this world, which are women and soil, we have tried to dominate and shut down the cycles.”
On Wednesday, she walked a careful line, saying farmers, like doctors, are in an “impossible situation.”
“Obviously, changing anything overnight would be devastating to the American farmer,” Means said.
However, “we need to understand how these chemicals are affecting our bodies.”
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The Supreme Court will soon decide whether a Michigan county violated a family's constitutional rights by selling their property as part of a tax foreclosure for well under its market value, years after the high court ruled counties may not pocket the profits from those kinds of sales.
Justices will hear oral arguments on Wednesday in Pung v. Isabella County. In this case, Isabella County seized the Pung family's home to pay $2,242 in unpaid taxes, penalties, and interest. The county then sold the property at auction for $76,008 despite its fair market value of $194,400. After the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Tyler v. Hennepin County, in which the justices unanimously agreed that local governments cannot pocket more than the amount of unpaid taxes in a foreclosure sale, a federal court ruled the family was entitled to the profit of the sale after the unpaid taxes were covered, but not to the surplus based on the value of the property.
The family's lawyers argued to the high court that they are entitled to roughly $192,000 in surplus rather than the $73,000 surplus they received, in a case which could transform the standard for tax foreclosure sales.
“When government takes more than it is owed, it crosses constitutional lines. The Fifth Amendment mandates just compensation; the Eighth Amendment forbids excessive fines as punishment. Both clauses converge in this case,” Pung's lawyers argue in their brief.
The lawyers for the family argue the heart of the case is how much people are owed when the government seizes property after it is sold off for unpaid taxes, arguing it should be about the property's value and not the amount it is sold for at an “inadequate” auction.
“Historically, this has always been based on the property's ‘fair market value,' not the residue of an inferior distressed auction. The lower courts erred by measuring compensation from the County's auction, rather than from the property's known fair market value. The Constitution requires compensation measured by the owner's loss—not by the government's chosen disposal method,” the brief said.
Lawyers for Isabella County argued to the high court in their brief that they should reject Pung's arguments that the Fifth and Eighth amendments require them to rely on the property value, rather than the auction sale amount, to calculate how much the family is owed.
“English and American governments have seized and sold property to collect debts for centuries. And, for centuries, the majority rule has required the government to return surplus proceeds, if any, to the property's former owner. Petitioner's fair-market-value theory has no foothold in history or precedent,” the brief said.
“The robust tradition of requiring foreclosing governments to pay surplus proceeds (and no more) to property owners shows that neither the Takings Clause nor the Excessive Fines Clause requires a greater amount,” the county's brief continued.
Lawyers for the county also warned that if the Supreme Court sides with the Pung family, they will “effectively eliminate foreclosure as an option to collect government debts, and cripple state property-tax collection systems.”
“Doing so would benefit those who do not pay their taxes while increasing the burden on those who do,” the brief said.
The Justice Department also filed a brief to the Supreme Court in the case and will have time to argue on Wednesday, arguing that the Eighth Amendment's excessive fines clause should not apply because there is no “fine” in this case.
“When a government sells a taxpayer's property and refunds the surplus proceeds, the only money that the government keeps is what the taxpayer owes. That is payment for unpaid taxes, not punishment for some offense,” the DOJ's brief said.
While the DOJ claims the Eighth Amendment is not involved in this case, it argues that, under the Fifth Amendment, a person is entitled to the surplus of a sale conducted “fairly.”
“The taxpayer may therefore challenge the procedural fairness of the sale by arguing, for example, that it was conducted with insufficient notice or opportunity for bidding. But if the sale was conducted fairly, the Takings Clause entitles the taxpayer to no more than the surplus proceeds,” the brief said.
“Requiring governments to pay the difference between the foreclosure-sale price and the value at a hypothetical unrestricted sale would effectively deprive them of an age-old tool of tax collection,” the DOJ added.
SUPREME COURT PROTECTS POSTAL SERVICE FROM BEING SUED OVER INTENTIONALLY UNDELIVERED MAIL
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Pung v. Isabella County at 10 a.m. Wednesday, shortly after justices are expected to release at least one ruling in a case they heard earlier this term.
A decision in the Pung case is expected by the end of June, when the high court's final opinions are likely to be released.
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President Donald Trump touts American success during the State of the Union address live from the nations capital.
Many conservatives quickly took to social media to praise President Trump's State of the Union speech, which lasted just under two hours, energizing Republicans and riling Democrats.
"It's not just an excellent speech, it's mostly POTUS himself," conservative radio host Mark Levin posted on X. " He's a truly historic leader. I know it drives DC nuts. Who cares."
"Trump is a colossus; an amazingly patriotic speech," FOX Business Senior Correspondent Charles Gasparino posted on X.
"This is the best State of the Union Address I've ever seen," conservative commentator Buck Sexton posted on X. "Not just by Trump. By any President."
President Donald Trump during a State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the Capitol Feb. 24, 2026. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"President Trump's State of the Union put America's greatness on full display—celebrating our war heroes, everyday heroes, and Olympic champions," former GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy posted on X.
"The President delivered a home run State of the Union tonight," GOP Rep. Chip Roy posted on X.
Democrats on social media struck a different tone, with many prominent faces of the party bashing the president as the speech developed, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who accused Trump of "destroying the country" and posted "that was boring."
TRUMP TAKES DIRECT SOTU SWIPE AT DEMOCRATS OVER TAXES: 'TO HURT THE PEOPLE'
"That State of the Union speech by Trump was humiliating for both him and the Republican Party," liberal influencer Harry Sisson posted on X. "He rambled incoherently and Republicans clapped like seals the whole time no matter what was said. I'm glad military heroes were honored, but he lied the entire time."
Trump's speech, which was the longest State of the Union in history, focused on what he called a "turnaround for the ages" in the United States during his second term.
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U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with members of Congress as he departs following his State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on February 24, 2026. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images)
Trump invited a swath of various guests to the speech, including everyday Americans, Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk's widow, Erika Kirk, the U.S. men's hockey team fresh off their gold medal win, military members who acted heroically in the time of crisis and families who have suffered tragedy at the hands of illegal immigrants.
Trump's speech came as the GOP prepares to defend its majority in the House and Senate as the November midterms loom, and also as the nation prepares to celebrate its 250 years of independence.
"This July 4th, we will mark two and a half centuries of liberty and triumph, progress and freedom in the most incredible and exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of the earth. And you've seen nothing yet," Trump said. "We're going to do better and better and better. This is the golden age of America."
Fox News Digital's Emma Colton contributed to this report.
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
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Roofers are turning down jobs. Painters are locking themselves inside the homes they're finishing. Concrete crews have monthslong waiting lists.
In the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has slowed home construction to a crawl – at a time when Minnesota, like much of the country, faces a steep housing shortage.
The White House has begun scaling back its monthslong enforcement surge in the state. But across the housing market, the aftershocks are still unfolding.
“I think most of us would probably take Covid over this,” said one large homebuilder in the Minneapolis area who asked for his name not to be shared since some of his job sites have been targeted by immigration officers over the last few weeks. “This is misery for us in the housing industry.”
President Donald Trump has made housing affordability a central pillar of his domestic agenda, and the US House of Representatives passed legislation this month intended to encourage more homebuilding. But the president's stepped-up immigration enforcement threatens to undercut that effort, sidelining the workers needed to build new homes.
As in many other states, the construction industry in Minnesota is heavily reliant on immigrant labor.
Trump promised ‘aggressive' housing reform next year. Here's what to expect for home prices in 2026
The homebuilder, who oversees hundreds of residential projects across the Midwest, said many of his jobs are now facing monthslong delays as dozens of construction crews hesitate to return. He said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were stationed at the site of one of his large apartment construction projects for weeks, waiting to make arrests. More than nine crews walked off the job after seeing the officers, he said. At one point this month, only six of the 80 roofers he had contracted were still showing up, regardless of their immigration status.
Even in the days after the White House announced that the immigration operation in Minnesota would wind down, the builder said there were still interactions with ICE around his job sites.
“In real dollars, we're seeing a decline in revenues of somewhere between 25% and 30% – and that's directly attributed to the fact that we can't put work in place,” he said.
At its height, about 3,000 federal officers were deployed as part of Operation Metro Surge, the large-scale immigration operation primarily carried out by ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
What began in December in Minneapolis and St. Paul quickly spread to the rest of the state and led to confrontations between federal agents and protesters, including the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal agents and the detention of thousands of individuals.
Across the US, immigrants play an outsized role in the construction industry: According to a recent report from the National Association of Home Builders, immigrant workers account for more than 25% of the construction workforce, a historic high. It is unclear how many of those workers are undocumented.
Builders in Minnesota told CNN they estimate thousands of construction workers, both documented and undocumented, are avoiding work for fear of harassment, detainment, or violent confrontations.
Tenants' rights groups say eviction filings could rise if renters who fear going to work fall behind on rent payments. Last week, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board voted to temporarily suspend evictions for its rental properties in response to Operation Metro Surge, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Mark Williams, a custom-home builder in Minneapolis, said skilled construction workers have been harder to come by lately – and he has struggled to break ground on some construction projects.
“We work with three concrete masons, and two of them pushed us out by two months because they couldn't get any of their crews to show up on any of our jobs,” Williams said. “They often sub-contract out to other masons, and none of those masons would show up, either.”
Williams typically signs a contract with a roofing company about 30 days before he needs them to start the work. But recently, the siding and roofing company he normally works with told him they'll need at least four to five months' notice in order to guarantee they'll have the crew necessary to complete the work. He has had to tell clients that their projects will be delayed.
Williams said that, to his knowledge, everyone who works on his homes is legally allowed to work in the country. But his company, like many other homebuilders, contracts out tasks it can't perform itself, so he doesn't directly hire all the laborers on site.
Barak Steenlage, the co-owner of another Minnesota homebuilder, said that he has also fielded calls since the start of this year from his company's project manager, informing him that certain subcontractors or suppliers don't want to work on projects in Minneapolis, for fear of being harassed, regardless of their immigration status.
For teams of painters and other construction work that is done primarily indoors, Steenlage said he has given crews permission to lock themselves inside the homes they are working on, so they aren't visible to agents outside.
Home buyers might be hoping for lower mortgage rates with a new Fed chief. They'll have to wait
Steenlage, who has worked as a homebuilder for more than 20 years, said that without immigrants in construction, there wouldn't be enough people to handle the work.
A fall 2025 report from the NAHB on the current state of the nation's construction labor market estimated a $2.7 billion annual impact on the national economy due to longer construction times caused by the industry's skilled labor shortage.
“There's a lot of important skill and work being done by the people that are currently feeling under attack and unsafe,” Steenlage said.
Williams said that recent ICE activity could make homebuilding even more expensive in Minnesota, a state that is already relatively more expensive to build in, due to the need for specialized construction to handle the area's extreme temperature fluctuations.
“If everyone wants their roof sided and no one is going to do it, anyone that can do it will charge whatever they want,” Williams said. “Building is already unaffordable. Now it could be astronomically unaffordable.”
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North Korea says it successfully tested a new missile launch system.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has handed his teenage daughter a leadership role in the regime's powerful "Missile Administration," the body that oversees Pyongyang's nuclear forces, South Korean media reported Monday.
The girl, Ju Ae, who is believed to be 13 or 14 years old, was assessed by South Korean intelligence received on Sunday to be acting as a "missile general director" while authorities monitor developments at the ongoing Ninth Congress of the ruling Workers' Party, the reports said.
The Chosun Daily, citing high-level government sources familiar with the matter, said intelligence agencies obtained reports that Kim's daughter has been elevated to the position.
While Jang Chang-ha is officially listed as director of the administration, intelligence suggested Kim's daughter is receiving briefings from generals and issuing directives.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, and his daughter, Ju Ae, right, attend a ceremony on Saeppyol Street in Pyongyang. (KCNA via KNS / AFP via Getty Images)
South Korea's National Intelligence Service recently told lawmakers that her public profile signals she is also in the "stage of being designated as a successor," adding that circumstances have been seen where she provides opinions on policy, The Associated Press reported.
The teen has appeared alongside her father at high-profile military events, including intercontinental ballistic missile launches and weapons inspections.
North Korean state media first confirmed her existence in November 2022, and described her only as a "beloved child" when she accompanied Kim at the launch of the Hwasong-17 ICBM.
Her name has never been officially disclosed by Pyongyang.
NORTH KOREA TEST-LAUNCHES HYPERSONIC MISSILE SYSTEM IN FRONT OF KIM, NATION SAYS
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter, Ju Ae, celebrate the New Year, in Pyongyang, North Korea. (KCNA via Reuters)
Her reported role comes as Kim continues to showcase advances in the country's weapons programs.
On Feb. 18, Kim was photographed taking the wheel of a nuclear-capable 600mm multiple rocket launcher in Pyongyang, touting it as among the most powerful of its kind.
State media showed rows of launch vehicles and said the rockets, which Kim claimed rival short-range ballistic missiles and use artificial intelligence in their guidance systems, have "completely changed" modern artillery warfare, Reuters reported.
As previously reported by Fox News Digital, Kim was re-elected general secretary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea on Feb.22, a decision announced by state-run media following the party's Ninth Congress.
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North Korea has suspended all meaningful diplomacy with the United States and South Korea since the collapse of a 2019 summit between Kim and President Donald Trump.
This came over disagreements about sanctions relief in exchange for steps to wind down Kim's nuclear and missile program.
Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex's Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
On a bright afternoon under the hot Australian sun, small, dewy faces peer out from the holes in masonry bricks, enclosed by a simple greenhouse. These structures form frog “saunas” that offer endangered frogs a warm refuge from a catastrophic disease.
The saunas are part of an experiment led by Anthony Waddle, a researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, who created this novel, low-tech intervention to help frogs fight off a deadly fungus.
Waddle, an American-born biologist, wasn't drawn to Australia for its stunning coastlines or unique marsupials — instead he relocated for a tiny, slimy, sun-loving creature found in freshwater habitats throughout the southeast — the green and golden bell frog.
With bulging eyes, bulbous digits and vibrantly colored skin to match their name, these native frogs are one of the country's most striking amphibians, but also, one of its most threatened species.
Over the past three decades, green and golden bell frog populations in New South Wales —once their stronghold — have declined to just 10% of their historical levels.
Although habitat loss and climate change have contributed to their collapse, a major driver has been chytrid — an ancient fungus that has morphed into a modern-day killer.
The form responsible for the green and golden bell frog decline, and for mass amphibian die-offs over the last half-century, is known scientifically as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. This waterborne pathogen triggers a highly contagious and often fatal disease called chytridiomycosis, affecting frogs, toads and salamanders.
“The chytrid fungus is attracted to their skin, it attaches to it and it dissolves the skin's barriers,” Waddle said. Put simply, “chytrid is eating their skin.”
For amphibians, skin is more than a protective layer — it is vital for breathing, absorbing water and other regulatory processes. When these functions are disrupted, it places stress on the heart and can lead to cardiac arrest.
“This is the worst disease ever to impact biodiversity, and most people don't even know it exists,” Waddle told CNN.
Waddle has made it his life's work to help save species threatened by the fungus. In 2016, the conservation biologist began his work in the lab — developing a vaccine to combat the disease in leopard frogs in the Western US.
He created a weakened form of chytrid that the frogs could easily fend off and discovered it could spread from frog to frog without causing illness — instead functioning as a transmissible vaccine boosting their resistance and improving survival when later exposed.
He then turned his attention to how temperature shapes the disease's dynamics. Across continents, chytrid outbreaks follow a seasonal pattern — devastating frog populations in cold winters but subsiding in warmer months, indicating the fungus thrives in cooler weather.
This left Waddle wondering: “If the frogs had access to high temperatures, could they get better?”
In 2020, Waddle started to construct small frog saunas using stacked masonry bricks covered with simple greenhouse structures that heat up in the sun. The shelters quickly became popular with the green and golden bell frogs, which are naturally drawn to warmth.
He found that when frogs' body temperatures reached about 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), a threshold chytrid cannot tolerate, many were able to get rid of their infections.
As a control measure, Waddle also placed frogs in shaded, cooler structures. Frogs with access to the hot shelters warmed up and rapidly cleared the fungus, while those in the cooler enclosures did not, his study, published in the journal Nature, concluded.
Waddle said the sauna method also helps build immunity. “We found that frogs that had an infection cured with heat were 23 times more likely to survive a reinfection,” he told CNN, adding “they do get reinfected, but at really low rates.”
To have a meaningful impact, these saunas would need to be deployed widely across a species' range. A relatively inexpensive solution, Waddle has published a simple guide to help people build their own.
But these saunas won't work in all climates or on all species, Waddle noted. For instance, raising the body temperature of Australia's endangered corroboree frog — an alpine-inhabiting species — would kill it.
Frogs have endured four mass extinctions, evolving repeatedly to survive a changing planet. But now, facing a fast-moving fungal pandemic that has become the most devastating infectious disease in vertebrate history — according to a 2019 retrospective study — researchers like Waddle say they need our help.
The first major amphibian die-offs that scientists could link to chytrid likely began in the 1970s, but it took more than two decades for research to identify the fungus as the culprit.
Untangling chytrid's role from other environmental pressures is difficult, but research estimates that globally, the fungus has driven around 90 species to extinction and pushed more than 500 others into decline.
Once it enters, chytrid becomes part of the ecosystem and cannot be eradicated. It has been found on every amphibian-inhabiting continent, said Bree Rosenblum, an evolutionary biologist and professor at University of California, Berkeley.
This disease is striking a group already in crisis: “Amphibians are a very endangered group of creatures on our planet; more than a third of amphibians are considered threatened with extinction,” Rosenblum told CNN.
Because they occupy a critical middle rung of the food chain, she said, their disappearance could ripple outwards, setting off chain reactions that affect countless other species.
They also serve as natural pest control, like feeding on mosquitoes that carry diseases such as malaria and West Nile virus.
“Once you start taking species out of ecosystems, it has cascading, catastrophic effects,” she said.
More than two decades ago, Rosenblum started investigating where chytrid came from and how it spread, using genetic tools to reconstruct the fungus's evolutionary family tree. Her work revealed that chytrid was not a single invader but a collection of lineages that evolved in different parts of the world and later spread globally — likely through wildlife trade and human movement.
“We can reconstruct it the best we can with our genetic data, but something changed in the last decades to hundreds of years that made it much more deadly,” she said. “The big question is, is it just that something changed in the chytrid, or did something also change in frogs to made them less able to fight it off because of other environmental stressors.”
She believes that slowing the disease's spread through the wildlife trade, and reducing pressures like habitat destruction and pollution, are critical steps in curbing the amphibian extinction crisis.
But “probably the most important thing is buying amphibians time,” she said. “The long-term solution is evolution, so they can adapt and build natural immunity.”
In Northern California's Cascade Mountains, froglets lie with their legs outstretched in shallow baths — a group of unlikely patients in a fight for survival.
These are Cascades frogs. Endemic to the Pacific Northwest, they live in high mountain lakes and meadows from Northern California up to British Columbia, Canada.
They have been disappearing from this landscape, particularly from the southern end of their range, said Dr. Jonah Piovia-Scott, an associate professor of biological sciences at Washington State University.
“I had initially started off studying the impacts of introduced trout on these frogs, and then we realized that something else was also happening,” Piovia-Scott told CNN — “and it turned out that that was chytrid.”
Having studied chytrid for two and a half decades, he knew that antifungal treatments could help eliminate the infection — at least in controlled, laboratory settings.
“We were really interested in seeing whether we can actually have an impact on survival in an at-risk, wild population,” he said.
In 2012, Piovia-Scott's team tested baths with diluted itraconazole, a common antifungal agent, and found they reduced chytrid infections and improved survival in wild populations of metamorphosed tadpoles (froglets) — the life stage most vulnerable to disease-related mortality.
The team expanded into larger-scale field experiments at meadow sites in Northern California, immersing hundreds of froglets in medicated baths for five minutes a day over six consecutive days.
In a study published in 2022, they found that treated frogs were four times more likely than those untreated to survive their first winter, which is a critical hurdle for young frogs; those that survive it are far more likely to reach adulthood and reproduce.
While antifungal baths are a valuable and scalable tool, Piovia-Scott stressed they are a short-term “Band-Aid.”
“We're not trying to set up a situation where the only way we can keep these animals alive is treating them with an antifungal chemical every year,” he said. “I don't think that's a good long-term solution.”
Instead, he said the treatment works best alongside other strategies, such as translocations — moving frogs back into their former habitats to help reestablish populations. His team is already putting that approach into practice by relocating frogs from a nearby healthy population into protected sites in Lassen Volcanic National Park, a former Cascades frog stronghold, after first treating them.
Ultimately, he echoes Rosenblum: the goal is to maintain populations long enough for natural resistance to develop — which is already taking place. Piovia-Scott explained that from California to Central America, amphibians that suffered severe declines from chytrid are beginning to rebound.
This recovery isn't because the fungus has weakened, he said — the frogs have adapted. “But you can't develop resistance if the population doesn't exist,” Piovia-Scott stressed.
Rosenblum praises the ingenuity behind solutions like frog saunas and antifungal baths, seeing them as proof of what human concern and ingenuity can achieve — while also underscoring the challenges involved in scaling such hands-on interventions across thousands of species and habitats.
“These strategies are worth testing, but global implementation is really hard,” she said, adding that we need to carefully weigh both the benefits and the potential unanticipated effects of intervening in natural habitats.
For Rosenblum, Waddle and Piovia-Scott, the long-term objective is to reach a point where frogs can survive on their own — without constant human intervention.
For Waddle, that kind of futureproofing may lie in synthetic biology — making frogs genetically resistant to chytrid fungus.
Scientists still don't fully understand how some frogs naturally fight off chytrid, but Waddle said certain amphibians produce antibodies in their skin that can kill the fungus.
Waddle is now testing whether vulnerable frog species can be given those same natural defenses using genetic editing. He stresses the work is in its early days and must be approached with extreme caution.
“We need to make sure it works and doesn't have negative effects on the frogs and we also have to think through every possible unintended consequence,” he said.
Last October, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) adopted its first global policy on synthetic biology, acknowledging that it could play a role in conservation, while also emphasizing the need for careful, case-by-case evaluation of risks and benefits.
For some species, less radical tools may be enough, Waddle acknowledged, but for amphibians that don't respond to classic conservation measures and are on the brink of extinction, he sees little alternative.
Protecting biodiversity isn't just about preserving ecosystems, he added. “Frogs have thousands of compounds in their skin with powerful antibacterial properties, and we're just starting to touch on their impacts,” said Waddle.
At a time when antibiotic resistance is becoming a global crisis, these compounds could be important not just for frogs, but for human medicine, he noted.
Scientists have already seen hints of that potential: a protein found in South Indian frogs has been shown to protect mice from influenza, preventing infection before it takes hold.
For Rosenblum, hope lies not in one tool or technology, but in a global effort to protect amphibians.
“What blankets the world are those collaborative networks of humans who care enough to be inventive on behalf of other species on our planet,” she said. That web of care, she believes, can start anywhere: “If each of us cared about one thing besides ourselves, we would be able to blanket the tree of life over and over again.”
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Across the world from the expansive US police search for the missing Nancy Guthrie, a family in Australia was pleading for help to find their 85-year-old grandfather, who police say was mistakenly kidnapped from his modest home in suburban Sydney, and later murdered.
Chris Baghsarian, a widower who lived alone, was ripped from his bed on the morning of February 13 by assailants who detectives believe were intending to target another man.
“I suspect that the intended target was going to be kidnapped, where a ransom for money was going to be asked,” Detective Acting Superintendent Andrew Marks told reporters Wednesday.
New South Wales (NSW) Police immediately alerted the kidnappers to their mistake in successive press conferences, urging them to abandon the grandfather at a safe location.
Instead, a video emerged of the older man tied up at a location later found to be an abandoned and derelict property in Dural, on the outskirts of Sydney, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from his home.
By the time police had identified and searched the location, Baghsarian was gone.
In the days after his disappearance, the man's family released a statement describing the situation as a “surreal nightmare.”
“We are struggling to make sense of the fact that he has been taken and that our family has been caught up in something that has nothing to do with us,” they said.
“Chris is a devoted father, brother, uncle, and grandfather. He is deeply loved, gentle, and the kindest person.”
On Wednesday, police confirmed Baghsarian's body had been found the previous day near a golf course in a rural area west of Sydney. An autopsy is expected to reveal his cause of death.
“It's somebody's worst nightmare, right?” Marks told reporters. “The fact that an innocent man was taken from his home is not acceptable.”
“These people need to be held to account.”
Less than 24 hours after Baghsarian's body was found, police swooped on two properties, arresting two men, ages 24 and 29, and seizing items they say connect them to his murder.
Video released by police shows tactical squads pulling up in SUVs to a large suburban home on Sydney's outskirts, jumping the fence, and banging on the front door, before breaking in.
Inside, a woman can be heard screaming. Later, officers escort a barefoot, disheveled man to a waiting police van. A separate raid led to the arrest of another man, who's expected to face similar charges of kidnapping and murder.
“We'll allege in court that these men participated in a joint criminal enterprise with other persons to kidnap Mr Baghsarian,” Marks said.
Police suspect that at least three people are involved in the fatal abduction, and they expect to make further arrests.
Kidnappings are rare in Australia – even more so when victims have no prior history that would suggest they were a target, said criminologist Clarke Jones, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. “In past situations, people are released once they realize they've got the wrong person,” he said.
He said technology had made it easier for criminal groups to conceal their activities – and to coordinate action from within Australia or anywhere in the world.
“The tighter the law enforcement gets on these types of crimes, the more they then adapt to try and evade any type of detection,” he said.
Baghsarian's family has asked for privacy as they process the disturbing events of the past two weeks.
“This is an extraordinarily distressing time, and we need space to support one another and focus on navigating what comes next,” they said in a statement.
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A Venezuelan opposition leader recently freed from prison reunited with his niece Tuesday during the State of the Union address, as President Donald Trump touted the US military operation that removed President Nicolás Maduro.
In his speech, Trump drew attention to Alejandra Gonzalez, who was in the audience, saying she shared a special bond with her uncle Enrique Márquez.
“Alejandra, I'm pleased to inform you that not only has your uncle been released, but he is here tonight,” Trump announced, before Enrique Márquez walked into the House chamber where he embraced her as lawmakers applauded.
The heartwarming and surprise reunion came against the backdrop of major political changes in Venezuela following Maduro's ouster on January 3. Since then, the US has put pressure on acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's former deputy, to release hundreds of political prisoners jailed during almost three decades of authoritarian rule.
Márquez, a 2024 presidential candidate for a centrist party, was among the first to walk free last month. He had been held in the notorious El Helicode prison since his arrest in January 2025. He was accused of being involved in an attempted coup after he questioned Maduro's victory in the election.
“Alejandra feared she would never see her uncle again,” Trump said.
“Since the raid we have worked with the new leadership and they have ordered the closure of that vile prison and released hundreds of political prisoners already, with more to come.”
Trump, who largely focused on domestic issues during his speech, called Venezuela a “new friend,” and a “partner.”
Venezuela has released more than 400 political prisoners since the US dramatically removed Maduro, according to the country's leading human rights organization Foro Penal.
Hundreds of political prisoners are still locked up, according to human rights groups, and many of those released so far have faced restrictions and conditions such as travel bans, periodic court appearances and gag orders.
Last week, Venezuelan lawmakers passed a new bill granting amnesty to people who were prosecuted or convicted for political reasons, paving the way for hundreds more releases.
After signing the law, Rodríguez described it as “an extraordinary door for Venezuela to reunite, for Venezuela to learn to coexist democratically and peacefully, for Venezuela to rid itself of hatred, of intolerance, let it open up to human rights.”
National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said Venezuelan authorities had received more than 1,500 requests for amnesty by Saturday.
During his Washington address on Tuesday, Trump awarded US helicopter pilot Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover a Medal of Honor for his involvement in the operation to capture Maduro.
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President Donald Trump delivered his fourth State of the Union address Tuesday, the first of his second term, where he declared that America has undergone a “turnaround for the ages.”
The president split his time between touting his alleged successes from the past year and announcing a handful of new policy proposals, goading Democrats on issues ranging from immigration to transgender children.
Trump's remarks loosely followed the bones of his typical campaign stumping but did feature a number of notable themes and moments, the first of which occurred just minutes into Trump's speech.
Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was ejected from the chamber after allegedly yelling at the president. Green had been holding up a sign reading “Black People Aren't Apes,” in reference to a racist meme posted to the president's Truth Social account earlier this month.
Here's what you need to know from Trump's speech Tuesday night.
Just last week, speaking in Georgia, Trump declared that he'd “won affordability,” despite the economy consistently polling as a top issue for voters heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
Republican lawmakers and officials have quietly pressed the president to do more to address affordability concerns, and almost immediately upon stepping on the dais, Trump sought to compare former President Joe Biden's economic stewardship with his own agenda. The president claimed his policies have driven down core inflation to the “lowest level in five years,” citing steady declines in gasoline prices and recent dips in mortgage rates.
“A short time ago, we were a dead country. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world,” he declared. “I say tonight, to members of Congress: the state of our union is strong.”
Still, the president gave a tacit nod to voters' concerns by announcing new economic proposals. Specifically, Trump announced an agreement between the White House and tech companies to have the firms build their own energy sources for data centers across the country.
TRUMP'S TALE OF TWO SPEECHES
The president also pressed Congress to pass a second budget reconciliation package this year. Trump hopes the new package will include tax cuts for American households that didn't make it into last year's One Big Beautiful Bill, as well as additional cuts for American corporations.
He also said his administration would allow adult workers without a 401K “access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker,” with a federal match of up to $1,000 per year.
The president proceeded to tick off economic wins, such as his Most Favored Nations drug pricing plan and the creation of the so-called Trump Accounts, investment accounts partially funded by the federal government, before even addressing the elephant in the room: Last Friday's Supreme Court ruling that struck down his “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariff slate.
Trump held a press conference last week following the ruling, where he called the six justices who ruled against him “lap dogs” for the Democrats and accused foreign actors of influencing the decision.
But Tuesday night, Trump presented a more even tone, referring to the ruling as “unfortunate” and seeking to spin it into a positive.
“The good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made,” he declared, noting that sectoral and unfair trade tariffs remain on the books. “As time goes by, I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.”
There's very little Trump cares about more than winning.
And true to form, he hosted members of the U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey team, fresh off a gold medal victory over Canada on Sunday, as special guests of the White House. The team's entrance caused the room to erupt into bipartisan chants of “U-S-A!”
“That's the first time I've ever seen them get up,” Trump joked, referencing the cheers from Democrats. “And actually not all of them did get up.”
Trump later announced that he would award goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, who saved 41 of 42 Canadian shots on goal during the gold medal game, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
But Trump also sprinkled a heavy dose of Americana imagery throughout the bulk of his remarks.
The president highlighted this coming summer's America 250 celebration, where the country will “mark two and a half centuries of liberty and triumph, progress and freedom in the most incredible and exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of the Earth.”
“You've seen nothing yet. We're going to do better and better and better,” he declared. “This is the golden age of America.”
Traditionally a standout issue for the president, immigration has proven a tricky spot for Republicans after federal agents shot and killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Though Trump's base continues to voice support for the president's deportation agenda, polls show a rising majority of Americans believe that Trump's policies have gone too far.
The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for nearly two weeks, as Democratic lawmakers have refused to fund the department to rebuke Trump's immigration policies.
However, Trump did push the “softer” immigration touch he's alluded to in recent weeks, instead calling for the “immediate” restoration of DHS funding.
“One of the great things about the State of the Union is how it gives Americans the chance to see clearly what their representatives really believe. So tonight, I'm inviting every legislature to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support,” Trump declared, earning a lengthy ovation from Republicans.
And a select number of Democrats, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), took the bait, keeping their seats and yelling at the president.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Trump shot back, earning raucous cheers from GOP members.
The president proceeded to call for the passage of the “Delilah Law,” a proposal barring states from granting commercial driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, and the “SAVE Act,” a bill requiring states to administer voter identification requirements.
Trump, in his three previous States of the Union and two other joint addresses to Congress, has slowly perfected the art of baiting Democrats into cutting campaign ads for Republicans.
The president put that skill on display multiple times on Tuesday, on top of the immigration exchange with Omar.
“These people are crazy, I'm telling you. They're crazy,” he offered when Democrats declined to stand during his section, vowing to fight states from allowing minors to transition their gender.
“How do you not stand? How do you not stand?” he shot at Democrats who did not cheer following his exchange with Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant killed in North Carolina by a multiple-time offender.
“Did Nancy Pelosi stand up?” Trump additionally joked after his call for Congress to pass legislation ensuring that “members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information” to trade stocks.
As he frequently does, Trump again on Tuesday claimed to have ended “eight wars” during his first year back in office.
The president thanked special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, for negotiating the ongoing peace process in Gaza while predicting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “will go down as the best” diplomat in the nation's history.
Still, the president had few words Tuesday, the fourth-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, on ending that specific conflict, a “ninth war” ended on his watch.
“25,000 soldiers are dying each and every month. Think of that,” he continued. “A war which would have never happened if I were president.”
On the other hand, Trump had much more to say about a brewing conflict with Iran. The Trump administration has rapidly built up the largest American military presence in the Middle East in recent weeks as the president seeks to pressure Tehran into signing a new nuclear treaty.
“They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular, nuclear weapons. Yet they continue starting it all over,” Trump said, referencing Operation Midnight Hammer, a series of airstrikes on Iranian nuclear industry targets last year. “We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words. We will never have a nuclear weapon.”
DOUG COLLINS SERVES AS TRUMP'S DESIGNATED SURVIVOR FOR SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR
“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy, but one thing is certain: I will never allow the world's No. 1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can't let that happen,” he stated. “No nation should ever doubt America's resolve. We have the most powerful military on Earth.”
President Donald Trump unveiled a new retirement savings plan for workers during his State of the Union address.
During the Tuesday night address, Trump said that, despite the typical 401(k) retirement savings account rising under his administration, millions of working people still do not have access to a retirement plan that includes matching employer contributions.
LIVE UPDATES: TRUMP DELIVERS 2026 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
“To remedy this gross disparity, I am announcing that next year my administration will give these oft-forgotten American workers, great people, the people that built our country, access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker, we will match your contribution with up to $1,000 each year,” Trump said.
The savings accounts would be similar to those that federal workers have access to, the Thrift Savings Plan.
The White House intends to use an existing Savers Match enacted by legislation signed by then-President Joe Biden in 2022, the SECURE 2.0 Act, as an avenue for providing an annual $1,000 match to low-income workers. The plan will provide an account vehicle for eligible workers to get that Savings Match.
The idea comes after Republicans created “Trump accounts” as part of their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law last year. The Trump accounts are a form of savings account for children.
The Trump accounts are funded through the Treasury Department with a $1,000 credit for U.S. citizens born from 2025 through 2028. Parents and families can contribute up to $5,000 per year to those accounts.
TRUMP BOASTS OF FALLING INFLATION DURING JOINT ADDRESS: HERE'S THE CONTEXT
Beneficiaries are not permitted to pull from their Trump accounts until they turn 18. At that time, they can withdraw up to half the funds only for higher education costs, training programs, small business loans, or first-time home purchases. They can withdraw more funds later in life.
Several major companies, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, have since pledged to match $1,000 contributions to their employees who open Trump accounts.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Authorities investigate the scene after reports that a person fatally stabbed multiple people on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Gig Harbor, Wash. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)
Authorities investigate the scene after reports that a man fatally stabbed multiple people, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Gig Harbor, Wash. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)
Authorities investigate the scene after reports that a man fatally stabbed multiple people Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Gig Harbor, Wash. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)
One of the victims is removed as authorities investigate the scene after reports that a man fatally stabbed multiple people Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Gig Harbor, Wash. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)
Authorities investigate the scene after reports that a man fatally stabbed multiple people Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, in Gig Harbor, Wash. (AP Photo/John Froschauer)
SEATTLE (AP) — A man fatally stabbed four people in Washington state on Tuesday morning as sheriff's deputies were on their way to hand him a domestic violence protection order, authorities said. The suspect died after being shot by an arriving deputy.
The Pierce County Sheriff's Office said deputies initially responded at 8:40 a.m. to reports that a 32-year-old man was violating a no-contact order at a home on the Key Peninsula, northwest of Tacoma. They obtained a copy of the order, learned it was not valid because it had not been served on the man and headed to the address to provide it to him.
While they were en route, at about 9:30 a.m., additional reports came in that the man was stabbing people outside the home, the sheriff's office said. The first deputy arrived within about three minutes and shot the suspect, who was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Officer Shelbie Boyd, a spokesperson for the Pierce County Force Investigation Team.
Three of the stabbing victims were dead at the scene and another died while being taken to a hospital.
Pierce County court records show that a woman who lived at the address last May obtained a one-year protection order against her 32-year-old son. She wrote that he had mental health and substance abuse issues, had previously pushed her, and more recently had threatened her by saying that her “grave has been already dug up.”
The son had been “threatening me, abusing me both mentally and emotionally. Doing witchcraft/occult behavior and doing rituals in my home,” the woman wrote. “Damaging personal belongings. Hurting my cat. ... I am an elderly disabled woman and he is taking advantage of me and my health.”
The records show that the son had notice of a hearing before the issuance of the restraining order but did not appear for it. The protective order required him not to possess dangerous weapons; to stay 1,000 feet (305 meters) from his mother, her vehicle and her address, which they had shared; and to comply with a previously prescribed mental health treatment plan, including medication.
It was not immediately clear why the attacker had not previously been served with the protection order. Typically in Washington state, someone who obtains such an order can request that law enforcement deliver it to the subject of the order or hire a private investigator or “process server” to do so. Not knowing the location of the subject of the restraining order can delay that.
Chris Cardenas, who lives just a couple minutes driving from the street where the stabbings occurred, said he was washing his truck in his driveway when he heard the gunfire.
“All of a sudden I just heard like a series of gunshots,” he said. “You could really hear it echoing through the trees.”
Sirens then sounded nonstop for about 40 minutes, he said.
“I immediately knew something was up because I've never heard gunshots out here,” he said.
He went over to the cordoned-off scene and saw ambulances, a forensics bus and dozens of police vehicles, he said, adding that he couldn't have braced himself “for how tragic the news would be.”
___
Associated Press writers Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Democrats stayed seated when President Donald Trump asked if the first duty of the government is to protect its citizens at his State of the Union address.
“If you agree with the statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
Republicans stood, clapped, and whistled for a couple of minutes before the president condemned Democrats for not standing.
“Isn't that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up,” Trump said after applause died down.
The chamber got rowdy as Trump condemned Democrats, as a handful of members yelled back.
Democrats such as Tlaib and Omar are shouting at Trump about the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by immigration officers"You killed Alex!" Tlaib saidAlso heard "you are literally killing American citizens" from the Dem side
LIVE UPDATES: TRUMP DELIVERS 2026 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
Democrats proceeded to respond to the president, saying, “You killed Alex,” referring to Minnesota resident and ICU nurse Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by immigration enforcement personnel in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
Deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller echoed the president's condemnation of Democrats, saying in a post on X, “The immortal visual of the entire Democrat party—upon explicit repeated invitation—refusing to stand for the core moral principle that US government owes its allegiance to US citizens and not foreign criminal invaders, is the most shocking image in the history of the US Congress.”
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Goldman Sachs' top diversity official has left for a rival in recent weeks, multiple people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. Her exit comes as Wall Street retreats from long-stated DEI pledges about hiring and career advancement.
Megan Hogan, Goldman's global co-head of talent left in January for Morgan Stanley, several people familiar with the matter said. Hogan, who joined the firm nearly 12 years ago, held the title of chief diversity officer until early 2025 before taking on the broader talent position for the past year.
Hogan confirmed the move via email on Tuesday, telling Business Insider that Morgan Stanley had extended her "an amazing opportunity" in talent development, which will begin when her garden leave expires. She declined to comment further.
At Morgan Stanley, Hogan will serve as head of talent development, reporting to Susan Reid, the firm's global head of talent. Hogan will begin in April, a person familiar with the hire said.
Like other Wall Street banks, Goldman Sachs spent years investing in workforce diversity initiatives, and Hogan was one of its most prominent faces focused on social impact issues. But when President Donald Trump returned to power last January, he issued an executive order ending DEI programming at government agencies and urging companies to follow suit. Goldman, like many of its peers, has since taken steps to scrub DEI language from public-facing materials.
Earlier this month, the bank also agreed to remove race, gender identity, and sexual orientation from its board-member selection criteria following pressure from a conservative shareholder group, the Wall Street Journal reported. It also stopped highlighting specific DEI targets in annual reports, a practice that had been a staple of its post-2020 communications, and said it would sunset the "aspirational hiring goals" it established half a decade ago.
"This is a reflection of the changing legal environment and adapting to the reality of those legal shifts," a spokesperson for the bank told Business Insider, adding that the firm stands by the benefit of "diverse perspectives and experiences," and is following the law while running programs designed to "attract the best talent."
Later this week, the bank is expected to name Lauren Uranker, another managing director who joined the firm about 14 years ago, as the new sole head of talent development, engagement, and management, according to a person with close knowledge of the bank's thinking. Uranker was appointed global co-head of talent alongside Hogan in mid-2025.
In her new position, Uranker's mandate is expected to concentrate on the transition to AI-supported work, team growth, and finding ways to engage and retain top employees. Her title has no direct references to DEI, but the position will still encompass programming designed to advance workplace inclusion, the source added.
Corporate America — including financial services firms such as JPMorgan, Citi, and Morgan Stanley— has eased use of the term "DEI" and associated language since early 2025. The Trump administration's rebuke of diversity-related programming continues to serve as a point of pride for Trump, who touted the crackdown during his State of the Union address to lawmakers on Tuesday night. "We ended DEI in America," he said.
Goldman had previously been among Wall Street's most vocal advocates for promoting inclusion in the workplace. In 2020, David Solomon, the bank's CEO, championed a series of policies like requiring companies to appoint diverse board members before his bankers would agree to help them go public — a rule the company killed last year. Stephanie Cohen, the bank's former chief strategy officer who departed in 2024, told Business Insider in 2020 that Goldman viewed these issues as more than perfunctory but vital for commercial success.
Hogan's predecessor, Erika Irish Brown, left for Citi in 2021 to lead DEI efforts there. Following Brown's departure, Hogan — who previously held the titles of head of Americas talent management and global head of diversity recruiting — assumed the chief diversity officer title the same year, but last year consolidated primarily on her "global co-head of talent" designation. Her exit compounds another long-standing struggle for the Wall Street bank: retaining senior female leaders. Goldman has faced blowback over whether it's done enough to support their career progress — an area where officials have acknowledged there's room for improvement.
Though the firm has increased the total share of female managing directors by 3% since 2021, a spokesperson said, Solomon acknowledged this past fall that there was further to go. "We've made a bunch of progress, especially in the senior ranks," he said at the Economic Club of Washington in October. But the results, he added, were "candidly not enough, and we continue to be focused on creating opportunities."
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Axon Enterprise's stock surged more than 17% after the maker of Tasers, body cameras and drones topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates as artificial intelligence accelerated demand for its software products
The company reported adjusted earnings of $2.15 per share on $797 million in revenue, surpassing the $1.60 per share and $755 million in revenue expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG.
Axon also issued upbeat revenue guidance for 2026, calling for growth between 27% and 30%, compared to a 25.8% estimate.
CEO Rick Smith said that since starting the company in 1993, AI has brought a "moment unlike anything" he has seen.
"If we deploy AI more aggressively and more thoughtfully than anyone else in this space, while honoring the responsibility that comes with the operating environment we operate in, we will create value that our customers simply cannot replicate," he told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday.
Axon said AI capabilities accounted for about 10%, or $750 million, of total bookings last year as it infused more tech into its tools.
Some of those AI features include automatic license plate recognition and a voice-activated companion built into a body camera. The tool, known as Axon Assistant, attracted more than 500 customers.
Finance chief Brittany Bagley said Axon expects its software business, which grew 40% during the quarter to $343 million, to soon outpace hardware growth due to AI tail winds.
Revenue grew 39% from a year ago. Net income totaled about $3 million, or 3 cents per share, down from $135 million, or $1.67 per share a year ago. Axon attributed the shift to operating losses and strategic investment activities.
The company also set 2028 targets for $6 billion in annual revenue and 28% adjusted EBITDA margin.
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Axon Enterprise's stock surged more than 17% after the maker of Tasers, body cameras and drones topped Wall Street's fourth-quarter estimates as artificial intelligence accelerated demand for its software products
The company reported adjusted earnings of $2.15 per share on $797 million in revenue, surpassing the $1.60 per share and $755 million in revenue expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG.
Axon also issued upbeat revenue guidance for 2026, calling for growth between 27% and 30%, compared to a 25.8% estimate.
CEO Rick Smith said that since starting the company in 1993, AI has brought a "moment unlike anything" he has seen.
"If we deploy AI more aggressively and more thoughtfully than anyone else in this space, while honoring the responsibility that comes with the operating environment we operate in, we will create value that our customers simply cannot replicate," he told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday.
Axon said AI capabilities accounted for about 10%, or $750 million, of total bookings last year as it infused more tech into its tools.
Some of those AI features include automatic license plate recognition and a voice-activated companion built into a body camera. The tool, known as Axon Assistant, attracted more than 500 customers.
Finance chief Brittany Bagley said Axon expects its software business, which grew 40% during the quarter to $343 million, to soon outpace hardware growth due to AI tail winds.
Revenue grew 39% from a year ago. Net income totaled about $3 million, or 3 cents per share, down from $135 million, or $1.67 per share a year ago. Axon attributed the shift to operating losses and strategic investment activities.
The company also set 2028 targets for $6 billion in annual revenue and 28% adjusted EBITDA margin.
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Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce could be making their "Love Story" official this summer at a luxurious Rhode Island hotel.
Page Six reported in December that the celebration could unfold at one of Rhode Island's most storied seaside hotels, just steps from Swift's Watch Hill mansion.
The outlet reported that the couple plans to tie the knot at Ocean House in Westerly, a historic Gilded Age-era beachfront property that first opened in 1868 and has since been meticulously restored into a five-star retreat overlooking the Atlantic.
Ocean House did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the reports.
I visited Ocean House in December to dine at its bistro restaurant and see firsthand why the Grammy winner might choose the grand yet intimate resort as a wedding venue.
Here's what it's like to visit and dine at Ocean House — and why it fits the bill for a Swift-worthy celebration.
About an hour from Newport, Watch Hill has a population of around 200 residents and is known for its classic New England charm, sweeping Atlantic Ocean views, and grand seaside homes.
Located on the shores of Westerly, Ocean House acted as a quintessential New England summer retreat for affluent families looking to vacation by the sea.
The hotel closed in 2003 due to structural deterioration, but was later rebuilt to replicate its original look. It reopened in 2010.
Taylor Swift's Watch Hill residence, which she's owned since 2013, can be seen from the grounds of Ocean House. Business Insider previously reported that Swift paid $17.75 million in cash for the home, which was originally built in 1904.
The mansion spans 12,000 square feet and has eight bedrooms. If Swift isn't getting married at Ocean House for her ceremony or reception, it's possible she'll use her own home as the main venue and the hotel to house guests.
This wasn't my first time at Ocean House — I've also been during the summer, when guests and visitors can take cocktails from the downstairs bar out to the hotel's expansive grounds, play croquet, and admire the ocean views.
Although it was much darker and colder when I visited this time, I could still appreciate the hotel's historic charm and grandeur.
My family of three made our dinner reservation at the hotel's bistro restaurant, which is more low-key than its fine-dining restaurant, about two weeks in advance. In my experience, it can be hard to get reservations during peak seasons, such as summer and the holidays.
The front entryway was decorated with a large woven rug, as well as decorations for its Peter-Pan-themed New Year's Eve party.
Guests of the hotel, as well as diners at the hotel's restaurants, milled around the lobby — it was buzzy without being overly crowded.
A pianist played at a nearby piano, creating a cozy yet upscale vibe.
Pictures of sailboats and even a painting of those lost on the Titanic adorned the lobby walls.
In addition to hotel accommodations, the resort offers a "land and sea" experience, in which guests can book a stay aboard a restored 1937 yacht that once carried famous guests such as Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire, Nelson Rockefeller, and President Roosevelt, according to the hotel.
The hotel has 49 guest rooms and 20 signature suites. If Swift and Kelce do plan to house overflow guests at the hotel, it would be shaping up to be a smaller, more intimate wedding rather than a massive celebrity bash.
However, the nearby Westerly State Airport would potentially allow private jets to fly in and out of the area with relative ease.
Ocean House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on whether Swift will be tying the knot at the resort.
However, room rates surge sharply around Swift's rumored wedding date of June 13. A one-night stay on June 12 or June 13 is listed at $9,544, compared with $2,073 for the following Friday and Saturday. When attempting to book those mid-June dates, the hotel's website also indicates that no rooms are currently available.
The bistro is open year-round and serves "casual, seasonally inspired dishes," while COAST is the hotel's fine-dining restaurant.
During the warmer months, guests can also visit the Verandah Raw Bar, Dalia, which is a tapas restaurant, and Théa at Dune Cottage, a beachside restaurant reserved for hotel guests.
The overall vibe of the restaurant was elevated but comfortable, with lush seating and rich wooden tables throughout the room.
After a few glasses of chardonnay to start the meal, we asked our waiter what he thought about the rumors surrounding Swift getting married at the resort this summer.
Unsurprisingly, he declined to share details. However, he noted that if a high-profile wedding were taking place at the hotel, most staff members likely wouldn't be informed until the day of — or shortly beforehand — to minimize the risk of media leaks and large crowds gathering on the property.
Information-gathering aside, we were also there for dinner. We started with calamari ($22) and a side of crispy Brussels sprouts ($12).
It was more than enough to satisfy four people, and while it was fried to a rich golden brown, it didn't feel heavy. It was perfectly crispy and flavorful.
Topped with crispy bacon, the Brussels sprouts were the ideal balance of rich flavor and freshness.
The short rib ($45) is a staple on the restaurant's winter menu. The menu changes seasonally, switching out heartier dishes like this one for lighter fare like seafood as the weather warms up.
However, dishes like steak, scallops, and fish appear to be mainstays year-round.
The scallops ($50) were sourced from nearby Stonington, Connecticut, a coastal town known for its sweet, briny shellfish harvested from the cold waters of the Long Island Sound.
They arrived nestled atop a smoky almond romesco with fava beans and chorizo slices, which added subtle heat and richness. The scallops had a beautifully caramelized sear that gave way to a plump, buttery interior.
Served with garlic butter and a side of bearnaise sauce, the grilled hanger steak ($40) was cooked to medium-rare perfection. The fries were crispy yet light and were perfectly salted.
Every bite melted in our mouths — for such a simple dish, we were impressed, and thought the price point was reasonable.
The hazelnut tart ($14) combined a chocolate flavor profile with slightly tart raspberry sauce, creating the perfect bite to finish the meal.
Including a bottle of wine, two appetizers, three entrées, and dessert, our meal came to $292.72.
Ocean House strikes a rare balance between grandeur and privacy, with excellent food and hospitality from the hotel's discreet staff, who are willing to keep all wedding details under wraps.
Add in its location just steps from Watch Hill's quiet village center — and minutes from Swift's own Rhode Island home — and it's easy to see how the historic resort offers the exclusivity, romance, and coastal New England charm fit for a pop superstar's summer wedding.
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David Tepper, billionaire founder of hedge fund Appaloosa Management, sent a strongly worded letter to Whirlpool's board, accusing the appliance maker of destroying shareholder value and calling for sweeping changes to its strategy.
Tepper said in the letter that he watched with "a certain astonishment" as the company issued equity in what he called a large and unnecessary dilution of shareholders. He argued the capital raise came at a cost exceeding 10%, far higher than the company's tax-adjusted debt cost of below 5% in public markets, despite management's stated goal of reducing leverage.
"Over the years this management team has destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder value. Enough is enough. There can be no more excuses," Tepper said in the letter, first obtained by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Whirlpool, the maker of Maytag and other iconic American appliance brands, was the eighth-biggest holding in Appaloosa Management's portfolio at the end of the fourth quarter, worth $282 million, according to Verity data.
Whirlpool shares tanked 14% on Tuesday amid the secondary share sale, which will raise $454.9 million from a common stock offering and $508.1 million from a depositary share sale, according to the company. Whirlpool also sold 435,000 shares of Guangdong Whirlpool Electrical Appliances at a discounted $69 a share in a private placement.
Shares of Whirlpool were down less than 1% in morning trading after Tepper's letter came out. The stock has tumbled nearly 36% from its 52-week high from July.
The hedge fund manager also faulted Whirlpool for failing to capitalize on tariffs instituted under the Trump administration, saying the company should explore partnerships or potential mergers with disadvantaged foreign competitors to strengthen its strategic position.
"We encourage the Board to (i) remember their fiduciary responsibilities and not accept management acting purely in its own self-interest, and (ii) invite domestic entities or foreign corporations who want tocreate American jobs and increase shareholder value to take an interest in Whirlpool," said the letter.
Whirlpool didn't immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.
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European defense companies must take a stronger lead on collaborating to help the continent become independent of the U.S. security umbrella, Leonardo's CEO told CNBC.
Speaking with CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday after Leonardo's annual results statement, Roberto Cingolani said European defense companies have "all the capabilities and technical skills" and should not wait for governments to fix the sector, which he warned was "fragmented."
Companies should take the lead in a process of "aggregation", which European governments would follow, he said, adding that this approach "pays a lot" and helps enable companies to become "better, faster, more profitable."
He pointed to Leonardo's partnership with the U.K.'s BAE Systems and Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as co-founders of the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) to jointly develop the Tempest stealth fighter.
Leonardo has also developed joint agreements with German defense giant Rheinmetall for land defense systems, and with Turkish drone maker Baykar, he said.
Last October, Leonardo also unveiled plans for a combined space and satellite company with Airbus and Thales to rival Elon Musk's Starlink.
"I'm firmly convinced nobody can make it on their own," Cingolani told CNBC. "We need to deploy synergies, we need to understand joining forces in a competitive industry like defense is fundamental to be successful, to be fast in responding to the needs of our societies."
U.S. President Donald Trump's bid to annex Greenland contributed to fractures in the NATO alliance, as the war in Ukraine focuses attention on Europe's defense.
The continent's growing push for greater military sovereignty now underpins what investors have called a multi-year "mega-trend" fueled by evolving geopolitical threats and doubts over U.S. commitments to NATO.
"The silent agreement was that Americans were paying for European defense. Europeans were rather relaxed after 80 years of peace. We were purchasing primarily American technologies. Correctly, the Americans want Europeans to be more independent. It's a reasonable request," he said.
"On the other hand, it means we need to develop our own technologies that are complementary to the American ones and under the NATO umbrella, he added.
"It's not America versus Europe — it's just collaborating on a more symmetric basis."
His comments came after Leonardo reported an 18% annual increase in core profits — topping 1.75 billion euros ($2.1 billion) — in its latest earnings statement on Wednesday.
New orders rose 14.5% last year, to 23.8 billion euros, powered by its aeronautics division, as net debt sat at 1 billion euros — a 44% decrease for the Rome-headquartered, Milan-listed company.
Its shares finished Wednesday's session 3.5% down after the earnings.
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This is CNBC's Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.
Happy Wednesday. The restaurant reservation platform wars are heating up, and I'm wondering whether my fascination with this story is a sign that I eat out too often.
Stock futures are higher this morning after a positive session yesterday.
Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
President Donald Trump touted his economic record during his State of the Union address last night, saying the U.S. economy is "roaring like never before" — despite polls that show many Americans are feeling the opposite. The speech clocked in at 107 minutes, the longest-ever State of the Union address.
Here's what to know:
Buzzy artificial intelligence startup Anthropic announced updates to its Claude Cowork tool yesterday aimed at improving office workers' productivity. The enhancements include allowing companies to connect Cowork to platforms such as Google Drive, Gmail and DocuSign.
Recent product releases from Anthropic have sparked sharp declines in cybersecurity and software stocks, but yesterday's rollout wasn't seen as threatening to the software industry as Wall Street feared. Stocks in the sector regained some ground during the session, helping to power a broader recovery rally which drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average up more than 350 points.
Follow live markets updates here.
Lowe's surpassed Wall Street's fourth-quarter expectations for earnings and revenue this morning, reporting more than 10% quarterly sales growth from the same time a year ago.
But the positive results were overshadowed by the home improvement retailer's weaker-than-expected earnings outlook for the full year. Shares of Lowe's slipped around 3% in premarket trading this morning.
A crop of technology earnings reports are due after the bell. The headliner is Nvidia, whose results will come amid mounting skepticism on the Street about AI.
CNBC's Morning Squawk recaps the biggest stories investors should know before the stock market opens, every weekday morning.
Subscribe here to get access today.
Warner Bros. Discovery announced yesterday that Paramount Skydance upped its takeover offer to $31 per share. WBD said the new proposal, which its board would review, could "reasonably be expected" to beat out the media giant's current deal with Netflix.
Paramount's new offer is all cash and includes a $7 billion breakup fee if the merger does not receive regulatory approval, according to WBD. Paramount also agreed to cover the $2.8 billion owed to Netflix if WBD backs out of its existing deal with the streaming giant.
Paramount CEO David Ellison has been vying for WBD for nearly half of a year. As CNBC's Sarah Whitten reports, acquiring the media company could help improve Paramount's lackluster box office record under Ellison's leadership.
Panera Bread is hopping on the value meal bandwagon.
The company announced a "Mix & Match" deal this morning in a bid to lure back money-conscious consumers. Panera's new value options come as a number of restaurant chains, including McDonald's and Taco Bell, promote low-cost menu items. As CNBC's Amelia Lucas notes, affordability has been a key part of Panera's turnaround plan under CEO Paul Carbone.
Meanwhile, shares of fellow fast-casual chain Cava surged nearly 10% in extended trading after the company beat analyst expectations on both lines for the fourth quarter. The Mediterranean chain also reported unexpected growth in same-store sales and said full-year revenue topped $1 billion for the first time.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in an investor meeting this week that plans to rejigger the bank's workforce amid AI's technological shakeup are already taking shape.
— CNBC's Garrett Downs, Spencer Kimball, Dan Mangan, Kevin Breuninger, Evelyn Cheng, Ashley Capoot, Annie Palmer, Sean Conlon, Alex Sherman, Sarah Whitten, Amelia Lucas, Laya Neelakandan and Hugh Son contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.
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Nvidia's earnings on Wednesday are expected to show booming sales of the company's current rack-scale system. But all eyes are on its next AI system, Vera Rubin, which is scheduled to roll out later this year.Vera Rubin, which is made up of 1.3 million components, will deliver 10 times more performance per watt than its predecessor, Grace Blackwell, the company claims. That's a significant development when energy consumption is one of the most critical issues facing the artificial intelligence build-out.
CNBC got an exclusive first look at Vera Rubin at Nvidia's headquarters in Santa Clara, California.Nvidia says the new AI system is a complex web of parts sourced from around the world. Its core chips include 72 Rubin graphics processing units, or GPUs, and 36 Vera central processing units, or CPUs, primarily made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The other parts, from liquid cooling elements to power systems and compute trays, come from more than 80 suppliers in at least 20 countries, including China, Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Israel and the U.S.
One big challenge the company faces is the soaring costs of memory due to a global shortage from all the AI-driven demand. Dion Harris, Nvidia's AI infrastructure head, said in an interview that the company has been giving suppliers "very detailed forecasts."
"We're aligning to make sure that everything we're shipping will be met by our supply chain," he said. "We're in good shape."
It's a critical moment for Nvidia, which dominates the market for AI processors but faces intensifying competition from Advanced Micro Devices as well as custom silicon from Broadcom and Google's homegrown tensor processing units. Nvidia has plans to manufacture up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the U.S. through 2029, including making Blackwell GPUs at TSMC's new Arizona fabs.
Grace Blackwell went into production in 2024, and changed the game on how much compute was possible with a single system. Vera Rubin, which is expected to ship in the second half of 2026, takes the company to another level. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced in January that the system was in full production.
"These things are massive. They've got all the compute, all the networking, all the cabling, all the cooling," said Daniel Newman of research firm Futurum Group. "They've got all these systems pulled together into a single rack built for absolute greatest efficiency and greatest performance. And that's just not how servers were historically built."
Last week, Meta announced plans to use Vera Rubin in its data centers by 2027. Nvidia's list of other expected Vera Rubin customers includes OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The racks, manufactured in the U.S. and elsewhere, including in Taiwan and at a new Foxconn plant in Mexico, weigh nearly 2 tons and have about 1,300 total microchips, compared with Grace Blackwell's 864.
Vera Rubin is a simpler, modular system intended to ease installs and repairs. Each superchip slides out of one of the rack's 18 compute trays in seconds. In the Blackwell system, those components are soldered to the board.
Nvidia said the new system will consume about twice as much power as its predecessor, but will be far more efficient because of that 10 times return on performance per watt.
Jordan Klein, an analyst at Mizuho Securities, said what "matters the most" is "how many tokens per power consumed can you get."
"The more you can tweak that or move up the curve, the higher the return would be on the dollar you spend," Klein said.
Vera Rubin is also Nvidia's first system that's 100% liquid cooled, which Harris said helps data centers consume "much less water" than traditional evaporative cooling.Nvidia doesn't share rack pricing, but Futurum Group estimates the price will increase about 25% from Grace Blackwell, bringing the system price to somewhere around $3.5 million to $4 million.
As major customers seek to diversify their reliance on the chipmaker, many are also filling AI servers with their own in-house silicon. CNBC visited an Amazon Web Services data center in October packed with "ultra-servers" made up of the company's Trainium 2 chips. Meanwhile, Google's data centers are loaded with racks of its TPUs.
Later this year, Nvidia will see some big competition when rival AMD ships its first rack-scale system called Helios. The chipmaker just secured a major commitment from Meta for up to 6 gigawatts of capacity.
"You're going to see a lot of uptake because customers want more capacity, but they also want a viable second source to keep Nvidia honest," Klein said.
With respect to the competition, Harris said: "Hats off to anyone who's going to try. But this is certainly not a simple endeavor."Watch the video for a detailed look at Vera Rubin and how the system works.
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Gucci's new AI-generated ads have hit a nerve online.
The renderings — including a glamorous woman in a fur coat striding through a restaurant, a pair of models some commentators likened to "Grand Theft Auto" characters, and sleek car scenes — were posted on Gucci's social media pages ahead of creative director Demna Gvasalia's first runway show at Milan Fashion Week on Friday.
The images quickly drew sharp criticism online, with some users calling them "cheap" and "slop"— a term used to describe AI-generated content perceived as low-quality or mass-produced.
"You did not need to use AI for this, so tacky," one Instagram user said. Another user wrote: "Craftsmanship reduced to marketing narrative." One user on X said AI makes the brand look cheaper than TJ Maxx.
A post shared by GUCCI (@gucci)
Not all of the images for the "Primavera" campaign are AI-generated — it also includes a mix of other photography.
Gucci did not respond to a request for comment.
Branding experts say that while some consumers perceive the images as "cheap," Gucci's decision to use AI was likely driven by creative intent rather than cost-cutting.
It's about "positioning Gucci at the intersection of fashion, art and technology," Blanca Zugaza Escribano, a fashion and luxury strategy consultant at Metyis, told Business Insider.
The use of AI fits into Gucci's history of experimentation and boundary-pushing, she said.
"It signals creative futurism, reinforces the brand's relevance in a tech-driven world, and allows it to generate surreal, high-impact imagery that traditional production might not easily achieve," she added.
PRIMAVERAFebruary 272 p.m. CETCreated with AI pic.twitter.com/sNbcFrpTX9
This isn't the first time the Italian luxury fashion house has dipped its toes into AI.
Earlier this month, Gucci partnered with Snapchat for an AI interactive lens — a feature that enables Snapchat users to become one of Gucci's "La Famiglia" figures. These were fictional digital characters created for one of its collection rollouts.
Armelle Poulou, CFO of Kering — Gucci's parent company — said in its fourth-quarter earnings call that the launch of the "La Famiglia" Collection, and its "surrounding activations," are putting "Gucci back at the center of the attention."
That push for visibility comes at a critical moment for the brand.
Gucci had the steepest revenue decline among Kering's portfolio, falling 22% on a reported basis and 19% on a comparable basis in its full-year 2025 earnings.
Matthew Drinkwater, the director of the Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion, said luxury has traditionally been rooted in "craft, heritage and human storytelling."
"If AI is used in a way that feels like it replaces craft, it risks undermining the very thing that creates aspiration," he said.
This isn't the first time Gucci has been accused of diluting the brand image. While its push for maximalism and logos more than doubled its revenue between 2015 and 2022 —under creative director Alessandro Michele — when consumers turned to the "quiet luxury" trend, it was unable to keep up.
Alongside mass-market partnerships, the fashion house's customer base had also become younger and more aspirational, many of whom seem to have moved on.
Gucci isn't the only brand to face backlash for its use of AI in marketing. In December, fashion house Valentino raised eyebrows after launching an AI-generated campaign for its DeVain handbag.
A post shared by Valentino (@maisonvalentino)
"Ruining a fashion house legacy is tough work, but I see you guys have determination," one user on Instagram said of Valentino's campaign at the time.
For luxury brands, the challenge of delivering a positive tech experience is even greater, said Elaine Parr, a senior partner and consumer products and retail industries leader EMEA at IBM.
Not only is it a "tough market" for luxury right now as a pullback in spending from aspirational shoppers weighs on sales, but "you need to deliver on the Lux brand promise and be modern whilst retaining your heritage," Parr added.
The Instagram comments section of luxury brands has become "the most honest focus group in fashion," said Drinkwater, the director of the Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion.
"Almost any use of AI in fashion still seems to trigger a level of outrage," he added.
Drinkwater said that while AI is more effective when it supports a creative vision rather than replaces it, negative campaign reactions "are good examples of how quickly the conversation can turn when people feel craft or human input is being displaced."
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AI anxiety is hitting entry-level workers hardest. For those aiming for a consulting career, where junior staff historically built slide decks and crunched data, AI agents seem like an intimidating new competitor.
But two of EY's top consulting leaders say junior employees are a valuable asset for professional services firms in the AI age.
Lack of experience is what makes the youngest professionals at EY valuable, Dan Diasio, EY's global consulting AI leader, told Business Insider.
They arrive without a decade or more of assumptions about how work should be done — more of a blank sheet of paper. That allows them to challenge the status quo and rethink processes from first principles.
His advice for junior consultants at EY is to use that to their advantage: be bold, ask questions about the way things are done, and lean into the use of technology.
"If anything, as a young graduate, they've got more opportunity to change our organization," Errol Gardner, global head of consulting at the Big Four firm EY, told Business Insider. Junior consultants have the native digital skills and the creativity necessary for the AI era, he said.
Across the industry, consulting firms are racing to embed generative AI into their own workflows while advising clients on how to implement the technology. That shift is prompting a reassessment of hiring, with a new focus on engineering talent.
It's also raised questions about the traditional consulting pyramid model, which has long relied on teams of junior staff to perform research and prepare materials. If AI agents can complete much of that "assembly" work in seconds, what happens to entry-level roles?
Fellow Big Four firm PwC has reduced graduate hiring goals in the US, in part because of "the impact of AI," according to an internal presentation obtained by Business Insider last August.
At EY, Gardner said there has been "no material change" in graduate recruitment due to AI. The firm continues to hire to support growth in its consulting business, he said.
In its latest annual report, EY said it invests more than $1 billion annually in developing AI-first platforms and products, and AI-related revenue was up 30% in the firm's 2025 financial year.
Diasio, who is responsible for AI across EY's consulting business, added that knowledge-workers broadly, not just the young ones, are getting a bad rap amid the current AI narrative.
There is an idea that they're going to be replaced by AI, said Diasio, but AI without context, knowledge, and expertise, puts you down a path of "statistical sameness" and produces, as he put it, "polished slop."
He said we're in the early stages of an evolution of consultants' roles: "Our people are going to move more to being creators, creators of new business models, creators of new opportunities for our clients, creators of maybe new products."
"It's people and their creativity that lift the ceiling," he added.
While the tools consultants use are evolving rapidly, Gardner said the core objective of their job remains the same: delivering value to clients, developing clients' teams, working collaboratively to implement change, and pursuing learning and development.
That won't shift by 2030 — or even 2040, he argued. "As long as human beings are buying from human beings, there will continue to be difficulty in executing change and implementing technology," he said.
What will change is how the work gets done. Consultants will spend less time on what Gardner described as "assembly" work — pulling together presentations, drafting proposals, or synthesizing information — and more time interpreting insights and shaping outcomes.
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pthompson@businessinsider.com or Signal at Polly_Thompson.89. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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Lowe's topped Wall Street's quarterly revenue and earnings expectations and posted more than 10% sales growth year over year on Wednesday even as the home improvement market's struggles showed few signs of ending.
In an interview with CNBC, CEO Marvin Ellison said the home improvement retailer is "still dealing with a housing market that does not have a lot of tailwind." A mix of higher inflation, economic uncertainty and elevated mortgage rates have created a "lock-in effect" for U.S. consumers who are staying put instead of buying and selling homes, he said.
"For us, the greatest fuel for the home improvement industry is when you decide to put your house on the market," he said. "Because the first thing you do when you put it on the market is you fix up your yard, you repair your fence, you paint your walls, you do simple beautification modifications in your home."
As the waiting game for stronger home improvement demand continues, he said Lowe's strategy is resonating with do-it-yourself customers and home professionals. He credited some company-specific changes, such as better digital experiences, flexible delivery options and more installation services.
He said Lowe's anticipates roughly flat demand for the home improvement industry this year. Its own full-year sales forecast is based on expectations that it will outperform the market, he said.
Lowe's said it expects total sales for the full current fiscal year to range between $92 billion and $94 billion, which would be a roughly 7% to 9% increase over the prior year. It said it projects adjusted earnings per share to be between $12.25 and $12.75 for the full year. Lowe's said it expects comparable sales, a metric that takes out one-time factors, to be approximately flat to up 2%.
Shares of Lowe's were down more than 4% in midday trading on Wednesday as the company's earnings per share projections for the year came in short of analysts' consensus expectations of $12.95, according to LSEG.
Ellison told CNBC the company's outlook is "appropriately conservative" because of the "very fluid and very unpredictable environment" it faces due to slower home sales and changing tariff rates.
Here's what Lowe's reported for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with Wall Street's estimates, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:
Lowe's net income for the three-month period that ended Jan. 30 dropped to $999 million, or $1.78 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.99 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Excluding one-time factors, including expenses associated with recent acquisitions, Lowe's reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.98.
Revenue rose from $18.55 billion in the year-ago period.
Comparable sales for the quarter climbed 1.3%, higher than the 0.2% that analysts were expecting, according to StreetAccount. The company said in a news release that growth was driven by its gains with home professionals, online sales and home services, along with a strong holiday season.
Lowe's posted growth in nine of its 14 merchandising categories, said Bill Boltz, executive vice president of merchandising, on the company's earnings call. Some of the categories and items that sold well are more closely tied to pros, such as sales of plumbing supplies like water heaters and millwork for windows and doors, Boltz said. Yet the company also saw strength with paint sales, as customers bought interior and exterior paint, primer and stains, he said.
Lowe's results reinforce the housing market's struggles a day after rival Home Depot said it is still seeing similar reluctance to take on big housing projects.
Home Depot on Tuesday beat Wall Street's earnings and revenue expectations, but stuck by conservative full-year guidance. Its quarterly results reflected that home improvement demand remains tepid, as U.S. consumers continue to put off big projects because of high borrowing costs and housing prices as well as economic concerns.
Like Home Depot, Lowe's has felt pinched by a tougher backdrop for the industry. Earlier this month, Lowe's cut about 600 corporate and support roles, a move it said would free up resources to support stores. Home Depot in late January laid off 800 workers and said employees would have to work from the office five days a week.
Both have also looked to pros to drive growth by acquiring companies that cater to contractors, roofers, electricians and others who tend to be a steadier source of business.
Last year, Lowe's acquired Foundation Building Materials, a distributor of drywall, insulation and other interior building products for large residential and commercial professionals, for about $8.8 billion. It also bought Artisan Design Group, which provides design services and installation of flooring, cabinets and countertops for homebuilders and property managers, for about $1.33 billion.
Lowe's has also made its own moves to reach customers who are delaying home purchases, such as launching a third-party marketplace to expand its mix of merchandise, tapping influencers to raise its visibility on social media and reaching out to young families by relaunching its kids' program.
Yet Lowe's and Home Depot are still waiting for signs that U.S. consumers are ready to jump back in to buying, selling and fixing up their homes at a more typical rate.
Ellison said on the company's earnings call that the company is closely watching if there's a shift toward more pricier discretionary purchases.
"When we start to see a sustained number of discretionary big-ticket purchases from the DIY [do-it-yourself shopper], that's going to give us an indication that the consumer is getting healthier and they're more confident in making those purchases," he said.
He told CNBC that two changes could meaningfully move the needle for the industry: A pick-up in home sales or an increase in the use of home equity lines of credit. Homeowners may stick with their low fixed-mortgage rate, but tap the increased value of their home to redo their kitchen, finish a basement or build a deck.
"We think that as people stay locked in and they come to the realization that 'I'm not going to give up this two and a half percent mortgage rate,' they're going to start investing in their home at some point," he said.
Tariff policies, too, have injected fresh uncertainty for retailers after the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that some country-specific tariffs were illegal. Since then, President Donald Trump has announced a global duty of 10%, which he has suggested he could increase.
About 40% of Lowe's goods are imported, Ellison told CNBC, which is lower than it used to be. He said Lowe's can lean on its existing tariff playbook, which has gotten sharper in recent years, even as it calculates how its costs may shift.
As of Tuesday's close, Lowe's shares are up nearly 16% year to date, surpassing the S&P 500's roughly 1% gains during the same period. Its stock has risen about 15% over the past year, almost matching the S&P 500's approximately 16% gains over that time.
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Panera Bread is entering the so-called value wars with its new "Mix & Match" deals in a bid to win back price-conscious diners.
The chain, known for its soups, salads and sandwiches, is in the early stages of a turnaround, with a focus on reinvesting in its business and reversing years of traffic declines. Once the top fast-casual brand in the U.S., Panera has fallen to No. 3, ceding the top spots to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panda Express.
In 2024, Panera's sales dropped 5% to $6.1 billion, according to Technomic estimates.
A key part of Panera's comeback strategy is focusing on value.
Across the restaurant industry, executives have reported weaker spending among consumers, who are trying to save money by trading down to fast food or dining out less frequently. Chains like McDonald's and Taco Bell have leaned into value offerings to try to win back customers.
About 3 out of every 4 diners said that daily specials, discounts or value promotions matter when choosing where to dine or order takeout, according to the National Restaurant Association's annual State of the Restaurant Industry report.
"[Consumers] are seeking value, and they're also seeking quality," Panera CEO Paul Carbone told CNBC. "That's so, so important."
Starting Wednesday, Panera customers can choose halved portions of sandwiches and salads, as well as cups of soup, from the Mix & Match menu. Each of the 10 items is priced at $4.99, and diners have to buy at least two items. Seasonal menu items will also rotate through the Mix & Match options.
Each order also comes with the choice of a baguette, chips or an apple.
Panera explored other value offerings, but the Mix & Match menu tested successfully, Carbone said.
"The guest has really, really reacted well to it," he said, adding the menu is expected to drive incremental visits to the restaurant.
And while Panera is introducing the deal, its popular "You Pick Two" offering is sticking around.
Carbone said that customer research showed that diners view the option to buy two entrees from the menu as an opportunity for variety, rather than a chance to save money. Like Mix & Match, the offer allows customers to choose a half salad, half sandwich or cup of soup or mac and cheese. However, You Pick Two spans the menu, rather than being restricted to just 10 items.
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In a way, Tekmerion Capital is a throwback to an earlier era of hedge funds.
Before mega funds like Millennium and Citadel shifted the $5.2 trillion industry toward more institutional "skill factories," hedge funds were dominated by quirky characters trading niche markets and esoteric instruments.
Zachary Squire certainly fits that bill. The chief investment officer of Tekmerion Capital, which will spin out of Brevan Howard next month with $1 billion in assets, Squire has the investing bona fides — with stops at D.E. Shaw, Bridgewater, and HBK — that would catch any allocator's eye.
Even in the eccentric world of macro investors, though, Squire stands out. A Princeton valedictorian who majored in Latin and ancient Greek, he's turning his undergraduate thesis — a deep dive into property rights in the works of Roman philosopher Cicero — into a book. He sang opera as a child growing up in New York City.
Squire and his partner, Reed Morrissey, the firm's CEO, are now pitching to new backers. The pair is in South Beach this week for the annual iConnections conference to meet with potential investors — and to add to his many conversation starters, Squire drove from New York to Miami.
Tekmerion counts multimanager quant fund, Engineers Gate, and Galaxy Digital CEO Michael Novogratz as investors and is positioning itself as a diversifier for institutions heavily exposed to US stocks, driven by differentiated macro research.
"There's an opportunity right now where macro is hot and en vogue, and we want to be out there fundraising," said Squire in an interview last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Balcony Lounge restaurant.
"We want investors who understand what macro is, we want investors who understand hedge funds," he added.
Squire initially had no interest in money management. He was set to pursue a Master's in philosophy at Cambridge University when a cold email from legendary fund D.E. Shaw changed his trajectory.
"I still don't know how they found me," he said. He joined the firm's entry-level rotational associates program, in part because Cambridge allowed him to defer his enrollment for a year.
D.E. Shaw is known for its focus on talent that, at first glance, doesn't fit the typical Wall Street mold. Squire said the pitch was basically "everything in the finance industry is learning." Winning, for asset managers, requires "sheer intellectual horsepower."
He spent the bulk of his two years there on risk management, where he was exposed to the entire catalogue of markets, asset classes, and instruments the firm trades. He then joined Bridgewater, the Ray Dalio-founded firm that holds the title of largest hedge fund in the world, researching and trading global rates and currencies. An internal trading game — where employees could invest part of their pay in ideas they believed in — ultimately helped Tekmerion come about.
His strong performance in the game "gave me confidence I could do something like this," Squire said.
Adding to his macro toolkit, Squire spent the next three years in London for credit investor HBK, focused on emerging markets.
The Tekmerion framework began to emerge, in large part thanks to Morrissey, a childhood friend who majored in international relations at Georgetown and worked in Malawi during his Fulbright scholarship.
Morrissey "saw the vision before I did," Squire said, and soon the pair, along with a fellow Bridgewater alum, Lawrence Minicone, set out to raise money for the new venture. A mutual connection living in Puerto Rico brought them into Novogratz's orbit, who backed them.
Tekmerion — a Greek word that, in academic texts, means irrefutable proof but in everyday language translates to "boundary stone" or a marker to delineate two sides — was launched in early 2017 with a small team and a relative pittance of capital.
Then Bridgewater sued.
The firm's launch quickly caught the attention of the executive team at Bridgewater, including Dalio. Bridgewater's legal team kept its complaints in private arbitration, where the mega fund alleged Tekmerion had run amok of past employee agreements thanks to a "misappropriation of trade secrets, breaches of contract, and unfair competition."
Tekmerion eventually won a positive ruling from the panel, which found that Bridgewater had "manufactured false evidence." The case spilled into public view in 2020 because Tekmerion sued Bridgewater to recover millions in legal fees, though that case was settled in August 2020.
Bridgewater declined to comment. Despite the frustration with Bridgewater and its legal strategy, Squire appreciates his former employer's focus on publishing research, something Tekmerion has continued.
In that stressful time for the young fund, Minicone stepped away from the fund to work at RB Venture Partners as a private market investor.
In the years following the pandemic, the fund began to gain traction, delivering returns of nearly 30% in 2022, when global equity markets tanked, and 9.3% in 2023, outperforming larger macro players like Rokos Capital and Bridgewater. The manager caught the eye of billionaire Brevan Howard cofounder Alan Howard, who personally backed the young fund.
That relationship kicked off a relationship between not just Tekmerion and Howard, but also his firm. In 2024, the manager merged into the Brevan platform, where they continued to manage their own branded fund under Brevan's umbrella of strategies.
Squire and Morrissey are excited to be back on their own again, though with a bigger team and much more capital. An undisclosed number of Brevan employees who worked under them are a part of the relaunch team. While Howard and Brevan are not investors in the relaunch, the firm retains the right to invest later and gets a share of Tekmerion's revenue going forward.
The firm's main partnership is now Engineers Gate, the multimanager systematic firm run by Greg Eisner. The fund will work from Engineers Gate's midtown Manhattan offices in a building that also houses multistrategy giant Balyasny. (They eventually hope to find their own space downtown, closer to the Chinatown neighborhood Squire and Morrissey call home).
With many operational headaches settled thanks to the Engineers Gate relationship, the focus can now be on research and the firm's models more than ever. Despite being a systematic macro manager, Squire said, "We don't like to be called a quant."
Tekmerion's process starts with discretionary macro research to determine which investment signals and data inputs are worth weighing more heavily than others in an algorithm. Because of the slow frequency of many macro datasets, the firm typically holds positions for weeks at a time, Morrissey said.
Squire and Morrissey believe the firm's nowcasting — their projection of what the macro environment is in the moment, since many economic data points are produced on a delay, such as the unemployment rate — is a key part of the pitch for potential LPs, which would get access to both the research and the fund's returns.
In the meantime, the pair keep their history and shared background top of mind. When Miles Johnson, a student from their old high school, reached out in 2022 with a passion for the classics but uncertainty about his career path, the firm brought him on as an intern. They said he's been a "rockstar" for the manager as he's matriculated at Columbia and continues doing research for the manager.
"Talent doesn't have a blueprint," Morrissey said.
"You don't need the same degree or background; people are people, and it's their grit and drive that we're interested in."
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For years, Josette Chang and Alexander Nathanson were doing all the "right" things with their money — maxing out retirement accounts, saving consistently, and earning high incomes in finance and medicine — but they didn't have a clear plan.
"We were kind of on autopilot," Nathanson told Business Insider. "The internet says, 'Max out your 401(k).' We did that, but we didn't really think much beyond that."
Within a year of investing in a financial planner and reevaluating their strategy, the New York City couple were surprised to learn that they had already reached financial independence. Chang quit her finance job in 2024, and Nathanson, a physician specializing in obesity medicine, scaled back his hospital hours. He doesn't work because he has to, but because he wants to.
"We have to acknowledge our privilege. We're two high-income professionals, but even then, I still feel like more people can do it than may realize it," Nathanson said.
Here are the three money moves they say set them up for early retirement.
Nathanson and Chang weren't financial novices. Chang worked in finance, and Nathanson regularly read about investing
"I thought that I knew what I was doing," Nathanson said. "Turns out when you speak with a knowledgeable third party, it really can change things profoundly."
That's ultimately what they decided to do, even though they were initially wary of hiring a professional. Like many high earners, they were skeptical of the traditional assets-under-management model, where advisors earn more as portfolios grow.
The couple chose to work with a flat-fee planner, Dr. Jay Zigmont, who specializes in advising people without children. One of the first things he did was challenge how they were thinking about financial independence.
"We assumed early retirement required building a portfolio of rental properties: You need rental properties, and you need a lot of them," said Nathanson, noting that he and Chang never wanted to be landlords. "Working with Jay shed some of those misconceptions. It allowed us to prioritize what we actually want to do and what we don't want to do."
Beyond reframing their mindset, their planner also put structure behind their numbers. When you're after financial independence, figuring out how much is "enough" to quit or scale back from work isn't a simple calculation and involves factoring in things like how much your money will compound, long-term care, and withdrawal strategies.
"It's an important calculation. It's not necessarily simple," said Nathanson. "I don't think anyone could just sit down and do it themselves, but once all of that is done, I would say that more people are further along than they think."
Another key shift was how they handled their savings. Before hiring a professional, they had parked a significant amount of money in a high-yield savings account while debating whether to upgrade to a larger home.
Once they decided to stay put, they realized that cash could be working harder for them in an investment account.
Today, their portfolio is intentionally simple, consisting of three low-cost index funds: a total US stock market fund, a total international stock market fund, and a total bond market fund.
"We believe in an evidence-based investment strategy," Chang said, adding that they deliberately avoid more speculative investments, such as individual stock picking and cryptocurrency.
The third move ran counter to common financial advice. Conventional wisdom often suggests keeping a low-interest mortgage and investing the extra cash instead. When they bought their New York City apartment in 2018, they said they financed half the purchase. Their initial mortgage rate was 3.75%, and they later refinanced to around 3.1%.
"That seems to be the conventional wisdom, right? 'Oh, it's a low rate. Don't touch it,'" Nathanson said.
Still, they chose to eliminate their debt completely. Business Insider reviewed public records filed with the New York City Register that confirm the couple's mortgage was paid off in September 2024.
It was a "psychological weight" they lifted, Nathanson said, though the financial impact was significant as well. With their largest expense gone, his part-time salary now comfortably covers their costs, meaning they don't yet have to draw from their portfolio.
For Chang and Nathanson, the shift from autopilot to intention made all the difference.
"Don't make decisions just because that's what everyone around you is doing," Nathanson said.
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U.S. Treasury yields were relatively unchanged on Wednesday as investors weighed President Donald Trump's State of the Union address, which largely focused on the economy.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose just under 1 basis point to 4.037%. The 30-year Treasury bond yield was less than 1 basis point lower at 4.681%. The 2-year Treasury note yield also added less than 1 basis point to 3.465%.
One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Investors watched Trump's State of the Union on Tuesday, which had a major focus on the economy, and lasted nearly two hours, the longest on record.
During the speech, the president said that the economy is "roaring like never before" and said inflation was "plummeting." He called for the creation of a government-backed 401(k)- type pension plan for U.S. workers who don't have a retirement plan through their employers.
Trump also called on Congress to pass legislation that would prevent institutional investors from buying up single-family homes.
Investors will now shift their attention to economic data coming later in the week, including weekly initial jobless claims on Thursday and the January producer price index on Friday.
Geopolitical tensions are also in focus, with investors monitoring developments between the U.S. and Iran. Investors largely shrugged off Trump's latest tariff decision, with the new levy going into effect at a lower-than-expected 10% rate on Tuesday.
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If there are two things I love, it's processed meats and not-exactly-maliciously messing around with internet tools. So I was determined to beat the BBC's Thomas Germain at his own game of exploiting ChatGPT and Google Gemini results to be crowned tech journalism's No. 1 hot dog eater.
To my great embarrassment and the shame it brought upon the House of Business Insider, I failed.
Last week, Germain published a fun article for the BBC about how he created a page on his personal website claiming he was a hot dog-eating champion and had beaten several other tech journalists in a competition. He wrote:
His page was quickly ingested (no chewing required) by the bots that crawl the web for new information to feed LLMs, and treated as fact by ChatGPT and Google Gemini. It worked:
Of course, Germain's point wasn't merely to show that if you write information on a webpage, it will show up in AI. The broader issue here is that influencing AI results is becoming the new SEO — a tactic brands and companies use — oftentimes completely legitimately! — to boost their profiles within search results.
More and more people are turning to AI chatbots instead of Google to get product recommendations or search for information. This all isn't brand new; my colleague Alistair Barr wrote about how "AEO" is the new SEO last May. AEO is "answer-engine optimization" to SEO's "search-engine optimization."
Is it easier to persuade people that your product is the best using AI instead of traditional SEO? I suspect it probably is. People rarely click on the source links for information given in chatbots, and seeing a small link that goes to a random personal website might be less obviously untrustworthy in the context of an AI chatbot answer than when you're looking at a page of Google results. Basically, AI results look more convincing than search results, even if we all know in the back of our minds that AI chatbots aren't always right.
I was impressed and envious of the hot dog prank, so I wanted to see how I could try to add to it. I created a page on my own personal website that said I won the 2026 Paris Hot Dog Eating Contest for Tech Reporters, beating out reigning champ Thomas Germain. (I didn't publish this on BI because we wouldn't knowingly publish something that's false — even for a fun story.)
After two days, I queried Gemini and ChatGPT about who had won the Paris Hot Dog Eating Contest. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get either to say it was me. Because of the BBC article describing the prank, the AI chatbots now understood it to be a joke and any information about it to be satirical. Fooey.
However, that didn't stop Gemini from hallucinating some completely new information, adding in a bunch of stuff that appeared in neither my nor Germain's fake accounts. For example, Gemini said:
(This is completely made up. Not just because it didn't actually happen, but because this description also doesn't exist anywhere on the web — at least that I could find.)
When my editor asked Gemini about my eating feats, it told him that I'd won a grilled cheese-eating contest in 2012 by finishing three sandwiches. In reality, in 2012, I wrote an article about competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi eating 30 grilled cheese sandwiches.
So what have we learned here? It's not really huge news that "sometimes chatbots get facts wrong, especially when there's little information on a particular topic on the web." You (hopefully) knew that already.
And yes, I guess we learned it can be easy to manipulate your AI results — but more easily for the person who gets there first, a sort of AEO land rush, perhaps. And it's certainly a lot harder to manipulate after a large credible news site publishes an article saying it was all a joke.
I will have to figure out some other way to mess with AI, I suppose.
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OpenAI is peeling back the veil on how scammers are trying to use ChatGPT to do everything from modern twists on romance scams to smear the Prime Minister of Japan.
On Wednesday morning, OpenAI released the latest edition of its intelligence threat report.
Screenshots included in the report show a purported romance scam that OpenAI said likely originated in Cambodia. The report said users asked ChatGPT to create a logo for a fake high-end dating service, generate images of fake women, and provide tax advice. Incredibly, according to OpenAI, when asking for financial advice the user(s) stated their occupation as "scammer."
OpenAI estimated that the scam, which it said targeted Indonesian men interested in luxury lifestyle content, was "likely defrauding hundreds of victims a month."
The company said the operation worked by getting users to choose from a list of fictitious women and relationship types. After building trust, an AI chatbot posing a flirty receptionist directed the conversation over to Telegram. OpenAI said that on Telegram, a mixture of humans using ChatGPT and API, would use "romantic and sexually-explicit language" to direct users to fake dating services and eventually entice them to do a series of "tasks" or "missions" that "required increasingly large payments via bank transfers or digital payment wallets."
It isn't just faux romance that OpenAI said it thwarted. The AI company also said it banned "a cluster of ChatGPT" accounts that posed as law firms, individual attorneys, and US law enforcement.
OpenAI said the scammers asked ChatGPT to generate a fake New York State Bar Association membership card and create social media content to further the scam.
Of the operations OpenAI highlighted, the most brazen may be one attributed to an "individual associated with Chinese law enforcement." According to OpenAI, the individual tried to use ChatGPT to plan "a covert IO" or intelligence operation targeting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. The query came after Takaichi publicly criticized human rights issues in Mongolia.
OpenAI said it gained significant insight into similar "cyber special operations" that were used to "suppress dissent and silence critics both online and offline, at home and abroad," in part because the individual asked ChatGPT to "edit and polish periodic status reports."
"This effort appears to be large-scale, resource-intensive and sustained, counting at least hundreds of staff, thousands of fake accounts across scores of platforms, the use of locally deployed AI models, and a playbook of dozens of tactics," OpenAI wrote in its report. "These range from abusive reporting of dissidents' social media accounts, through mass online posting, to forging documents and impersonating US officials."
Representatives of the Chinese and Japanese embassies did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
ChatGPT refused to assist in the planning of the operation targeting Takaichi, OpenAI said. Seemingly undeterred, the user later asked ChatGPT "to polish a status report on what was clearly the same campaign," the implication being that the operation continued anyway.
OpenAI said the user's activity included the use of Chinese AI models, including DeepSeek and Qwen. Based on available data, OpenAI said it could also map the extent of the influence operations.
"This is what Chinese, modern trans-national repression looks like," Ben Nimmo, the principal investigator on OpenAI's intelligence and investigations team, told reporters ahead of the release. "It's not just digital. It's not just about trolling. It's industrialized. It's about trying to hit critics of the CCP with everything, everywhere, all at once."
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Gavin Newsom saw the first iPhone well before the rest of us did.
That's according to the California governor and potential 2028 presidential candidate's new book, "Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery," which was released on Tuesday.
Newsom wrote that when he was serving as mayor of San Francisco, he found himself in the penthouse suite of the Fairmont Hotel with several tech leaders, including Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, along with Steve Jobs, then the CEO of Apple.
"I was the only one in the room dressed in a suit and tie," Newsom wrote. "Sergey and Larry were wearing T-shirts. I want to say that Steve was dressed in his blue jeans and black mock turtleneck."
In Newsom's telling, Jobs beckoned him and the Google co-founders over, where he pulled out "a sleek device that none of us had ever seen before, a solid piece of glass with no keyboard that could be held in one hand."
"He swiped the screen and we said, 'Whoa,'" Newsom wrote. "He let each of us swipe it, and I repeated, 'Whoa.'"
Newsom went on:
The iPhone famously introduced the world to multitouch technology, which quickly became the norm in the smartphone industry.
The device is now Apple's biggest money-maker, accounting for more than $85.3 billion of its overall $143.8 billion in revenue last quarter.
Newsom recounted the episode as he discussed the rise of the tech scene in San Francisco, much of which coincided with his own political rise from local politician to mayor.
"We began our maturations at the same time and in the same place," Newsom wrote. "We began with the same mentality of nothing to lose."
He also wrote that he gained "more than a few lessons" from his friends in the tech world.
"To believe that the city of San Francisco could solve its problems by sticking to the same old vision would be to miss the magic that was tech," Newsom wrote.
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As street traffic returns in Beijing after a nine-day holiday, there's little time for businesses to breathe, ahead of a critical few weeks for U.S.-China relations.
First up is an annual meeting of China's parliament that kicks off next Thursday. That's when Chinese Premier Li Qiang will announce the year's growth targets and stimulus plans — against renewed tariff uncertainty.
All eyes, however, will be on U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The White House said the visit will happen from March 31 to April 2, although China has yet to confirm the dates.
Tariff cuts will be in focus. The two leaders could send a positive signal by publishing whitelists that support cross-border investment, said Hai Zhao, a director of international political studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-affiliated think tank.
Zhao also hopes the U.S. and China can agree on guidelines that can prevent the relationship from being rocked by short-term developments.
Time, however, is tight for both sides to refine negotiating points. China's parliamentary meeting is likely to end only in the second week of March, followed by a state-organized "China Development Forum" which typically draws executives from U.S. and other foreign companies.
If Trump's trip proceeds, it will be the first visit to China by a sitting U.S. president since 2017.
The U.S. tariff leverage calculus on Beijing has shifted in the years following that trip. The U.S. share of China's overall exports has fallen sharply from 18% at the end of 2017 to 9.6% at the end of last year.
After a weekend of back-and-forth from Washington on global tariff rates, China's Commerce Ministry broke its holiday silence with a statement Monday that urged the U.S. to cancel its tariffs.
"For companies, the [U.S. Supreme Court tariff] ruling renews trade uncertainty as the stop-and-go policy will prevail and complicate inventory management," Ludovic Subran, chief investment officer and chief economist at Allianz Research, said in a co-authored report Monday.
For now, "the Global South and China now emerge as the biggest winners," Allianz Research said.
China won't change its demand for lower U.S. tariffs and hopes for a more stable and predictable tariff regime, Zhao said. He added that China isn't seeking to maximize its trade surplus with the world and may need to adjust its relations with other countries to address the economic impact.
China's top diplomat Wang Yi typically fields questions during the roughly week-long parliamentary session and could shed light on Beijing's stance on global trade.
But the ultimate answer lies at home. What's the actual economic pressure that China's policymakers are up against?
The U.S. economy and China's exports remain closely linked, Macquarie's Chief China Economist Larry Hu noted.
That's because U.S. economic growth has been largely propelled by investment in artificial intelligence, while China's export strength has been supported by overseas sales of chips and power equipment, according to Hu's analysis.
"If an AI bust causes China's exports to plunge ... Beijing would need to step up domestic stimulus," Hu said. In that scenario, Beijing would likely step up support for the property sector, which would then revive a long-awaited recovery in consumption.
As investors brace for more AI-driven volatility, what's the takeaway? If AI-related spending and stocks plunge, the ultimate winners are companies exposed to consumer spending in China, according to Hu.
The market turbulence comes even as Beijing accelerates its AI push. In recent weeks, homegrown startups and established tech giants have rolled out a wave of new models, moving swiftly ahead of a widely anticipated update from domestic AI company DeepSeek.
As its parliamentary meeting kicks off next week, policymakers are expected to release more details on its five-year plan to boost domestic tech capabilities.
Deepseek, which became a talking point for policymakers at last year's meeting, signaled a renewed emphasis on tech.
The question hanging over next week's gathering is less about whether China will double down on tech than about how confident Beijing is in a fragile U.S. trade truce that keeps exports afloat.
Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at Capital Economics, said Chinese authorities are starting to realize that investments into infrastructure and real estate are no longer able to deliver long-term economic growth.
Latest data from the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach suggest China has yet to follow through on commitments to increase purchases of U.S. agricultural goods under a trade agreement between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump.
Max Kahn, president of Coresight Research, said the aspirational segment of the luxury market in China is improving as with consumer sentiment, and that there's still demand for Western goods.
Port controversy. China-linked CK Hutchinson has officially lost control over Panama Canal assets — which local authorities handed to Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk and Swiss-based Mediterranean Shipping Co.
'Remarkable.' That's how OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described Chinese tech companies' progress in a CNBC interview. It's not just AI. Their pace of development in "many fields" is "amazingly fast," he said.
Humanoids advance. From stumbles to kung fu flips, Chinese human-shaped robots have shown rapid improvement in just one year.
Chinese and Hong Kong stocks rose in afternoon trading Wednesday, after easing concerns around the impact of artificial intelligence on select industries led to a tech-driven rally on Wall Street
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index rose 0.39%, while mainland's CSI 300 added 0.49%. Year-to-date, the CSI 300 is up 2.26%, while the Hang Seng Index rose 4.12%.
China's benchmark 10-year government bond yield rose to 1.807%, while the offshore yuan was little changed at 6.9088 against the greenback.
— Lee Ying Shan
Feb. 25-26: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on state visit to China
Feb. 26: Baidu to release quarterly earnings after the Hong Kong market close
March 1: China to lower tariffs on Canadian canola seed and resume imports of Canadian beef
March 4: RatingDog China Services and Manufacturing PMI, Official NBS Manufacturing PMI
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Buying a first home is generally considered a young person's game. If your 20s are for stumbling through adulthood, then your 30s are for settling down with a family and a mortgage. Your 40s are for reaping the fruits of that labor: as you watch your home equity swell, maybe you think about splurging for more bedrooms and a bigger yard.
A report released last fall by the National Association of Realtors upended this basic assumption. For several decades, the typical age of first-time homebuyers bounced around the early 30s, never surpassing 33. Last year, though, the group's annual survey found the median age of first-timers had hit a record high of 40, capping off a four-year surge that began during the pandemic-era housing shuffle. The message was loud and clear: Picking up the keys to your first place is no longer an "early adult" thing. Now it's part of your midlife crisis.
Cue the hand-wringing. "First-home homebuyers are older than ever," declared headlines from The New York Times and Axios. "Many would-be buyers are frozen out of the housing market," warned another. For my own story, I dubbed this new era the "age of the geriatric homebuyer." I spoke with a woman who placed her first winning bid on a home at 42 and couldn't shake the feeling that she was behind. In light of the NAR's latest data dump, however, she appeared to be merely another example of the sea change in real estate.
The splashy number seemed to confirm our worst fears about the housing market: only old, rich people are having any luck, and younger generations are struggling to break in. The optimists' take was that elder millennials still had some breathing room. For those inclined to doomerism, though, it was more proof that a classic marker of adult success was drifting further out of reach.
"It is very consistent with this idea that housing affordability is very strained," says Chen Zhao, a senior economist at the brokerage firm Redfin, "and therefore you have to be older to afford a house right now."
There's just one problem: The death of the thirtysomething homebuyer may have been greatly exaggerated. A new analysis from Redfin, shared exclusively with Business Insider, found that the median age of the first-time buyer last year was 35 — a slight decrease from the year prior. It adds to the growing pile of evidence that the new median of 40 was a mirage. While millennials, now 29 to 45, generally lag behind boomers on the homeownership front, the purchasing milestone hasn't shifted nearly as much as the NAR report suggests.
If you want to understand the housing market's ebbs and flows over the past couple of decades, Redfin's analysis is a helpful starting point. Economists there found the median age of first-time buyers climbed slowly but steadily from 2008 to 2018, peaking at 38, before bouncing around the mid-30s in the following years. Zhao tells me the trend makes intuitive sense: banks tightened up lending standards after the housing bubble burst in 2008, making it tougher to get a mortgage and buy a house. Then mortgage rates began ticking downward before plummeting in 2020 and 2021, reaching a 50-year low as the Federal Reserve slashed borrowing costs to fight inflation. All those cheap home loans made it easier for younger people to break into the market, and the first-time homebuying age fell to 34 in 2021 and 2022. Then rates jumped, and the median age of first-timers followed suit, rising to 35 in 2023 and 36 the following year. Affordability improved slightly in 2025, thanks to slower home-price growth, rising wages, and marginally lower mortgage rates, which could explain last year's decrease in the median age.
While the NAR and Redfin analyses both point to first-time homebuyers generally getting older, the latter's numbers are way less dramatic. Redfin isn't the only one pushing back on the idea that the typical buying age skyrocketed over the past few years. A growing number of economists have chimed in to suggest the situation isn't nearly so dire. Studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the American Enterprise Institute found that the median age of first-timers was basically unchanged at 33 between 2019 and 2024, before rising slightly last year to 34. Researchers at the Mortgage Bankers Association similarly found a modest increase from 30 to 33 over the decade leading up to 2024, followed by a dip to 32 in 2025.
Connor O'Brien, a fellow at the DC-based think tank Institute for Progress, analyzed the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey and American Community Survey and found that the median age for all buyers had ticked up since 2000 but hovered around 42 in 2023, while NAR reported a median age for all buyers of 49 that year and a stunning increase to 59 just two years later. That Census data only runs until 2023, but O'Brien says he doesn't see any reason to believe that the typical buying ages would have undergone a seismic shift in two short years, given the housing market's stasis.
"It seemed totally implausible," O'Brien tells me.
So why the discrepancy? The rebuttals to NAR's data all draw upon national data sources that researchers say are far more robust than the Realtors' annual survey of recent homebuyers, which is conducted via mail and text message. In July of last year, the NAR sent the 120-question survey to a nationally representative sample of more than 173,000 recent homebuyers but received just 6,103 back, a response rate of 3.5% (the census' American Community Survey, by contrast, sees a response rate of more than 80%). The New York Fed and the Mortgage Bankers Association relied on the Consumer Credit Panel and the National Mortgage Database, which sample millions of underlying documents, like mortgages and credit reports, to take the temperature of the American homebuyer.
Redfin's analysis also uses Census data, specifically an annual supplement to its Current Population Survey, which asks households who moved in the past year why they did so. The survey doesn't separate first-time buyers from repeat buyers, so Redfin used a proxy: it counted respondents as "first-time buyers" if they said they moved because they wanted to own rather than rent, or to start their own household, implying they'd previously been living with roommates or parents.
Jessica Lautz, the NAR's deputy chief economist and vice president of research, says in an emailed statement that the organization stands by its methodology. Lautz describes the NAR's survey as "the only national survey that asks primary residence buyers if they are a first-time buyer or repeat buyer," and points out that analyses of mortgage and census data must rely on varying degrees of assumptions in order to parse first-timers from the rest of the pack — mortgage data, for example, doesn't include all-cash buyers. Some of those assumptions, she says, no longer match the reality of the new housing market.
"Marriage and divorce do happen, inheritances are gifted, all-cash buyers happen, and sometimes a household may have to rent temporarily before owning again," Lautz says in the statement. "Homeownership has become out of reach for the typical young adult in America."
Redfin's methodology isn't perfect — taken on its own, I'm not sure it would unseat the NAR's estimates. It's important to pay attention, however, because it adds to the mountain of evidence that first-time buyers aren't suddenly getting way older.
"Because no data source is perfect, what you really want to do is say, What is the bulk of the evidence showing me?" Zhao tells me. "When we compare our results to analyses that other people have done looking at credit bureau data or mortgage data, it seems to support the idea that the age of the first-time buyer has not increased all that much."
This might sound like a bunch of bickering and hair-splitting, a squabble among housing nerds. But the conclusion — that people are still buying homes at roughly the same age they were a couple of decades ago — has far-reaching implications.
"People are potentially going to make policy based on their view of how the economy and housing market are developing," O'Brien tells me. "If their views are fundamentally incorrect, that could be a big problem."
The takeaway shouldn't be that things are fine and dandy for millennial homebuyers, though.
A recent analysis of census data by Ben Glasner, a senior economist at the Economic Innovation Group, found that while millennials and boomers were about as likely to own homes at 44, the ownership rate among 32-year-old millennials (41.3%) was well below the 54.7% for boomers at that age. And while Redfin and NAR pulled vastly different homebuying ages from their data, both groups advocate for more housing construction. Glasner draws a similar conclusion.
"We don't have enough housing where people want to live, and where people find the job markets that they want to participate in," he tells me.
The "40-year-old" finding had all the proper ingredients for virality: a nice, big number that confirmed what everyone already felt to be true about the dismal state of the world. Things are rough out there for millennial homebuyers, no doubt. But the goalposts haven't moved as much as we thought — at least, not yet.
"I think a lot of times people feel like, Well, if I can't achieve the homeownership step, it's kind of like I can't move forward with my life," Zhao tells me. "And I think that's why people are very hung up on this number."
James Rodriguez is a correspondent on Business Insider's Discourse team.
Business Insider's Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day's most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.
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BEIJING — U.S. President Donald Trump avoided directly naming China in his State of the Union address Tuesday, just weeks before his scheduled trip to Beijing.
In what was the longest State of the Union (SOTU) speech by any U.S. president, Trump covered a range of topics from inflation and tariffs to stock market records.
But notably, he did not directly mention China, other than a reference to "Russian and Chinese military technology" that guarded Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during the operation that led to the capture of the foreign leader.
During Trump's first term from 2017 to 2021, he made direct references to the Chinese nation in all three of his State of the Union addresses. The remarks had largely highlighted the threat from Beijing to the U.S.
"Trump doesn't want to pick a fight with China in an election year," said Gabriel Wildau, managing director, Teneo, referring to the coming U.S. midterm elections in November.
"Stability in U.S.-China relations is a priority for the president at least this year and potentially for the rest of his term," Wildau said.
In order to maintain that relationship, Trump plans to visit Beijing from March 31 to April 2, the first trip by a U.S. president since 2017.
But China's foreign ministry has yet to confirm exact dates for the visit, pointed out George Chen, partner at The Asia Group. "That makes Trump look more desperate to visit China more than how much [Chinese president Xi Jinping] wants to host him."
"The lack of mentions about China in Trump's speech is another example to show how Trump stays cautious now about U.S.-China relations," Chen said.
China and the U.S. ratcheted up tariffs on each others' goods last spring to well over 100%, before reaching a trade truce in October to bring tariffs below 50% for the next year. Beijing also tightened its restrictions on rare earths exports worldwide. The Asian country dominates the global supply chain for rare earths, critical minerals used in a swath of technologies.
"The state of the union showed Trump thinks glorifying U.S. military triumphs over weak states like Venezuela makes better election year politics than fighting with China over rare earths," Wildau said.
Uncertainty around tariffs picked up over the weekend after the U.S. Supreme Court last week struck down tariffs that Trump had imposed on a swath of countries last year. Trump then quickly pointed to an alternative basis for raising the global tariff rate.
In social media posts on Weibo, two Chinese state media outlets highlighted opposition within Congress to Trump's speech. Local attention in China to Trump's address was otherwise muted.
Trump's limited mention of China also reflects how unpredictable his policy on Beijing can be, said Yue Su, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
"By contrast, [Democrat U.S. President Joe] Biden consistently referred to China in his speeches, which underscored a degree of continuity and predictability in his China policy," she said, referring to Trump's predecessor.
The Democratic Party's rebuttal to Trump's State of the Union Tuesday focused directly on Beijing.
"But as the president spoke of his perceived successes tonight, he continues to cede economic power and technological strength to Russia, bow down to China, bow down to a Russian dictator and make plans for war with Iran," said Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who gave the rebuttal.
For a U.S. president who has called out Xi by name in public speeches, the absence of mentioning the world's second-largest economy in the SOTU speech marks a strategic move.
If Trump seals a deal during his Beijing trip, "he could easily frame it as a major achievement for his base," said EIU's Su. "And if negotiations do not go well, a retaliatory or hardline approach could be presented in a similarly positive light domestically."
Steven Okun, founder and CEO of Singapore-based APAC Advisors, said that this year, the speech was understandably more focused on topics that impact the midterm elections, which don't include China.
But he pointed out that if Trump really wanted to address U.S. consumer affordability, lowering tariffs on China would "show up much quicker in people's pocketbooks."
"So, we may see a deal on tariffs with China end of March or early April," Okun said Wednesday on CNBC's "Access Middle East."
Many U.S. company executives are expected to accompany Trump on his trip to China in a few weeks. Meetings with Chinese counterparts can be an opportunity to support deals, including Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products.
When asked about Trump's limited discussion of China, Marko Papic, a chief strategist at global investment research firm BCA Research, simply said: "A big deal is coming!"
—CNBC's Sydney Goh contributed to this report.
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In this article
Chile is the latest Latin American country to have become embroiled in a U.S.-China power struggle.
The country, which counts Washington as its top foreign investor and Beijing as its largest trading partner, is facing pressure from the White House over a subsea cable project with links to China.
In a surprise move, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said late last week that the Trump administration would impose visa restrictions on three Chilean officials tied to a digital cable project proposed by Chinese firms, alleging a security threat.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric, who will leave office on March 11, condemned the visa sanctions and rejected the notion that the country "promotes any action that threatens our security or that of the region."
Chile's outgoing left-wing government later said one of the sanctioned officials was the country's Minister of Transport and Telecommunications Juan Carlos Muñoz, without commenting on the identities of the other two.
The U.S. ambassador to Chile, Brandon Judd, defended the visa restrictions on Monday, telling reporters that it is Washington's "sovereign right to take actions when we feel that the region's security is being threatened," according to The Associated Press.
The spat comes just days before a Latin American leader's summit in Miami, Florida — and two weeks before Chile's incoming right-wing government takes over in Santiago.
It also represents a major test for José Antonio Kast's administration, following the right-wing candidate's election victory late last year.
Analysts say U.S. President Donald Trump, who is seeking to counter China's strategic influence in the region, is sending an unequivocal message to Latin American countries.
The U.S.-Chile tensions were, above all, "a calibrated warning" to the Kast administration that strategic infrastructure decisions will be treated as geopolitical alignment choices — rather than neutral tenders, according to Mariano Machado, Americas principal analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.
To be sure, digital undersea cables are the backbone of the world's internet and telecommunications infrastructure, enabling everything from international phone calls to financial transactions. By some estimates, as much as 95% of international traffic passes through these largely unseen data super-highways.
"The near-term external consequence is that Kast's upcoming Washington engagements – chief among them, in the Shield of the Americas summit – will become early tests of how Chile balances partners under pressure," Machado said.
"As US-China competition intensifies in the region, Chile's 'digital hub' ambition becomes investable only if geopolitical concerns are addressed upfront, not retrofitted after a crisis," he continued. "Winning deals will be those that lock in clear governance and credible security assurances early enough to preserve bankability."
China's embassy in Chile has reportedly accused Washington of "obvious contempt for the sovereignty, dignity, and national interests of Chile" following the Trump administration's visa restrictions against Chilean officials.
China's strategic and economic influence in Latin America is well established, although it is thought to be the target of Trump's so-called "Donroe Doctrine" — a portmanteau of Donald Trump and the Monroe Doctrine, which refers to a 19th century foreign policy position that asserted Washington's influence over the Western Hemisphere.
In just the last few weeks, for example, Panama's top court ruled against Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison, saying a concession held by a subsidiary of the firm to operate ports at either end of the Panama Canal was unconstitutional. The outcome was widely seen as a victory for Trump's regional security ambitions.
The U.S. has also ratcheted up pressure on Cuba's communist-run government, threatening to impose tariffs on any country that provides oil to Havana, and recently conducted an extraordinary military operation to depose Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
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It ended up being the longest State of the Union speech in American history.
I was one of over 100 reporters seated in the House chamber during President Donald Trump's address on Tuesday night, when the president shattered the record for the longest speech at just over 107 minutes.
That's just past the 99 minutes he spoke for last year, when he previously set the record for the longest speech to a joint session of Congress.
Over the course of the lengthy speech, the mood gradually devolved, eventually leading to outright bickering. In fact, there was only one strong bipartisan moment — and it happened to involve athletes walking into the press gallery.
The speech hit many of the president's usual talking points, sprinkled in a few policy proposals, and emphasized the theatrics.
Just like in years past, the speech had its share of drama, with lawmakers heckling the president and one even being escorted out.
Here's what it was like, and what I saw during the speech.
If you're watching the State of the Union from home, you might be wondering where the reporters covering the speech in person are sitting.
The answer: Behind the president, in a gallery above the floor of the House chamber. It's the same floor where the dignitaries' guests sit.
In normal times, reporters can come and go freely from the gallery. Due to the high demand to watch this major speech, I had to get a press pass, which gave me access to an assigned seat.
Roughly 140 reporters and photographers were up in the gallery with me — about 90 of them in seats, and another 50 standing.
Reporters are also strictly forbidden from taking photos in the House chamber, so I'm not able to share any firsthand look at the gallery.
Last year, Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas was thrown out of the House chamber for loudly protesting during Trump's speech.
This year, he was thrown out again.
At the beginning of the speech, Green quietly unfurled a sign declaring that "Black People Aren't Apes," an apparent reference to a video that was briefly posted on Trump's Truth Social account earlier this month that depicted President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
Republican lawmakers were incensed, with Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma at one point trying to tear the sign out of Green's hand.
Ultimately, a staffer led Green out of the chamber.
About 20 minutes into Trump's speech, we were met with a surprise — members of the US Men's Hockey team streamed into the press gallery, bringing the room's attention toward an area where all the reporters were sitting.
Lawmakers broke into cheers and applause. It was one of the few bipartisan moments of applause of the whole night.
In the House, the chamber is evenly divided between the Republican side and the Democratic side. But you wouldn't know it from Tuesday night's speech.
There were noticeably fewer Democrats on hand, with several seats appearing to be empty on their side of the aisle. Several Republicans, apparently taking advantage of the open space, even sat on the Democratic side.
Many of the Democratic women who did attend could be seen wearing white, a color associated with the suffragette movement.
Ahead of the speech, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries encouraged Democrats to either boycott the speech or sit in silent protest, an apparent effort to avoid the disruptions that marked last year's speech.
Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont was among dozens of Democrats who opted to attend the "People's State of the Union" — a rally sponsored by the liberal groups MeidasTouch and MoveOn that was held on the National Mall — instead of the speech.
"I want to be surrounded by positive people who are really thinking about how to bring this country together," Balint told me. "I cannot normalize this anymore. I just can't."
One Democrat who chose to attend, Rep. Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, told me before the speech that he believes it's "important for me to be there to see what the president has to say."
"People can choose to do what they want, but I feel like it's part of my job to show up," Vasquez said.
After the Supreme Court voted to strike down many of Trump's tariffs on Friday, many wondered if there would be fireworkers at Tuesday night's speech.
After all, Supreme Court justices are seated directly in front of the president.
Ultimately, the confrontation never came, but it was a little awkward.
Just four of the nine justices showed up for Trump's speech: John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Elena Kagan. All of those justices except Kavanaugh voted to strike down the tariffs.
Trump shook each of the justices' hands before taking the podium, and the justices sat stone-faced when Trump mentioned the court's "very unfortunate" ruling.
As Trump spoke about the tariffs, scattered laughter could be heard throughout the chamber.
"They're right in front of you!" someone from the Democratic side could be heard yelling at one point, referring to the justices.
With the exception of Al Green, the first hour of Trump's speech was relatively free of major disruptions.
That began to change.
A major turning point was when Trump discussed funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota began loudly heckling Trump over the killing of two American citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis. Trump at one point fired back, saying the lawmakers should be "ashamed" of themselves.
The heckling continued as Trump moved on to election security and transgender issues.
"These people are crazy," Trump remarked at one point.
The president, along with every member of the House and Senate, is entitled to bring a guest to the speech. Generally, they sit in the gallery, which sits one floor above the chamber.
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida brought "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary. Several Democrats brought Epstein survivors. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina invited David Ellison, Paramount's CEO.
Trump brought Erika Kirk, who succeeded her late husband Charlie Kirk as the head of Turning Point USA, after he was killed in September.
One person who attended last year, but wasn't there this year: Elon Musk.
After the speech, many lawmakers and Cabinet secretaries head to Statuary Hall, where journalists and TV cameras await them.
It's not unlike the "spin room" at a presidential debate, where each side gives its take on what happened that night.
Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee snagged an aisle seat and got to shake Trump's hand, though he wouldn't tell me what the two talked about.
"It was about our cat, and our barn that we named after him," Burchett joked.
Burchett said Trump's speech was so long because he "had a lot of successes that he needed to talk about."
Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, on the other hand, told reporters that Trump's speech was full of lies while defending the reaction of lawmakers like Tlaib and Omar.
"This administration has literally killed American citizens under the guise of addressing immigration," McBride said.
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Some US presidents have more of the gift of the gab than others.
The American Presidency Project has tracked the length of every president's State of the Union address since 1964, with the timer beginning when the president opens with "Mr. Speaker" or "Madam Speaker."
In the State of the Union, which is mandated by the Constitution, presidents typically highlight their administration's accomplishments and lay out their legislative agenda in a speech before a joint session of Congress.
Presidents usually also introduce their legislative priorities in a joint address during their first year in office, a tradition started by President Ronald Reagan. Though this speech doesn't technically qualify as a State of the Union, it is widely regarded as such and is included in the American Presidency Project's dataset.
On average, State of the Union speeches from 1964 to 2025 have lasted 56 minutes and 24 seconds, according to the American Presidency Project. President Richard Nixon gave the shortest-ever State of the Union speech in 1972 at 28 minutes and 55 seconds.
President Donald Trump and President Bill Clinton have given nine of the top 10 longest State of the Union speeches in history. In 2026, Trump broke his own record when his joint address to Congress clocked in at 1 hour and 47 minutes.
Here's how the top 10 longest State of the Union addresses stack up.
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President Donald Trump called the Supreme Court's decision that overturned his signature tariffs "unfortunate" during his State of the Union address.
Trump addressed the nation several days after the Supreme Court ruled against most of his 2025 tariffs that were enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Despite this setback to his economic agenda, which he touted on Tuesday, Trump said he wouldn't need to make new trade deals, even though he used the now-struck-down tariffs as his primary negotiating tool, because other countries were happy with the deals made so far.
Immediately after the SCOTUS ruling, Trump signed an executive order to impose a 10% "global tariff" under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Unlike the IEEPA tariffs, any duties under Section 122 last 150 days before requiring congressional approval.
"They're a little more complex, but they're actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary," said Trump of his new 10% "global tariffs" at the State of the Union.
"It's already time-tested and approved, and as time goes by, I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love," Trump added.
According to the Customs and Border Protection, the US has collected around $129 billion in revenue under the IEEPA tariffs. Companies large and small have now begun the messy process of litigating for tariff refunds, and some, like FedEx, have filed lawsuits at the Court of International Trade.
Recent studies found that it was companies and consumers who pay for the majority of tariffs, including a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that said, "90% of the tariffs' economic burden fell on US firms and consumers."
The landmark SCOTUS ruling was made at a time when concerns about affordability and economic health were widespread. Recent data shows that while the US economy grew 2.2% in 2025, job creation stalled. Economists previously told Business Insider that this pattern is widening the gap between the wealthy and everyone else.
According to a February poll jointly conducted by ABC News, The Washington Post, and Ipsos, a majority of Americans disapprove of how the president is handling inflation, tariffs, relations with other countries, immigration, and the economy.
According to the University of Michigan's monthly consumer sentiment survey, consumer confidence in February is more than 12% lower than in the same month in 2025.
Dana M Peterson, Chief Economist at The Conference Board, commented in its February economic sentiment research that though consumers' pessimistic expectations for the future "eased somewhat," confidence remains "well below" the four-year peak achieved in November 2024.
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Wayve is revving up its global robotaxi ambitions with fresh funding as it prepares to take on Waymo in London.
The UK-based autonomous vehicle software startup announced early Tuesday in the UK that it had raised $1.5 billion from a host of Big Tech giants and major automakers.
The funding round, which values the startup at $8.6 billion, includes $1.2 billion from investors including Microsoft, Nvidia, and Uber, as well as Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis.
It also includes additional capital from Uber, which is tied to deployments of Wayve-powered robotaxis across the globe. The two companies have a deal to launch self-driving vehicles on Uber's app in over 10 markets worldwide, starting with London this year.
"We've been learning to drive on British roads for the last eight years, and so this is our home turf," Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve, told Business Insider in an interview.
The CEO said the latest funding round is key to pursuing the company's ambition to license its software to major automakers and robotaxi fleet platforms like Uber.
Unlike Tesla or Waymo, Wayve is solely focused on developing software for other companies looking to deploy self-driving cars. It is not building its own fleet of robotaxis.
Kendall said owning a fleet is expensive, and Tesla's approach to building its own car can be a constraint since it limits the company to one vehicle platform.
"Everyone wants autonomy, but not everyone wants to buy a Tesla," he said.
Kendall added that Wayve's AI driver is designed to be generalizable — the same way a human can quickly learn to drive different cars and in new cities.
That allows Wayve's technology to quickly adapt to new driving environments and learn new road rules, from switching to the opposite side of the road to right turns at a red light, without relying on high-definition mapping and sensors, the approach taken by rivals like Waymo. It also allows the AI driver to be adapted by different automakers, which may have different sensor configurations on their cars, such as lidar or cameras.
"Because that's what we've built, it enables us to take this business model that enables high-margin software revenues," Kendall said.
Wayve says that over the past year, its fleet of Ford Mach-Es outfitted with its AI driver has driven in more than 500 cities across Europe, North America, and Japan without being trained on city-specific data.
The company is also planning to license its technology to carmakers as an advanced driver-assistance system like Tesla's Full Self-Driving, which handles most driving tasks with human supervision. Wayve has a deal with Nissan that will see its AI tech power the Japanese carmaker's ProPilot driver assistance system from 2027.
The UK-based startup has been testing its tech in London since 2017, and its public debut comes as the city's robotaxi scene gets increasingly crowded.
Waymo is aiming to begin operating its autonomous vehicles in London, its first international location, this year, while Wayve vehicles will be joined on the Uber app by robotaxis from Chinese tech giant Baidu, which is also partnering with Lyft.
Jump to
25 February 2026
A conversation with UK Information Commissioner John Edwards
Edwards talks data reform, ‘deliberate,' ‘approachable' ICO
UK announces independent adequacy decisions; Edwards named ICO top candidate
ICO launches investigation into how social platforms use children's personal data
Saudi Arabia's data protection authority steps up enforcement
Jedidiah Bracy
IAPP staff
5 Minute Read
Nearly four years after giving his first public speech as the U.K. Information Commissioner, John Edwards took the keynote stage at the IAPP U.K. Intensive 2026 to reflect on his term, underscore the agency's achievements in recent years and look ahead for what's to come.
"Change has been the only constant during my tenure at the ICO," he said. "To adapt a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who famously said: 'No man ever steps in the same river twice.'"
Since 2022, Edwards said the ICO adapted to "a near constant process of law reform, culminating in the Data (Use and Access) Act," which, ultimately, restructures the agency. Plus, externally, "there's been a continuous flow of innovation, countless areas where the ICO has needed to step up, move quickly and provide certainty," he said.
When Edwards first took the reins in 2022, for example, ChatGPT had not yet taken the world by storm, and earlier this year, the ICO pivoted in early February so it could investigate the Grok AI system "and its potential to produce harmful sexualized content using personal data."
Drawing a parallel with the challenge many practitioners now face, Edwards said the ICO has had to make choices and prioritize its efforts in this dynamic time. "I know you can relate to that challenge," he told attendees. "DPOs are in the same boat. You are expected to do more with less, to adapt and change, upskill and stay informed, often within a fixed or shrinking budget."
The ICO's priorities under Edwards have focused on areas "where we believe we could make the most meaningful difference" — that being in AI and biometrics, children's privacy, cookies and online tracking.
Following upon the work of former Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, whose tenure included the launch of the ICO's Children's Code, Edwards said the agency has "now improved online privacy for up to 11 million children, translating the code from policy into real meaningful change for the public."
It took action against TikTok in 2023, fining it more that 12 million GBP for misusing children's personal data. "That work fed directly into our recommender systems investigations, which echo timely concerns we're now seeing in research and litigation in California about social media addiction," Edwards said.
Just this week, the ICO fined Reddit more than 14 million GBP after its investigation found the company "failed to apply any robust age assurance mechanism" and "failed to carry out a data protection impact assessment to assess and mitigate risks to children before January 2025." The Reddit action came just weeks after another undertaking was announced against Imgur's parent company over children's privacy violations.
With biometrics, the first enforcement action under Edwards was against Clearview AI, which has been in litigation since. "Now we're waiting on a Court of Appeal hearing," Edwards said on the status of the Clearview action, "and frankly, there is little chance that it will be resolved before my time here concludes."
Litigation aside, he said this was "an important case for us to pursue" because of the "impact on people's rights and the wider implications for issues of jurisdiction over foreign companies processing UK citizens' data."
The protracted litigation, however, is "resource-intensive and slow," said Edwards. "It often doesn't give industry, or the public, the answers they need, when they need them."
When Edwards first took office, he announced a listening tour right as the U.K. was considering reform of its data protection law, which has since been updated under the DUAA. Legal certainty was top of mind at the time, and, for Edwards, continues today.
He described some of the directions in which the ICO is regularly pulled, from a rise in public data protection complaints — which has risen from more than 40,000 in 2024-25 to 66,000 in 2025-26 — to demands for investigating every data breach report and "pursue every organisation with the full suite of enforcement tools at our disposal."
The ICO has also faced calls to provide more guidance to undergird legal certainty for business, while others, in "a recent Select Committee hearing" have suggested that "we should be auditing all government use of third-party IT applications, and all cloud storage contracts."
Though Edwards provided assurance to attendees that these multi-directional calls are valid, the agency has had to allocate resources and prioritize its efforts to make the most effective impact across the board. "This means using all the regulatory tools available to us to drive change — producing guidance and advice, engaging upstream with companies and leading criminal prosecutions."
Edwards suggested that, regardless of the industry, an organization's "focus should be on the things that align with your purpose and matter the most to the people you serve, not what is shouting the loudest."
He offered that companies should think about what would make the largest difference to customers and stakeholders if things go to plan, and what would be the "greatest harm if left unaddressed."
The ICO has asked itself similar questions, he said, and that guides its priorities.
"Just like at that first IAPP London in 2022," he said, "I want to leave you with a message of reassurance and certainty. As the regulator, we're here to help you navigate change. That's why we've worked hard to get the most important DUAA guidance out as quickly as possible. And we're expanding our Data Essentials training to help small and medium businesses feel more confident using people's data responsibly in an evolving world."
Jedidiah Bracy is the editorial director for the IAPP.
This content is eligible for Continuing Professional Education credits. Please self-submit according to CPE policy guidelines.
The IAPP is a policy neutral, not-for-profit association founded in 2000 with a mission to define, promote and improve the professions of privacy, AI governance and digital responsibility globally.
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Traders betting against the prices of major cryptocurrencies are feeling the pain Wednesday as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other top assets are well in the green, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of short position liquidations.
Bitcoin (BTC) has rebounded to nearly $69,000 for the first time in more than a week, recently trading for $69,869 after falling below the $63,000 mark on Tuesday. While up more than 7% on the day, the price of the leading cryptocurrency remains down more than 21% over the last 30 days.
Altcoins Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) are the biggest gainers among the top 10 coins by market cap, with Ethereum rising 12% on the day to a recent price of $2,075 while Solana has jumped almost 14% to just shy of $89. Both coins had shown substantial losses in recent weeks, but are swinging back the other direction on Wednesday.
Overall, the crypto market has climbed by about 6.6% over the last 24 hours, per data from CoinGecko. Other major gainers with double-digit rises during that span include Polkadot (DOT), Filecoin (FIL), Uniswap (UNI), Aptos (APT), Avalanche (AVAX), and Chainlink (LINK).
More than $400 million worth of short positions have been liquidated in the last 24 hours, per data from CoinGlass, making up the vast majority of the $463 million worth of total liquidations during that span.
Bitcoin currently leads the list with about $200 million worth of liquidations, with Ethereum next up with $153 million worth and Solana well behind in third with about $22 million.
Prominent crypto stocks are skyrocketing Wednesday as the risk-on appetite grows in equities, with USDC stablecoin issuer Circle showing a 29% spike to $79 per share after reporting earnings, while blockchain lender Figure is up 15% to $34 per share and Ethereum treasury leader BitMine Immersion Technologies has swung up almost 14% to $22.
Polkadot, Solana Lead Altcoin Surge Ahead of Nvidia Earnings Call
Other notable crypto stock gainers today include Coinbase with a 13% swing to $183, Bitcoin treasury giant Strategy rising nearly 9% to above $135 per share, and Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings with a 7% rise to $8.66.
While still bearish overall, users on Myriad—a prediction markets platform operated by Decrypt's parent company, Dastan—are gaining more confidence that Bitcoin will continue rising. They currently pencil in a 43% chance that Bitcoin will next rise to $84,000 rather than fall to $55,000, with odds rising about 14% in the last day.
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Big money is betting against crypto equities like Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy (MSTR) and American crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN), new data compiled by Goldman Sachs Research shows.
The firms find themselves ranked first and fourth in short interest as a percentage of market cap at 14% and 10%, respectively, among companies valued at $25 billion or greater.
“Crypto is like cilantro: Some people love it and some people hate it,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan told Decrypt. “It's not surprising to see it at the top of the short interest list,” he said of MSTR and COIN's ranking.
While the data, gathered from reported hedge fund holdings at the end of 2025, shows no notable change in hedge fund ownership for the two firms from Q3 to Q4, the pair have been some of the weakest performers among top shorted stocks.
While up about 9% on Wednesday to a recent price of $135, shares of MSTR have plunged around 60% in the last six months as Bitcoin has fallen precipitously from its October all-time high of $126,080. The top crypto asset, and the bedrock of Strategy's business, is now changing hands at $68,614—over 45% below that all-time high mark.
That extended decline has led to mounting losses for Michael Saylor's firm, formerly known as MicroStrategy, which now finds itself facing unrealized or paper losses of around $5.3 billion.
Skeptics have previously noted that if MSTR shares fall far enough, it could force the firm to sell some of its Bitcoin holdings to repay debts, creating a cascading event within the market as its biggest player liquidates its BTC. The company established a cash reserve in December to cover stockholder dividends, but didn't rule out potential Bitcoin sales in the future.
Strategy Will Buy Bitcoin 'Forever', Says Michael Saylor—Even With $5 Billion Paper Loss
Users on Myriad, a prediction market platform operated by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, currently pencil in a less than 15% chance that Strategy sells Bitcoin by the end of 2026. That mark has fallen from a peak above 35% earlier this month.
“Shorting MSTR has been a popular trade for the past couple of years,” said Hougan, noting that some have been running arbitrage trades like “long Bitcoin and then shorting MSTR,” or “long the convertible bonds and short the stock.”
While those trades are “reasonable” in Hougan's eyes, he said some traders shorting the firm are misinterpreting its business model.
“Some people don't understand MSTR's balance sheet, and think the company is at some kind of threat of going bankrupt if the value of Bitcoin falls below their purchase price,” he added.
Strategy's 100th Bitcoin Purchase Ever Is Its Smallest Yet in 2026
“This is, of course, wrong, and anyone shorting for this reason will learn they are wrong the hard way."
Saylor recently defended the firm amid similar concerns, noting that Strategy would be fine even if Bitcoin dropped all the way down to $8,000.
Despite its business not being centered on only Bitcoin, shares in Coinbase too have taken a dive amid falling crypto prices over the last six months, dropping around 40% during that time. The firm recently missed expectations for its fourth quarter earnings, but with shares trading around $167 at the time, analysts from Bernstein indicated the stock was "too ‘cheap' to sell.”
COIN shares are trading higher today, above $184 amid a 14% boost on Wednesday, but sit well off its 52-week high of $444.
Other firms with crypto ties on the most shorted list include CoreWeave (CRWV), Robinhood (HOOD), and PayPal (PYPL).
New York, NY, Feb. 25, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mint a .molt domain. Get an AI agent, an immutable wallet, persistent storage, and on-chain identity , all for 0.4 SOL. No servers. No DevOps. No monthly bills.
Molt.id the first AI agent domain name system built natively on Solana, today announced the upcoming launch of its native token $MOLTID on February 25 at 6PM UTC via Meteora. The launch marks a pivotal moment for the project as it expands from a fully operational mainnet protocol into a token-powered ecosystem designed to sustain, reward, and scale the autonomous agent economy.
Molt.id has already been live on Solana mainnet, enabling users to mint .molt domains , Metaplex Core NFTs that come bundled with a personal AI agent, an immutable domain wallet with no private keys, persistent cloud storage, and verifiable on-chain identity. The protocol eliminates the technical barriers that have historically prevented everyday users from deploying and operating autonomous AI agents.
The Problem: AI Agents Are Too Hard to Run
Despite the explosive growth of AI and autonomous agents in Web3, deploying one remains a significant technical challenge. Users typically need a VPS or dedicated machine (often $600+), Docker and DevOps knowledge, ongoing server maintenance, private key management with constant exposure risk, and recurring monthly hosting bills that add up quickly.
For most people creators, traders, community managers, small projects, and DAOs , this is simply out of reach. The result is that the AI agent economy remains gated behind technical and financial barriers, accessible only to developers and well-funded teams.
The Solution: Mint and Go
Molt.id collapses the entire stack into a single action: mint a .molt domain for 0.4 SOL.
That one NFT mint gives the holder:
- A personal OpenClaw AI agent instance — powered by Cloudflare, running on-demand with zero idle costs. No VPS, no Docker, no MacBook required. Accessible from any device.
- An immutable domain wallet — a permanent Asset Signer PDA derived from the NFT itself. No private keys exist. No seed phrases to lose. The owner co-signs every transaction, maintaining full custody at all times.
- Persistent agent storage — all agent data including personality (soul.md), skills, memory, and conversation history stored on Cloudflare R2, tied directly to the NFT.
- On-chain identity — all public agent data anchored on Solana via Metaplex Core. Verifiable. Portable. Composable with the broader Solana ecosystem.
- Channel integrations — connect the agent to Telegram, Discord, or Slack directly from the UI, enabling the agent to live where its community already communicates.
"We built Molt.id because we believe AI agents should be as easy to deploy as registering a domain name," said the Molt.id team. "No one should need to be a DevOps engineer to have an autonomous agent working for them on-chain. One mint. Everything included. That's it."
The Molt Wallet: No Private Keys. Ever.
At the core of Molt.id's security architecture is the immutable domain wallet , an Asset Signer PDA derived deterministically from the NFT using the seeds.
This wallet has no private keys and no seed phrases. The agent can propose transactions, but every operation requires the domain owner's co-signature. This eliminates the single largest attack vector in the AI agent space: private key exposure.
Agent Capabilities: More Than Identity
Each .molt agent is designed to be a fully autonomous participant in the on-chain economy. Current and upcoming capabilities include:
- Token trading — buy and sell directly from the agent wallet
- Token launching — deploy tokens with creator fees tied to the domain wallet via Genesis Protocol
- x402 payments — pay for services and get paid, autonomously
- x402 service hosting — generate revenue by offering agent capabilities to other agents and users
- Agent-to-agent interactions — discover, verify, and transact with other .molt agents on-chain
- Train and sell — train an agent for specific tasks and list it for sale on secondary marketplaces like Tensor Trade
These capabilities are being rolled out progressively as the protocol matures, with documentation updated in real-time at docs.molt.id.
About Molt.id
Molt.id is the first AI agent domain name system on Solana. By minting a .molt domain — a Metaplex Core NFT — users receive a personal AI agent, an immutable domain wallet with no private keys, persistent cloud storage, and verifiable on-chain identity. The protocol eliminates the infrastructure, cost, and complexity barriers to deploying autonomous AI agents, making the agent economy accessible to everyone.
Website: https://www.molt.id
dApp: https://app.molt.id
Documentation: https://docs.molt.id
X (Twitter): https://x.com/moltdotid
Disclaimer: The information provided in this press release is not a solicitation for investment, nor is it intended as investment advice, financial advice, or trading advice. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of capital. It is strongly recommended you practice due diligence, including consultation with a professional financial advisor, before investing in or trading cryptocurrency and securities. Neither the media platform nor the publisher shall be held responsible for any fraudulent activities, misrepresentations, or financial losses arising from the content of this press release.
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Central Bank Digital Currency: The Centre will launch a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)-based food subsidy distribution pilot project under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) in the Union Territory of Puducherry on Thursday in a major step towards strengthening India's digital public infrastructure and enhancing transparency in subsidy delivery, according to an official statement.
The digital rupee or e-rupee is a tokenised digital version of the Indian rupee, issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
The introduction of the digital rupee offers an opportunity to enhance the direct benefit transfer (DBT) ecosystem by providing a secure, instant, traceable, and programmable digital cash mechanism for PMGKAY beneficiaries, thereby enabling smoother fund flow and reducing friction in availing entitlements.Also Read
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The pilot project will be inaugurated by Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Pralhad Joshi, in the presence of Puducherry Lt Governor, K. Kailashnathan and Chief Minister, N. Rangasamy.
The initiative marks a significant reform in the delivery of food subsidy through the Public Distribution System (PDS) by integrating the digital rupee issued by the RBI into the direct benefit transfer framework. Under the pilot project, the food subsidy will be credited to identified beneficiaries in the form of programmable Central Bank Digital Currency tokens directly into their CBDC wallets.
The tokens will be redeemable exclusively for the purchase of entitled foodgrains at authorised merchants and fair price shops, thereby ensuring purpose-bound usage of subsidy and enhanced transparency.
Following the implementation in Puducherry, the CBDC-based pilot will be expanded in a phased manner to cover additional beneficiaries and other Union Territories, the statement said. The pilot is being implemented in coordination with the Puducherry government, the Reserve Bank of India, the Public Financial Management System (PFMS), and the designated banking partner, Canara Bank.
The CBDC-based digital food currency initiative represents the next stage of digital transformation in India's food security ecosystem. It seeks to enhance transparency, efficiency, accountability, and beneficiary empowerment in subsidy delivery.
For breaking news and live news updates, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Read more on Latest India News on India.com.
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Last week, artificial intelligence was blamed for writing buggy crypto software. This week, it was credited with finding a bug before it could be exploited.
Octane Security, a self-described “AI-native security firm,” said on Wednesday its AI tool found a high-severity bug in Nethermind, software that runs the Ethereum blockchain.
Nethermind fixed the bug before it could be exploited, Octane said. Nearly 40% of Ethereum validators use Nethermind, and an exploit could have caused them to miss blocks, affecting Ethereum's liveness and availability.
“This is one of the highest-stakes demonstrations yet of AI-led vulnerability research,” Giovanni Vignone, founder and CEO of Octane Security, said in a statement.
“AI has dramatically accelerated vulnerability research. Bug hypotheses, exploit verification, and production-grade reports can now happen 10× faster, which rewrites the threat model for every organisation putting code onchain.”
Octane's announcement comes just five days after AI firm Anthropic rattled cybersecurity stocks with a new security tool that “scans codebases for security vulnerabilities and suggests targeted software patches for human review.”
AI has taken the tech world by storm, enabling experienced software engineers to write code faster than ever before. In crypto, it has fuelled the idea of agentic AI where programmes conduct trades independent of human beings.
But it has also fanned concerns.
This week, a report from Citrini Research rattled Wall Street by envisioning a future where AI has replaced human workers and nuked the world economy. The S&P dropped more than 1% on Monday as a result.
Even AI developers are worried about the potential military applications of their creations, as Anthropic's clash with the White House shows.
And AI has triggered fears that the technology can be used to break cybersecurity.
Some have worried it could empower hackers. Others are concerned engineers could become over-reliant on AI-written code and release buggy software.
That concern came to life earlier this month, when a bug in AI-generated code cost users of crypto protocol Moonwell nearly $2.7 million in crypto. One Moonwell software engineer said the code in question had passed an audit from crypto security firm Halborn.
“AI coding will become more and more prevalent, and the increasing adoption of vibe coding remains one reason why more investment in design, threat modelling, formal methods, fuzzing, and 24/7 monitoring are critical steps for every web3 team to take,” Seth Hallem, CEO at crypto security firm Certora, told DL News after the Moonwell incident.
Octane's experience suggests that investment might increasingly flow toward AI.
In the run-up to the launch of Ethereum upgrade Fusaka last year, Octane joined an audit contest sponsored by Gnosis and Lido. The contest rewarded security researchers for finding bugs in Nethermind and the other so-called clients that run Ethereum.
Octane partnered with pseudonymous security researcher Guhu, who reviewed potential bugs flagged by the company's AI.
Octane and Guhu submitted 17 issues, 16 of which were fixed by client teams. Nine were considered severe, and, of those, “six are believed to be unique,” the company said. They ultimately placed fourth in the contest, earning $70,633 in rewards.
They also submitted the Nethermind bug to a bug bounty program run by the Ethereum Foundation.
According to Octane, a hacker could sabotage validators running Nethermind by submitting a “malformed transaction.”
“This could have caused sustained missed slots across all Nethermind-based proposers for as long as the malformed transaction remained in the pool,” the company said.
“Exploitation would have removed that capacity from the network, causing affected validators to miss block rewards, incur inactivity leak penalties, and degrade overall network liveness and availability.”
The bug was never exploited and was promptly patched. The Ethereum Foundation awarded Octane a $50,000 bug bounty, the company said.
“If you are not using AI to find and fix flaws continuously, you are competing against the blackhats who are,” Vignone said.
Aleks Gilbert is DL News' New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.
Bitcoin BTC$65,121.75 bounced back above $68,500 during Wednesday's U.S. session, gaining more than 6% over the past 24 hours as deeply bearish positioning across the crypto market began to unwind.
The move sparked a broader relief rally across altcoins. Ethereum's ether (ETH) surged 10%, reclaiming the $2,000 level for the first time in a week. Solana (SOL), DOGE$0.09290, ADA$0.2663 and Chainlink LINK$8.4681 each advanced more than 10%, outperforming bitcoin and the broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index's gains.
With Wednesday's bounce, BTC now has erased the early-week selloff that saw prices plunging below $63,000. The move follows a period of extremely negative sentiment across the market. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, a popular sentiment gauge, has been hovering in Extreme Fear levels for most of February.
Perpetual futures funding rates — the periodic payments between long and short traders — had also turned negative multiple times over the past weeks. This means short sellers have been paying longs to maintain positions, a sign that bearish bets had become crowded. Such setups often leave markets vulnerable to sharp squeezes higher when prices begin to rise.
The rebound has liquidated nearly $400 million in leveraged bearish bets across crypto derivatives over the past 24 hours, CoinGlass data shows. Notably, bitcoin perpetual funding rates remain below neutral even amid the rally, suggesting the move isn't being driven by aggressive leveraged speculation.
Crypto-related equities also joined the advance. Stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) surged 29% following an earnings beat, while Coinbase (COIN) gained 13%. Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy (MSTR) and digital asset investment firm Galaxy (GLXY) advanced 7%-8%. Bitcoin miners — increasingly tied to AI infrastructure themes — were lagging, with Bitfarms (BITF) and MARA Holdings (MARA) standing out with 6%-7% gains.
Many crypto-linked stocks had built up sizable short interest from hedge funds, 10x Research's Markus Thielen noted, leaving them primed for a sharp reversal.
Improving risk appetite across traditional markets has given a favorable backdrop for the crypto bounce. The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were 0.7% and 1.2% higher, respectively, in the first half of the trading. The software sector, embattled by AI fears, extended its gains, with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) up by another 2% during the session.
For the first time in over 40 days, the Coinbase Premium Index has turned positive again. This index tracks the price difference between bitcoin on Coinbase, a major U.S. exchange, and the broader global market average. It is widely viewed as a gauge of U.S. capital flows, institutional participation, and overall market sentiment.
While the MSTR to IBIT ratio is up 12% year to date, indicating that Strategy has outperformed BlackRock's ETF. This relative strength points to continued risk-on appetite, even as bitcoin has fallen 25% this year.
In addition, the U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $257.7 million in inflows on Tuesday, the largest daily total since Feb. 6.
UPDATE (Feb. 25, 17:36 UTC): Updates prices throughout the story.
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XRP jumps 6% as exchange data points to institutional accumulation
Break above $1.37 draws strong spot demand, with ETF inflows and retail buying suggesting positioning shift.
What to know:
Disclosure & Polices: CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk has adopted a set of principles aimed at ensuring the integrity, editorial independence and freedom from bias of its publications. CoinDesk is part of Bullish (NYSE:BLSH), an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services. Bullish owns and invests in digital asset businesses and digital assets and CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive Bullish equity-based compensation.
Bitcoin BTC$65,121.75 bounced back above $68,500 during Wednesday's U.S. session, gaining more than 6% over the past 24 hours as deeply bearish positioning across the crypto market began to unwind.
The move sparked a broader relief rally across altcoins. Ethereum's ether (ETH) surged 10%, reclaiming the $2,000 level for the first time in a week. Solana (SOL), DOGE$0.09290, ADA$0.2663 and Chainlink LINK$8.4681 each advanced more than 10%, outperforming bitcoin and the broad-market benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index's gains.
With Wednesday's bounce, BTC now has erased the early-week selloff that saw prices plunging below $63,000. The move follows a period of extremely negative sentiment across the market. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, a popular sentiment gauge, has been hovering in Extreme Fear levels for most of February.
Perpetual futures funding rates — the periodic payments between long and short traders — had also turned negative multiple times over the past weeks. This means short sellers have been paying longs to maintain positions, a sign that bearish bets had become crowded. Such setups often leave markets vulnerable to sharp squeezes higher when prices begin to rise.
The rebound has liquidated nearly $400 million in leveraged bearish bets across crypto derivatives over the past 24 hours, CoinGlass data shows. Notably, bitcoin perpetual funding rates remain below neutral even amid the rally, suggesting the move isn't being driven by aggressive leveraged speculation.
Crypto-related equities also joined the advance. Stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) surged 29% following an earnings beat, while Coinbase (COIN) gained 13%. Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy (MSTR) and digital asset investment firm Galaxy (GLXY) advanced 7%-8%. Bitcoin miners — increasingly tied to AI infrastructure themes — were lagging, with Bitfarms (BITF) and MARA Holdings (MARA) standing out with 6%-7% gains.
Many crypto-linked stocks had built up sizable short interest from hedge funds, 10x Research's Markus Thielen noted, leaving them primed for a sharp reversal.
Improving risk appetite across traditional markets has given a favorable backdrop for the crypto bounce. The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were 0.7% and 1.2% higher, respectively, in the first half of the trading. The software sector, embattled by AI fears, extended its gains, with the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) up by another 2% during the session.
For the first time in over 40 days, the Coinbase Premium Index has turned positive again. This index tracks the price difference between bitcoin on Coinbase, a major U.S. exchange, and the broader global market average. It is widely viewed as a gauge of U.S. capital flows, institutional participation, and overall market sentiment.
While the MSTR to IBIT ratio is up 12% year to date, indicating that Strategy has outperformed BlackRock's ETF. This relative strength points to continued risk-on appetite, even as bitcoin has fallen 25% this year.
In addition, the U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $257.7 million in inflows on Tuesday, the largest daily total since Feb. 6.
UPDATE (Feb. 25, 17:36 UTC): Updates prices throughout the story.
More For You
XRP jumps 6% as exchange data points to institutional accumulation
Break above $1.37 draws strong spot demand, with ETF inflows and retail buying suggesting positioning shift.
What to know:
Disclosure & Polices: CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk has adopted a set of principles aimed at ensuring the integrity, editorial independence and freedom from bias of its publications. CoinDesk is part of Bullish (NYSE:BLSH), an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services. Bullish owns and invests in digital asset businesses and digital assets and CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive Bullish equity-based compensation.
GD Culture Group (GDC) has received board approval to sell part of its 7,500 bitcoin reserve to help fund a previously announced stock repurchase program, the company said.
The board authorization allows management to decide when and how to carry out the bitcoin sales. GD Culture emphasized it's not obligated to sell any set amount and can alter or halt the plan at any time.
Facing a sharp decline in the stock price as the price of bitcoin has tumbled in recent months, the board approved a $100 million repurchase program earlier this month.
The company's bitcoin holdings are currently worth about $497 million, according to data from CoinGecko. That value has dropped over time, with GD Culture carrying an unrealized loss of $344 million, down nearly 41% from its total acquisition cost of $841.5 million.
The company got its large bitcoin stash through the acquisition of Pallas Capital Holding. The move was, at the time, financed through the issuance of 39.18 million shares.
Other companies have also started divesting their bitcoin holdings. Earlier this week, Bitdeer sold all of its BTC to fund a move into AI data centers, while Riot Platforms reduced its BTC balance late last year.
GDC shares are higher by 7% on Wednesday alongside a modest bounce in the price of bitcoin to above $67,000. They remain down by nearly 70% from their September 2025 peak.
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Blockfills co-founder and CEO Nicholas Hammer has stepped down
The crypto lender suspended client deposits and withdrawals earlier this month due to recent market and financial conditions.
What to know:
Disclosure & Polices: CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk has adopted a set of principles aimed at ensuring the integrity, editorial independence and freedom from bias of its publications. CoinDesk is part of Bullish (NYSE:BLSH), an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services. Bullish owns and invests in digital asset businesses and digital assets and CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive Bullish equity-based compensation.
XRP rallied 6% as bitcoin neared the $67,000 mark in U.S. morning hours Wednesday, with data from one exchange showing spot buyers outpaced sellers by more than 200%.
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Bitcoin climbs above $68,500, Circle leads crypto stocks higher, as bounce strengthens
Ether, solana and dogecoin are among the altcoins posting 10% or more advances.
What to know:
Disclosure & Polices: CoinDesk is an award-winning media outlet that covers the cryptocurrency industry. Its journalists abide by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk has adopted a set of principles aimed at ensuring the integrity, editorial independence and freedom from bias of its publications. CoinDesk is part of Bullish (NYSE:BLSH), an institutionally focused global digital asset platform that provides market infrastructure and information services. Bullish owns and invests in digital asset businesses and digital assets and CoinDesk employees, including journalists, may receive Bullish equity-based compensation.
Bitcoin has lost nearly 30% of its value since January. Yet Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is making the case that it remains one of the most powerful tools ordinary people have to fight rising prices. That gap between the pitch and the reality is hard to ignore.
Armstrong laid out his argument in a post on X, and later repeated it at the World Liberty Forum, an event hosted by the family of US President Donald Trump.
The logic is straightforward: inflation quietly destroys the purchasing power of cash. Wealthier people protect themselves by moving money into stocks, real estate, and Bitcoin. People without access to those same options get hit hardest and have no way out.
Inflation is a regressive tax on the poorest people in society, since they only hold cash.
Once people have wealth, they can afford and get access to inflation-resistant asset classes (stocks, bitcoin, real estate, etc).
Expanding financial access and opportunities globally to…
A Fair Point, Pushed Too Far?
It is a legitimate observation. Economists have made similar arguments for years — that inflation acts like a hidden tax on those with the least. Armstrong is not wrong about the problem. The prescription, though, is harder to defend.
Bitcoin does not move like a slow, grinding inflation rate. It can drop 20% in a single week. For someone with no financial cushion, that is not protection. That is exposure to a different kind of loss — one that can happen far faster than any inflation rate ever could. The volatility is not a minor detail. It is the central flaw in the argument.
The Law That Could Shift Things
The more grounded part of Armstrong's message involves legislation. The CLARITY Act, currently being debated in Congress, aims to define how digital assets are regulated in the US — which agencies hold authority and under what conditions. US Senator Bernie Moreno said lawmakers are pushing to pass the bill by April.
Armstrong, speaking at the forum, called a balanced version of the bill a potential win for crypto firms, banks, and consumers alike. Talks have focused on stablecoins and whether they can offer competitive yields without running into existing banking rules.Keeping Pace With China
Armstrong also raised the stakes internationally. China is advancing a government-backed digital currency that pays interest. His message to US regulators was direct: fall behind on stablecoin policy, and America loses ground in a competition it should be leading.
It is a real concern — even if his inflation argument leaves something to be desired.
Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView
Select market data provided by ICE Data Services. Select reference data provided by FactSet. Copyright © 2026 FactSet Research Systems Inc.Copyright © 2026, American Bankers Association. CUSIP Database provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. All rights reserved. SEC fillings and other documents provided by Quartr.© 2026 TradingView, Inc.
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Strategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) bought 592 Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) for $39.8 million marking its 100th purchase announcement since August 2020, despite sitting on a $7 billion unrealized loss.
Strategy sold 297,940 shares of common stock between February 17-22, generating $39.7 million in net proceeds.
The company used the entire amount to buy 592 BTC at an average price of $67,286 per coin.
Total holdings now stand at 717,722 BTC acquired for $54.56 billion at an average price of $76,020 per coin.
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With Bitcoin trading just above $66,000, Strategy sits on an unrealized loss of roughly $10,000 per coin—approximately $7 billion total.
Executive Chairman Michael Saylor posted a cheeky announcement on X, celebrating the 100th Bitcoin purchase disclosure since the company began accumulating in August 2020.
The milestone underscores Saylor's unwavering commitment to the strategy despite mounting paper losses.
Strategy retains significant capital-raising capacity with $7.84 billion available under its common stock ATM facility and billions more across multiple perpetual preferred stock series.
This suggests the buying will continue regardless of Bitcoin's price trajectory.
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MSTR is down 3%, trading 47% below the 200 EMA at $240.97—an extraordinary gap illustrating the collapse's severity.
All EMAs stack far overhead: 20 EMA at $136.24, 50 EMA at $157.59, 100 EMA at $197.26, and 200 EMA at $240.97.
The Supertrend at $150.09 remains firmly bearish.
A descending trendline from the $473 peak defines the downtrend, with MSTR accelerating below even this bearish channel in recent capitulation.
See Also: 1.5 Million Users Are Already Working Inside This AI Platform — Investors Can Still Get In
Critical support at $155-$165 was annihilated after holding multiple times in December-January.
That former support now acts as formidable resistance. The only remaining technical floor sits at $105-$110, shown in green at the bottom. MSTR briefly touched this level during capitulation before bouncing to current levels.
Current price sits only 20% above $105-$110 support. Today's 3% decline shows selling pressure hasn't relented.
The stock is stuck in a death zone between $120-$140, unable to generate meaningful bounces but holding above ultimate support.
Breaking below $120 on a daily close will likely accelerate toward retesting $105-$110. If that critical support fails, the stock enters true price discovery with next support potentially at $90, then $75, or lower.
Image: Shutterstock
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Building a resilient portfolio means thinking beyond a single asset or market trend. Economic cycles shift, sectors rise and fall, and no one investment performs well in every environment. That's why many investors look to diversify with platforms that provide access to real estate, fixed-income opportunities, professional financial guidance, precious metals, and even self-directed retirement accounts. By spreading exposure across multiple asset classes, it becomes easier to manage risk, capture steady returns, and create long-term wealth that isn't tied to the fortunes of just one company or industry.
Rad AI's award-winning artificial intelligence technology helps transform data chaos into actionable insights, enabling the creation of high-performing content with measurable ROI. Their Regulation A+ offering allows investors to participate at $0.85 per share with a minimum investment of $1,000, providing an opportunity to diversify portfolios into early-stage AI innovation. For investors seeking exposure to the rapidly growing AI and tech sector, Rad AI offers a chance to get in on the ground floor of a data-driven growth story.
Paladin Power is addressing the growing demand for energy independence with a fire-safe energy storage system that doesn't rely on lithium-ion batteries. Instead, its ESS uses non-lithium, solid-state graphene battery technology designed for durability, safety, and long service life—positioning it as an alternative to fire-prone storage solutions that dominate today's market. Since launching in 2023, Paladin has generated $185 million in contracted revenue, achieved strong year-over-year growth, and secured a manufacturing agreement with NYSE-listed Jabil. With systems already deployed across residential and commercial properties and a $500B global electrification market opportunity ahead, Paladin offers investors exposure to decentralized energy infrastructure backed by real contracts, U.S.-based manufacturing, and scalable next-generation technology.
Elf Labs is an IP-focused entertainment company built on a strategy that has powered giants like Disney and Marvel: ownership of globally recognized character IP. After more than a decade of rights acquisition, the company controls 500+ protected trademarks and copyrights tied to iconic characters including Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan. This foundation has generated over $15 million in royalties, expanded licensing into 30+ countries, and supported development of 100+ product lines. With its Nasdaq ticker ($ELFS) reserved and valuation growth exceeding 1,600% in under two years, Elf Labs is now scaling distribution through patented production systems, global licensing, and streaming and mobile initiatives—offering investors exposure to a private entertainment company with a clear public-market trajectory.
Valley Center Wellness is setting a new benchmark in luxury behavioral health with its flagship facility in Corona, California. Designed as a private, resort-style wellness retreat on a 4.2-acre estate, the center combines discretion, comfort, and comprehensive care, offering patients private chefs, daily massages, acupuncturist sessions, and access to a pool, spa, gym, and basketball court. Focused on high-profile and affluent clients, Valley Wellness provides fully customized treatment plans outside the constraints of insurance, emphasizing long-term recovery, holistic wellness, and life-after-addiction strategies. Through its three-stage care model—including residential, outpatient, and transitional housing—patients experience continuity of care that supports lasting change. For investors, Valley Wellness has launched an equity crowdfunding opportunity, offering a way to participate in a fast-growing $42 billion behavioral health sector while gaining exposure to both high-end real estate and a premium healthcare business.
Immersed is a private, pre-IPO technology company operating at the intersection of AI, spatial computing, and remote work. Best known for building the most widely used productivity app on the Meta Quest platform, Immersed enables professionals and teams to work full-time in shared virtual environments across macOS, Windows, and Linux. The company is expanding beyond software with its own productivity-focused XR headset and AI tools, supported by partnerships with major technology firms including Meta, Samsung, and Qualcomm. Immersed is currently allowing retail investors to participate in its pre-IPO round, subject to eligibility and offering terms.
Backed by Jeff Bezos, Arrived Homes makes real estate investing accessible with a low barrier to entry. Investors can buy fractional shares of single-family rentals and vacation homes starting with as little as $100. This allows everyday investors to diversify into real estate, collect rental income, and build long-term wealth without needing to manage properties directly.
Lightstone DIRECT gives accredited investors direct access to institutional-grade real estate, going beyond typical crowdfunding platforms. By cutting out middlemen, it aligns investor and manager interests while providing exposure to a $12B+ portfolio spanning multifamily, industrial, hospitality, retail, office, and life science properties. This approach allows investors to diversify their portfolios across multiple property types and markets, gaining professional-grade real estate exposure without the fees or misalignment common on other platforms.
Masterworks enables investors to diversify into blue-chip art, an alternative asset class with historically low correlation to stocks and bonds. Through fractional ownership of museum-quality works by artists like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso, investors gain access without the high costs or complexities of owning art outright. With hundreds of offerings and strong historical exits on select works, Masterworks adds a scarce, globally traded asset to portfolios seeking long-term diversification.
BAM Capital offers accredited investors a way to diversify beyond public markets through institutional-grade multifamily real estate. With over $1.85 billion in completed transactions and guidance from Senior Economic Advisor Tony Landa, the firm targets income and long-term growth as supply tightens and renter demand remains strong—especially in Midwest markets. Its income-focused and growth-oriented funds provide exposure to real assets designed to be less tied to stock market volatility.
As digital assets become a larger part of diversified portfolios, traders increasingly look for platforms that offer transparency, efficiency, and control. Kraken Pro is an advanced trading interface from Kraken, one of the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, designed for users who want more sophisticated tools without added complexity. With low, volume-based fees, a streamlined interface for managing spot, margin, and futures trading, and a strong focus on security and regulatory compliance, Kraken Pro provides a way to gain diversified crypto exposure through a clear, professional-grade trading experience.
REX Shares designs specialized ETFs for investors who want more precision than traditional broad-market funds can offer. Its lineup spans options-based income strategies, leveraged and inverse exposures, spot-linked crypto ETFs, and thematic funds tied to structural trends. By targeting specific income objectives, volatility profiles, or market themes, these ETFs can be used alongside core holdings to introduce differentiated return drivers and reduce reliance on a single market outcome, while maintaining the liquidity and transparency of the ETF structure.
Motley Fool Asset Management brings its long-standing "Foolish" investing philosophy into a lineup of passive ETFs designed around clear, rules-based investment styles. Built using decades of proprietary research from The Motley Fool, LLC, these factor-based ETFs focus on growth, value, and momentum strategies, selecting U.S. companies based on quality, risk, and long-term potential. For investors who want professionally vetted stock exposure without the demands of active trading, Motley Fool Asset Management offers a straightforward way to access expert-driven strategies through the simplicity and liquidity of an ETF.
Finance Advisors helps Americans approach retirement with greater clarity by connecting them to vetted, fiduciary financial advisors who specialize in tax-aware retirement planning. Rather than focusing on products or investment performance alone, the platform emphasizes strategies that account for after-tax income, withdrawal sequencing, and long-term tax efficiency—factors that can materially impact retirement outcomes. Free to use, Finance Advisors gives individuals with meaningful savings access to a level of planning sophistication historically reserved for high-net-worth households, helping reduce hidden tax risk and improve long-term financial confidence.
Public is a multi-asset investing platform built for long-term investors who want more control, transparency, and innovation in how they grow wealth. Founded in 2019 as the first broker-dealer to offer commission-free, real-time fractional investing, Public now lets users invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, and more—all in one place. Its latest feature, Generated Assets, uses AI to turn a single idea into a fully customized, investable index that can be explained and backtested before committing capital. Combined with AI-powered research tools, clear explanations of market moves, and an uncapped 1% match for transferring an existing portfolio, Public positions itself as a modern platform designed to help serious investors make more informed decisions with context.
Money Pickle helps people connect with vetted fiduciary financial advisors—professionals who are legally obligated to act in their clients' best interests. Through a quick online quiz, users are matched with a fiduciary for a complimentary, no-obligation one-on-one strategy session tailored to goals like retirement planning, investing, tax strategy, or getting financially organized. With no upfront costs and no sales pressure, Money Pickle removes the friction and uncertainty from finding trustworthy advice, making personalized financial guidance accessible whether you're building wealth, preserving it, or planning for the future.
This article Michael Saylor Hits 100 Bitcoin Buys—And He's Not Stopping Despite A $7 Billion Loss originally appeared on Benzinga.com
© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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In the world of digital creativity, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have opened up new ways for artists, creators, and developers to showcase and sell their work. But for someone completely new to the space, the process of creating and selling an NFT can feel confusing and overwhelming. This guide breaks down that journey into simple, human-friendly steps—starting from your idea to finally listing it on a marketplace.
Before diving into the creation process, it's important to understand what you're actually building. An NFT is a digital asset that represents ownership or proof of authenticity of something unique. This could be digital art, music, writing, virtual real estate, or even a video clip. What makes NFTs special is that they are recorded on a blockchain—an open, digital ledger—where no two NFTs are the same.
Unlike other files that can be replicated ad infinitum, NFTs are created to be unique or limited editions. When someone purchases your NFT, they're not merely buying the file—They're buying a verifiable piece of digital ownership.
All creativity starts as a concept. Consider what you wish your NFT to mean. This is your artistic vision—it might be a work of digital art, a brief animation, a poem, or even a digital good. What it needs to be is meaningful to you and something you're happy to put your name to. Your concept does not have to be complicated or revolutionary, but it must be authentic and unique.
Once you have your concept, determine the shape it will take: Will it be visual? Will it be audio? Will it be interactive? Your format will dictate the technical equipment you'll require for the next steps.
It might be a tablet drawing, a recording made with simple recording software, or a short video edited on your lap top.
When your work is complete, ensure that the file is in a format that NFT platforms will accept. Standard formats are JPG, PNG, GIF for images, MP4 for films, and MP3 for sound. Ensure the file is not too large, as most platforms have size restrictions.
Your NFT home is the blockchain you decide to use. The most popular for NFTs is Ethereum, but it isn't the only option. Others are Solana, Polygon, and Tezos. Each blockchain has their own characteristics, fees, and eco-footprint. As a new user, it's worth reading a bit about all of them and selecting one that suits you and your budget.
Having selected a blockchain, you now require a marketplace. This is where your NFT will be posted for sale on the internet. Marketplaces are either open access or invite only/applications required. Each platform also has different support, fees, and exhibition to the community.
In order to access the blockchain, you will need a digital wallet. This is your bank account of the crypto world. It holds your cryptocurrency and enables you to sign and authorize actions such as minting an NFT or getting paid.
Creating the wallet is generally free, and initializing it means saving a recovery phrase that will grant you complete control of your wallet. Be sure to hold this phrase close and confidentially. When your wallet is established, connect it with the NFT marketplace you prefer.
"Minting" refers to the process of converting your digital file into an NFT on the blockchain. All platforms provide a simple-to-use process that allows you to upload your file, place a name and description on it, and choose how you want to sell it. You can sell your NFT at a set price, auction it off, or even produce a limited edition.
Before you finalize, double-check all your information. Some blockchains charge a tiny minting fee, but others have free options (usually referred to as "lazy minting").
Once you've minted, your NFT is now live on the marketplace. It can be found by buyers, collectors, and other creators. You will also get a link that you can share on the internet to market your creation—though this tutorial will resist diving into marketing strategies.
When you sell your NFT to someone, you'll be paid in cryptocurrency into your wallet. Your NFT will be moved into the buyer's wallet, and they now have the digital ownership proof. Some platforms even allow you to get a small fee each time your NFT is resold in the future—a 'royalty'.
After your initial sale, don't get discouraged if it takes a while for momentum to pick up. It can take weeks or months for many creators to sell their first piece. Take the experience as a learning opportunity, learn from it, and experiment with various types of content and presentation.
It may feel new to create and sell your first NFT, but it does not have to be made complex. As with any creative endeavor, it's a matter of discovering new instruments, learning along the way, and sharing your work with the world. As the crypto landscape changes, one thing remains the same: the importance of being authentic, patient, and open to learning. If you begin with a vision in mind and proceed with caution through the steps, your NFT adventure can be a fulfilling mixture of innovation and discovery.
Let it be a start—not only of a digital token—but of a new digital way of creating, connecting, and building.
Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency investments are risky and highly volatile. This is not financial advice; always do your research. Our editors are not involved, and we do not take responsibility for any losses.
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The crypto market recovered strongly today, with total market value rising 3.5% to around $2.26 trillion. Major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana are now trading in green, showing gains between 3% and 8%.
This recovery comes at a critical time as Bitcoin dominance has broken below an important support level, raising early signs that altcoins could rally soon.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana Lead Market Recovery
Bitcoin is now trading near $65,600 after recovering from recent lows near $62,000. The recovery shows that buyers are stepping in and preventing deeper losses.
Similarly, Ethereum has also jumped over 5.8%, while XRP has gained nearly 4%. Solana is among the top performers, rising more than 8.5% today.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI), a key indicator, has moved out of oversold levels. This means the heavy selling phase has ended, and the market is now stabilizing.
Experts say if Bitcoin stays above $64,000, it could try to move higher again and create a strong setup for altcoins to rise.
Bitcoin Dominance Shows Early Signs of Weakness
Bitcoin dominance is currently hovering around 58.42%, and the chart shows a clear break below a long-term rising support line. This trendline had been holding dominance up since 2024.
Now that dominance has broken below this key level, it signals that investors are starting to move capital into altcoins.
Once the breakdown happens, dominance will quickly move toward the 54% zone, confirming weakness. This is one of the strongest early signals of a potential altcoin season.
Altcoins Start To Outperform Bitcoin
Altcoins are now rising faster than Bitcoin. Coins like Cardano, LINK, AVAX, and LTC are up around 5 to 9%. Smaller coins such as VIRTUAL, MORPHO, and ETHFI have jumped more than 10%.
The Altcoin Season Index has climbed to 45, its highest level since January. This shows that altcoins are slowly gaining strength, but the market is still in the early stage of a bigger move.
If Bitcoin dominance keeps falling, altcoins could see even stronger rallies ahead.
Therefore, the next few weeks will be important to confirm whether the market is entering a full altcoin rally phase.
FAQs
The crypto market is up 3.5% as buyers returned after oversold conditions. Bitcoin holding above $64K improved sentiment and triggered gains across major altcoins.
It's early but promising. The Altcoin Season Index at 45 shows improving momentum, yet confirmation requires sustained Bitcoin stability and continued dominance decline.
Bitcoin holding above $64,000 is key. Staying above this level strengthens bullish momentum and increases the chances of further upside for the broader market.
Select market data provided by ICE Data Services. Select reference data provided by FactSet. Copyright © 2026 FactSet Research Systems Inc.Copyright © 2026, American Bankers Association. CUSIP Database provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. All rights reserved. SEC fillings and other documents provided by Quartr.© 2026 TradingView, Inc.
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Cryptocurrencies including Polkadot, Solana, Bittensor, and Uniswap led a broad altcoin rally Wednesday ahead of Nvidia's highly anticipated earnings report, with the tech-focused bounce extending across major tokens.
Among the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap, Polkadot led with gains of 11.5% in the past 24 hours, while Solana jumped 8.1%, "AI-proxy" token Bittensor rose 6.8% and high-beta major coin Uniswap gained 7.7%, per CoinGecko data.
The move was mirrored across the "big-cap" landscape, with leading altcoins such as Avalanche and World Liberty Financial posting gains of over 6%, pushing the total crypto market cap up 3.7% to $2.34 trillion.
The surge liquidated over $325 million in positions across the market, according to CoinGlass data.
While the timing aligns with a broader relief in equities, Andri Fauzan Adziima, Research Lead at Bitrue, told Decrypt the move is a cocktail of "institutional dip-buying, short liquidations, and easing tariff fears," rather than a direct bet on Nvidia's specific balance sheet.
The rally comes as traders position for Nvidia's fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings, due after Wednesday's close. The chipmaker has become a bellwether for AI-driven tech sentiment, with implications that increasingly spill into crypto markets.
The earnings release lands one day after the State of the Union address, around the same time as Bitcoin surged over $2,000, Decrypt previously reported.
Bitcoin Ticks Higher as Markets Weigh Trump Address, Broader Risk Sentiment
"This is the single most important catalyst in the window," Derek Lim, head of research at Caladan, told Decrypt. "The entire equity market, and crypto by extension, was positioning around this event."
He expects Nvidia to report revenue of approximately $65.7 billion, a 67% increase year-over-year.
"So when the most consequential earnings print of the quarter lands the day after a speech, tbh the speech should be viewed as the secondary event," he said, adding that, "Equity flows, options positioning, and risk sentiment in the 48 hours around the SOTU were oriented toward Nvidia, NOT toward policy rhetoric."
Lim added that Bitcoin's price action during the speech window was "likely more Nvidia-driven than speech-driven."
Despite the immediate rally, broader market conditions remain precarious, according to Augustine Fan, Partner and Head of Insights at SignalPlus.
"We remain mired in a structural bear market and are in desperate need for a new narrative to rescue us from this downtrend, but that seems to be a tall ask at the moment," Fan told Decrypt. "Support comes in at the mid-$55,000 area, while we would need a short squeeze to take us back above $74k before technicals start to improve. Path of resistance remains for lower prices in the meantime."
Fan added that the current rebound followed a period of oversold conditions across both crypto and equities.
"The trend continued into today on the back of a further short squeeze, in addition to anticipation of Nvidia earnings as well as some month-end buying against the lowered equity prices." He noted that upcoming Federal Reserve speakers are "expected to be supportive of markets, with rates traders already pricing in rate cuts well into 2027."
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Home | Updates | Reddit hit with a major ICO penalty over children's privacy failures
The ICO found Reddit processed children's data without a lawful basis, exposing young users to inappropriate content and breaching core requirements of the Children's code.
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office has fined Reddit £14.47 million after finding that the platform unlawfully used children's personal information and failed to put in place adequate age checks.
The regulator concluded that Reddit allowed children under 13 to access the platform without robust age-verification measures, leaving them exposed to content they were not able to understand or control.
Although Reddit updated its processes in July 2025, self-declaration remained easy to bypass, offering only a veneer of protection. Investigators also found that the company had not completed a data protection impact assessment until 2025, despite a large number of teenagers using the service.
Concerns were heightened by the volume of children affected and the risks created by relying on inadequate age checks.
The regulator noted that unlawful data processing occurred over a prolonged period, and that children were at risk of viewing harmful material while their information was processed without a lawful basis.
UK Information Commissioner John Edwards said companies must prioritise meaningful age assurance and understand the responsibilities set out in the Children's Code.
The ICO said it will continue monitoring Reddit's current controls and expects online platforms to align with robust age-assurance standards rather than rely on weak verification.
It will coordinate its oversight with Ofcom as part of broader efforts to strengthen online safety and ensure under-18s benefit from high privacy protections by default.
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Strategy has become the most-shorted large-cap US stock as hedge funds ramp up bearish bets, according to data from Goldman Sachs.
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Crypto bank Anchorage Digital said it holds Strategy's perpetual preferred security STRC on its balance sheet, adding an institutional backer to Michael Saylor's Bitcoin treasury company at a time when Wall Street traders are increasingly betting against it.
In a Wednesday post on X, Anchorage co-founder and CEO Nathan McCauley said the purchase shows alignment between two companies built around Bitcoin (BTC) infrastructure and corporate treasury adoption. “Conviction compounds. Institutions don't just talk about Bitcoin, they structure around it,” McCauley wrote.
“When the company that operationalizes Bitcoin infrastructure puts capital alongside the company that operationalized the Bitcoin treasury strategy…that's a signal,” he added. Anchorage did not reveal the size or timing of the position.
According to Strategy's website, STRC is a Nasdaq-listed perpetual preferred security marketed as a short-duration, high-yield instrument. The shares pay an 11.25% annual dividend distributed monthly in cash. Capital raised through the instrument has historically financed the company's continued Bitcoin accumulation.
Related: Michael Saylor says quantum threat to Bitcoin is more than 10 years away
Anchorage's purchase comes as Strategy has climbed to the top of Goldman Sachs' list of most-shorted large-cap US equities by short interest as a percentage of market capitalization. A year ago, it did not rank among the top 50. The company began rising on the list in late 2025 as its share price weakened even before Bitcoin peaked in October.
Short selling involves borrowing shares and selling them with the expectation of repurchasing later at a lower price. Losses can increase if the stock rises.
Strategy functions as a leveraged public-equity proxy for Bitcoin. It issues securities and deploys the proceeds into BTC. Gains can amplify during rallies, while downturns magnify pressure on the share price.
The company currently holds 717,722 Bitcoin worth about $46.68 billion at current market prices. The coins were acquired at an average cost of about $76,020, leaving the company sitting on an estimated $7 billion unrealized loss with Bitcoin trading near $66,000.
On Monday, it announced another purchase, acquiring 592 BTC for $39.8 million.
Related: Michael Saylor hints at Strategy's 100th Bitcoin buy
Last week, Strategy founder Michael Saylor said the company intends to convert roughly $6 billion in convertible bond debt into equity, replacing repayment obligations with newly issued shares. The change would lower leverage on the balance sheet by turning bondholders into shareholders, though it could dilute existing investors.
Strategy added that its Bitcoin treasury would still cover its liabilities even in an extreme downturn. According to the company, Bitcoin would need to fall close to $8,000, about an 88% drop, before its holdings and debt reached parity.
Magazine: Bitcoin may take 7 years to upgrade to post-quantum — BIP-360 co-author
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As congressional momentum behind the crypto market structure bill known as the CLARITY Act slows, the Blockchain Association has stepped forward with its own proposal aimed at shaping the next phase of digital asset regulation in the United States.
On Tuesday, the Washington-based nonprofit — which represents more than 125 crypto companies — released a document titled Digital Asset Tax Principles.
The framework is intended to guide lawmakers as they revisit tax policy for digital assets amid broader regulatory discussions. The association has also participated in White House meetings over the past month related to the CLARITY Act.
In announcing the framework, Summer Mersinger, Chief Executive Officer of the Blockchain Association, said lawmakers must ensure that any tax legislation reflects the economic realities of how digital assets function.
She emphasized that tax rules should be practical for both taxpayers and regulators, adding that the group's recommendations are designed to provide clarity while reinforcing US competitiveness in the global digital economy.
The principles outlined in the document focus heavily on making crypto taxation workable in practice. One major recommendation is the creation of a meaningful de minimis exemption for small digital asset transactions, which would ease compliance burdens for everyday users.
The association also proposes that stablecoins be treated as cash for tax purposes, arguing that such treatment would prevent disproportionate reporting requirements for routine payments.
Another key theme is functional consistency. The group argues that economically similar activities should be taxed similarly, regardless of the technical structure behind them.
For example, it recommends that mining and staking rewards be treated as self-created property, taxable only when the tokens are sold or otherwise disposed of, and sourced to the owner's residence.
The framework also addresses economic ownership, urging lawmakers to allow nonrecognition treatment for transactions that do not materially change a taxpayer's economic exposure.
In addition, the association highlights privacy and safety concerns, advocating for reporting requirements that achieve legitimate enforcement goals without unnecessarily compromising taxpayer privacy.
Global competitiveness is another pillar of the proposal. The Blockchain Association suggests implementing a safe harbor for foreign individuals trading on US exchanges and adopting policies that encourage digital asset activity to remain onshore rather than move abroad.
It also calls for anti-abuse provisions that close wash sale loopholes while preserving the ability of Americans to use digital assets in everyday transactions. Further recommendations aim to improve access and flexibility within the tax system.
Currently, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) classifies crypto as property rather than currency. As a result, most crypto-related activity falls into one of two categories: capital gains or ordinary income.
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Researchers have uncovered a promising new treatment target for a severe autoimmune brain disorder. The finding could help drive the development of more precise therapies for a condition caused by the immune system attacking a critical brain receptor known as the NMDA receptor. It may also open the door to a future blood test that could detect signs of the disease earlier and allow patients to begin treatment sooner.
The research was conducted at Oregon Health & Science University and published in the journal Science Advances.
The Disease Behind "Brain on Fire"
Many people recognize this disorder from the bestselling memoir and the 2016 film "Brain on Fire." Although widely publicized, the condition is rare, affecting roughly 1 in 1 million people each year, most often adults in their 20s and 30s.
The illness occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks NMDA receptors in the brain. These receptors play an essential role in memory and thinking. The attack is driven in part by anti-NMDA receptor autoantibodies. Patients can experience dramatic personality changes, profound memory loss, seizures, and in severe cases, death.
Pinpointing the Antibody Binding Sites
In the new study, scientists identified specific locations on a subunit of the NMDA receptor where these harmful antibodies attach. Blocking these precise sites could potentially slow or even reverse the progression of the disease.
Lead author Junhoe Kim, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the OHSU Vollum Institute, analyzed anti-NMDA receptor autoantibodies taken from a specially engineered mouse model of the disease. He then compared those findings with detailed images of the same types of antibodies collected from people diagnosed with the disorder.
The binding locations observed in mice closely matched those seen in human patients.
"We have really solid evidence because the autoantibody binding sites that Junhoe identified overlap with those from people," said senior author Eric Gouaux, Ph.D., senior scientist in the Vollum and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "We're focused now on this area as literally a hot spot for the interaction that underpins at least one component of the disease."
Kim explained that earlier research had narrowed down the general region where antibodies might attach.
"From previous studies, people knew where the antibodies might bind," he said. "But we collected the entire native autoimmune antibody panel from a mouse model with the disease, and we elucidated where specifically they bind onto the receptor."
Near-Atomic Imaging Reveals a Critical Hot Spot
The team used advanced near-atomic imaging at the Pacific Northwest Cryo-EM Center on OHSU's South Waterfront campus. The facility is one of three national centers dedicated to this state-of-the-art imaging technology. It is jointly operated by OHSU and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Their analysis showed that nearly all of the antibodies concentrated on a single region of the receptor.
"Nearly all of the antibodies bound to a single domain of the receptor that happens to be the part of the receptor that's simplest to target," Gouaux said. "It's a super exciting result, actually."
Toward More Precise Treatments
According to co-author Gary Westbrook, M.D., a neurologist and senior scientist at the Vollum Institute, the discovery could help pharmaceutical companies design drugs that specifically block the damaging antibody interactions. Current treatments rely largely on immunosuppression, which does not work for everyone and can leave patients vulnerable to relapse.
"More specific approaches are definitely needed," he said.
In addition to Kim, Gouaux, and Westbrook, the research team included Farzad Jalali-Yazdi, Ph.D., and Brian Jones, Ph.D., of OHSU.
The study was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea, award RS202400334731; the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, both part of the National Institutes of Health, under award numbers F32MH115595, R01NS117371 and R01NS038631; the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Jennifer and Bernard LaCroute. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
All animal research at OHSU undergoes review and approval by the university's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). The IACUC ensures the welfare of animal subjects and the safety of research personnel. It also evaluates all proposed animal studies to confirm their scientific merit and justify the use of live animals.
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The existence of human hippocampal neurogenesis has long been disputed1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 and its relevance in cognition remains unknown. Recent studies have established the presence of proliferating progenitors and immature neurons and a reduction in the latter in Alzheimer's disease (AD)11,13. However, their origin and the molecular networks that regulate neurogenesis and function are poorly understood. Here we studied human post-mortem hippocampi obtained from different cohorts: young adults with intact memory, aged adults with no cognitive impairments, aged adults with extraordinary memory capacity (SuperAgers)14,15, adults with preclinical intermediate pathology or adults with AD. Using multiomic single-cell sequencing (single-nucleus RNA sequencing and single-nuclei assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing), we analysed the profiles of 355,997 nuclei isolated from the hippocampus samples and identified neural stem cells, neuroblasts and immature granule neurons. Dysregulated neurogenesis was largely associated with changes in chromatin accessibility. Analyses of transcription factors and target gene signatures that distinguished each of the groups revealed early alterations in chromatin accessibility of neurogenic cells from individuals with preclinical AD, and such changes were even more evident in samples from individuals with AD. We identified a distinct profile of neurogenesis in SuperAgers that may reflect a ‘resilience signature'. Finally, alterations in the profile of astrocytes and CA1 neurons govern cognitive function in the ageing hippocampus. Together, our study points to a multiomic molecular signature of the hippocampus that distinguishes cognitive resilience and deterioration with ageing.
In the rodent, the transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie the generation of new neurons from neural stem cells (NSCs) in the subgranular layer of the dentate gyrus are well established16. Hippocampal neurogenesis has a crucial role in learning and memory in the rodent brain17,18 through the recruitment of immature neurons into memory circuits to promote memory formation19,20,21,22. Neurogenesis is reduced as rodents age and is impaired in mouse models of AD, which contributes to memory deficits21,23,24,25,26. By contrast, little is known about the fate of neurogenesis in the human brain, let alone its regulatory mechanisms or functional roles in cognition. The existence of hippocampal neurogenesis in the adult human brain has generated controversy over the past few years1,2,5,9,11,12, which is primarily attributable to limitations in the use of species-specific neurogenic proxies, sample processing, cell annotation and computational analyses6,7,27. There were also concerns about the overlapping molecular signatures of immature neurons and inhibitory neurons12. Single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) studies have confirmed the existence of immature neurons in the adult human brain11 and that there is a reduced number of immature neurons in AD4,5,11. A subset of progenitor cells in the adult human brain show signs of ongoing proliferation13. However, key knowledge gaps remain. First, the epigenetic underpinnings of neurogenesis are unknown. Defining them would facilitate an understanding of distinct capacities for neurogenesis. Second, the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) that govern neurogenesis in the adult human brain are unknown. Third, the link between neurogenesis and cognitive function in humans, and the possible impairment of neurogenesis in preclinical cases transitioning from healthy ageing to AD, remains unclear. Conversely, the characteristics of neurogenesis in persons with exceptional memory are unknown. To address these gaps, we performed multiomic snRNA-seq and single-nuclei assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing (snATAC–seq) analyses of nuclei isolated from human hippocampi from the following cohorts: young adults with intact cognition (YA); aged adults with normal-for-age cognition (HA); adults with preclinical intermediate pathology possibly transitioning from HA to AD (PCI); adults with AD; and adults termed SuperAgers (SA), who are individuals displaying exceptional performance on tests of episodic memory.
To establish regulatory pathways of neurogenesis in the adult human brain, we first examined sequencing profiles of 85,977 nuclei from 8 cognitively intact adults aged 20–40 years (YA cohort; Supplementary Table 1). To ensure robust cell annotation, we used the machine learning label-transfer algorithm single-cell annotation using variational inference (scANVI)28 implemented in single-cell variational inference (scVI)29 to transfer labels from two human brain scRNA-seq datasets: a human developmental forebrain30 and an adult human hippocampal dataset11. Unsupervised clustering based on snRNA-seq revealed 12 cell types in the hippocampus, including neuroblasts and immature neurons (Extended Data Fig. 1). The immature neurons appeared at the outer margins of the mature granule neuron cluster in a two-dimensional uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP) visualization. The neuroblast cluster partially overlapped with the mature oligodendrocyte (mOL) cluster. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and pathway analyses comparing these clusters revealed 4,166 DEGs and 169 pathways, all of which were upregulated in neuroblasts compared with mOLs. Of these, 80 pathways were associated with dendritic, axonal, postsynaptic density and neurotransmission pathways (Supplementary Table 2). Thus, to determine the nature of the similarity of these two clusters, we examined the expression levels of proxies observed in a single-cell transcriptomic-based human brain atlas31. We observed that oligodendrocyte-related proxies, such as myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG) and myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG), were expressed in neuroblasts, albeit at lower levels than mOLs (Extended Data Fig. 2a). This finding may partially explain the visual proximity of clusters on the UMAP even though their gene expression profiles were clearly distinct.
To identify NSCs and their developmental trajectory, we examined the latent time of the astrocyte, neuroblast, immature and mature granule neuron clusters using RNA velocity. This method analyses the association between the level of cell differentiation and mRNA half-life on the basis of the ratio of nascent and mature mRNA30. Several subclusters were observed (Extended Data Fig. 1b). Immature neurons identified by machine learning had a lower latent time than mature granule neurons (Extended Data Fig. 1c). Two subclusters with latent times greater than astrocytes but lower than immature neurons were ascertained. One subcluster was validated as the above-identified neuroblast cluster (Extended Data Fig. 1b,c). Examination of the other subcluster compared with astrocytes revealed 766 DEGs (671 upregulated and 95 downregulated) compared with the rest of the astrocytes (Supplementary Table 3). Pathway analysis revealed that 25 out of the 65 pathways were related to neuronal development, including axonal development, node of Ranvier, initial segment, growth cone, axonal guidance, dendritic spine and postsynaptic density (Supplementary Table 3). This cluster was designated as NSCs (Extended Data Fig. 1a–c). Together, the RNA velocity analysis revealed directional flow from NSCs to an astrocyte subcluster, and then towards neuroblasts via immature neurons to mature granule neurons, a finding that supports the presence of a developmental trajectory in the adult human hippocampus (Extended Data Fig. 1b,c). Similar to what has been reported for the rodent32, human NSCs expressed high levels of stemness proxies and low levels of neuronal markers compared with neuroblasts and immature neurons (Extended Data Fig. 1d,e). Notably, the snATAC–seq analysis enabled an orthogonal assessment of stemness via chromatin accessibility. We observed high chromatin accessibility of areas associated with multilineage potential in NSCs, whereas neuronal maturation proxies exhibited high levels of open chromatin in neuroblasts and immature neurons (Extended Data Fig. 1f). A comparison of our neurogenesis signature with previous studies that observed neurogenesis in the human dentate gyrus13 revealed a high level of concordance (Extended Data Figs. 2–4 and Supplementary Table 4). We further validated our neurogenic signature by applying it to large scRNA-seq whole-brain datasets in which neurogenesis was not expected33,34,35,36. This analysis confirmed the high specificity level of our neurogenic signature (Extended Data Fig. 2).
The top DEGs and differentially accessible regions (DARs) in NSCs were downregulated in neuroblasts and further downregulated in immature neurons (Fig. 1a,b, Extended Data Fig. 5 and Supplementary Table 5). Conversely, the top DEGs and DARs in neuroblasts were downregulated in NSCs (Fig. 1a,b). Some of these genes were further upregulated in immature neurons, whereas others maintained their expression levels or were downregulated. The expression levels of the top DEGs identified in immature neurons were low in NSCs and moderate in neuroblasts, a result consistent with a transcriptomic profile shift during this trajectory (Fig. 1a,b). Developmental pathways, such as β-catenin and basolateral plasma membrane, were enriched in NSCs and downregulated in neuroblasts and immature neurons. Pathways enriched in immature neurons were related to synaptic function and plasticity (Fig. 1c and Supplementary Table 6). Motif enrichment statistics revealed that the top motifs in NSCs were those of the canonical signalling transducer family of STAT transcription factors (TFs; for example, STAT3, STAT4 and STAT5), PLAGL1 and NFIB. By contrast, in immature neurons, these were RFX2, FOS–JUN, NFE2, MEIS2 and PBX2 (Fig. 1d). This pattern suggests that there is an activity shift from TFs that promote stem cell maintenance and proliferation in NSCs to TFs that regulate neuronal differentiation and maturation in immature neurons, a finding that provides further support for a developmental trajectory in the hippocampus37,38. The availability of paired snRNA-seq and snATAC–seq data enabled us to determine the GRNs of neurogenesis by using the TF–peak–gene trio approach39 and enhancer-driven GRNs (eRegulons using SCENIC+)40. A neurogenesis trajectory showed that the strongest interactions in NSCs were downregulated in neuroblasts and further downregulated in immature neurons. By contrast, interactions that do not exist in NSCs were mildly upregulated in neuroblasts and to a greater extent in immature neurons (Extended Data Fig. 3 and Supplementary Table 7). The magnitude of interactions changed across all cell types, whereas their direction of regulation remained consistent. Different eRegulon networks governed each cell type. The most prominent eRegulons in NSCs were RORA, RORB, SMAD1, ZNF98, SOX6, PRRX1, NFIA, GLIS3, BCL6 and ETV6. In neuroblasts, these were ZNF740, ZNF180, THRA, NFE2L1, NEUROD1, FEZF2, EGR1, EGR3, E2F1 and repressors of NRF1. In immature neurons, the main eRegulons were ZNF589, ZNF519, TFDP1, ONECUT2, MTF2, MTA3, GLIS1 and E2F3 and repressors of SOX2 and MXI1 (Fig. 1e and Supplementary Table 7). Together, these single-nucleus multiomic analyses establish a multifaceted molecular framework of neurogenesis in the adult human brain.
a, The top ten DEGs for each neurogenic cell type among YA samples. b, The top ten DARs in gene promoters of each neurogenic cell type among YA samples. Labelled genes correspond to the overlapping promoters. Top DEGs and DARs were selected on the basis of their per cent difference in expression of all significant (q < 0.05) DEGs and DARs, respectively. c, Pathway signatures of top pathways from all neurogenesis DEGs. DEGs of the pathway analysis were based on adjusted P < 0.01, log2[fold change] > 1 and per cent difference > 0.3. Enriched pathways were selected on the basis of FDR < 0.05 and for nuclear gene functions for NSCs and neuroblasts. Pathways enriched in immature neurons were selected on the basis of FDR < 0.01 and log2[enrichment ratio] > 2. d, Motif enrichment statistics of increased open chromatin in NSCs and immature neurons. DARs were based on adjusted P < 0.05. Enriched motifs were selected on the basis of FDR < 0.05 and log2[enrichment ratio] > 1. e, Heatmap dot plot of cell-specific regulons in neurogenic cells in YA samples. The top ten most cell-specific regulons for each cell type were included if the gene-based area under the curve (AUC) change was significant (Benjamini-Hochberg (BH)-corrected, Mann–Whitney U-test, two-sided, FDR < 0.05).
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To examine the effect of age and cognitive diagnosis on neurogenesis, we sequenced nuclei isolated from the hippocampi of healthy agers with no cognitive impairments (HA cohort; n = 8, with 73,093 nuclei sequenced), with preclinical intermediate pathology possibly transitioning from HA to AD (PCI cohort; n = 6, with 58,281 nuclei sequenced) or with AD (n = 10, with 87,209 nuclei sequenced). Hippocampus samples from SuperAgers (SA cohort; n = 6, with 51,437 nuclei sequenced) were also analysed; these individuals were defined as persons aged 80 years or older whose performance on tests of episodic memory was equal to or better than that of persons aged 50–59 years14,15. All cell types observed in the YA group were detected in the other groups (Fig. 2a and Extended Data Fig. 4a). However, the number of NSCs was significantly increased in the PCI and AD groups compared with the HA cohort. Moreover, the average number of neuroblasts and immature neurons was significantly reduced in the AD group compared with the HA and YA groups. The number of immature neurons was also significantly reduced in the AD cohort compared with the PCI group (Extended Data Fig. 4b and Supplementary Table 8). The majority of age-driven and diagnosis-driven alterations in neurogenesis were observed in the number of DARs compared with DEGs, which suggests that epigenetic differences in chromatin accessibility represent a more robust molecular signature of differences in cognitive ageing than differential mRNA expression. Specifically, most DEGs were observed in NSCs, with only 172 DEGs distinguishing the AD and HA groups, 6 between AD and PCI, 154 between AD and YA and 18 between SA and the other diagnostic cohorts. The number of upregulated or downregulated DEGs and DARs in NSCs was roughly equal with age and diagnosis (Supplemental Tables 9 and 10). Examination of DEGs and DARs in all neurogenic cells combined as a function of diagnosis showed an opposite directionality of both genes and open chromatin regions in the AD group compared with the other conditions (Fig. 2b–d and Supplementary Tables 9 and 10). DAR-based motif enrichment revealed that the top motifs identified in differentially accessible chromatin regions belonged to the zinc finger TF family, whereas the most downregulated motifs belonged to the regulatory factor X (RFX) family, both of which are key drivers of development and cell growth and differentiation (Fig. 2e). Notably, we identified a set of DARs that were specifically downregulated in neuroblasts and immature neurons in the PCI cohort compared with the YA, HA and SA groups. These DARs were further downregulated in the AD group. We reasoned that such alterations in chromatin accessibility precede changes in corresponding RNA expression signatures in PCI. We integrated these peaks with the GRN analysis to identify inferred target genes, followed by pathway enrichment analysis. This process revealed that most pathways are associated with maintenance of neuronal structure and function, synaptic plasticity and neuronal development (Fig. 2f,g and Supplementary Tables 11 and 12). Together, these results suggest that downregulation of DARs induce alterations in neurogenesis as a function of cognitive deterioration and that the earliest alterations with age take place in NSCs. Moreover, most DARs and DEGs were substantially downregulated in neuroblasts and immature neurons in the AD group, and DARs associated with synaptic plasticity and neurotransmission may serve as early signatures of pathological alterations in neurogenesis.
a, UMAP of all cells (left) and neurogenic cells (right), coloured by cell type (top) or diagnosis group (bottom). b,c, Heatmaps of DEGs (b) and DARs (c) in neurogenesis. d, The number of DEGs and DARs in neurogenesis as a function of diagnosis. e, Top motifs altered in neurogenesis as a function of diagnosis. f,g, Pathway enrichment analysis of inferred target genes of top DARs that were upregulated in PCI and may transition to AD through pathway abundance (P < 0.05; log2[fold change]) (f) and by log2[fold enrichment] (g).
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Next, we sought to determine the strongest GRNs that govern alterations in neurogenesis with ageing and disease. Using SCENIC+, which combines single-cell chromatin accessibility and gene expression data with motif discovery to infer enhancer-driven GRNs (eGRNs)40, we determined the eRegulons of these processes. eRegulon-based UMAP visualization revealed that NSCs constituted a distinct cluster (Fig. 3a), a result that further highlights the characteristic molecular signature of NSCs at the GRN level. This finding was validated by SCENIC+ eRegulon-based diffusion41,42,43, which, based on the eRegulons, revealed lineage continuity of NSCs, neuroblasts and immature neurons (Fig. 3b–d and Extended Data Fig. 4c). To identify the eRegulons associated with neurogenesis in cognitive decline, we examined the top eRegulons that were altered in the PCI and AD groups compared with the HA cohort. We observed a distinct set of eRegulons that drive neurogenesis in the HA group compared with the PCI and AD conditions (Fig. 3e). Five out of the six top eRegulons that drive neurogenesis in the HA group were downregulated in the PCI and AD groups. Instead, a separate set of eRegulons was upregulated in PCI and further in AD. Notably, out of the seven upregulated eRegulons, five (ZNF98, SMAD1, RORB, PRRX1 and NFIA) constituted the top eRegulons of NSCs in the YA cohort (Fig. 1e). This finding may partially explain the significant upregulation of NSC numbers in AD (Extended Data Fig. 4b and Supplementary Table 8). Examination of cell-type-specific eRegulons in the HA, PCI and AD groups revealed that this outcome may be due to downregulation of the NFIA repressor in NSCs from the PCI and AD groups compared with the HA cohort (Fig. 3f). Furthermore, distinct sets of activator and repressor eRegulons govern NSCs in these three cognitive cohorts. Specifically, ZNF565, ONECUT2 activators and SOX6, PAX6 and ARNT2 repressors were upregulated in PCI. These factors were replaced by RXRG, RARG, NFIC and KLF5 activators in AD (Fig. 3f). Examination of all diagnostic conditions revealed several notable findings. First, a distinct signature of SA compared with all other conditions, whereby the activators TFDP1, ONECUT2 and GLIS1 and the repressors SOX2, MXI1 and FOXO3 were upregulated. Second, a signature of activators that was uniquely upregulated in AD whereas the others were significantly downregulated, including ZNF98, ZNF423, ZIC1, RORB, RARG, PAX6, NFIA and CPSF4. Third, a signature that was driven by ageing, particularly the activators ZNF580, SOX15, IRF3, E2F4 and CHURC1 (Fig. 3g). Together, these results suggest that alterations in neurogenesis as a function of cognitive diagnosis are driven by distinct sets of combinations of GRNs that represent altered network interactions among cis regulatory elements, TFs and target genes.
a, UMAP of all cells in every condition based on their SCENIC+ eRegulon embedding. b,c, UMAP (b) and diffusion map (c) of neurogenic cells based on their SCENIC+ eRegulon embedding. d, Gene-based AUC regulon activity scores projected onto the UMAP for the top four most specific regulons for each neurogenic cell type. Rows correspond to cell types as follows: top, NSCs; middle, neuroblasts; bottom, immature neurons. Colours indicate regulon activity measured as gene-based AUC scores. Only significant cell-specific eRegulons are shown (BH-corrected Mann–Whitney U-test, two-sided, FDR < 0.05). The number in parentheses indicates the number of target genes in each regulon (g). e, Differential regulons in all neurogenic cells for the HA, PCI and AD groups. f, Differential eRegulons in NSCs for the HA, PCI and AD groups. g, Differential eRegulons of neurogenesis in all cognitive diagnoses. For e–g, the top five regulons, based on fold change, were included for each condition if the gene-based AUC change was significant (BH-corrected, Mann–Whitney U-test, two-sided, FDR < 0.05).
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Having established that neurogenesis is altered in cognitive decline, we next sought to determine the signature of cognitive resilience, particularly in the SA cohort. Cell abundance analysis of the SA group revealed a significant increase in the number of immature neurons in the SA group compared with the other cohorts. However, we were concerned that this effect was mainly due to one outlier with a high number of immature neurons. However, even after exclusion of this sample, we observed a 2.5-fold increase in immature neurons. The abundance of immature neurons in the SA group compared with the AD cohort was significant either way. Comparisons of SA with the HA, YA and PCI cohorts showed about a twofold increase in immature neurons in the SA group, albeit this result was not significant. We further observed significantly more neuroblasts in the SA than in AD groups (q = 0.0002; Extended Data Fig. 4a,b and Supplementary Table 8). Examination of the neurogenesis signature in the SA group revealed that this distinct profile of immature neurons and neuroblasts can be attributed mainly to DARs. Specifically, 7,058 DARs in immature neurons and 674 in neuroblasts were upregulated in the SA cohort compared with the other groups. By contrast, few alterations were observed in NSCs (Fig. 4a,b and Supplementary Tables 9 and 10). A small number of key genes were upregulated in neuroblasts and immature neurons, such as BDNF (which encodes brain-derived neurotrophic factor) and CALB1 (Fig. 4a). Downregulated genes included NEUROD6 and NECTIN3, which, in association with apolipoprotein E (APOE), are implicated in synaptic plasticity (Fig. 4a). To confirm whether there is a resilience signature in neurogenesis, we calculated resilience scores, which were defined to identify patterns of consistent effects of DEGs and DARs in the AD group relative to the YA, HA and SA cohorts. We computed the fold change for each comparison, and the resilience score was the geometric mean of these products. A clear signature was observed in neuroblasts and immature neurons, for which most genes and peaks exhibited stable expression levels in YA, HA and SA, whereas they were substantially downregulated in AD. This pattern was particularly exaggerated in open chromatin regions (Fig. 4c–e and Supplementary Table 13). In NSCs, expression levels of some of the genes and peaks changed as a function of age or cognitive diagnosis (Fig. 4c–e). The pathways that were enriched in the top 500 resilience genes for each cell type (false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05) in NSCs were related to cellular processes of proliferation and growth. In neuroblasts, top pathways were mitochondrial and endosomal pathway and synaptic vesicle endocytosis. In immature neurons, these were RNA binding and protein binding, cytoplasmic and axonal pathways (Fig. 4f). Motifs that were enriched in the top 500 resilience open chromatin peaks in immature neurons included TFs of zinc finger proteins that are implicated in promoting neuronal differentiation (FDR < 0.05; Fig. 4g). To identify the strongest networks that underlie cognitive resilience, we examined the top eRegulons in the SA group. We observed a common signature of eRegulons between the YA and SA groups (Figs. 1e and 4h). Specifically, similar to the YA group, the top activators in NSCs from the SA cohort were ZNF98, SOX6, RORB, PRRX1, ETV6 and BCL6 and the common repressors were SOX2 and MXI1 (Fig. 4h). Likewise, immature neurons in the YA and SA groups shared the following common activator eRegulons: ZNF589, TFDP1, ONECUT2, MTF2, MTA3, GLIS1 and E2F3. Common repressors were SOX2 and MXI1. Samples from the SA group also exhibited unique eRegulons. Specifically, the activator eRegulon PROX1 in immature neurons and ZNF423, ZIC1, SOX2 and NFE2L2 in NSCs. Moreover, NSCs from the SA group exhibited a series of repressors that are not active in the YA group. Notably, in the YA cohort, neuroblasts showed a strong differentiation-associated eRegulon signature driven by NEUROD1, FEZF2, EGR1, EGR3, E2F1 and THRA (Fig. 1e). This coordinated program was entirely absent in SA, with SOX2 and NFE2L2 being the only activators operating in SA. Instead, neuroblasts from the SA group exhibited a series of repressors that are not active in the YA cohort. Together, this result suggests that there is a shift in the transcriptional landscape that governs neurogenesis in the YA and SA groups. (Fig. 4h). The unique eRegulon signature in the SA group was also apparent in comparison with all other diagnostic cohorts. A marked downregulation of repressors and most activators was accompanied by a strong upregulation of a specific set of eRegulons in immature neurons and neuroblasts (Extended Data Fig. 5). In neuroblasts, this included downregulation of NEUROD1 and NRF1 repressors concomitantly with the upregulation of FOXO3 and MXI1 repressors. Notably, most activators and top repressors in NSCs were downregulated, which may partially explain the scarcity of DEGs and DARs observed in NSCs from the SA group. In light of these results, we next asked whether the unique signature of SA is driven by ageing. We observed that although the profile of SA exhibited some ageing effects, most changes were independent of ageing. Specifically, in NSCs, the activator E2F1 and the repressor NFIB were both downregulated in the HA and SA groups; therefore, these factors may represent ageing-induced alterations in neurogenesis. Likewise, the activator CEBPZ, which was dominant in the YA group, was downregulated in the HA and SA cohort. However, a unique set of eRegulons was driving NSCs and immature neurons from the SA group compared with HA, particularly upregulation of the activators ZBTB21, NFE2L2, MBNL2, FOS, EGR4 and EGR1 in NSCs and of ZBTB7A, NFE2L1, ELK1 and EGR3 in immature neurons (Fig. 4i). However, we cannot exclude the possibility that the unique eRegulons detected in samples from the SA group is the result of ageing-driven alterations. In support of this theory, the profile of neuroblasts was similar in the HA and SA groups (Fig. 4i). Together, these results highlight a specific molecular network that governs neurogenesis in SA and may contribute to cognitive superiority.
a,b, The top DEGs (a) and DARs (b) in immature neurons in SA compared with the other cognitive diagnoses. c,d, The top 20 resilience genes (c) and open chromatin peaks (d) in each cell type. e, Total resilience scores, summed over all genes or open chromatin peaks for each cell type, and split by the relative effect in AD: increased (top) or decreased (bottom). f, Pathways that are enriched in the top 500 resilience genes for each cell type (FDR < 0.05). g, Motifs that are enriched in the top 500 resilience open chromatin peaks for immature cells (FDR < 0.05). Note that there were no enriched motifs for NSC or neuroblast resilience peaks. h, Cell-specific regulons in neurogenic cells from the SA group. The top ten most cell-specific regulons for each cell type were included if the gene-based AUC change was significant (BH corrected, Mann–Whitney U-test, two-sided, FDR < 0.05). i, Differential regulons in NSCs, neuroblasts and immature neurons in the following comparisons: SA versus HA and SA versus YA. The top five regulons, based on fold change, were included for each condition if the gene-based AUC change was significant (BH corrected, Mann–Whitney U-test, two-sided, FDR < 0.05).
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We next sought to determine the molecular signals that preserve hippocampal cognitive integrity (HIPPI) or that give way to pathological ageing. For this purpose, we examined signals that are differentially expressed in the SA group compared with the HA cohort and that exhibit a contrasting trend in the PCI group compared with the HA and YA groups. We observed 1,001 DEGs and 579 DARs. Most DEGs appeared in CA1 neurons, whereas most DARs appeared in astrocytes (Fig. 5a,b and Supplementary Tables 14 and 15). Significant alterations in both DEGs and DARS were also noted in oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs) and mOLs (Fig. 5a). Notably, among the most significant HIPPI in CA1 neurons were genes that have a role in neuronal function and neurotransmission (Fig. 5c); for example, GABRB1, NRGN and KCNF. Also notable were APOE in microglia, EGR1 and GRASP, which link receptors, including group 1 metabotropic glutamate receptors, to neuronal proteins. The following relationships were also identified: the glutamate metabotropic receptor GRM8 in inhibitory neurons; and KCNE, GRIN2B, GRIA1 and GRIK1 in mature granule cells (mGCs). Together, these results imply that the maintenance of efficient neurotransmission, synaptic plasticity and redox balance is central to the successful cognitive ageing phenotype, whereas their disruption marks the transition to PCI (Supplementary Tables 14 and 15). In addition to synapse and cellular homeostasis, pathway analysis of the HIPPI genes in CA neurons revealed cytosolic ribosome pathways, energy metabolism and mitochondrial, endosomal and lysosomal pathways (Fig. 5e). DARs in astrocytes and their motif analysis revealed numerous FOS–JUN basic leucine zipper factors (bZIP) (Fig. 5d,f). To examine the impact of the HIPPI DEGs and DARs on neurogenesis, we performed CellChat analysis among neurogenic cells, astrocytes and CA1 neuron ligand–receptor signalling. We analysed the GRN for each diagnostic group in both astrocytes and CA1 neurons and computed an ‘ageing score' comparison of the same TF–peak–gene interaction strength across diagnosis groups. The most significant pathways were related to the synaptic complexes neurexin–neuroligin (NRXN1–NLGN), including the Alzheimer-related cadherin-like calsyntenin proteins (for example, NRXN1–CLSTN1 and NRXN1–CLSTN2), NCAM1, contactin (CNTN), APP–SORL1 and glutamatergic receptors (for example, Glu-SLC17, GRIAs; Glu-SLC17, GRIK2; and Glu-SLC17, GRMs) (Fig. 5g,h and Supplementary Table 16). Enhanced synaptic adhesion and glutamatergic communication in the SA and HA groups contrasted with their attenuation in the PCI and AD groups. This result suggests that preservation of excitatory synapse integrity is a hallmark of healthy cognitive ageing and a potential intervention target for the prevention of cognitive deterioration.
a,b, Number of DEGs (a) and DARs (b) that show contrasting expression patterns in HA and SA compared with PCI in each cell type in the hippocampus. c,d, Heatmaps of DEGs in CA neurons (c) and DARs in astrocytes (d). e, Bar plot of significant pathways (q < 0.05) showing opposite regulation between healthy and pathological ageing (PCI) in CA neurons. f, Significant motifs enriched in astrocyte DARs with opposite accessibility changes between healthy and pathological ageing (q < 0.05 and log2[ratio] > 1). g,h, CellChat heatmap (g) and network plot (h) of the relative strength of interactions from CellChat changes from the ageing filter.
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Through the use of snRNA-seq and ATAC–seq of human hippocampus samples from individuals with distinct cognitive functional profiles, and integrating and analysing these data, our study provides key insights into human neurogenesis. First, we analysed the molecular network that regulates neurogenesis in the adult human hippocampus using post-mortem samples of young adults (age range of 20–40 years) with no known cognitive deficits and no dementia-related proteinopathy. We observed a neurogenic trajectory from NSCs to mature granule neurons via neuroblasts and immature neurons. The NSC cluster we identified contained several subpopulations with varying latent times, which may represent different states of NSCs and neural progenitor cells. Future analysis with greater sensitivity could facilitate an even greater resolution for the identification of NSC subpopulations. We validated the neurogenesis signature by comparing it to previous studies that observed neurogenesis in the human dentate gyrus13 and in turn by applying it to large scRNA-seq whole-brain datasets33,34,35,36 (Extended Data Figs. 6–8). As anticipated, the majority of brain areas in these studies showed a lack of NSCs, consistent with the notion that neurogenesis in the adult human brain is limited to areas such as the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. Sporadic cells in other brain regions were occasionally identified as NSCs. However, given that sequenced tissue usually comes from frozen blocks that are crudely defined, we cannot exclude the possibility that these were dentate gyrus neurogenic cells that were present in brain blocks labelled as other brain regions. Our own samples were verified for the presence of the dentate gyrus in each of the frozen tissue blocks that we processed and laser-dissected for the enrichment of the dentate gyrus. Given the high variability among individuals in both studies and the different age and cognitive statuses of the participants, we conclude that our NSCs were correctly annotated.
We showed that neurogenesis is manifested by shared sets of genes, distinct signatures of chromatin accessibility and their regulatory networks that clearly defined cell phenotype and maturation level. Second, we examined alterations in the regulatory networks that govern neurogenesis as a function of age and cognitive diagnosis. The earliest alterations in DEGs and DARs take place in NSCs with ageing and may give way to substantial alterations in DARs in neuroblasts and immature neurons in AD. Third, we identified DARs in PCI that may represent a molecular progression trajectory towards AD. Downregulated pathways related to these DARs were associated with synaptic plasticity and neurotransmission. Targeting them may attenuate or prevent the deterioration of neurogenesis in AD. Fourth, we identified eRegulons associated with alterations in neurogenesis as a function of age and cognitive decline. Targeting these networks may prevent or attenuate alterations in neurogenesis, which may be manifested by the attenuation of cognitive decline. Fifth, we identified a molecular network of neurogenesis that is associated with cognitive resilience. In addition to the genes, open chromatin regions, pathways and motifs that characterized neurogenesis in SA compared with the other conditions, we examined signals in the YA and HA groups that were maintained in SA and concomitantly and significantly showed the opposite directionality in PCI and AD. This signature represents regulatory mechanisms of neurogenesis that are probably associated with the maintenance of intact cognitive function in ageing. Notably, we observed a general increase in the number of immature neurons in SA; however, inter-sample variability and low sample number compromised the power of our analysis. It should be noted that the high level of variability from sample-to-sample in cell-type abundance limited the quantitative power of our study. Future experiments with a greater number of human brain samples will be needed to study this aspect in depth. A key limitation of any multiomic analysis of human brains is the limited sample size and the large variability that is present in human brain samples. As multiomic sequencing becomes more widespread and applied to human brains with defined cognitive function, future studies will help further clarify the robustness of the differences between chromatin accessibility and mRNA expression. One explanation for the low number of DEGs versus the substantially higher number of DARs across ageing and function phenotypes could reflect the transient nature of mRNA stability depending on the differences in collection methods. By contrast, chromatin accessibility of DNA is less likely to depend on differences in collection times and procedures. Alternatively, mRNA differences could also be more indicative of acute responses of the brain to stimuli, whereas chromatin accessibility may be a more robust and consistent indicator of underlying neuronal states. Sixth, we identified that neurogenesis in SA is led by a distinct set of GRNs. Finally, we identified molecular signals in the hippocampus that promote healthy ageing with intact cognition (HIPPI) or cognitive decline. We showed that such alterations are most apparent in DEGs in CA1 neurons and DARs in astrocytes and we identified putative regulatory networks that govern these interactions. Glutamatergic pathways spearhead the interactions between CA1, astrocytes and neurogenesis and may determine the crossroad between successful and unsuccessful ageing. These alterations in the CA1 may give way to the significantly reduced number of CA1 neurons in AD. These data indicate that cell–cell interactions may have a role in memory formation and cognitive function. In summary, our study delineated the molecular signatures of hippocampal neurogenesis and their alterations as a function of age and cognitive status. The marked differences in chromatin accessibility across the neurogenic spectrum suggest that epigenetic differences represent more definitive signatures of distinct ageing-associated cognitive impairment trajectories than those observed only via gene expression analysis. This study analysed the most significant enhancer-driven GRNs by inferring the interactions between DARs and target genes and determined the molecular networks that underlie cognitive resilience. Demonstration of such epigenetic signatures associated with neurogenic cells in the human hippocampus highlights the importance of identifying the underlying molecular mechanisms for future targeted therapeutics that aim to preserve cognitive function during ageing.
The YA, HA, PCI and AD samples were obtained from the University of Washington repository bank. In 2016, the University of Washington Institutional Review Board issued an official determination that the post-mortem repository work does not meet the metric of human subject research as this study collects samples from deceased individuals. These practices are now informed by the US Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift ACT 2006 (last revised or amended in 2009) and Washington Statute Chapter 68.64 RCW. Consent forms and HIPAA compliance are regulated by the University of Washington School of Medicine Compliance Office. All materials were collected under informed consent. For the SuperAgers, written informed consent and agreement to enter the study and the brain donation programme were obtained from all participants in the study, and the study was approved by the Northwestern University Institutional Review Board and in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration.
Where applicable, all human tissue studies were approved by the institutional review boards with oversight over the specific cohort studies, and all tissue samples were obtained with informed consent. Human brain tissue samples for molecular omics and sequencing studies were provided by the University of Washington (UW) BioRepository and Integrated Neuropathology (BRaIN) laboratory, which supports a number of cohort studies that were represented in the cohort for this study, including the UW Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC) clinical core, the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study, the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS) and the Pacific Northwest Brain Donor Network (PNBDN). Tissue samples were derived through a rapid tissue collection process, performed with a post-mortem interval of <12 h, and includes rapid procurement of the donor brain, coronal slicing and rapid sampling and freezing (either flash-freezing in liquid nitrogen or in supercooled dry ice and isopentane slurry), fixation of brain followed by routine sampling and diagnostic neuropathological analysis according to the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association guidelines for the pathological assessment of AD and related dementias44,45. This study was designed with five groups: YA, HA, PCI, AD and SA (Supplementary Table 1).
All participants were required to have preserved activities of daily living and to lack clinical evidence or history of neurological or psychiatric disease. The autopsied brains of participants characterized as cognitive SuperAgers from the Northwestern SuperAging Program were obtained from the Northwestern University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (NU-ADRC) Brain Bank. Written informed consent and agreement to enter the brain donation programme were obtained from all participants in the study, and the study was approved by the Northwestern University Institutional Review Board and in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Samples from representative brain regions of each participant were qualitatively surveyed and found to be free of significant neurodegenerative pathology other than common age-related changes. After autopsy, the right hemisphere was cut into 2–3 cm blocks and each block was flash-frozen on dry ice. Tissue at the mid-hippocampal region was collected from frozen blocks and used in this study. SA were required to be 80 years of age or older and to perform at or above average normative values for individuals in their 50s and 60s on the delayed recall of the Rey auditory verbal learning test (RAVLT)46, and within one standard deviation of the average range for their age and education on measures of other cognitive domains according to published normative values based on age, sex and race or ethnicity47,48.
The dentate gyrus was isolated from fresh-frozen blocks of 38 participants representing 5 diagnostic groups (YA, HA, PCI, AD and SA). Tissue was then immediately homogenized, whereby for each sample, a separate homogenizer and douncing pestles (loose and tight) were used. Each sample was homogenized in 1 ml pre-chilled lysis buffer (0.1% NP-40 alternative (or NP-40), 10 mM Tris, 146 mM NaCl, 1 mM CaCl2, 21 mM MgCl2 and 40 U ml–1 RNAse inhibitor) by mechanical douncing 20 times with the loose pestle followed by 20 times with the tight pestle to obtain a single-cell suspension. Cell suspensions were then incubated on ice for 5 min. The homogenate was then filtered through 70 µm filters (Miltenyi Biotec 130-041-407) and 40 µm filters (Miltenyi Biotec 130-041-406), moved to 1.5 ml tubes and centrifuged at 4 °C for 5 min at 500 rcf. Supernatants were removed and the nucleus pellet was washed 3 times with wash buffer (10 mM Tris, 146 mM NaCl, 1 mM CaCl2, 21 mM MgCl2, 0.01% BSA and 40 U ml–1 RNAse inhibitor). After the last wash, the supernatant was removed, and the nucleus pellet was resuspended in resuspension buffer and mixed with 900 µl Sucrose Cushion buffer. To remove additional debris, resuspended nuclei were loaded above a 3 Sucrose Cushion gradient (2.7 ml Nuclei PURE 2M Sucrose Cushion solution with 300 μl Nuclei PURE Sucrose Cushion buffer), and the sucrose gradient containing the nuclei was centrifuged at 13,000 rcf for 45 min at 4 °C. The supernatant was then carefully removed and the samples were immediately processed using the Single Cell protocol from 10x Genomics.
The 10x Genomics Multiome library preparation process and sequencing were done at Northwestern University NUseq facility core with the support of an NIH grant (1S10OD025120). The number of nuclei was analysed using Nexcelom Cellometer Auto2000 with the AOPI fluorescent staining method. The nuclei first underwent transposition with ATAC enzyme for 1 h at 37 °C. Next, 16,000 transposed nuclei were loaded into a Chromium Controller (10x Genomics, PN-120223) on a Chromium Next GEM Chip J (10x Genomics, PN-1000230), and single-cell gel beads were generated in the emulsion (GEM) according to the manufacturer's protocol. Barcoded DNA and cDNA were PCR-amplified and subjected to library construction. The snATAC–seq library was generated using a Chromium Next GEM Single Cell Multiome ATAC + Gene expression kit (10x Genomics, PN-1000281) and Single Index Kit N Set A (10x Genomics, PN-1000212) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Amplified cDNA was used for the gene expression library with a dual Index Kit TT Set A (10x Genomics, PN-1000215). Quality control for the constructed library was performed using an Agilent Bioanalyzer High Sensitivity DNA kit (Agilent Technologies, 5067-4626) and a Qubit DNA HS assay kit for qualitative and quantitative analysis, respectively. For the snATAC–seq library, the multiplexed libraries were pooled and sequenced on an Illumina Novaseq sequencer with 100 cycles kits using the following read length: 50 bp read 1 and 49 bp read 2. For the snRNA–seq library, the libraries were sequenced on an Illumina Novaseq sequencer with 100 cycles kits using the following read length: 28 bp read 1 for cell barcode and unique molecular identifiers (UMIs) and 90 bp read 2 for transcript expression. The targeted sequencing depth for snATAC–seq and snRNA-seq was 25,000 and 20,000 reads per cell, respectively.
Raw reads were demultiplexed and single-nucleus gene expression and peak enrichment were quantified simultaneously using CellRanger-arc count (10x Genomics). The quality of the run was assessed using the following criteria: (1) demultiplexing metrics, including the number of cells captured and the per cent of reads with valid barcodes; (2) gene expression metrics, including the per cent of mappable reads to the genome and transcriptome, and the median UMI counts and median genes expressed per cell; and (3) open chromatin metrics, including the per cent of mappable reads to the genome, in peaks and to promoter sequences, and the median counts and total peaks observed per cell. Following the quantification and peak calling analysis for each individual sample, all captures were aggregated to obtain a unified feature set for downstream analysis using CellRanger-arc aggr (10x Genomics).
All samples were analysed together. Single cells were filtered to ensure that data used in the downstream analysis were of high quality. Cells with >10% mitochondrial expression, indicative of dead or dying cells, cells with low numbers of genes expressed (<1,000 genes) or low total UMI RNA counts (<2,000 UMI counts) and cells with low peak numbers (<200 peaks) or total ATAC counts (<500 counts) were removed. Clustering was performed on the RNA-seq data, anticipating that gene expression would have a higher dynamic range than open chromatin, using the Seurat package in R49. Single-droplet multiplets were detected using the union of two independent methods: Scrublet50 and DoubletDetection51. Gene expression was normalized using NormalizeData, and the top 6,000 variable genes were identified using FindVariableFeatures, both with default parameters. The top variable genes were z-scored using ScaleData, and principal components (PCs) were computed using RunPCA for the top 200 PCs. The significance of each PC was computed using JackStraw, and heatmaps of the top cells and genes per PC were plotted using DimHeatmap; after reviewing both results the top 125 PCs were selected as features for clustering analysis. Clustering analysis was performed with the Louvain algorithm as implemented in Seurat49 at resolutions 0.25, 0.5, 1 and 2. After reviewing the expression of known marker genes, we based our downstream analysis on the clustering results at resolution 1.
To identify primary cell types, we used a transfer-learning approach based on scVI52 and scANVI28, in which reference dataset annotations are transferred to annotate subpopulations in a query dataset. Reference data were obtained from a previous study30, which reported a human developmental forebrain dataset, and another study of the human hippocampus11. The latent representation was modelled using the top 5,000 most variable genes in the combined dataset and was corrected for batch effect based on the data source. We then used scANVI (v.1.0.3)28 (n_samples_per_label=500) to transfer the most likely label from the reference datasets to the unannotated cells in our dataset. Based on the label transfer and gene marker annotations from clustering, we annotated astrocytes, neuroblasts, developmentally immature neurons, CA neurons, CA2–4 neurons, microglia, OPCs, mOLs, mGCs, endothelial cells and ependymal cells (Extended Data Fig. 6). NSCs were proposed to be part of the astrocyte cluster based on the recent literature53. Thus, astrocytes were provisionally labelled NSC/astrocyte.
The primary cell-type analysis included cells identified as neuroblasts and developmentally immature neurons. To ensure the robustness of these annotations, we used previously published machine learning-based identification of immature neurons specifically in mGCs11. We then performed a subclustering analysis on cells identified as developmentally immature from the primary cell typing, which resulted in nine subclusters, and we performed a CytoTrace54 analysis to infer the relative maturity stage of each cell type. We observed a clear distinction between neuroblasts and immature neurons, as well as clear correspondence between subclustered cells with either neuroblast or immature neurons (Extended Data Fig. 7a,b). Subclusters 0, 2 and 6 were reclassified as neuroblasts and combined with the other neuroblast cells, and subclusters 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 were reclassified as immature neurons and combined with other immature neurons.
To differentiate astrocytes from NSCs, we performed a subclustering of the NSC/astrocyte population and an RNA velocity analysis using scVelo55 on the NSC/astrocyte cluster along with neuroblasts, immature neurons and mGCs. Using the latent time measurement from the RNA velocity analysis, we identified a subcluster of the NSC/astrocyte population with the lowest latent time values (least differentiated) that was in between the remainder of the NSC/astrocyte cluster and the neurogenic cell types (Extended Data Fig. 1b,c). We identified these intermediate cells of NSC/astrocyte as the NSC subset, and the remainder as astrocytes.
Extended Data Fig. 1d,e and Supplementary Table 3 show the characterization of NSCs, neuroblasts and immature neurons based on the expression levels of developmental proxies (Extended Data Fig. 1d), the characterization of proxy expression trajectory in each cell type (Extended Data Fig. 1e) and open chromatin events of proxies in each cell type (Extended Data Fig. 1f). These were based on Supplementary Tables 5–7. We also computed differential gene and pathway analysis comparing NSCs to astrocytes. Pathway analysis revealed 57 pathways that were upregulated in NSCs, 23 of them are related to neuronal development, including axonal development, node of Ranvier, initial segment, growth cone, axonal guidance and dendritic spine (Supplementary Table 3).
We also compared NSC and astrocyte chromatin structure. We computed a UMAP of the ATAC–seq data of our NSC and astrocytes, which revealed that the NSCs have a chromatin structure that is distinct from astrocytes (Extended Data Figs. 1 and 4c).
Finally, SCENIC+ analysis was performed to study distinct GRNs (eRegulons) active in NSCs and mature astrocytes. This analysis also served as an orthogonal approach to assess whether the cells we annotated as NSCs represent a distinct population. This method integrates the chromatin accessibility and the expression of RNA at a single-cell level to infer the activity of TFs and to create GRNs. The regulon activity is an indicator of the activity of the TFs in GRNs. We found that NSCs and astrocytes formed distinct clusters based on the overall regulon embedding (Fig. 3a). This result further validates the annotation of NSCs as a distinct population. Diffusion analysis in the regulatory space of neurogenic cell types showed a clear developmental trajectory from NSCs to neuroblasts to immature neurons (Fig. 3b,c).
We compared NSCs in our dataset to one from a previous study13, which also performed single-cell sequencing of the human hippocampus. In the previous study13, the authors were able to identify both NSCs and neural progenitor cells. We identified the top 131 upregulated genes with adjusted P < 0.05 and log2[fold change] > 1 in the NSC/astrocyte population for our dataset and examined their expression levels in the other dataset13. Genes were selected only if they were expressed by >25% NSCs in both datasets. We observed that almost all of these genes were also upregulated in the NSCs of the previously published dataset relative to their astrocytes (Extended Data Fig. 2). This result illustrates a strong correspondence between the NSCs we identified and those independently obtained in the previous study13.
To enable putative identification of NSCs more broadly, we derived a NSC signature scoring metric based on the 131 NSC upregulated genes, computed as the mean z-score over all astrocyte or NSC cells. We computed NSC scores using previously published data13 and observed consistent high scores in their NSCs and low scores in their astrocytes (Extended Data Fig. 2). We also performed the reverse analysis, identifying upregulated genes in NSCs from the previously published data13 using the same criteria as described above. This analysis identified 161 genes, 55 of which were common to the 131 genes from our data. We then computed the mean z-score of these 161 genes both in our NSC/astrocyte group and in the cells from the previous study13 (Extended Data Fig. 2). We note that our NSCs also scored high using this approach, which again indicated a strong concordance in how NSCs are differentiated from astrocytes.
We next applied our annotation approach to a dataset that should not contain any significant number of NSCs. We chose a previously published sequencing dataset of the human prefrontal brain35. We would not expect any significant presence of NSCs in the prefrontal cortex. After performing label transfer, using our data as a reference and annotating cells from the prefrontal brain dataset35, a small number of apparent NSCs were labelled using this approach. However, when we examined the same 131 upregulated genes in NSCs in these cells, we observed a roughly even mix of upregulated and downregulated genes, which indicated that there is a lack of NSC signature and no defined population of NSCs (Extended Data Fig. 2).
Finally, we took a two-pronged approach and analysed two large datasets33,34 using two different methods. For the first dataset33, we examined each sample and tissue region, specifically those annotated as ‘astrocytes', and used label transfer to predict NSCs. We reasoned that the similarity is highest between NSCs and astrocytes; therefore, populations that are typically labelled as astrocytes require in-depth analysis for possible subpopulations in the astrocyte cluster that might be NSCs. We did not observe any NSCs in any of the brain areas but did find a few modestly scoring cells in the pons for sample H19.30.002. Cells were labelled in red if their probability was >0.75 (Extended Data Fig. 7d). Label transfer is well-suited to broadly segregate and annotate cell populations based on a reference dataset. However, label transfer is not necessarily optimal for the identification of rare subpopulations, especially those that have high transcriptional similarity to larger subpopulations, as in the case for the large astrocyte population and the rarer NSC population. For the second dataset34, we used our targeted approach, looking specifically at overexpression of NSC-specific genes relative to astrocytes and considering a holistic annotation across the neurogenic spectrum. We performed a NSC scoring analysis using the above 131-gene signature in the cell population identified as astrocytes using ROSMAP. This analysis was performed for all six brain regions, independently for each sample to avoid sample-to-sample differences from skewing gene expression z-scores (Extended Data Fig. 8). No NSCs were observed in any of the other brain areas other than a few in the anterior thalamus. Further annotation of immature neurons and mGCs by label transfer (using our data as a reference, annotating cells in ROSMAP) in the samples with positive NSCs showed that we were able to identify a significant number of both immature neurons and mGCs in the hippocampus, but we did not identify immature neurons or mGCs in the anterior thalamus (Extended Data Fig. 7c). From the combination of these observations, we conclude that our use of the NSC scoring procedure is specific for identifying NSCs, and that further holistic analysis of neurogenic cell types—in particular the identification of the immature and mGC end points—is crucial for a final determination of the neurogenic niche.
We performed an additional global validation of NSC and neuroblast signatures in a comparison a previously published dataset13. We computed DEGs of NSCs and neuroblasts, this time relative to all other cells in the tissue, for both our data and the previously published data13. We compared the number of common DEGs (log2[fold change] > 1, adjusted P < 0.05, per cent expressed > 25%) of similarly annotated cells (NSCs in both or neuroblasts in both) and computed the statistical enrichment using Fisher's exact test. The overlap of DEGs for both NSCs and neuroblasts had large odds ratios and were highly significant. As a negative control, we considered the reverse comparison; that is, overlap of DEGs in NSCs in one dataset to those from neuroblasts in the other dataset; these were not significant and had odds ratios close to 1 (Supplementary Table 4). Together, these analyses show commonality in the gene sets in our NSC and neuroblast cell types compared with the previously published dataset13 and confirm that NSCs and neuroblasts are also distinct from each other.
We also performed additional specific comparisons to highlight differences between neuroblasts and oligodendrocytes, which have broadly similar transcriptional profiles. We show the expression levels of selected proxies of neuroblasts and oligodendrocytes in a dot plot (Extended Data Fig. 2a). We also computed DEGs and pathway enrichment of for neuroblasts versus mOLs. Pathway analysis revealed 169 pathways that were upregulated in neuroblasts. Of these, 80 pathways were directly related to axonal, dendritic and presynaptic and postsynaptic structure, function and plasticity (Supplementary Table 2). Finally, we performed an RNA velocity analysis over the population of neuroblasts and mOLs and observed a consistently lower latent time estimation for the neuroblast population, again reinforcing the relative level of differentiation of these cells (Extended Data Fig. 7a, b).
After determination of cell types, we re-called peaks separately for each cell type using Seurat49, merging peaks across all cell types to obtain a more complete measurement of the open chromatin peaks for rarer cell types.
We counted the total cells per cell type per sample and computed association statistics between these cell counts and diagnosis of the participants and other AD-related traits using edgeR56 without the TMM normalization. Comparisons between groups, for example, cell abundance between AD and HA, were computed using the exactTest function56. Association of cell-type abundance with continuous variables, such as cognitive scores, were computed using generalized linear models. P values were adjusted for multiple testing using FDR correction.
DEGs for each neurogenic cell type were obtained using the FindAllMarkers function in Seurat49 with the Wilcox test, comparing each cell type to all other cells. This analysis was performed between NSCs, neuroblasts and immature neurons only. Significantly DEGs were determined based on adjusted q < 0.05.
Differential gene and peak statistics between diagnosis groups were computed using a pseudo-bulk approach. Counts for gene expression or open chromatin were summed for each sample across all cells in a given cluster. Low-expressed genes or peaks—expressed in fewer than 25% of samples or with fewer than 50 total counts across all samples—were removed. Differential expression and open chromatin statistics for each cluster were computed using edgeR using the exactTest56 to perform pairwise between groups. P values were adjusted using FDR correction. DEGs were determined based on FDR < 0.05.
Motif enrichment analysis enables inference of specific TFs that are driving developmental changes between clusters. First, we searched for instances of known TF motifs in all peak sequences from the JASPAR database57 using FIMO58. Then we computed motif enrichment statistics for each set of differentially expressed peaks by comparing the fraction of motif-containing peaks in or not in the differentially expressed peaks using Fisher's exact test. We repeated this test for all motifs, correcting for multiple testing using the BH-corrected FDR59.
Pathway enrichment of DEGs was interrogated against the Neuroimmune Gene Ontology (NIGO) Biological Process (BP) pathway database. Pathway enrichment for DEGs was performed with Fisher's exact test in R. P values were adjusted for multiple testing using FDR correction.
Regulatory interactions between TFs and target genes through open chromatin were determined using a similar TF–peak–gene trio approach to that as previously described39. First, low-expressed genes (expressed in <10% of cells) and peaks (observed in <2% of cells) were removed. Potential peak–gene interactions were identified by annotating each peak to all genes within 200 kb or overlapping the body of the gene. TF–peak interactions were identified by searching for TF motifs from the JASPAR core vertebrate database60 in open chromatin regions using FIMO61 with motif P < 1 × 10–5. Peak and gene log-normalized expression levels were averaged over the 20 nearest neighbours.
Potential regulatory interactions from TF gene–peak–target gene trios were constructed on the basis of TF–peak binding and peak–gene proximity in the genome, and Pearson's correlation coefficients were computed on the normalized expression for each pair. TF gene–peak correlation coefficients less than zero were set to 0, and the inferred type of TF–target gene regulatory interaction (activation or repression) was based on the sign of the TF gene–target gene correlation. To rank and prioritize the interactions based on those with the strongest evidence, we computed the geometric mean of the absolute value of the three correlation coefficients. To scale this score with respect to the direction of regulation, we multiplied the score by the sign of the TF gene–target gene correlation.
For GRN analysis of neurogenic cell types (NSCs, neuroblasts and immature neurons), we performed this analysis separately for cells from each diagnosis group (YA, HA, PCI, AD and SA) to enable comparisons of interaction scores between cell types. We also augmented the above-computed scores with the differential gene and peak statistics computed between cell types. For each cell type, we looked at the log fold change values in TF gene, peak and target gene expression. First, we verified that the sign of each correlation coefficient matched the sign of the product of the log2[fold change] values. Second, we computed the geometric mean of the absolute value of all three log2[fold change] values to obtain a cell-type-specific score.
We ran SCENIC+ with region sets built from the 3,000 NTOP topics, OTSU topics, DARs between cell types and DARs between conditions in individual cell types. We used a custom cis-target database created with 1,000-base-pair padding from every region present in our filtered ATAC modality. Input motifs were taken from v10nr_clust-nr.hgnc. We generated these inputs separately for all cell types and neurogenic cell types. Both sets of inputs were independently processed through SCENIC+ using default parameters40.
Interactions between cell types were inferred using the CellChat62 package in R with default parameters for cells from astrocytes, CA neurons and neurogenic cells (NSCs, neuroblasts and immature neurons grouped together). An initial analysis was conducted over all cells from all diagnosis groups. A second analysis was conducted separately for each biological sample. In the second per-sample analysis, we quantified the same interactions that were identified in the first overall analysis to enable a fair comparison of interaction strengths from sample-to-sample. Differential statistics of the interaction probabilities was computed using limma in R63.
Specific filtering for ‘SA resilience' genes and peaks was based on differential gene and peak expression by diagnosis results. AD–YA, AD–HA and SA–AD pairs were compared and then a summarized effect and significance statistic was computed as log2[fold change] × –log10[q]. All three comparisons were required to have the same sign (same direction). A summary score was computed as the geometric mean of the absolute value of all three summary statistics.
Specific filtering for healthy versus unhealthy ageing, by comparing PCI and SA outcomes, was also based on differential gene and peak expression by diagnosis results. In this case, we looked for genes and peaks for which the SA–HA result is opposite to PCI–HA and PCI–YA, and that at least one of these comparisons had q < 0.2.
For CellChat healthy ageing interactions, we obtained interactions that were significantly altered in AD but displayed the same relative directionality in SA–HA, PCI–HA, and PCI–YA.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
Raw and processed datasets associated with this study are publicly available from the Gene Expression Omnibus at accession number GSE268609 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE268609). Source data are provided with this paper.
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Bioinformatic analyses were performed by staff at the UIC Research Informatics Core, a department supported in part by NCATS through grant UM1TR005438. This work was supported by NIA AG033570, AG033570-S2, AG076940, AGO79002, AG060238 and AG061628 (to O.L.), R01-AG091545(JR) and T32 HL139439 (to M.A.S.), F31AG090005 (to M.A.S.), a UI College of Medicine Team Science Award (to O.L. and J.R.), and the Nancy and Buster Alvord endowment (to C.D.K.). Brain donors and tissue resources were supported by the UW Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (P30 AG066509), the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study (U19 AG066567) and the Pacific Northwest Brain Donor Network (supported by funds from NIH UM1 MH130981, UM1 MH134812, U01 NS137500 and U01 NS137484, U24 AG072458, DoD W81XWH-21-S-TBIPH2, the Allen Institute for Brain Science and the Northwestern University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (P30AG072977), the SuperAging Research Initiative (U19AG073153), the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust and the Gefen-Querrey Brain Health Fund). The authors thank H. Song for help with the implementation of the machine learning approach and A. Schantz, J. Campos, E. Ragaglia, A. Wilson and M. Damodarasamy for outstanding data and technical support. This work would be impossible without the incredible generosity of brain donors and their loved ones.
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Ahmed Disouky, K. R. Sabitha, Mostafa M. Mostafa & Orly Lazarov
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Mark A. Sanborn & Jalees Rehman
Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's disease, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA
Ivan Alejandro Ayala, Sandra Weintraub, Tamar Gefen, M.-Marsel Mesulam & Changiz Geula
Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center, Chicago, IL, USA
David A. Bennett
Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
Yisha Lu & Yi Zhou
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
Yisha Lu & Yi Zhou
UW Biorepository and Integrated Neuropathology (BRaIN) Lab, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
C. Dirk Keene
Research Informatics Core, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Mark Maienschein-Cline
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O.L. designed the research, analysed data and wrote the manuscript. A.D. conducted all experiments, acquired and analysed data and wrote the manuscript. K.R.S. and M.M.M. sorted and collected tissue samples for sequencing. I.A.A., C.D.K.,C.G., M.-M.M. and D.A.B. provided the samples. S.W. and T.G. conducted clinical tests for determination of cognitively age-normal versus cognitively age-above normal individuals. Y.Z., Y.L., M.A.S., M.M.-C. and J.R. analysed data. All authors critically revised and approved the manuscript.
Correspondence to
Jalees Rehman or Orly Lazarov.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
A. UMAP of all cell types for all YA cells. B. UMAP of astrocytes, neurogenic cell types and mature granule neurons (mGC), which have broad transcriptional similarity to NSCs, neuroblasts and immature neurons. C. Latent time of RNA velocity, showing earliest time points for NSCs, and development from there towards astrocytes in one direction, and neuroblast/immature/mGC in the other direction. D. Dotplot showing expression of neurogenesis-related marker genes in neurogenic cell types (NSC, neuroblast, immature). E. Smoothed gene expression over latent time for neurogenesis-related marker genes, across all neurogenic cell types. F. Open chromatin (counts per billion bases) around gene promoters (+/2 kb from TSS) for neurogenesis-related marker genes over neurogenic cell types.
Source data
A. Dotplot of expression levels of neuroblasts and oligodendrocyte proxies observed in a single-cell transcriptomics-based human brain atlas. B,C. NSC_versus_astrocyte_DEGs signature. Average predicted probability of label transfer per cell type in the Dumitru et al. dataset13 (B) or Mathys et al. dataset35 (C) based on the current study's signature, i.e., top 131 upregulated genes with p_adj<0.05 and log2FC > 1 in NSC/Astrocyte. In (B) we observed that the vast majority of top NSC genes in the current study were also upregulated in the NSCs identified in Dumitru et al. dataset13. In contrast, in (C) a strong correspondence between the same cell types, and absence of predicted mGC, immature, CA2-4, neuroblast and NSC was observed. D. Left: UMAP of Dumitru et al. dataset13 astrocytes and NSCs. Right: Mean z-score per cell for all astrocytes and NSCs from the Dumitru et al. data based on top NSC genes in the current study. We observed high scoring compatibility between the studies. E. Reverse scoring approach. Top panel “Dumitru”: Top DEGs NSC versus astrocytes in the Dumitru et al. data13 using the same threshold parameters as in the current study. Middle panel “Disouky”: astrocytes and NSC in the current study scored based on top DEGs identified in the Dumitru et al. data13. Low panel “Disouky ATAC UMAP”: NSC and Astrocyte in the current study in a UMAP computed from the ATACseq data showing a distinct chromatin of NSCs from astrocytes. F,G. Lack of neurogenic cell types in other brain regions. Comparison of the current study to Mathys et al. dataset35 (F) and Smajic et al. dataset36 (G). Average predicted probability of label transfer per cell type showed weak correspondence of hippocampal neurogenesis in these studies.
Source data
This analysis was performed using the TF–peak–gene trios approach38.Interactions in NSCs were downregulated in neuroblasts and further downregulated in immature neurons. In contrast, interactions that did not exist in NSCs, were upregulated in neuroblasts and to a greater extent in immature neurons.
Source data
A. Number of cells as a function of diagnosis. B. Cell abundance as a function of diagnosis. C. Latent time of RNA velocity of NSC, neuroblasts, immature neurons, mGCs and astrocytes as a function of diagnosis.
Source data
A-C. eRegulons of neurogenesis in all conditions. A. NSCs. B. Neuroblasts. C. Immature neurons.
Violin plots of QC metrics per sample, colored by group; nCount_Peaks = total counts over all peaks per cell; nCount_RNA = total counts over all genes per cell; nFeature_Peaks = total peaks observed per cell with at least one count; nFeature_RNA = total genes expressed per cell with at least one count. No systematic shifts in sample or cell quality per group that would result in bias or misleading results in the downstream analysis were observed.
Source data
A. Neuroblasts versus immature neurons. Illustrates the final determination of neuroblasts and immature neurons in the current study. “Developmental immature” cell labels from the initial label transfer were clustered based on a comparison with their developmental “time” (CytoTRACE) as neuroblasts or immature neurons, the latter were determined based on machine learning11. B. Velocity of neuroblast versus oligodendrocytes. Latent time from RNA velocity analysis of neuroblast and oligodendrocytes. C. Abundance of immature neurons in the hippocampus in the current study and in the thalamus of Liu et al. dataset34. The annotation of immature neurons and mature granule cells (mGC) in the ROSMAP data was done by label transfer using our dataset as a reference. Annotation was done in the anterior thalamus samples with positive NSCs (see Extended Data Fig. 8). The data showed the identification of a significant number of both immature neurons and mGC in the hippocampus, but none in the anterior thalamus. D. Examination of the current neurogenic signature in Siletti et al. dataset33. Each sample and tissue region from the Siletti datasets, specifically those annotated as “astrocytes”, was examined using label transfer to predict NSCs. We observed no NSC in any of the brain areas but did find a few modestly scoring cells in the pons for H19.30.002. Cells were labeled in red if their probability was >0.75. However, our identification of NSCs did not rely on the label transfer approach.
Examination of the current neurogenic signature in Liu et al. dataset34. This data set has 377 total samples from 111 donors in 6 different brain regions. An NSC scoring analysis using the current study's 131-gene signature in the cell population identified as “astrocytes” by ROSMAP dataset; this analysis was performed for all six brain regions, independently for each sample to avoid sample-to-sample differences from skewing gene expression z-scores. The figure shows a UMAP plot for astrocytes for each sample in each tissue. Three panels per sample per tissue in this plot, from left-to-right: Clustering was performed at resolution 0.5 in Seurat. The NSC score was examined for each cell, and clusters with an average z score > 0.5 were identified as NSCs. We observed NSCs in several hippocampal datasets using this procedure. No NSCs were observed in any of the other brain areas other than a few in the anterior thalamus. For the latter region, no immature neurons were observed.
Full-length heatmap of DEGs in the YA cohort.
Full-length heatmap of DARs in neuroblasts as a function of diagnosis.
Full-length heatmap of DARs in immature neurons as a function of diagnosis.
Full-length heatmap of DEGs in neurogenesis as a function of diagnosis.
Full-length heatmap of DARs in neurogenesis as a function of diagnosis.
Quality control metrics by cell type.
Examination of the NSC signature from a previously published dataset34.
Supplementary Tables 1–16. Supplementary Table 1: human participants in the study. Supplementary Table 2: DEGs and pathway analysis of neuroblasts, mOLs, CA neurons, immature and mGCs in the YA cohort. Supplementary Table 3: DEGs and pathway analysis of NSCs and astrocytes in the YA cohort. Supplementary Table 4: Neuroblast and NSC DEG validation between the current study and a previously published dataset13. Supplementary Table 5: DEGs of the neurogenic population in the YA cohort. Supplementary Table 6: NIGO pathway analysis of the neurogenic population in the YA cohort. Supplementary Table 7: GRNs and strongest motif interactions of the neurogenic population in the YA cohort. Supplementary Table 8: Cell-type abundance. Supplementary Table 9: DEGs across diagnosis. Supplementary Table 10: DARs across diagnosis. Supplementary Table 11: Pathway enrichment analysis of inferred target genes of top DARs that were upregulated in PCI. Supplementary Table 12: TF–target–gene interactions across neurogenesis in each diagnosis group. Supplementary Table 13: Resilience ranking across diagnosis. Supplementary Table 14: DEG contrary expression pattern in HA and SA compared with PCI in each cell type. Supplementary Table 15: DAR contrary expression pattern in HA and SA compared with PCI in each cell type. Supplementary Table 16: CellChat network interactions.
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Disouky, A., Sanborn, M.A., Sabitha, K.R. et al. Human hippocampal neurogenesis in adulthood, ageing and Alzheimer's disease.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10169-4
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You only need to walk past a location with an active WiFi network and radio waves WiFi sends out will bounce off you and create an image
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WiFi makes it possible to access the internet from anywhere, but now it can also be used for underhanded surveillance—and not in the ways you might think.
Sure, there are already countless bots that spy on your internet activity, no matter how you adjust your settings or what blockers you put up. But what's especially unnerving about the new way WiFi is being used as spying tech is that it doesn't rely on browsing history at all. It needs no specialized hardware. It doesn't even need to reach your phone, tablet or any other gadget. You only need to walk past a location with an active WiFi network and radio waves WiFi sends out will bounce off you and create an image, opening up an opportunity to invade your privacy.
When WiFi signals propagate and interact with something or someone, the resulting patterns can be stitched together to create a sort of snapshot using radio signals instead of the light that a camera needs. Once captured and analyzed, these patterns create an image of you that can then be used to secretly follow you just about anywhere WiFi exists. Even if you don't have your phone or laptop, WiFi surveillance can detect you based on solely on your radio-spectrum image. There are no special sensors involved. Tactics like this are problematic enough when individuals use them, so just imagine how they could be wielded by companies and governments that want to know your every move.
Beamforming feedback information (BFI) is what happens when devices linked to a WiFi network, such as smartphones and routers, send feedback signals within that network. Creepier still, this information is transmitted without encryption, meaning anyone in the range of that network can access it. Researchers Julian Todt, Felix Morsbach, and Thorsten Strufe of KASTEL Security Research Labs at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany, are concerned. Earlier attempts at WiFi surveillance required LiDAR sensors or techniques that measured changes in read signals as they bounced off objects and people. BFI makes surveillance without consent much easier than other methods.
“With WiFi networks being ubiquitous in our everyday lives, the impact of unknown privacy threats is likely severe,” the researchers said in a study recently published in Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. “[BFI] can infer the identity of individuals with very high accuracy, across different walking styles and perspectives, even with large sample sizes.”
As radio signals propagate, what's received can be compared to what would be expected if the signals encountered no interference. That comparison offers an estimate of interference that can be helpful for correcting any errors in the data received. Naturally, these estimates carry information about the environment the signals were traveling through. Humans cause a significant amount of interference, and when that is analyzed, a human presence can be inferred. But the information that can be gleaned goes beyond just where you are. Interference analysis can find out sensitive information and also pick up on what you might be doing, allowing whoever is behind the surveillance to decide whether you seem suspicious, even if nothing remotely shady is going on.
WiFi has a physical layer known as channel state information (CSI). Previous versions of CSI were not meant to be used for anything but correcting errors, and accessing the information required an application that was compatible only with specific hardware. While that made it more difficult to use WiFi for sensing, there was a lower risk to personal privacy. Enter WiFi 5. Designed for higher bandwidths, this iteration of WiFi introduced beamforming—and unintentionally made BFI possible. Compromised or attacking devices, known as malicious nodes, can gain only limited access to systems based on CSI. But BFI enables a malicious node to record everything within its broadcasting range, including people.
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is planning to standardize WiFi applications that are capable of sensing even more information—with no privacy protections in sight. With this threat looming and WiFi becoming more necessary than ever, the researchers urge more investigation into BFI, particularly in light of certain unresolved questions. For example, how someone's features or mannerisms influence beamforming reports is still unclear, and how to prevent or at least mitigate privacy breaches still needs to be figured out. For now, some countermeasures exist, but their effectiveness is questionable.
“As BFI is transmitted unencrypted over the air, no specialized hardware with custom firmware is necessary to record it and it is easier to record multiple perspectives,” the researchers said. “This highlights the privacy threats associated with BFI-based sensing. With this hardware making its way into millions of homes, the privacy concerns are severe.”
Maybe it's time for Rockwell to update the lyrics to his iconic hit “Somebody's Watching Me” to include something about WiFi.
Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.
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As we age, neuron production declines in the human brain, but scientists just identified the protein key to regenerating neural stem cells.
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Aging has always been an inevitable part of life, but now scientists hope that one of its cellular mechanisms could help reverse its effects. The mechanism in question is the seemingly unavoidable decline of neural stem cells. That decline is a pretty big piece of biological bad news, as a dip in neuronal regeneration can have profound impacts on learning and memory. Recently, a team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) wondered if investigating the underlying mechanism of decline could help them find the key to halting the process.
This search led them to a transcription factor (a specialized protein that regulates gene expression) whose name is a bit of a mouthful—cyclin D-binding myb-like transcription factor 1, or DMTF1. In their experiments, they found that DMTF1 appears repressed in “aged” neural stem cells, and conversely, that restoring DMTF1's expression helped stem cells get their mojo back. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.
“While [previous] studies have found that defective neural stem cell regeneration can be partially restored, its underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood,” Derrick Sek Tong Ong, the senior author of the study from NUS, said in a press statement. “Understanding the mechanisms for neural stem cell regeneration provides a stronger foundation for studying age-related cognitive decline.”
The NUS research team used human stem cell systems and mouse models to simulate aging, and then analyzed how DMTF1 influenced neural stem cell function through transcriptome analyses and genome binding. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences capping the ends of chromosomes to prevent them from fraying or tangling, and they naturally get shorter over time as cells divide inside an aging organism. Thus, reduced telomere length is a telltale sign of aging. Indeed, short telomeres can trigger cellular senescence, which in turn leads to decreased cell division and a rise in inflammation.
What the researchers discovered is that DMTF1 can control the expression of helper genes that activate other, growth-related genes through chromatin remodeling. Crucially, this mechanism rescued the proliferation of neural stem cells impaired by telomere shortening, even without restoring telomere length itself. This discovery suggests that in the future, therapies targeting DMTF1 can reverse age-related decline in brain stem cells by reactivating the molecular machinery that drives cell division.
“Our findings suggest that DMTF1 can contribute to neural stem cell multiplication in neurological aging,” Liang Yajing, a co-author of the study from NUS, said in a press statement. “While our study is in its infancy, the findings provide a framework for understanding how aging-associated molecular changes affect neural stem cell behavior, and may ultimately guide the development of successful therapeutics.”
While these experiments were all performed outside of a human body, the researchers are still hopeful that future studies on DMTF1 could, at the very least, improve neuronal stem cell regeneration—even as telomeres shorten and aging takes hold. Such future treatments wouldn't be a rewind button on aging, but they could help ensure that those golden years stay golden.
Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.
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3 min read
‘Wellness influencer' Casey Means heads to confirmation hearing
The U.S. Senate is holding a confirmation hearing today for wellness influencer Casey Means, the Trump administration's pick for surgeon general
By Dan Vergano edited by Tanya Lewis
Snow falls on the U.S. Capitol on February 23, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
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Wellness influencer Casey Means, who left a medical residency to pursue alternative medicine, will appear today at a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on her nomination for U.S. surgeon general. Her original hearing, scheduled for October 30, 2025, was delayed by the delivery of her first child.
Last May President Donald Trump nominated Means for the job of the “Nation's Doctor,” a role best known for high-profile health advisories. The surgeon general is also head of a uniformed public health corps whose members serve in agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Means, age 38, was nominated after the Trump administration withdrew its initial nomination of Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat for the job following reports that she had made misleading claims about her medical training and military service.
“[Means's] academic achievements, together with her life's work, are absolutely outstanding,” Trump said in a social media post announcing her nomination.
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Means is a popular wellness influencer allied with Department of Health and Human Services chief Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. She has argued that many diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's, originate from poor diet, sleeplessness and a lack of exercise—all of which, she has said, ultimately affect cellular function under a “mitochondrial dysfunction” theory of disease.
She is expected to face questions about financial conflicts of interest over ties to companies that sell nutritional supplements and her role in the “functional medicine” company she co-founded, Levels, which markets glucose monitors to healthy people. (The American Academy of Family Physicians temporarily stopped awarding continuing medical education credits in functional medicine in 2014 after finding some of its treatments to be “harmful and dangerous.” Courses that teach clinicians how to perform specific techniques are still barred.) Means said in a government filing last September that she will resign from her advisory position at Levels if she is confirmed as surgeon general.
The Senate is also expected to question Means about her views on vaccines. Republican senator and physician Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has increasingly voiced concerns about moves by the HHS to undercut childhood vaccine recommendations. Means has meanwhile echoed Kennedy's vaccine skepticism in recent statements.
Educated as a physician at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Means resigned from her medical residency training as an ear, nose and throat surgeon in 2018 to co-found Levels. Means's brother Calley Means, with whom she co-authored the best-selling nutrition advice book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection between Metabolism and Limitless Health, recently stepped down as a White House adviser to Kennedy. His tenure was marked by conflict-of-interest concerns. Casey Means has criticized the food and pharmaceutical industries for underplaying the role of healthy eating in preventing disease, a standard argument of the Trump administration's “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
Bloomberg reported last October that in Casey Means's testimony at the hearing, she plans to say, “My professional history has prepared me to be an innovative, unifying and practical leader focused on reversing chronic disease.”
Former Trump administration surgeon general Jerome Adams and American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin have criticized Means because she doesn't have an active medical license or board certification, and they have argued that she oversells wellness as a cure for disease. Her endorsement of unpasteurized raw milk despite its proven health harms and her focus on mitochondrial illnesses echo similar rhetoric from Kennedy.
“Casey Means is more influencer than medical practitioner,” says Michigan State University's Mariah Wellman, who studies influencer credibility in the wellness industry. Means is a “prime example” of an online entrepreneur using a medical degree to establish credibility while speaking outside the boundaries of their training, she adds.
“I am concerned that Means will not work to make Americans healthy and instead further her own goals of becoming more popular online and making more money—the exact thing she often states she is fighting against,” Wellman says.
The confirmation hearing will begin at 10 A.M. EST.
Dan Vergano is senior editor, Washington, D.C., at Scientific American. He has previously written for Grid News, BuzzFeed News, National Geographic and USA Today. He is chair of the New Horizons committee for the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and a journalism award judge for both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
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Governments have announced plans to reduce the number of animals, such as mice, used in experimental procedures. Credit: Philip Cheung for The Washington Post/Getty
Last November, the UK government announced a bold plan to phase out animal testing in some areas of research. Animal tests for skin irritation are scheduled for elimination this year, and some studies on dogs should be slashed by 2030. The long-term vision is “a world where the use of animals in science is eliminated in all but exceptional circumstances”, the government policy reads.
Why simply ending animal testing isn't the answer in biomedical research
Why simply ending animal testing isn't the answer in biomedical research
Other nations are making similar moves. Last April, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans to make animal studies the “exception rather than the norm” in drug safety and toxicity testing in 3–5 years. The same month, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed an initiative to reduce the use of animals in research that it funds. This year, the European Commission plans to publish a road map to end animal testing in chemical safety assessments.
Ethical and animal-welfare concerns have long fuelled efforts to curb animal use in research — and now rapid advances in alternative scientific methods are accelerating the shift. These ‘new approach methodologies' (NAMs) include devices known as organs-on-chips, 3D tissue cultures called organoids and computational models, such as artificial-intelligence systems. The number of biomedical publications using only NAMs grew from around 25,000 to 100,000 between 2006 and 2022, according to an analysis of studies on seven diseases by Animal Free Research UK, an organization that promotes the replacement of animal experiments1 (see ‘Alternatives on the up'). And China is investing heavily in this area: in 2024, it launched the Human Organ Physiopathology Emulation System, an infrastructure project dedicated to developing NAMs, backed with an investment of 2,640 million yuan (US$382 million).
Source: Ref. 1
Proponents say that NAMs can be better than animals at mimicking human biology and predicting whether new drugs are safe and effective. Organs-on-chips and organoids are often created with human cells, and computational models can be designed using human data. The shift towards alternative models is “long overdue”, says Donald Ingber, a bioengineer at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston, Massachusetts, and a co-founder of Emulate, a biotechnology company in Boston focused on organs-on-chips.
But NAMs are a long way from ousting all animal procedures in research, scientists say. Some biological systems are too complex and unpredictable to study without animals. And many of the alternative methods have yet to be validated — to show that they represent the system they are modelling accurately and reproducibly enough to satisfy drug and chemical regulators. “Not all of these [alternative] models are ready for prime time,” Ingber says.
Efforts to replace, reduce and refine the use of animals in research (known as the 3Rs) have been ramping up for decades; in some places, use of animals is already falling. Data from the United Kingdom show that the number of scientific procedures on animals fell from 4.14 million in 2015 to 2.64 million in 2024 (see ‘Falling numbers'). The total number of animals used in research and testing in the European Union and Norway dropped by 5% between 2018 and 2022. (The number used in the United States is hard to pin down because the law does not require reporting on rats, mice and fish.)
Source: Annual Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2024 (Home Office, 2025).
In the United Kingdom, around 76% of experimental animal procedures are for basic and applied research: understanding organisms, modelling disease and developing new therapies (see ‘What animals are used for'). Another 22% are part of regulatory procedures — mostly testing the toxicity and safety of new medicines and other chemicals before they can be used. Some 67% of all procedures involve mice or rats (see go.nature.com/3mzfkgw).
Source: Annual Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2024 (Home Office, 2025).
But these and other animals have limitations, especially when it comes to understanding and intervening in human diseases. Medicines that work in animal models during preclinical testing often prove ineffective in humans. This is one major reason that around 86% of investigational drugs fail in clinical trials2, and why many researchers are focused on developing alternatives.
Take sepsis, for instance, a severe reaction to infection. Researchers have developed more than 100 therapies for sepsis that looked promising in rodent models but that were ineffective in clinical trials3. That's partly because of differences in human and rodent immune systems and the difficulty of mimicking a complex condition that varies from one person to the next in inbred mice that are genetically similar and raised in uniform conditions.
Increasingly, researchers see NAMs as a way to help. Joseph Wu, a cardiologist and researcher at Stanford University, California, and his team have been developing an approach that they dubbed “clinical trials in a dish”. This involves generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from a range of people with a medical condition, using these to grow cells or organoids and then testing whether potential drugs improve how the ‘diseased' models function.
Alternatives to animal testing are the future — it's time that journals, funders and scientists embrace them
Alternatives to animal testing are the future — it's time that journals, funders and scientists embrace them
In one 2020 study4, Wu and his team grew iPSCs and then endothelial cells — which line blood vessels — from members of a family carrying a mutated gene that can cause a common form of heart failure. Using these cells, the researchers were able to screen possible drugs and pinpoint one that helped to improve cardiovascular function in two members of the family with the mutation, and that might be used more widely. Integrating this method into a drug-development pipeline, says Wu, could help to reveal whether a drug works before animal testing, reduce the number of animals used and increase the success of clinical trials.
Studies suggest that some NAMs are as good as, or better than, animal tests. Emulate has developed an organ-on-a-chip system called Liver-Chip, a USB-stick-sized device in which human liver cells are grown in tiny fluid-filled channels and used to test whether potential drugs might cause liver damage. A 2022 study5 by the firm suggested that the chips could correctly identify compounds known to have caused liver injury with 87% accuracy, without falsely flagging harmless compounds as toxic. The chips also detected 12 of 15 liver-harming drugs that were previously, using animal models, deemed safe enough to proceed to clinical trials.
Animal research is not always king: researchers should explore the alternatives
Animal research is not always king: researchers should explore the alternatives
In 2024, Liver-Chip was accepted in the FDA's Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs (ISTAND) pilot programme, which supports the advancement of tools for drug development. If approved, pharmaceutical firms could use the chip to test for toxicity in place of animal models and submit the data as part of a drug-approval application.
Such chips are highly specialized, however. Edward Kelly, a toxicologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and his colleagues developed a kidney chip that can reproduce aspects of acute kidney injury in humans6 and that is being considered for the ISTAND programme. But the device includes only one of the kidney's more than two dozen cell types, he says. “It's a reductionist approach, which allows us to study those cells in greater detail. But understanding what happens in the whole human kidney still requires animal studies,” he says.
Another popular alternative to animal testing is organoids — 3D living systems that capture many of the features of real tissues or organs.
Over the past decade or so, researchers have created a wide array of organoids that can model human diseases, including cancers and genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis — and used those to screen for possible drugs and test for toxicity. In a 2021 study7, researchers generated human liver organoids using iPSCs. They used these to create a toxicity screening tool that detected substances that curbed the organoids' bile transport and mitochondrial function. The assay was highly accurate when tested on 238 marketed drugs.
Human brain models and other organoids could reduce the use of animals in research.Credit: Noelia Antón-Bolaños, Irene Faravelli, Rahel Kastli/Arlotta Lab
And a third alternative is computational models, in which researchers test how a drug behaves in silico. In 2021, a team developed a tool for testing whether a compound causes skin sensitization — an allergic reaction in people. This is a standard part of safety testing for chemicals in industrial and household products and medicines, and conventionally requires animal tests. The team built a virtual test using data on around 430 chemicals from previous human, mouse and laboratory studies, and showed that it could accurately identify chemicals with a 1% chance of causing a skin reaction8. The tool was accepted as an approach for skin-allergy testing last year by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which sets internationally recognized guidelines for safety testing chemicals.
Researchers hope that AI can help too. Several regulatory agencies, including the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), are working on integrating AI tools into their chemical or drug safety-assessment pipelines.
Mini hearts, lungs and livers made in lab now grow their own blood vessels
Mini hearts, lungs and livers made in lab now grow their own blood vessels
In 2023, researchers at the FDA's National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson, Arkansas, and their colleagues used clinical data on more than 8,000 rats treated with 138 compounds to build a generative AI model called AnimalGAN. In a simulated experiment involving 100,000 virtual rats, the team showed that the model could correctly rank the liver toxicity of three drugs with similar chemical structures9. This approach is now part of a broader programme at the agency to advance the use of AI tools in toxicology.
The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly investing in NAMs. Marianne Manchester, global head of pharmaceutical sciences at the multinational drug company Roche in Basel, Switzerland, says that the firm has a growing number of studies using NAMs to test drug candidates in areas such as oncology and immunology. In 2023, the company launched the Institute of Human Biology, which is developing human model systems, including organoids, to speed up drug development. Animal data are still mandatory for most new drug applications for marketing approval in the United States and Europe, but the company has waivers to use NAMs data for 12 submissions to regulatory authorities, including the FDA and EMA, Manchester says. “There is much more openness to considering these alternative approaches.”
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Why simply ending animal testing isn't the answer in biomedical research
Alternatives to animal testing are the future — it's time that journals, funders and scientists embrace them
Animal research is not always king: researchers should explore the alternatives
Mini hearts, lungs and livers made in lab now grow their own blood vessels
This AI method could turbocharge the hunt for new medicines
AI can help to speed up drug discovery — but only if we give it the right data
Mini-colon and brain ‘organoids' shed light on cancer and other diseases
Brain tissues, assemble! Inside the push to build better brain models
‘An AlphaFold 4' – scientists marvel at DeepMind drug spin-off's exclusive new AI
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Article 25 FEB 26
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Why simply ending animal testing isn't the answer in biomedical research
Alternatives to animal testing are the future — it's time that journals, funders and scientists embrace them
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Mini hearts, lungs and livers made in lab now grow their own blood vessels
This AI method could turbocharge the hunt for new medicines
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February 25, 2026
2 min read
Chimpanzee pee reveals how our primate cousins are getting drunk on fermented fruit
A urinalysis shows that these apes ingest significant amounts of alcohol, providing new clues to how alcohol influences the animals' behavior
By K. R. Callaway edited by Claire Cameron
Chimps are voracious eaters with a soft spot for overripe fruit.
AfriPics.com/Alamy
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A chimpanzee might not walk into a bar, but these apes have a taste for alcohol.
Specifically, they consume alcohol inside fermented fruits, from figs to star apples to local stone fruits. As these fruits ripen, they produce sugars, which combine with yeast to produce ethanol. While the amount of ethanol in an individual piece of fruit is very small, chimps are voracious, with some eating about 4.5 kilograms of fruit a day. Old research suggested that, adjusted for body weight, a chimpanzee might ingest the equivalent of more than two standard alcoholic drinks a day. But proof of this consumption had been elusive—until now.
A new analysis of chimpanzees' pee confirms that the apes ingest enough alcohol to show up on field tests of their urine. The finding could shed light on how the psychoactive substance affects the animals' behavior.
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“We can't jump the gun on the conclusions, but there are a lot of avenues where the psychoactive influence of alcohol would be useful for chimpanzee behavior and ecology,” says Aleksey Maro, a doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the study.
Maro and his team followed a group of chimps at Ngogo, a research site within Uganda's Kibale National Park. They collected the apes' urine and identified the presence of alcohol in the samples on-site with dipstick assays that are typically used to test humans for alcohol consumption.
We know that alcohol can significantly influence human behavior, whether by impairing our cognition or affecting our motor function—not to mention by causing hangovers. But it's possible that consuming alcohol could proffer some benefit to chimps, for example, by lowering their anxiety while they guard their territory or by boosting socialization within their group.
Some researchers doubt that chimps seek out these effects the way humans might pursue a little light relief at a bar—and it's unclear if chimps feel alcohol's effects in the same way we do.
“In a sense, alcohol makes humans more like chimpanzees,” says Kevin Langergraber, a chimp ecologist at Arizona State University, who was not involved in the study. “I have been at Ngogo many times when the chimpanzees are feeding on these supercrops of Chrysophyllum fruits and have never noticed that the chimps are behaving strangely.”
Maro says a better way to think about the chimpanzees' alcohol ingestion is to compare it to sharing a bottle of wine with friends over a meal. The apes definitely consume the equivalent of a standard drink or two's worth of booze, but when they do so, they also have a full stomach and, perhaps, foster a closer relationship to their peers.
“You have a glass of wine with dinner; you talk to people. Maybe this is where it comes from evolutionarily,” Maro says.
K. R. Callaway is an editorial intern at Scientific American. She specializes in science, health, history and policy.
If you enjoyed this article, I'd like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I've been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
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February 25, 2026
2 min read
Baby butterflies keep the beat to fool ants into taking care of them
These caterpillars rely on ants to tend them, and they use a surprisingly complex sense of rhythm to make it happen
By Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson
Ant carrying a caterpillar of a type called Maculinea in which juveniles must be tended by ants to survive.
Vibrant Lab, Torino (CC BY-SA)
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Certain crafty caterpillars have an unusual approach to ensuring they live long enough to become a butterfly: each convinces an ant to carry it into the ant's nest, providing food and shelter. Now scientists have found that these caterpillars use a surprisingly complex rhythm like a secret knock to convince the ants to come fetch them.
That's according to research published on February 25 in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, which found that caterpillars can keep a beat called double meter that has so far been identified only in a couple of primates, says co-author Chiara De Gregorio, who studies animal behavior at the University of Warwick in England. “That was very exciting,” she says.
De Gregorio more regularly studies primates than insects, but her focus is on how rhythm shapes communication. She expanded to insects when colleagues approached her and noted that these caterpillars were somehow internally generating vibrations that seemed to mimic the pitch of a queen ant. (The ants rub together hardened parts of their abdomen to make their vibrations, but scientists aren't sure yet how the caterpillars are accomplishing the feat.) The scientists wondered whether the caterpillars might have been matching the ants' rhythm as well.
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So the researchers headed out to the field in northern Italy and collected nests from two groups of ants, as well as caterpillars from nine species of butterflies that were related to one another but that had shown varying degrees of association with ants—some absolutely required tending by ants to survive, others were happy to be taken in could can manage on their own, and the rest had no connection with ants at all.
One of the Maculinea butterflies as an adult.
Vibrant Lab, Torino (CC BY-SA)
The scientists then recorded the vibrations each animal made. Amplified to reach a human ear, they just sounded like noise, but with the help of acoustic analysis software, De Gregorio and her colleagues were able to parse the rhythms created by each insect.
All the insects that the researchers analyzed were able to keep a steady pulsing beat that scientists call isochrony. “We were already shocked when we found really regular metronomic isochronous signal,” De Gregorio says. “We were like, ‘Oh, that's very cool.'”
But what was even more surprising was that both the ants and the caterpillars who required care from them also created a much rarer rhythm called double meter, in which one beat lasts either twice or half as long as the beat that follows it. So far, De Gregorio says, scientists have yet to observe double meter in birds and have only found it in the vocalizations of a couple species of primate.
She and her colleagues hope to follow up with more experiments on these insects, particularly manipulating caterpillar recordings to understand how ants' tendency to rescue caterpillars varies with the summons.
Overall, De Gregorio hopes the finding underscores the role of rhythm in communication. “The more we study rhythm, the more we see [it] in so many different animal species,” she says. “Evolution works in very weird and funny ways.”
Meghan Bartels is a science journalist based in New York City. She joined Scientific American in 2023 and is now a senior reporter there. Previously, she spent more than four years as a writer and editor at Space.com, as well as nearly a year as a science reporter at Newsweek, where she focused on space and Earth science. Her writing has also appeared in Audubon, Nautilus, Astronomy and Smithsonian, among other publications. She attended Georgetown University and earned a master's degree in journalism at New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.
If you enjoyed this article, I'd like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.
I've been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.
If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.
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A new study has found tiny plastic particles in nine out of 10 men diagnosed with prostate cancer. Researchers also discovered that these microplastics were present at higher concentrations in cancerous tumors than in nearby noncancerous prostate tissue.
The investigation was carried out at NYU Langone Health, including its Perlmutter Cancer Center and Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards. The research team set out to explore whether exposure to microplastics could contribute to the development of prostate cancer, which the American Cancer Society identifies as the most common cancer among men in the United States.
How Microplastics Enter the Human Body
Plastic materials used in food packaging, cosmetics, and many everyday products can break down into microscopic fragments when heated, worn down, or chemically processed. These particles can enter the body through food, breathing contaminated air, or contact with the skin. Previous research has detected microplastics in nearly every organ, as well as in bodily fluids and even the placenta. Despite their widespread presence, scientists still do not fully understand how these particles may affect human health.
Higher Plastic Levels in Cancerous Tissue
The researchers examined prostate tissue collected from 10 patients undergoing surgery to remove the gland. Plastic particles were identified in 90% of tumor samples and in 70% of benign prostate tissue samples.
The difference in concentration was notable. On average, tumor samples contained about 2.5 times more plastic than healthy tissue (about 40 micrograms of plastic per gram of tissue compared with 16 micrograms per gram).
"Our pilot study provides important evidence that microplastic exposure may be a risk factor for prostate cancer," said study lead author Stacy Loeb, MD, a professor in the NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Departments of Urology and Population Health.
Loeb noted that earlier research had suggested possible links between microplastics and conditions such as heart disease and dementia, but there had been little direct evidence tying them specifically to prostate cancer.
The findings will be presented on Feb. 26 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. According to Loeb, this is the first Western study to measure microplastic levels in prostate tumors and compare them directly with levels in noncancerous prostate tissue.
Rigorous Testing to Prevent Contamination
To conduct the analysis, scientists first reviewed tumor and benign tissue samples under visual inspection. They then used specialized instruments to measure the quantity, chemical composition, and structure of microplastic particles. The team focused on 12 of the most common plastic molecules.
Because plastic is widely used in medical and laboratory equipment, researchers took extra precautions to prevent contamination. They replaced plastic tools with alternatives made from aluminum, cotton, and other nonplastic materials. All testing was performed in controlled clean rooms designed specifically for microplastic analysis.
Possible Role of Inflammation in Cancer Development
"By uncovering yet another potential health concern posed by plastic, our findings highlight the need for stricter regulatory measures to limit the public's exposure to these substances, which are everywhere in the environment," said study senior author Vittorio Albergamo, PhD.
Albergamo, an assistant professor in the NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics, said the team plans to further investigate how microplastics behave inside the body and whether they may contribute to cancer formation. One possibility under consideration is that the particles trigger a prolonged immune response (inflammation) within prostate tissue. Over time, chronic inflammation can damage cells and cause genetic changes that lead to cancer.
He emphasized that the study involved a small group of patients and that larger studies will be necessary to confirm the findings.
Prostate Cancer Statistics and Study Support
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in eight men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime.
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
In addition to Loeb and Albergamo, the NYU Langone team included Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP; Trevor Johnson, PhD; Fang-Ming Deng, MD, PhD; Mark Strong, DO; David Wise, MD, PhD; José Alemán, MD, PhD; Zixuan Mo, BS; Mariana Rangel Camacho, BS; Nataliya Byrne, BA; Tatiana Sanchez Nolasco, MPH; Adrian Rivera, MPH; William Huang, MD; Herbert Lepor, MD; Wei Phin Tan, MD; and James Wysock, MD. Samir Taneja, MD, of Northwell Health in New York City also contributed to the study.
Loeb has consulted for pharmaceutical company Astellas, digital health company Savor Health, and men's health organization Movember, and has received research support from Endo USA Inc. She also participated in advisory boards for Endo USA, Blue Earth Diagnostics, Pfizer, Sumitomo Pharma, and Doceree. Wysock has consulted for medical equipment manufacturers Edap -- Focal One, and URO-1 Medical. Wise is a paid consultant for Pfizer, Bayer, K36, OncoC4, AstraZeneca, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and is an expert witness for Exxon Mobil. None of these activities are related to the current study. NYU Langone Health is managing the terms and conditions of these relationships in accordance with its policies and procedures.
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Nature Communications
volume 17, Article number: 2015 (2026)
Cite this article
Arenes, and particularly heteroarenes are integral structural components of a variety of chemicals and represent a privileged class of bioactive compounds found in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and vitamins. Diastereoselective hydrogenation of multi-substituted (hetero)arenes offers an efficient and industrially relevant approach to convert these compounds into valuable, diversified 3D building blocks for applications for example in drug innovation. We show that a rationally designed Pt catalyst permits the general diastereoselective hydrogenation of a broad range of multi-substituted and functionalized arenes and heteroarenes using mild conditions. The corresponding cyclic products are obtained with very high diastereoselectivity (d.r. value up to 99/1). The practical applicability of this catalysis is illustrated by the straightforward preparation of a novel plasticizer on kg-scale under solvent-free conditions.
Arenes and heteroarenes are widely used in the chemical industry and are the most common structural motifs in small molecule pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and natural products1. They can be easily functionalized by various synthetic methods, making them versatile chemical intermediates for many products in our daily lives. Notably, the saturated (hetero)aromatic analogs are much less investigated compared with the well-explored (hetero)aromatic counterparts. To illustrate: Compared to aromatic acids/esters and the corresponding boronic acids/esters, cyclohexanecarboxylic acids/esters and cyclohexylboronic acids/esters are 1–3 orders of magnitude less commercially available (Supplementary Table 1). In contrast to their commercial availability, saturated (hetero)cycles have attracted rapidly growing attention in recent years in many fields such as the mass production of chemicals2, energy generation3, and storage4,5, drug discovery1, etc. Compared to the planar (hetero)aromatic compounds, their saturated (hetero)cyclic analogs have three-dimensional structures, especially when two or more substituents are present. This three-dimensionality of the structures offers the possibility of achieving significant positive changes in the compound properties. In the polymer industry, for example, the glass transition temperature (Tg) of a material can be adjusted by manipulating the ratio between cis and trans diastereomers2. A number of other examples can be found in current drug research. Here, there is a growing interest in the integration of more three-dimensional structural components and the use of sp3-C centers in the development of new drugs (“escape from the flatland”) in order to improve the diversity of bioactive compound libraries and expand the chemical space6,7,8. Indeed, beneficial correlations have been demonstrated between increased molecular complexity and the improved clinical success of compound transition from discovery to drugs9. As a consequence, 3D-saturated (hetero)cyclic scaffolds are featured in a large number of top-selling small molecule drugs in recent years. However, it remains challenging and step-intensive to synthesize the desired multi-substituted (hetero)cyclic 3D scaffolds10.
Among the numerous known synthetic methods for the preparation of aliphatic saturated (hetero)cyclic compounds, catalytic stereoselective hydrogenations are probably the most general, powerful, and atomically efficient method11. In this respect, diastereoselective hydrogenations offer a direct pathway to unlock the 3D chemical structures starting from abundant 2D (hetero)arenes with di- or multi-substituents. However, the high kinetic barrier to break aromaticity (e.g., the aromatic stabilization energy for benzene is 36 kcal·mol−1)12 and to achieve chemo- and stereoselectivity in the presence of other functional groups remain major challenges for any catalyst development. Nevertheless, sophisticated molecular catalysts including borenium-13, borane-14,15, iridium-16, rhodium-17,18,19,20, zirconium-21, and molybdenum-based complexes22 allowed to achieve such transformations. From a practical point of view, homogeneous systems have intrinsic disadvantages like more difficult catalyst recycling, sensitivity, often complex ligand synthesis, and/or the use of basic or acidic additives. Obviously, the development of a robust heterogeneous catalyst is more attractive for many applications, especially on a larger scale. Despite the many heterogeneous catalysts developed for arene hydrogenations3,4,23,24,25,26, there is only a very limited number of publications regarding the diastereoselective hydrogenation of multiple-substituted (hetero)arenes, and most known materials make use of chiral auxiliaries27,28 or Lewis acids29.
Following today's vision of increasing sustainability in advanced chemical production, we herein present a unique heterogeneous Pt catalyst, which allows for the general diastereoselective hydrogenation of a variety of multi-substituted (up to six substituents!) and functionalized (hetero)arenes under mild reaction conditions. A combination of kinetic studies and modern characterization techniques identified a two-shell Pt structure as the most active site. To showcase the practicability of the catalyst and methodology, a phthalate-free plasticizer (cis−1,2-cyclohexanedicarboxylic acid, dioctyl ester) was prepared on a kg-scale under solvent-free conditions.
As a model reaction, the diastereoselective hydrogenation of the industrial bulk product dimethyl phthalate (1a, DP for short) to provide dimethyl 1,2-cyclohexane dicarboxylate was used, as the related higher esters are of interest as an alternative for phthalate plasticizers. To achieve high stereoselectivity and to identify highly active materials, catalytic tests were performed under mild reaction conditions (25 °C, 10 bar H2 pressure).
We commenced the study testing different commercially available and homemade supported metal catalysts (Table 1). Except for Pt-based catalysts, which showed limited conversions, no activity was observed for all the other tested materials (Pd/C, Ru/C, Ni/C, Co/C, and Cu/C) under these conditions (Table 1, entries 1–7). Variation of the support showed Pt/TiO2 as the optimal catalyst composition (Table 1, entries 6–10). For all the tested Pt/TiO2 materials, an excellent diastereoselective ratio (d.r.) of 99:1 towards the cis-product (2a) was obtained in a wide temperature range from 25 °C to 120 °C (Table 1, entries 11–13), which is different compared to other Pt-based catalysts30. The ester group also remained intact, and no over-hydrogenation occurred31. With an increased reaction time, excellent yield and d.r. can be observed at ambient conditions (25 °C, 1 bar H2 pressure, Table 1, entry 14). We also noted that, commercial Pt/C from different suppliers exhibited different activities (Table 1, entries 6 and 7). It is thus interesting and significant to identify the real catalytically active site to allow reproducible material preparation and the rational design of a highly efficient catalyst. Hence, we prepared a series of Pt/TiO2 catalysts with different Pt loadings (denoted as xPt/TiO2, where x represents the weight percentage of Pt) using an impregnation method as reported32. The measured Pt loading of all the prepared samples is very close to the designed value, as evidenced by the ICP-OES results (Supplementary Table 2). As shown in Fig. 1a, turnover frequency (TOF) shows an increasing trend when the Pt loading increases from 0.5 wt% to 4 wt%, followed by a slight decrease when further increasing the Pt loading to 6 wt%. To illustrate this phenomenon, kinetic studies were performed. The effect of mass transfer was eliminated (Supplementary Fig. 1) to ensure that the data were collected in a kinetically controlled region. The reaction orders for substrate 1a and hydrogen are almost identical for all samples tested (Fig. 1b): an order close to 0 for 1a and a positive order in the range of 0.7 ± 0.1 for hydrogen (Fig. 1c, data summarized in Supplementary Table 4). These reaction order values are consistent with those reported in the literature for the hydrogenation of benzene33,34, toluene35, and benzoic acid36 over Pt-based catalysts. A zero-order reaction for 1a indicates that the substrate 1a is involved in the reaction in a strongly adsorbed state. In addition, the reaction order values measured here are supposed to reflect a reaction mechanism in which the hydrogen addition to the intermediate on the catalyst surface is most likely the rate-determining step of this reaction. While we should note that it is also possible that during the reaction, the catalyst surface is saturated with substrate 1a, resulting in the hydrogen chemisorption as the kinetically limiting step. The effect of temperature on the reaction rates of all catalyst samples can be seen in the Arrhenius diagram (Fig. 1d). The dependencies in the Arrhenius diagram were linear in the investigated temperature range of 298–313 K for all investigated samples. Hence, the apparent activation energy (Ea) can be determined within this region. For all the samples, the Ea values are quite close, within the range of 33–42 kJ·mol−1, which is in agreement with reported data34,37. The measured kinetic parameters, including the reaction orders for the substrate 1a and H2, together with the apparent activation energies, did not differ significantly for all the tested samples, suggesting no obvious change in the reaction mechanism. Consequently, we would consider that the difference in reactivity originates from the number of active sites. In other words, since the total number of Pt centers involved in the reaction is the same (0.5 mol%) for all samples, it is reasonable to assume that some specific centers are the most active sites for the reaction, while others are less active or even inactive.
a) The effect of Pt loading on the activity. b Reaction orders with respect to the substrate. c Reaction orders with respect to H2. d Arrhenius plots. The error bars represent the standard deviation obtained from three independent performance tests. Reaction conditions: 0.25–1 mmol substrate, 0.5 mol% Pt, 5–20 bar H2, 2 mL cyclohexane, 25–40 °C.
The catalyst structure essentially comprises the electronic and the geometric structure38. To uncover the most active site of the catalyst, we first performed X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) to explore the effect of the electronic structure on the reactivity. As shown in Supplementary Fig. 2, both Pt0 and PtO were observed for all the samples. The fractions of these two species are quite close (around 62–66% for Pt0 and 34–38% for PtO, as shown in Supplementary Table 5), indicating that the electronic structure is not the decisive factor for the difference in the catalytic reactivity. Therefore, we assume a determinant role of the geometric structure, although controversial conclusions have been drawn for the hydrogenation of benzene and toluene. Such reactions have been designated as structure-insensitive reactions by groups of Verykios39 and Figueiredo40, while Somorjai and co-workers37 observed a moderate structure sensitivity for these hydrogenation reactions. To investigate the size distributions of supported Pt clusters and nanoparticles (NPs), we used scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). Some representative high-angle annular dark-field (HAADF) images are shown in Fig. 2a–e, which are categorized according to the physical model with different numbers of shells (definition is given in Supplementary Figs. 3 and 4 and Table 2)32. A significant amount of one-shell structured Pt was observed over 0.5Pt/TiO2 and 1Pt/TiO2. Because these two samples exhibited the least reactivity (Fig. 1a), we conclude that this type of Pt structure is not the most active site. When the Pt loading increases, the number of clusters (particle size < 0.5 nm) becomes negligible, while that of two-shell structured Pt and larger Pt NPs increases to some extent. Here, we summarize the relative populations of supported Pt with different structures. When the Pt NP are present in a three-shell structure or even larger size, its property becomes similar to the Pt(111) surface, which generally has a weak affinity to the substrate. For this reason, we have grouped these NPs together. As shown in Fig. 2f and the inset, a good correlation has been observed between the fractions of two-shell structured Pt and TOF, suggesting that such a type of Pt structure may be the most active Pt site for the reaction. To prove this hypothesis, we synthesized another two types of Pt/TiO2 catalysts: (1) supported Pt clusters with almost all the Pt size below 1 nm (denoted as PtS/TiO2, Fig. 3a) and (2) supported Pt NPs with Pt size > 2 nm (denoted as PtL/TiO2, Fig. 3b). Both catalysts exhibited limited activity, with reaction TOF even lower than that of 0.5Pt/TiO2 (Fig. 3c). These results strongly suggest that the two-shell structured Pt is most likely the most active site for this reaction.
a 0.5Pt/TiO2. b 1Pt/TiO2. c 2Pt/TiO2. d 4Pt/TiO2. e 6Pt/TiO2. f Relative populations of supported Pt clusters/NPs with different structures; Inset: the correlation between the frequency of two-shell structured Pt and TOF.
a PtS/TiO2. b PtL/TiO2. c Comparison of TOF with 0.5Pt/TiO2 and 4Pt/TiO2. The error bars represent the standard deviation obtained from three independent performance tests. Reaction conditions: 0.5 mmol substrate, 0.5 mol% Pt, 10 bar H2, 2 mL cyclohexane, 25 °C, conversions and yields were determined by GC-FID using n-hexadecane as an internal standard.
Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed to illustrate the size compatibility between the catalyst and substrates. The van der Waals diameter of 1a, calculated to be 1.03 nm (Table 2 and Supplementary Table 6), is larger than the size of a one-shell structured Pt nanoparticle (0.88 nm). Since H2 molecules should also dissociatively adsorb on Pt sites, it is natural to conclude that the size of this one-shell Pt nanoparticle (or even smaller Pt cluster) is too small to accommodate both 1a and H2 concurrently. The surface site will be over-covered by 1a based on the rather strong adsorption energy (−2.28 eV, Supplementary Table 7) on Pt13/TiO2. This might explain the very limited reactivity observed over the small-sized Pt catalyst. However, once the Pt size is too large, the adsorption of 1a on the Pt surface becomes much weaker (−0.63 eV for three-shell Pt159 and −0.21 eV for Pt(111) surface, see Supplementary Table 7), and this is contrary to our kinetic analysis, which shows that 1a was involved in the reaction in a strongly adsorbed state. Consequently, the two-shell structured Pt nanoparticle, which has a size of 1.40 nm (Table 2), is large enough to accommodate both 1a and H2 concurrently, and the adsorption energy of 1a (−2.07 eV., Supplementary Table 7) indicates a strong adsorption, as found in our kinetic analysis. Therefore, both factors make the two-shell structured Pt the most active site for the diastereoselective hydrogenation of dimethyl phthalate.
After identifying the optimal Pt/TiO2 catalyst in the benchmark reaction, we tested the hydrogenation of diverse substituted arenes and heteroarenes to evaluate the reaction scope and limitations (Fig. 4). Obviously, a broad substrate scope and functional group tolerance are prerequisites for advanced fine chemical applications. Substrates with substituents in the different positions of the arene ring were efficiently hydrogenated and gave very good to excellent yields and diastereoselectivities. By varying the position of the substituents in phthalates from ortho, meta to para, a slight decrease in diastereoselectivity is observed. While ortho-phthalates gave >99/1 diastereoselectivity, generating only a single diastereomer in quantitative yield (2a), the meta- and para-phthalates provided quantitative yields but lower selectivity (2b, 2c). In all cases, the corresponding cis-isomers were produced preferentially. Notably, product 2d was synthesized from n-octyl phthalate41,42, a commercial plasticizer, using standard reaction conditions with >99% diastereoselectivity. Similar to phthalates, substituted benzoic acid esters with electron-donating or -withdrawing moieties, showed comparable reactivity and diastereoselectivity (2e–2h). Irrespective of the electronics of the substituents, ortho-substituted benzoates gave excellent diastereoselectivities. Furthermore, methyl 3,4-dimethyl benzoate provided 2i in 90% isolated yield and a high d.r. value (92/8). Hydrogenation of ibuprofen methyl ester was performed at 60 °C using cyclohexane as solvent, which provided the corresponding hydrogenated product in 94% isolated yield (2v). In this case, the diastereoselectivity was comparable to other ester-containing arenes like 2g, 2h, and 2j.
Synthetic applications and kg-scale synthesis of non-phthalate-based plasticizers.
The diastereoselective hydrogenation of non-functionalized substrates and substrates with weakly coordinated functional groups is considered an extremely challenging problem43,44,45. In contrast to starting materials that bind to the catalyst (center) via a strong interaction, the fundamental difficulty with such transformations is that a large number of transition states are feasible. Exemplarily, catalytic hydrogenation of xylenes was performed. Interestingly, in all the cases a similar d.r. Ratio (around 3:1) is obtained irrespective of the position of the second methyl group (2k–2m). In these cases, product yields were calculated based on 1H NMR due to the lower boiling point of the corresponding 1,n-dimethylcyclohexanes or based on isolated products after filtering of the catalyst using neat conditions.
Next, we investigated some tri-substituted arenes under standard reaction conditions. Indeed, the products 2n–2p formed with similarly good diastereoselectivities compared to di-substituted arenes. Even tetra- and penta-substituted benzenes can be diastereoselectively (i.e., up to 80:20) hydrogenated to 2q–2r with the Pt/TiO2 catalyst system. As an example of fused-ring arenes, tetrahydronaphthalene was hydrogenated to form octahydronaphthalene (2s) in 98% GC yield and 80/20 d.r. value. Finally, bicyclic strained arenes were hydrogenated, providing 2t–2u with excellent diastereoselectivities, too.
The stereoselective hydrogenation of heteroarenes offers an effective strategy for the direct access to saturated heterocycles. In recent years, several homogeneous46,47,48 and heterogeneous49,50,51 catalyst systems have been developed for such reductions with high levels of chemo- and stereoselectivity. However, using heterogeneous catalysts for this task remains a challenge. Hence, we investigated the hydrogenation of pyridine (1ab) and phthalimides (1w–1z) in the presence of water as solvent at 60 °C. While dimethyl pyridine-2,3-dicarboxylate was hydrogenated with moderate diastereoselectivity, in the case of phthalimides, the reaction was highly selective to generate one diastereomer in high isolated yields. Also, 6-membered heterocyclic 9H-xanthene provided both arene hydrogenated product (2ac) in very good d.r. The heterocyclic product 2ad was also easily isolated with excellent diastereoselectivity after performing the hydrogenation reaction at 60 °C in water. 2ad is an important building block in the synthesis of (4aS,7aS)−6-benzyloctahydro-1H-pyrrolo[3,4-b] pyridine, which is commonly used as a crucial intermediate in the preparation of the drug moxifloxacin52,53,54. Similarly, hydrogenation of isoindoline-1,3-dione derivatives, which constitute an important group of medicinal substances55,56, provided the corresponding saturated heterocycles in excellent diastereoselectivities and with very good, isolated yields (2ae–2af).
Next, two examples of pinacol borane esters containing arenes with additional one and two substituents (2ag–2ah) were tested. While at room temperature, no conversion was observed, the corresponding hydrogenated products were provided with very good diastereoselectivity at 80 °C. Interestingly, substituted benzamides (2ai–2ap) formed the cyclohexanecarboxamides in good d.r. values, too. Compared to secondary amides, primary amides gave higher diastereoselectivity, while tertiary amides didn't show any reactivity even at higher reaction temperatures.
Reusability, stability, and easier separation of product and catalyst are intrinsic advantages of heterogeneous catalysts, as described at the beginning. For the model reaction, the Pt/TiO2 catalyst shows a stable conversion (ca. 40%) and d.r. value (99/1) during 5 runs (Supplementary Fig. 5). STEM characterization of the recycled catalyst reveal that the proposed Pt structure basically holds, with a slight decrease in the fraction of one-shell NPs and a tiny increase in the proportion of larger particles (>2 nm) (Supplementary Fig. 6). In order to demonstrate the practicability of this catalyst system and the process described herein, the diastereoselective hydrogenation of di-n-octyl phthalate was performed on kg-scale. This reaction was selected due to the concerns about the toxicity of phthalates and the interest in developing alternative non-phthalate-based plasticizers in industry2. To examine its stability and recycling, the Pt/TiO2 catalyst was recycled four times under neat conditions. The desired product was collected simply using filtration, without any further purification operations. 876 g of the cis-product was obtained with a d.r. value > 99:1 (Fig. 4).
In conclusion, we have developed a heterogeneous Pt catalyst allowing for the general diastereoselective hydrogenation of a wide range of (hetero)arenes under comparably mild conditions (10 bar H2; 25–120 °C). Detailed characterizations and kinetic experiments revealed a two-shell Pt structure as the most active site, which opens up the possibility for further rational design of catalysts for diastereoselective hydrogenations. The kg-scale synthesis of a phthalate-free plasticizer demonstrates the potential of such transformations for industrial applications.
TiO2-supported Pt catalysts with different Pt loadings (0.5 wt%, 1 wt%, 2 wt%, 4 wt%, 6 wt%) were synthesized using the wet-impregnation method. For a typical catalyst preparation (0.5 g), the desired amount of aqueous hydrogen hexachloroplatinic acid solution (7.5 mg Pt·mL−1, Alfa Aesar) was diluted to 16 mL using deionized water, and heated in an oil bath to 60 °C with vigorous stirring (800 r.p.m.) for 15 min, followed by the addition of TiO2 support (P25, Sigma-Aldrich). The temperature was kept at 60 °C for 16 h. After being cooled down, water was removed using rotatory evaporation. The resultant material was then put into the oven at 110 °C overnight. The sample was ground thoroughly and then calcined at 450 °C for 4 h with a heating rate of 10 °C·min−1. Finally, the sample was reduced in a flow-tube furnace under a steady flow of 5% H2/Ar at 250 °C for 1 h with a heating rate of 5 °C·min−1. This series of catalysts are denoted as xPt/TiO2, where x represents the weight percentage of Pt. For the catalyst synthesis of kg-scale reaction, a similar procedure was used for catalyst preparation except that concentrated aqueous hydrogen hexachloroplatinic acid solution (37.7 mg Pt·mL−1, Alfa Aesar) was used.
A two-step impregnation method was used to synthesize PtS/TiO2. For a typical catalyst preparation (1.0 g), desired amount of aqueous hydrogen hexachloroplatinic acid solution (7.5 mg Pt·mL−1, Alfa Aesar) and ethylenediamine solution (Pt: ethylenediamine = 1:2 in mol) was diluted to 16 mL in deionized water, and heated in an oil bath to 60 °C with vigorous stirring (800 r.p.m.) for 15 min, followed by the addition of TiO2 support (P25, Sigma-Aldrich). The temperature was kept at 60 °C for 2 h. After being cooled down, water was removed using rotatory evaporation. The sample was ground thoroughly and then calcined at 300 °C for 3 h with a heating rate of 10 °C·min−1. Then the catalyst was washed with 1 M NH4Cl, and the resultant material was put into an oven at 110 °C overnight. Finally, the sample was reduced in a flow-tube furnace under a steady flow of 5% H2/Ar at 300 °C for 3 h with a heating rate of 5 °C·min−1.
Sol-immobilization method is used to prepare PtL/TiO2. To initiate the synthesis process, a sol containing Pt NPs was prepared first. The desired amount of H2PtCl6 solution was pipetted into the beaker. Subsequently, 28 mL of water was added to the beaker, and the solution was stirred for 5 min. The PVA solution, with a PVA: Pt weight ratio of 1:1, was then added to the beaker, followed by stirring for 20–30 min to form Pt-PVA colloid. To reduce the Pt particle and control its size, a freshly prepared sodium borohydride (NaBH4) solution was added to the mixture. The NaBH4: Pt mole ratio was set at 4:1. The stirrer speed was then increased to 800 r.p.m., and the solution was left to stir for 30 min. Then H2SO4 was added to adjust the pH to 3. Subsequently, the desired amount of TiO2 support was gradually added to the beaker, ensuring the dissolution of any powder on the liquid surface before adding more. The solution was left to stir for 40 min. The catalyst solution was poured into the funnel, with the beaker rinsed using deionized water to ensure complete transfer. The water level in the funnel was maintained during the washing process by adding additional water as needed. After all the water had passed through the funnel, the funnel was placed in an oven (110 °C) overnight.
Unless otherwise stated, reactions were performed in autoclaves. Solvents were used directly without further purification. Gas chromatography (GC) was performed on an HP 6890 with a HP5 column (Agilent). All the materials were tested as catalysts without any further treatment. For a typical small-scale reaction (2 mL) procedure, the desired amount of catalyst (0.5 mol% of Pt), 0.5 mmol of substrate, and 2 mL of solvent were added in a 4 mL vial with a magnetic stirring bar and septum cap. Then, a needle was inserted in the septum, allowing H2 to enter the vial. The vials (up to eight) were set in an alloy plate and placed in a 300 mL steel Parr autoclave. The autoclave was flushed with H2 for times at 10 bar and finally pressurized to 10 bar. Then, it was placed into an aluminum block and kept at 25 °C for 16 h. When the reaction is completed, the autoclave is vented. Finally, the samples were removed from the autoclave with the addition of n-hexadecane as the internal standard and ethyl acetate to the crude mixture, followed by filtration to separate the solid catalysts using a celite pad. The organic layer was analyzed at the GC-FID (Agilent 7890 A) and by NMR.
The reaction was performed at three different times (in all cases conversions < 20%). Then we plotted the concentration of the reactant as a function of time. At such a low conversion, the coverage of the product on the catalyst surface was negligible, and we could assume that all the active sites were involved in the reaction. A linear correlation could be obtained by curve fitting. The initial rate (r) was calculated from the slope57:
Where r is the initial rate, mol·L−1·h−1; [R] is the concentration of the reactant, mol·L−1; t is the reaction time, h.
The TOF is calculated as follow:
Where V is the volume of the reaction mixture, L; nPt is the amount of surface Pt, mol, which is calculated as follow:
Where ntotal Pt is the total amount of Pt in one reaction, mol; d is the dispersion of Pt, determined by CO chemisorption, as shown in Supplementary Table 3.
Each measurement was repeated three times to plot the error bar.
In order to exclude the effect of catalyst loss during the operation procedure, we used two batches of catalysts for recycling tests. In batch A0, we used the standard amount of catalyst. In the second batch, B0, an excess amount of catalyst (ca. ten times that of A0) was used. The reaction condition and operation procedure were identical to the hydrogenation reaction. After one hydrogenation reaction, the reaction mixture in batch A0 was analyzed by GC-FID, and the result was recorded as the activity for the fresh catalyst. On the other hand, the catalyst in batch B0 was separated by centrifugation and washed with cyclohexane three times, followed by being dried in an oven at 80 °C for 2 h. Then the catalyst was collected and ground thoroughly, after which it was put into the vacuum line overnight for the complete removal of adsorbed species. For the second run, the standard amount of catalyst was taken out from batch B0 and denoted as batch A1, and the rest was denoted as batch B1. Both batches were set up for reaction. The result of batch A1 was regarded as the activity for the second run. The catalyst in batch B1 was regenerated using the same method above. The procedure was repeated up to five runs of the catalyst.
Desired amount of catalyst (0.5 mol% of Pt) and ca. 250 mL of di-n-octyl phthalate were added into a 450 mL steel Parr autoclave. The reaction proceeded under mechanical stirring. The autoclave was flushed with H2 three times at 10 bar and finally pressurized to 40 bar. Then, it was placed into an aluminum block and kept at 80 °C. The pressure of H2 was continuously monitored during the reaction process. When the H2 pressure decreased below 20 bar, it was recharged to ca. 40 bar. When the H2 pressure remained stable, the reaction was supposed to be completed. The autoclave was vented, and then the solid catalyst and product were separated by filtration. The liquid product was directly collected without purification. The catalyst was washed using cyclohexane, followed by drying in an oven at 80 °C for 2 h. Then the catalyst was collected and ground thoroughly, followed by being put into a vacuum line overnight for the complete removal of adsorbed species. The recycled catalyst was directly used for the next run without any further regeneration procedure. Four cycles were performed in total.
CO chemisorption. CO chemisorption measurements were conducted using a 3-Flex Micromeritics instrument. A 200 mg sample was placed into a U-shaped quartz reactor and heated from room temperature (RT) to 450 °C at a rate of 10 K/min under a flow of 5% O2/He (50 ml/min), with the temperature maintained for 60 min. The sample was then cooled under an Ar flow (50 ml/min). Following this, the sample was reduced in 5% H2/Ar (50 ml/min), heated to 200 °C at 5 K/min for 60 min, and further heated to 300 °C (10 K/min) under Ar. After cooling to RT, the sample loop was filled with 20% CO/He, and CO pulses were introduced into the sample using He as the carrier gas (50 ml/min). The resulting peaks were recorded and integrated using a thermal conductivity detector (TCD). The chemisorption stoichiometry was assumed to be Ptsurf: CO = 1:1, and a spherical metal particle shape was considered for calculations.
The XPS measurements were performed on an ESCALAB 220iXL (Thermo Fisher Scientific) with monochromated Al Kα radiation (E = 1486.6 eV). Samples are prepared on a stainless-steel holder with conductive double-sided adhesive carbon tape. The measurements are performed with charge compensation using a flood electron system combining low-energy electrons and Ar+ ions (pAr = 1 × 10−7 mbar). The electron binding energies are referenced to the C 1 s core level of carbon at 284.8 eV (C-C and C-H bonds). For quantitative analysis, the peaks were deconvoluted with Gaussian-Lorentzian curves using the software Unifit 2023. The peak areas were normalized by the transmission function of the spectrometer and the element-specific sensitivity factor of Scofield.
The morphology and particle size/structure of Pt-loaded catalysts were characterized using a Thermo Fisher Spectra 300 scanning transmission electron microscope equipped with a high-angle annular dark field (HAADF) detector and a Cs probe corrector (CEOS), operating at 300 kV. The TEM samples were prepared by dispersing the catalyst powders into a methanol solution, followed by sonication and drop-casting the solution onto a copper grid coated with an amorphous holey carbon film. The particle size distribution was analyzed from HAADF electron micrographs using the ImageJ software package58. To make the analysis representative, we counted ca. 500 particles for each sample.
NMR spectra were recorded on Bruker AV 300 spectrometers. All chemical shifts (δ) are reported in parts per million (ppm) and coupling constants (J) in Hz. All chemical shifts are reported relative to the peaks deuterated solvent (e.g., with respect to CDCl3, δ (ppm) = 7.26 for 1H NMR and δ (ppm) = 77.16 for 13C NMR, respectively).
All spin-polarized calculations were performed using the Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package (VASP, Version 6.4.2)59, and the generalized gradient approximation with Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (GGA-PBE) functional60,61 was employed to describe the exchange and correlation energies of electrons. The interaction between ion and valence electrons was described using projector-augmented wave (PAW)62 potential. The energy cutoff for plane wave was set to 400 eV with the convergence criteria of 1 × 10−4 eV/atom and 0.03 eV/Å for energy and max force in all structure optimizations and frequency calculations. The Brillouin zone was sampled with the Monkhorst–Pack method63.
To understand the activity for catalysts of different sizes at the atomic level, supported Pt13 and Pt55 nanoclusters on the (3 × 3) and (3 × 4) anatase-TiO2(101) surfaces were used to simulate the one-shell and two-shell structures, respectively. Besides, the Pt159 nanoparticle and the plain Pt(111) facet with a (8 × 8) supercell were constructed to simulate the structure of a three-shell and even larger surface size. All TiO2(101) surfaces were constructed with a six-atomic-layer thickness, where the bottom three layers were fixed in their bulk positions, and the others were relaxed. A vacuum region of at least 15 Å was set for all surface models to avoid the perpendicular interactions with adjacent slabs in the Z-direction, and an effective Hubbard parameter (Ueff)64 of 4.0 eV was set for Ti-3d states. The k-points for Pt13/TiO2(101), Pt55/TiO2(101), Pt159, Pt(111) models were setting to 3 × 3 × 1, 2 × 2 × 1, 2 × 2 × 1 and 2 × 2 × 1, respectively.
The adsorption energy (Eads) for the reactant was computed according to the equation, Eads = EX/slab ‒ EX ‒ Eslab, where the EX/slab, EX, and Eslab are the total optimized energy for the adsorbed configurations, isolated species, and bare slab, respectively.
All data are available from the corresponding author upon request. All original data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are already present in the manuscript and the Supplementary Information.
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We thank the analytical staff of the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis for their excellent service. We thank the support of the Carbon Neutrality and Energy System Transformation (CNEST) Program. R.Q. gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (CHN 1212814 HFST-P). LX and HY acknowledge the China Scholarship Council for the financial support.
These authors contributed equally: Ruiyang Qu, Soumyashree Jena, Lifeng Xiao, Hui Yang.
Leibniz-Institut für Katalyse e.V., Rostock, Germany
Ruiyang Qu, Soumyashree Jena, Hui Yang, Stephan Bartling, Hanan Atia, Ralf Jackstell, Kathrin Junge, Haijun Jiao & Matthias Beller
CHN Energy Europe Research GmbH, Berlin, Germany
Ruiyang Qu
Cardiff Catalysis Institute School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Lifeng Xiao & Graham J. Hutchings
National Institute of Clean-and-Low-Carbon Energy, Beijing, China
Hui Yang
State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication, Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China
Rongsheng Cai
Evonik Oxeno GmbH & Co. KG, Marl, Germany
Robert Franke
Lehrstuhl für Theoretische Chemie, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany
Robert Franke
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R.Q., S.J., L.X., and H.Y. contributed equally. R.Q. conceived the idea for the catalyst design and optimization. R.Q. and L.X. prepared the catalysts. R.Q. performed the kinetic studies and analyzed the data. S.J. optimized conditions for the substrate scope and carried out the application studies. R.Q., L.X., and R.C. were responsible for the electron microscopy studies and corresponding data analysis; R.Q., S.J., R.J., and R.F. performed the kg-scale tests. S.B. carried out XPS measurements. H.A. worked on the CO chemisorption measurement. H.Y. performed the DFT calculations under the supervision of H.J. K.J., H.J., G.J.H., and M.B. Supervised the research activities, provided guidance for synthetic applications, and supported the project with funding acquisition; R.Q., S.J., K.J., and M.B. co-wrote the paper; all the authors contributed to editing the manuscript.
Correspondence to
Kathrin Junge, Haijun Jiao, Graham J. Hutchings or Matthias Beller.
R.Q., S.J., R.J., R.F., K.J., and M.B. are the authors of a filed patent on the catalyst system under EP 23215244. The authors declare no other competing interests.
Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
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Qu, R., Jena, S., Xiao, L. et al. Highly selective and practical hydrogenation of functionalized (hetero)arenes.
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The US army regularly performs simulations for dealing with various weapons of mass destruction. This exercise took place in Morocco last May.Credit: Abdel Majid Bziouat/AFP/Getty
Earlier this month, the New START treaty, a strategic-arms reduction agreement between Russia and the United States to limit their nuclear arsenal, expired. That accord was the last in a series of such agreements that have been extended or renegotiated since the end of the cold war. This time, however, neither country has shown a willingness to extend, let alone replace, it. The world stands at a perilous moment in its efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons, warns physicist Karen Hallberg, who leads the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
Scientists can help stop a slide to nuclear war — don't shut them out again
Scientists can help stop a slide to nuclear war — don't shut them out again
Although Russia suspended its participation in New START in 2023, it said that it would abide by the treaty's limit of 1,550 battle-ready warheads. Yet, in 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin changed the threshold for using nuclear weapons to include a nuclear-armed response to a conventional attack, instead of just to a nuclear one.
Many specialists fear a new nuclear-arms race would include another major player. Researchers say that China currently has about 600 nuclear warheads, with more in production. Given these concerns, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight in January, symbolizing humanity's proximity to self-destruction from global threats. It is the closest the clock has been to midnight since its establishment in 1947. Nuclear powers should resume — and expand — dialogue about limiting their arsenals.
The existential risk of a nuclear conflict is real. Equally concerning is the possibility that a new arms race could lead to further testing of nuclear weapons, which — for decades — had mostly been suspended. At the end of October, Russia said it had tested two nuclear weapons. On the same day, US President Donald Trump instructed the Department of Defense (now called the Department of War) to also resume testing — although no further details were provided.
‘The Sun had fallen to Earth' — a survivor's recollection of the Hiroshima bombing
‘The Sun had fallen to Earth' — a survivor's recollection of the Hiroshima bombing
Perhaps more so than any other group, physicists understand nuclear-weapons testing intimately. Their calls for restraint must be heeded urgently. These tests are highly damaging to human health and to ecosystems, in addition to their threat to international security. To contemplate their resumption is to disregard decades of scientific knowledge.
The late 1950s and early 1960s saw mostly atmospheric nuclear tests. One of the first studies1 on the tests' effects reported that, across the United States, children born in 1958 had higher concentrations of strontium-90 in their teeth than did those born in 1947. The presence of this radioactive product in teeth indicated that debris can travel far beyond the test sites. This knowledge led to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the explosion of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater and in space. Subsequent research has shown that long-lived radionuclides, including plutonium-239, produced by such tests will persist in the ground for millennia2. Moreover, many of the people most affected by nuclear fallout belong to poor or marginalized communities, including Indigenous ones.
How a small nuclear war would transform the entire planet
How a small nuclear war would transform the entire planet
The partial ban was followed in 1996 by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty, which the United States, Russia and China have signed but not ratified. Although the accord has not officially come into force, countries have mostly abided by it. The treaty includes a system of monitoring stations, which can detect underground tests conducted anywhere in the world. North Korea, for instance, did a number of tests between 2006 and 2017.
Since the early 1990s, nuclear-armed states have developed methods to maintain their arsenals without setting off nuclear explosions. The United States had learnt much from the roughly 1,000 physical tests it had already performed, and this knowledge provided the foundation for its science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program. (Russia has done 715 tests and China 45.) Researchers can now model the dynamics of explosions and how nuclear materials behave and age. This work provides a consensus that such methods negate the need for physical tests.
India–Pakistan nuclear escalation: where could it lead?
India–Pakistan nuclear escalation: where could it lead?
Countries that advocate for renewed testing say that underground explosions are safe. But safe for whom? And for how long? For many people, it will be hard to forget how the world held its breath in May 1998, when India and Pakistan went toe to toe by performing underground nuclear-weapons tests. This was followed in 1999 by the Kargil war, an armed conflict between the two nations3. The world doesn't need another example of what could happen if one country decides to resume testing. It could lead other nations to follow suit, causing a cascade.
Instead of contemplating further nuclear-arms tests, nations need to show restraint and talk about expanding and extending New START. All of those involved must remember that the reasons for not testing nuclear weapons are just as valid now as they always have been.
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‘The Sun had fallen to Earth' — a survivor's recollection of the Hiroshima bombing
How a small nuclear war would transform the entire planet
India–Pakistan nuclear escalation: where could it lead?
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by Todd Bishop on Feb 25, 2026 at 10:45 amFebruary 25, 2026 at 10:49 am
Anthropic is acquiring Vercept, a Seattle startup founded by alumni of the Allen Institute for AI, in a move that illustrates the growing competition to build AI agents capable of navigating computers and other devices to complete tasks for users.
The deal, announced Wednesday, will fold Vercept's technology and an unspecified number of employees into Anthropic. Vercept's desktop application, Vy, will shut down in 30 days as part of the transition, according to the startup's message to users, which encouraged them to try Anthropic's Claude tools as an alternative while the service winds down.
In a post about the news, San Francisco-based Anthropic said the acquisition will help advance its “computer use” capabilities, enabling Claude to complete multi-step tasks inside live applications, including navigating spreadsheets and managing workflows across multiple tools.
Vercept's team has “spent years thinking carefully about how AI systems can see and act within the same software humans use every day,” Anthropic said. “That expertise maps directly onto some of the hardest problems we're working on at Anthropic.”
In their message to users, Vercept co-founders Kiana Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick said the startup's mission had “found a bigger home” at Anthropic, citing the AI lab's focus on building “safe, steerable AI systems.” They said the deal would allow the team to “push further into what's possible at the intersection of AI and the personal computing experience.”
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Vercept referred our inquiry to Anthropic.
Vercept closed a $16 million seed round in January 2025, valuing the company at $67 million post-money, according to Pitchbook data. San Francisco-based Fifty Years led the financing, joined by Point Nine Capital and the AI2 Incubator, Vercept's first institutional backer.
The angel list was notable: former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi all participated. Despite the high-profile backing, Vercept stayed lean, with 20 employees, according to LinkedIn.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the deal, Ehsani said Vercept had raised more than $50 million, a figure that appears to include additional capital beyond its previously disclosed seed round. She said Vercept had a “comfortable runway and a successful product” when the opportunity to join Anthropic emerged.
She described the decision as mission-driven rather than financial, saying the two companies had been working toward the same vision from complementary angles.
Seattle AI and startup veteran Oren Etzioni, a Vercept co-founder and early investor, described the outcome as “sad” in a post on LinkedIn, while praising the team that's now joining Anthropic.
Contacted via phone this morning, Etzioni elaborated, “I'm pleased to have gotten a positive return but obviously disappointed that after just a little over a year with so much traction, and such a fantastic team, we're basically throwing in the towel.”
Etzioni, the former CEO of the Allen Institute for AI and a longtime fixture in Seattle tech, said he was disappointed with aspects of how the acquisition process unfolded.
He said he's proud of the team and grateful for the chance to work with such a highly capable group, adding that he wishes them success in their next chapter at Anthropic.
In the comments on Etzioni's LinkedIn post, Seth Bannon, founder of venture firm Fifty Years and lead investor in Vercept's seed round, responded with a version of Theodore Roosevelt's “Man in the Arena,” a passage often cited in moments of public scrutiny or setback.
As first reported by GeekWire in February 2025, Vercept set out to build the “computer interface of the future,” as an early mover in AI agents that observe computer screens and automate desktop tasks.
Its flagship application, Vy, used artificial intelligence to “see” and understand screen elements much like a human does. Users were able to instruct Vy via natural language or demonstrations to automate repetitive tasks, such as data entry, producing video content, or organizing files.
Vercept's founding team read like an all-star roster from the Allen Institute for AI. CEO and co-founder Ehsani was a senior researcher at Ai2, where she led work on robotics and embodied AI, training agents that can see, learn from, and interact with their surroundings.
Weihs is a former Ai2 research manager who worked on AI agents and reinforcement learning and Girshick is a computer vision pioneer who has also spent time at Meta AI.
Vercept co-founder Matt Deitke, known for leading Ai2 projects including Molmo and Objaverse, left in mid-2025 after Meta reportedly offered him $250 million over four years to join its Superintelligence Lab, as part of a flurry of high-profile talent acquisitions at the time.
Under the hood, the company's Vy desktop agent was powered by a proprietary model built to understand screen interfaces and map natural language to on-screen actions. The company said VyUI outperformed models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic on UI grounding benchmarks.
But Vercept was operating in a crowded and fast-moving field.
Open-source projects like OpenClaw — the viral AI agent that automates tasks through messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram — have exploded in popularity.
Other startups and some of the biggest names in tech are building their own agentic tools. In addition to Anthropic's Claude Cowork, there's OpenAI's Operator, Google's Project Mariner, and Amazon's Nova Act. Microsoft is also pushing Copilot toward screen-level automation on Windows.
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Sold out: That was a brilliant deal but, unfortunately, as of February 25, it's sold out and no longer available for purchase at B&H Photo. The next, best option we can find right now is this 20TB WD Elements USB external hard drive for $399 over at Newegg. It's not as great a deal but it's still a good drive and one we've recommended in the past. With storage prices as they are, you're still saving money compared to rival models, and there's also a $40 saving to be had, too.
If you're trying to defy the AI price crunch and get hold of a large amount of storage for backups, archiving, and more, then this Seagate Expansion drive could be for you. Right now at B&H Photo, you can secure 20TB of Seagate storage in a USB 3.0 External Hard Drive for $319, a saving of $30 and just $16 per TB.
Of course, a few months ago, this storage would have been a good deal cheaper. In December, we saw the 22TB version of this drive fall to an all-time low of $249.99. So this is slightly less storage and nowhere near as cheap. However, in a climate where AI demand is squeezing the price of RAM, SSDs, and even HDDs, this is a rare discount that gets you a lot of storage for just $16 per terabyte
Beat the crunch
A large desktop storage solution that requires USB connectivity and a power supply, this is formatted for both Mac and Windows and is useful for backing up huge amounts of data, or storing vast archives.
This isn't a nifty SSD drive, so alongside USB connectivity, you'll need a power outlet close by. The size of the Seagate Expansion range isn't monstrous, weighing just 2.64 pounds and measuring 1.65 x 7.04 x 4.92 inches.
Out of the box, this will work with Windows and Mac, and includes an 18-inch USB 3.0 cable as well as an 18W power adapter.
As mentioned, storage is not as cheap as it used to be. Back in January, we reported that hard drive prices had surged by an average of 46% since September, and the trends are still only moving in one direction. In fact, one desperate UK resident recently flew to the United States because it was cheaper to buy drives abroad, combined with the cost of travel, than to pick them up at home.
It's safe to say that things are getting a bit wild out there. But with SSDs now costing a whopping 16x more than HDDs thanks to AI, large external hard drives still make for a decent value play, even at today's inflated prices. $16 per terabyte is the best storage we've seen in some time, and this deal is likely to sell out fast.
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.
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by Taylor Soper on Feb 25, 2026 at 8:57 amFebruary 25, 2026 at 9:06 am
Bellevue, Wash.-based startup Union.ai announced that it closed a $38.1 million Series A round, led by NEA, with participation from Nava Ventures and new investor Mozilla Ventures. The total includes a previously announced $19.1 million portion raised in 2023.
Union is the company behind Flyte, an open-source orchestration tool used to run complex machine learning and data workflows. Union is positioning itself as broader “AI development infrastructure” — covering orchestration as well as pieces such as training, inference, and observability — aimed at helping engineering teams move from experimentation to production faster.
“Building AI requires a fundamentally different approach than traditional software, and engineering teams are now embracing that,” CEO Ketan Umare said in a statement.
More from the company's post on LinkedIn:
This funding comes at an inflection point for AI: engineering teams are discovering that legacy software infrastructure and devtools struggle to handle AI development. They were designed for basic and deterministic processes of traditional data workflows, not for the non-deterministic processes of AI workflows, which expect agents to adapt and recover from failure at runtime. Union.ai is building the new category of AI development infrastructure. Engineering teams can develop dynamic, durable AI workflows and agents while dramatically reducing time spent maintaining brittle pipelines.
The startup says revenue grew 3X in 2025, and its customer base expanded 2.6X. Union's customers include Spotify, HederaDx, Carfax, Hopper, and others.
The company says the round supports the commercial launch of Union 2.0 and continued development of Flyte 2, including “pure Python” authoring, improved debugging, runtime decision-making, and crash-resilient workflows.
Umare helped develop the underlying technology for Flyte while he was an engineer at Lyft. He previously worked at Amazon and Oracle. He co-founded Union.ai in 2020 with Haytham Abuelfutuh.
The company has more than 40 employees and is actively hiring.
Investors are backing various startups building behind-the-scenes infrastructure to help companies turn AI prototypes into reliable products. Temporal, a “durable execution” company rooted in the Seattle region, announced a $300 million round last week.
University of Washington scientists and students are using AI to create real medicines.
Better treatments for cancer, autoimmune diseases, viruses and more are now on the horizon thanks to groundbreaking work with artificial intelligence from a team of scientists at the University of Washington's Institute for Protein Design. Led by Nobel Prize winner David Baker, this team of Huskies uses AI tools to create proteins — biology's building blocks — that lay the foundation for new medicines. Together, this international group of students, faculty and researchers acts as a “communal brain,” with each Husky contributing ideas and expertise from their fields. The institute's recent breakthroughs — including an antivenom for snakebites, and antibiotics that combat drug-resistant bacteria — show how this innovative science can save and change lives.
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What happens here matters everywhere
by Todd Bishop on Feb 25, 2026 at 8:53 amFebruary 25, 2026 at 8:53 am
Bill Gates apologized to Gates Foundation staff on Tuesday for his past interactions with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, acknowledging in an internal town hall that the situation puts the foundation's reputation at risk, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Gates met with Epstein multiple times from 2011 to 2014, years after the financier had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution, and continued the meetings even after his then-wife Melinda French Gates raised concerns in 2013, according to the WSJ report.
He told staff it was “a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” and to bring foundation executives into meetings with the sex offender, the newspaper reported.
In the town hall, Gates acknowledged two extramarital affairs (with a Russian bridge player and a Russian nuclear physicist) that Epstein later discovered through Gates's former science adviser Boris Nikolic, the WSJ reported. Gates insisted he didn't participate in or witness any of Epstein's crimes, telling staff, “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit.”
Gates has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein's victims.
During the town hall, he acknowledged the broader implications for the foundation.
“It definitely is the opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the foundation,” he said, according to the recording reviewed by the newspaper. “And our work is very reputational sensitive. I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us.”
In a statement to GeekWire, a Gates Foundation spokesperson said the town hall was a regularly scheduled internal event that Gates holds twice a year.
“Bill answered questions submitted by foundation staff on a range of issues, including the release of the Epstein files, the foundation's work in AI, and the future of global health,” the spokesperson said. “Bill spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions.”
Last week, Gates abruptly cancelled a planned keynote address at India's AI Impact Summit hours before he was scheduled to speak, with the foundation saying at the time that the decision was made “to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit's key priorities.”
In a previous statement, the Gates Foundation said it was “aware of emails recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice” involving communication between Epstein and foundation staff, and that a small number of employees had interacted with Epstein based on his claims that he could “mobilize significant philanthropic resources for global health and development.”
It said no collaboration was pursued and no payments were ever made to Epstein.
Separately on Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Epstein built a network of connections across Microsoft over more than two decades, reaching deeper into the company than any other major tech firm.
The documents show Epstein receiving updates on Microsoft's CEO search, offering advice to executives, and gaining access to confidential company business.
Among those named in the NYT report: former CTO Nathan Myhrvold, who vouched for Epstein to Gates; former Windows chief Steven Sinofsky, who shared confidential Microsoft information with Epstein and sought his advice on his exit package; and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a current Microsoft board member who visited Epstein's island and continued communicating with him through 2018, according to the newspaper.
Microsoft communications chief Frank Shaw told the NYT that the company was “disappointed” by emails between Epstein and former employees “acting in their personal capacities.”
The Seattle Times has separately reported on deeper ties between Myhrvold and Epstein, including emails showing the two met regularly in Seattle and New York from 2010 through 2018, and correspondence that appeared to show Myhrvold visiting Epstein's private island.
Myhrvold was also listed as a “friend” in Epstein's 2003 birthday book and contributed a personal letter to the project, as GeekWire previously reported.
A spokesperson for Myhrvold said previously that he knew Epstein “from TED conferences and as a donor to basic scientific research” and “regrets that he ever met him.”
The Epstein revelations have had significant consequences elsewhere.
Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Tom Pritzker stepped down over his ties to Epstein, Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathy Ruemmler resigned, Norway's former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been charged with aggravated corruption, and former British ambassador Peter Mandelson was arrested in connection with the disclosures.
In addition to his role at the foundation, Gates continues to advise Microsoft and serve as chairman of Bellevue-based TerraPower. Hoffman remains on the Microsoft board. Myhrvold is CEO of Intellectual Ventures and vice chairman of the TerraPower board.
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A former candidate in the 2026 race for governor of California and a popular YouTuber have been kicked off Kalshi's platform for alleged violations related to insider trading, the popular prediction market revealed Wednesday.
In a blog post detailing the cases, Kalshi's head of enforcement, Robert DeNault, noted that the company's surveillance system had flagged suspicious behavior in both instances.
In the case of the political candidate, Kalshi cited a video posted online “that appeared to show him trading on his own candidacy.” Kalshi froze the candidate's accounts and reported the activity to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the government agency that oversees prediction markets. It instituted a five-year ban and is fining the account a penalty 10 times the size of the initial trade, which Kalshi says it intends to donate to charity.
While Kalshi does not mention the candidate by name, DeNault notes that they have recently dropped out of the race and shifted to running for Congress. This fits the description of only one person involved in the race: Kyle Langford, a far-right Republican candidate best known for inflammatory antisemitic comments praising Nazis. Langford has since dropped out and launched a campaign styled as a progressive Democrat in California's 26th district.
In May 2025, Langford posted a video to X showing a screen recording of a trade order placed on Kalshi for an event in the governor's race. Shortly after the incident, Kalshi confirmed that it was looking into Langford's activities. In his description of the investigation into the candidate, DeNault notes that Kalshi began its investigation that May.
“Tensions between the USA and Iran are at an all-time high, and the media has chosen to cover a $200 campaign gimmick (aka betting on I, myself) from last year,” Langford said in a statement to WIRED. “Is this really the state of our political discourse?”
This is not the only suspension tied to the California governor race; as Politico reported on Tuesday, Democratic megadonor Stephen Cloobeck, who was briefly a candidate before dropping out to endorse representative Eric Swalwell, has also been blocked by the platform for attempting to trade on the race. “In the event we ever see a candidate trading on their own candidacy, it triggers disciplinary action on the exchange. Their trade gets frozen. They may be permanently suspended from having an account,” DeNault said in a statement. Cloobeck confirmed the bets to Politico and said he is still able to trade on other events.
This crackdown underscores how expansive definitions of “insider trading” can be on prediction markets; while traditional insider trading cases hinge on subjects profiting from “material nonpublic information”—confidential data or intelligence that can impact stock prices—here, even placing bets while working on an election or running for office can violate the rules.
In the case of the YouTube streamer, Kalshi reports that its surveillance systems flagged the account based on “statistically anomalous” trading success. It also received concurrent tips from Kalshi users, who had flagged the unusual activities. “We investigated and found that the trader was employed as an editor for the streamer's show and likely had access to material nonpublic information connected to his trading,” DeNault writes in the report. The account was frozen before it could withdraw funds; it is now suspended for two years, and it has also received a financial penalty. Kalshi did not disclose the identity of the YouTube streamer.
As prediction markets have exploded in popularity, there has been a series of high-profile incidents of suspected insider trading, including major trades made just prior to geopolitical events like the US capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. In Israel, two Polymarket traders were recently arrested for leaking classified information in connection to trades made on military activity. Following the Maduro incident, Congress introduced a bill to ban government officials from insider trading on prediction markets—but there have not been any enforcement actions made public.
The CFTC has not publicly acknowledged Kalshi's reports. (The agency did not respond to requests for comment from WIRED.) Typically, when suspected insider trading is flagged for the agency, its Enforcement Division will subpoena relevant documents, assess evidence, and then make a recommendation about potential charges. As the political battle heats up over how the company is regulated, the CFTC's approach to enforcement will likely be under close scrutiny.
This is the first time Kalshi has revealed details about its own processes for flagging apparent insider trading, but DeNault says the company plans to release additional information as more investigations close, “similar to how CME Group and others do.” Notably, CME Group is not another prediction market—it's the parent company operating the largest derivatives exchanges in the US.
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Microsoft confirmed today that Windows 11 is not ending support for legacy V3 and V4 printer drivers despite previous reports, walking back a Windows Roadmap entry from earlier this month that implied those drivers were being cut from the OS entirely.
In a statement to Windows Central, a Microsoft spokesperson said, "Windows has not ended support for legacy printer drivers. If your printer works with Windows today, it will continue to work, and no action is required." The company acknowledged that a Roadmap update stating Windows would "no longer support V3 and V4 printer drivers" was inaccurate and has since been removed from the page.
The confusion stems from what Microsoft did change on January 15, 2026: new V3 and V4 printer driver submissions to Windows Update were blocked by default and now require case-by-case approval for Windows 11 and Windows Server 2025 and later. That isn't the same as removing support for those drivers altogether. Existing drivers already available through Windows Update remain accessible, printers already installed and working will continue to function, and vendors can still distribute drivers directly via their own installer packages.
V3 and V4 are older Windows printer driver models that have been around for well over a decade. Microsoft first announced plans to phase out servicing for these legacy driver models back in September 2023, giving hardware partners more than two years to prepare. The push to modernize the Windows print stack is largely in part due to security concerns. Legacy printer drivers, which can run in kernel mode, have historically been a source of serious vulnerabilities, including the class of exploits known as PrintNightmare.
Although Windows has not ended support for legacy drivers, Microsoft's broader deprecation timeline is still in effect. From July 1 this year, Windows will adjust its internal driver ranking to “prefer” Microsoft's built-in Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) driver over third-party legacy alternatives when both are available. Then, from July 1, 2027, third-party printer driver updates distributed via Windows Update will be limited to security-related fixes only.
Microsoft also introduced Windows Protected Print Mode with Windows 11 24H2, an optional feature that removes third-party drivers entirely and restricts printing to Microsoft's own class drivers — a hint that Microsoft intends to wean Windows 11 off legacy driver models in the long term. For now, though, your old printer lives to print another day.
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The Trump administration has ordered U.S. diplomats to lobby against countries' attempts to regulate how American tech companies handle foreigners' data, arguing that data sovereignty laws threaten the advancement of AI services and technology, Reuters reported, citing an internal diplomatic cable.
The cable, signed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, says such laws would “disrupt global data flows, increase costs and cybersecurity risks, limit AI and cloud services, and expand government control in ways that can undermine civil liberties and enable censorship,” according to the report.
The cable pushes diplomats to “counter unnecessarily burdensome regulations, such as data localization mandates.” It also orders them to track proposals that would promote data sovereignty laws, and urged diplomats to promote the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules Forum, an international group that claims to enable “trusted data flows globally through international data protection and privacy certifications.”
The order comes as countries around the world increase scrutiny of how Big Tech companies and AI firms are using their citizens' data. The European Union has led the charge on this front with laws like the GDPR, the Digital Services Act and the AI Act, seeking to curb tech companies' control and exploitation of user data and hold them accountable.
The Trump administration has historically opposed such regulatory approaches, and this order reinforces that position as the government seeks to boost U.S. AI companies.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
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by Todd Bishop on Feb 25, 2026 at 6:45 amFebruary 25, 2026 at 6:51 am
Tired of Alexa's constant chatter? Wish Amazon's voice assistant would just get to the point without all the extra stuff? Maybe I'm just speaking for myself? Anyway, relief is finally here.
Amazon is rolling out a new option to keep Alexa's responses blessedly perfunctory in a new “Brief” mode for Alexa+, along with options for “Chill” and “Sweet” conversation styles that adjust the AI assistant's tone and delivery across Alexa+ devices.
Ask Alexa how it's going in Brief mode, for example, and the response might be a curt “All systems operational.” Switch to Chill and it's a zen “all systems are in harmony.” Go with Sweet and you'll get something like an exuberant “radiating pure joy!” (Responses differ each time.)
It's a first for the voice assistant, available now for Alexa+ users. Users can switch by saying “Alexa, change your personality style” or through the Alexa app under device settings. Personality styles can also be paired with any of Alexa's eight voice options, which include different genders and regional dialects.
Alexa's default personality also remains an option, and can be restored at any time.
Amazon has previously offered voice customization for Alexa, including celebrity add-ons like Samuel L. Jackson and Melissa McCarthy, but those were paid extras that altered phrasing on a limited set of responses rather than system-wide personality adjustments.
The new option is part of Amazon's broader Alexa+ overhaul, which has made the voice assistant more conversational, with the ability to take actions such as ordering takeout and booking dinner reservations. The company made the AI-powered upgrade available to all U.S. customers earlier this month, nearly a year after it was unveiled.
The personality feature reflects a trend in consumer AI. For example, ChatGPT lets users customize its tone and behavior through custom instructions, and Google's Gemini offers different response styles. Microsoft has been testing a “Personality Studio” for Copilot and introduced a “Real Talk” mode that mirrors the user's conversational style.
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The video editor in Adobe Firefly is getting a new feature called Quick Cut that uses AI to edit footage and B-roll to create a first draft of the final video based on user instructions.
Typically, you have to upload your footage and B-roll into a video editor, and manually arrange transitions. With Quick Cut, users can describe what they want the video to be in natural language, and the tool will automatically edit out irrelevant parts of the footage, and put together the different takes while using appropriate footage to make transitions between cuts.
Users can also pick frames from the B-roll and use one of the video models available within Firefly to create short transitions.
You can use the prompt box within the Firefly video editor to specify settings like aspect ratio and pacing between transitions, or add optional B-roll footage. Users can apply Quick Cut to the entire project, a particular timeline, or selected clips.
Loading the player…
Adobe stressed that the aim of Quick Cut is to deliver a first draft, so editors will still need to adjust elements, paste takes together, and work on transitions to put together the video.
“As we talk to our users, who are creators and marketers, the biggest problem they actually communicate is the need for fast turnaround, the need for time-saving techniques that just let them get to their creative vision as fast as possible,” Mike Folgner, product lead for AI and next-generation video tools, told TechCrunch.
“One thing we do know is that some of the mundane parts that come with video [editing], like just getting the selects in order, that's not really where they find joy and difference. They find joy in putting their spin on it. So Quick Cut is meant to help creators who have a set of media find the story very quickly and just get to a story cut as fast as possible,” he added.
Adobe has been pushing regular updates to its video-related tools. In December, it rolled out a new timeline-based video editor that brought layers and prompt-based editing — the editor treats different objects as layers and allows you to edit them using prompts, or use tools like resize and rotate.
The company has also added prompt-based editing capabilities to Firefly, letting users tell the video model how to edit video elements, colors, and camera angles, as well as a timeline view that lets you adjust frames, sounds, and other characteristics easily.
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Enterprise software giant Atlassian is rolling out a new way for humans and AI agents to work together that it hopes will help teams produce “10x the work without 10x the chaos.”
Atlassian announced “agents in Jira” on Wednesday. This update gives users of the company's project management software Jira the ability to assign and manage work for their digital agents from the same dashboard they use for their human employees.
Agents in Jira allows enterprises to assign tasks and tickets to AI agents, just as they would to people. It also tracks how the work is coming along, and sets deadlines, among other metrics. Users can now also loop in AI agents during the middle of an existing project too.
This feature is now available in open beta.
This update is meant to give users the same visibility into the work their agents are doing as their human employees, Tamar Yehoshua, Atlassian's new chief product and AI officer, told TechCrunch.
“Atlassian has been in the business, for decades, of collaboration software helping people get work done,” Yehoshua said. “Now, you enter agents, and agents are now doing a lot of that work, and so you want to be able to coordinate between humans and agents.”
But Atlassian understands that just giving people more avenues to automate doesn't necessarily mean less work, Yehoshua said. That's why the key part of this update is that everything happens within the same dashboard, she said.
“You've been hearing in the zeitgeist lately that all of these agents are creating more work for people, and in some ways, more chaos,” Yehoshua said. “What we're really good at is putting order to that chaos.”
As enterprises continue to figure out how and where they can find a return on investment from investing in AI tools, this kind of view could prove beneficial. The ability to compare the work of agents versus humans on the same project could help enterprises figure out where to deploy agents to begin with and what tasks should remain human-led.
This announcement is just the first of many, Yehoshua said, as the company looks to increasingly add AI tools into its existing software products.
“The goal is to enable people to work more productively with AI and I think this is a step,” Yehoshua said. “It's only the beginning of the journey. It's a long journey, but this is a really important step of how to integrate AI into the workflows that you already have, which I'm really excited about.”
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The AI pricing tool purports to cut Chinese manipulation out of critical minerals markets.
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The Trump administration plans to use a Pentagon-developed AI program to set reference prices for critical minerals, including gallium and germanium, as part of a broader effort to build a global metals trading bloc, Reuters reported on February 24, citing three sources with direct knowledge of the effort.
The program in question is DARPA's Open Price Exploration for National Security (OPEN), launched in 2023 to calculate what a metal should cost once labor, processing, and other inputs are factored in and alleged Chinese market manipulation is stripped out.
According to Reuters' sources, the administration intends to use OPEN's pricing model as the backbone for the reference price system that Vice President JD Vance proposed at a Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington on February 4, where more than 50 countries were represented. Vance proposed that member nations adopt reference prices for critical minerals "at each stage of production," enforced by adjustable tariffs.
Trump officials are initially focusing OPEN's model on four minerals: germanium, gallium, antimony, and tungsten, with S&P Global and Finnish data firm Rovjok supplying data and technical assistance, the sources said. Gallium, in compounds such as gallium nitride (GaN) and gallium arsenide (GaAs), is used in compound semiconductors found in RF chips and power electronics, while germanium is used in chip doping, fiber optics, and high-speed microelectronics.
China controls an estimated 60% to 80% of global germanium production and the U.S. Department of Energy has reported that the United States relies on China for roughly 95% of its gallium supply. Beijing imposed export licensing requirements on both metals in August 2023, then escalated to an outright ban on shipments to the U.S. in December 2024, before partially suspending that ban in November 2025 amid broader trade negotiations.
OPEN has been focused from its inception on metals that are thinly traded or not actively exchange-traded, where manufacturers struggle to determine whether quoted prices reflect actual supply-and-demand conditions rather than subsidized Chinese output. The program is scheduled to be transferred to the non-profit Critical Minerals Forum next year.
Not everyone is convinced the tariff-backed pricing model will hold. "You can try to set something approximating a price floor, but ultimately the trade barriers aren't going to guarantee someone on the other side of that tariff wall an actual price floor because multiple producers are still going to compete on price," Nathaniel Horadam, a former U.S. Department of Energy staffer who managed critical minerals lending programs across both the Biden and Trump administrations, told Reuters.
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The plan also raises questions around scope, particularly because current tariff structures could potentially apply to finished products containing these minerals, though the administration has not clarified that. In any case, whether introducing AI-powered analysis to the already tumultuous climate for international trade can help level the playing field remains to be seen.
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It's the classic awkward icebreaker: If you could invite anyone, dead or alive, to a dinner party, who would it be? Aristotle? Ailias is a company based in Surrey, UK, which promises to make that hypothetical a reality. It can reanimate historical and current legends with 3D hologram avatars that are fully conversational, knowledgeable, and can be delivered to you in a box.
The technology isn't bespoke. Many companies provide life-size hologram displays for events and parties, everything from floating 3D displays of Santa's sleigh or 3D Holo-Trucks. The physicist Dennis Gabor even won a Nobel Prize in 1971 for his work that led to holography, even though a life-size Elon Musk isn't probably the result that he (or anyone) had in mind.
What sets Ailias apart is the company's playful focus on history and education, which the company describes as “ultra character creation.” The company focuses on animating dead notable personalities into real-feeling conversational holograms, designed for interaction rather than spectacle. Ailias' holograms can juggle, do squats, or even breakdance, making your party, exhibition or just about any event an extra special occasion.
Ailias offers pricing on request, with costs varying depending on whether clients opt for rental, purchase, or whether you're seeking bespoke characters and activation. When I visited the offices, director Adrian Broadway noted that a minimum week's rental would run into the thousands of pounds, which includes software subscription costs, delivery, and installation.
Ailias' current roster has over 70 characters that could be staged in their bespoke boxes, including Henry VIII, Beethoven, Julius Caesar, and a suspiciously sexy Cleopatra. That these are mostly historical figures is no coincidence—Broadway describes these boxes as great for educational settings or museum exhibitions, but admits it also has to do with copyright restrictions on characters as well.
In the United Kingdom, the use of someone's identity for commercial purposes is treated as a trademark. (In the United States, the right to publicity is protected in some form in most states.) That is to say, if Ailias used a well-known or living celebrity, that would likely land the company in court. But a long-dead historical figure like Henry VIII is unlikely to cause trouble.
In this instance, Ailias had cleared the copyright concerns for the 7-foot-tall AI Albert Einstein, so after hitting the Start Chat button, I talked to Einstein about a wide range of topics, everything from science, music, to his thoughts on Elon Musk. He had a pleasant, soft German accent, and I was impressed at the response speed. Ailias notes that it takes under two seconds for each avatar to respond, which feels about right.
For an educational hologram, I often found myself answering more questions than I was asking. There were times Einstein felt like a large, animated ChatGPT conversation but with a German accent. This is to be expected, as Ailias relies on open source AI and third-party generative video to create the conversations. But there's no sense of verisimilitude anyway, since Einstein wasn't really 7 feet tall. I took the opportunity to ask, like an 11-year-old boy would, “Who would win in a fight, you or Isaac Newton?”
It held up as any AI language model would, deflecting back to its area of expertise by settling on a sensible, “It would be more of a fight of ideas.” In the aim of being at least semi-professional, that's as far as I went. But I'd imagine the language model would do fine with most things a preteen could throw at it.
This isn't deepfake or digital necromancy territory, or even the “ghostbot” that I thought I'd meet. The video interludes, like the aforementioned juggling and breakdancing that run on a loop, are silly and absurd. It's clear I'm talking to a famous person in a white box that I know to be long dead. Although it was strange, it was more funny than distressing. I didn't feel the dread I usually get when I see a video with the Sora watermark in the corner.
Ailias does have the capacity to make a hologram out of anyone, if commissioned (and if you can fulfill the licensing requirements). Broadway notes that with some short voice recordings and a couple of photos, the AI version of you could be created, start to finish, within a month.
The “custom character” package is intended for brands to create their own plucky AI avatar to market chicken wings or headphones. But there's nothing stopping you from creating one for your own personal use. For example, I asked Broadway if you could send Ailias photos of your ex, feed the AI your side of the story, and invite the box over to get some closure. It's an expensive way to heal, but therapy is expensive too.
Broadway laughed at this, but after realizing I was serious, he said, “Sure, I guess.” Ailias does have a series of guidelines for ethical use of AI and personal holograms, but that does imply that there is a big potential for misuse.
Holograms have been used commercially for quite some time, and for the companies that employ them, the benefits for brand awareness are clear. For example, millions of people have watched animations of Anna, Bjorn, Benny and Anni-Frid perform ABBA Voyage. It's different technology, but the spirit remains the same—people are willing to spend lots of money, even when they know it's an illusion. It makes sense that a brand might do the same.
Nike, for example, could use its lifetime partnership with Cristiano Ronaldo to commission a hologram version of the footballer to show off his favorite Nike boots. Any hotel could employ an AI concierge to direct guests to the hotel or bar, or pop into their room to let them know when breakfast finishes, which you can already do at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. One day you could be reporting your lost luggage to an airline hologram instead of a real-life agent. Yay.
To my own ends, it would be fun—and yes, a little problematic—to commission your own AI holograms for your own nefarious purposes. Ailias has a smaller version with a 21-inch screen that you can prop on a shelf. I'm thinking of sending one to my ex.
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Apple is reportedly finally releasing touchscreen MacBooks, decades after the first touchscreen Windows laptops appeared on the market. According to prominent Apple leaker Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, the long-awaited feature will finally arrive this year, but during the company's fall event and not in March, where it's expected to announce new iPad models and an entry-level MacBook priced between $599 and $699.
Aside from getting a touch-sensitive screen, sources say that the upcoming MacBook Pros will also get an OLED display, while the controversial notch will be replaced by the Dynamic Island, first introduced in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max in 2022. The rest of the laptop will still look the same, though, ensuring that veteran MacBook Pro users will still feel comfortable even if they upgrade to the latest version. Under the hood, it is expected that Apple will debut M6 chips with the OLED models, according to previous reports.
macOS will also reportedly introduce some changes to accommodate the additional functionality delivered by the touch screen. Because fingers inherently cover a larger space than a cursor, it's reported that the new MacBook Pro will automatically shift the interface depending on the input method. For example, if you touch the menu at the top of the screen, it will automatically enlarge to make it easier to select what you want and prevent any mispresses. A new context menu is also reportedly being developed that will appear around your finger, making access to commands and other shortcuts much more ergonomic. These changes go in line with Apple's “it just works” philosophy, ensuring that everything would work as intended, whether you prefer using a mouse or the touch screen.
Steve Jobs famously said in 2010 that touchscreen laptops do not work, which is probably the reason why it took so long for Apple to introduce one. In fairness, Jobs was probably right, especially with the available technology back then. But the arrival of Apple Silicon chips that grow more powerful with every generation, while still staying efficient, probably meant that implementing a UI that would smartly and seamlessly switch between cursor and touch controls.
Despite finally adding touch control to the MacBook Pro, Gurman says that it still won't replace the iPad. In fact, it's the iPad that's becoming more like a MacBook, especially with the release of iPadOS 26. Whatever the case, the Apple tablet will supposedly always be touch-first, while the upcoming MacBook Pros will have a blend of touch gestures and cursor movements, allowing its users to choose whichever they like without taking away from the experience of using either input method.
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8/10
I've been using Linux full-time since 2008, when I installed a copy of Ubuntu to see what it was like. It was great and I never looked back. In all that time, I have never purchased a PC that was explicitly designed to work with Linux. In 2008, there were precious few of those to choose from, but nowadays there are plenty, with names like Dell or Lenovo, or smaller, dedicated Linux shops like System76, which currently tops our guide to the best Linux laptops.
The latest dedicated Linux machine to cross my desk is from Kubuntu Focus, a relative newcomer (Kubuntu Focus launched in 2019), based not far from me in Traverse City, Michigan. The Zr Gen 1 is Kubuntu Focus' latest laptop, and it is a beast. Designed to pack all the power of a desktop in a (relatively) portable body, the Zr1 is one of the most powerful laptops I've ever used, running the best operating system around. The only drawback is that all that power does not come cheap.
The Zr is impressively large at 15 inches by 12 inches, and over an inch thick with ports on three sides. The screen is a gloriously large 18-inch LCD display (2560 x 1600 pixels, 168 dpi density) with a max brightness of over 500 nits and matte finish that makes it easy to use even in bright light. It's one of the better LCD panels I've used lately, and gamers will be happy to see the 240-Hz refresh rate. You can also plug in up to four external displays.
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
Inside, the Zr Gen 1 features an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX, with 24 cores, an RTX 5090 graphics card, 24 GB GDDR7 RAM (expandable up to 192 GB), and two SSDs, one with a capacity of 1 TB and the other with 2 TB. (You can have up to four drives, one of them being a PCIe GEN 5x4 NVMe.) Along with the discrete GPU, there's an integrated one as well, which means you can turn off the discrete one to maximize battery life. I spent about 90 percent of the time with the discrete card off and just turned it on when editing photos and video.
Thanks to the size of the Zr, there's plenty of room for a full size keyboard with a numeric pad. The keyboard is user-configurable and features a 65,536-color LED backlight system that you can tweak to your liking with the Focus tool. Typing on the keyboard is comfortable. There's 3.5 mm of travel to the keys, so they're plenty springy and responsive. As is generally the case with dedicated Linux laptops, there's a Kubuntu (gear icon) key rather than a Windows key.
Did I mention the Zr Gen 1 weighs 8 pounds? It is a big thing, too big for a shoulder bag. You'll definitely want a backpack for this one, but even then this isn't the sort of thing you bring to the coffee shop. It's more the sort of thing you cart to the lab and back, or perhaps just leave on your desk connected to your home lab. To that end I would say that, when I tell you battery life averaged around four hours, I would also add that it doesn't matter. This isn't a laptop you carry around. That you can take it to the couch and watch a movie on it when you want is an added bonus, but not really the point of the machine.
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
What is the point of a laptop like this? Anything that requires serious computing power, be it machine learning (running TensorFlow), local LLMs, big data crunching workflows, even high-end video editing. I should note that Davinci Resolve ran unlike it has ever run on anything else when I installed it on the Zr Gen 1. I always thought everyone had to wait a couple of seconds before applying a LUT to a large clip. It turns out that can be instantaneous, if you have the GPU for it. I wouldn't go so far as to say you could edit video without proxy clips, but … maybe you could, depending on the length of your clips.
The advantage of buying a laptop with Linux support is that you don't have to deal with the potential complexities of managing a Linux system. I am typing this on an Arch-based machine. If I install an update right now and it breaks vim, or tmux, or rxvt-unicode, or any other bit of software from the kernel all the way up to these three, fixing that is on me. What Kubuntu Focus offers is that you don't have to worry about any of that stuff breaking.
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
When any piece of software upstream from Kubuntu's finished product releases new software, the Focus developers first validate that everything works on the company's hardware. Kubuntu Focus hardware is tested for a minimum of three years after last sale. If an issue is found, the company works with the developers of the core components, like KDE, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and the Linux Kernel, to fix it before it ever gets passed on to you. The last known-stable version of software remains unchanged until the next version passes all the tests and there are no issues. Kubuntu Focus does this even at the application level, testing everything from dev tools like JetBrains, to consumer software like Dropbox, Steam, Zoom, Slack, and more to ensure everything works before it ships out to you.
The result is a level of stability you're not going to achieve on your own. While it's pretty rare for me to have to roll back software in Arch, I have had to do it, and it is a pain. I think there is value in the pain of the DIY approach, but it's not for everyone, and I am happy that there are options out there for people who don't want to futz with their system and just want to edit video or run their own LLM or whatever it is they want to do. I am happy that companies like Kubuntu Focus and System76 are out there making these fully compatible, well-tested systems available.
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
It's worth noting that Focus is a little different than System76. The latter has taken a full-stack approach to selling Linux hardware, controlling everything from OEM hardware configurations to the coreboot bootloader to the Pop!_OS distro with its Cosmic desktop, which is developed and maintained by System76.
Kubuntu Focus is not a full-stack retailer like that. As the name suggests, what you get is stock Kubuntu. The company does ship a couple of extra (and very handy) configuration tools and managers, along with their own software repositories, but they aren't customizing Kubuntu beyond that. Kubuntu Focus is, ahem, focused, mainly on QA testing of updates and maintaining full hardware support for its devices.
Focus does offer a few software tools, including custom power profiles tailored to your hardware, allowing you to fine-tune everything from graphics cards to fans. My favorite, though, is the rollback tool. If for some reason, somehow, something does go wrong with your Kubuntu system, you can use the rollback tool to quickly revert back to the system as it was before it stopped working. I tested this extensively by purposefully breaking the system, and it always worked exactly the way it was supposed to.
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
Kubuntu Focus has also done a great job with its setup wizard, which guides you through the setup process with a series of questions, suggestions, mini tutorials, and little wizards designed to make getting Linux running easier for newbies. It succeeds too. I especially like the little widgets that sit on the desktop to remind you of keyboard shortcuts and other helpful extras. For those new to Linux, the overall experience is leaps and bounds better than what they'd get downloading a random distro and trying to get it to work.
If you want an all-powerful Linux laptop, the Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 is a fantastic, if expensive, machine. Most people will probably be better served by one of the company's other models, like the Lr 14 or 16, which are more like your standard 14- or 16-inch laptop, but have some nice extras like dual SSD slots and up to 96 GB of RAM. The only downside is you're limited to a Core i5-13500H processor.
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
There's also the M2, which sits somewhere between the Lr and Zr, being a bit more svelte than the Zr, but using the more powerful Intel Core Ultra 9 processor. Whichever model suits your needs, the Linux experience and fantastic hardware support is the same.
That next year will be “the year of Linux” is a joke that's been around as long as I've been using Linux, which is going on 20 years now. I'm not going to evoke it here, except to say that I have seen more people experimenting with Linux lately than ever before. If you're one of those people and you really want to leave Apple and Microsoft behind, Kubuntu Focus machines are an excellent way to do it. They'll give you a level of support that even Apple and Microsoft don't really match.
Kubuntu Focus Zr Gen 1 Linux Laptop
Rating: 8/10
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Of all the cursed things I've seen this year, this is the most cursed yet.
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Yes, you did read the headline correctly, and you'd be wise to fetch a cross, garlic, and a stake. Lyra Rebane, a madlady who dabbles in CSS and infosec, figured out she could leverage the power of contemporary implementations of the stylesheet language to emulate an x86 processor, all without even a single line of JavaScript, WASM, or any other such tomfoolery.
The emulator even comes complete with a basic display and keypad, and some preinstalled programs for calculating the Fibonacci sequence, Pascal's triangle, and a variation of Wordle. You'll need a recent version of a Chromium-based browser, as some CSS features she used are not yet standard. Rebane even goes as far as showing fellow mad-people how to compile their own C programs for the emulator using the gcc-ia16 compiler.
As the first question out of everyone's mouths will be "Can it run Doom?", the answer is that no, it cannot, or at least not yet. While the x86css emulator implements most of the x86 assembly, it's missing key functionality like interrupt handling, port input/output, and block-operation instructions, all key to making most any game as we know them. Perhaps more poignantly, Doom is a 32-bit program and requires a 32-bit CPU (80386 or above), 4 MB of RAM, and the ability to enter protected mode.
Cold-hearted developers like myself will also find some warmth in the fact that Rebane did not use any vibe-coding or AI bot assistance for writing this emulator. And as she points out, a bot could have hardly done this, as the necessary leaps in logic to force CSS to be a full-fledged state machine require some serious out-of-the-box thinking. Rebane points to Jane Ori's CSS CPU Hack as instrumental to her own ideas.
i built an entire x86 CPU emulator in CSS (no javascript)you can write programs in C, compile them to x86 machine code with GCC, and run them inside CSS pic.twitter.com/jU29iLZfbZFebruary 24, 2026
As to the reason or utility of such an enterprise, she simply stated that it was a fun project. Many developers (me included) have long made jokes when people mention HTML and CSS as "programming languages," and this is definitely a moment of harsh acceptance. Some commenters wonder if this implies that contemporary CSS might become a serious attack vector, but that seems unlikely given that Rebane had to create the machine to run the code with.
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Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
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For instance, and this would be very, very bad: a puncture wound.
In the vacuum of space, the amount of debris—spent rocket stages, splintered satellites, micrometeoroids—numbers in the millions, all zooming about, often at 17,000 mph speeds. They're also constantly hitting each other in a tsuris of exponential littering. Most of these pieces are tiny, and many are not anywhere near the altitude of the ISS. But the area isn't completely clean.
Rolling out this week, WIRED's journalistic commissions on technological decommissions—from broken-down electric cars to falling-down space stations.
Debris actually pelts the ISS all the time, and noticeable dents and cracks line the exteriors. But should something fully breach the station, cabin atmosphere will seep into the vacuum of space and alarms will go off. Pressure gauges will confirm to astronauts that the station has, almost certainly, been hit, and the speed of the seepages may indicate how much time the crew has to respond. According to one NASA estimate, a 0.6-centimeter-wide hole leaves 14 hours to plug the leak. A 20-centimeter hole leaves less than a minute.
There is a plan to prevent such a strike—the Space Surveillance Network, a bevy of sensors that the military uses to track space debris. NASA monitors what's unofficially known as the “pizza box,” a sort of no-fly zone around the ISS. When pieces of debris are predicted to enter the box—if there's at least a 1 in 100,000 chance of collision—mission controllers order avoidance maneuvers, firing thrusters that move the ISS and dodge the trash. The technique has been used dozens of times since the first ISS module launched in 1998. But the system only tracks about 45,000 larger pieces, and all sensors have noise. Plus, risk thresholds can miss stuff, sometimes badly. In 2025, Chinese astronauts were briefly stranded at their station after debris hit their return vehicle.
The ISS does have its own defenses, of course. Fabric-y buffers envelope some of the systems, and a bumper called the Whipple Shield helps blunt impact. That shield is only built to stop debris up to about 1 cubic centimeter, though, and the debris tracker is only designed to catch pieces 10 cubic centimeters and larger. In other words, there's a gap in defenses.
Whatever the case, a wounded ISS will have been fairly rotten luck. Back in 2017, scientists from NASA and a Russian space contractor put the odds of this worst-case scenario at 1 in 121. As of late 2025, NASA told WIRED the risk of debris causing a depressurization event in any six-month period was somewhere between 1 in 36 and 1 in 170.
If they have time, astronauts and cosmonauts will look to plug the leak or close the hatch to the leaking section of the station. (That is how they dealt with a minor leak in the station's PrK module for a number of years, and it basically worked.) Remember, though, that this is the worst-case scenario, and our crew will run into a hard deadline. Once pressure falls to around 490 mm Hg, NASA says, critical systems risk breaking down. Astronauts could suffer hypoxia, oxygen deprivation so debilitating they could become delirious. It will be a heart-wrenching call, but if nothing else can be done, the crew will need to go to their crew vehicles and leave the ISS.
(There are other emergencies that could bring us to this point. One is a fire, which could result from machinery shorting. Another is a toxic ammonia leak. But these are even more unlikely.)
Let's now imagine that the station is depressurized and, for the first time in decades, empty, operated entirely via computers and remote control. First, NASA and its partners must accept the need to deorbit—there's no going back to save the ISS. This could be complicated: 23 countries in the European Space Agency, as well as Japan and Canada, are involved in the ISS partnership. And then there's Russia. The Russians have committed to supporting the ISS only until 2028. But they did agree to help NASA in a contingency deorbit situation.
There is no one single plan for how to abandon ship, since everything will depend on, well, everything. But something has to happen, because a giant piece of space trash will be headed toward Earth—albeit very, very slowly, and with the oversight of the world's top space engineers and scientists. But still, a worrisome situation. Ideally, the US Deorbit Vehicle, our Dragon, will be ready to shepherd the ISS to the atmosphere, over a safe zone in the Pacific Ocean.
But in the worst-case scenario, the Deorbit Vehicle won't be ready. Without it, a protocol agreed on in 2024, which relies on the Russian Progress spacecraft, could come into play. There will be vexing trade-offs to consider. Allowing the ISS to descend toward Earth on its own saves gas, which the ISS will need when it's finally time to eject into the atmosphere and ensure a burial at sea. But a slow descent jeopardizes the machinery needed to maintain remote control.
A controlled deorbit requires the use of several core systems, including those for communications, power, and avionics. Some of the ISS machinery was not specifically certified to perform in a depressurized environment. (NASA believes that critical systems would remain operable, based on technical analyses, and emphasizes that many of these systems are already used in vacuum.) Another thing to worry about: the ISS losing control over its orientation in space. The spacecraft could start tumbling, flipping the station's solar arrays away from the sun, taking the primary source of power with it.
And no matter what, the plan to use Russian assets remains problematic, since the ISS would have a “shallower reentry,” NASA says, and sprinkle surviving debris over a larger-than-desired area. Still, NASA would retain significant control over where any of these extant shards might plop down. They'll probably land in the ocean, just as the space agency has always hoped. Sure, the station would have died before its time, but the thing was getting old. Most likely, it will be fine.
But what if it's not fine? Even back in 1996, before a single component of the ISS was launched into orbit, NASA foresaw the possibility of an even worse worst-case scenario: an uncontrolled reentry. The crux of this scenario involves multiple systems failing in an improbable but not completely impossible cascade. Cabin depressurization could damage the avionics. The electrical power system could go offline, along with thermal control and data handling. Without these, systems controlling coolant and even propellant could break down. Unmoored, the ISS would edge slowly toward Earth, maybe over a year or two, with no way to control where it is headed or where its debris might land. And no, we could not save ourselves by blowing the station up. This would be extremely dangerous and almost certainly create an enormous amount of space trash—which is how we got into this hypothetical mess in the first place.
The atmosphere is a ruthless incinerator, and, no matter how the ISS comes down, most of it would be vaporized. But there's still that chunk of station that could survive reentry. In the best case, where we're prepared, air traffic controllers and maritime authorities can issue alerts. The station will shed pieces into the sky, and Australians might get a nice view before things kerplunk into the sea. Then the remains of this historic feat of human engineering will sink to the ocean floor, another carcass left to the algae and the microplastics.
But in the worst worst-case scenario, we don't have any control. Instead, the station will crack through the atmosphere. Sure, many pieces will likely end up in the ocean, but some might hit people, possibly in a town or a city. The station could break apart across thousands of miles and multiple continents. This would be exceedingly hard to anticipate. As NASA puts it, “Calculating the probability of this penetration cascading into loss of deorbit capability has a very large range of variables, making predictions ineffective.”
This almost certainly won't happen to the ISS. At the same time, it's a far more extreme version of the only way an American space station has ever come down. In 1979, after years spent vacant in orbit, Skylab, the US's first space station, started sinking toward the atmosphere, where it threatened to fall and drop molten spacecraft parts on Earth. At that point, NASA officials had to remotely wake up its computers and, with only limited control of the station, direct it over a location that would endanger the fewest humans.
In the months before, space agency officials were in frequent contact with the State Department, which disseminated the latest predicted trajectories to embassies across the world. In these situations, oops doesn't cut it: When one of the Salyuts, a Soviet space station model, was deorbited a few decades ago, flaming bits were littered across Argentina, scaring people and requiring the deployment of at least a few firefighters, according to local newspaper reports.
The ISS is far bigger than either the Salyuts or Skylab. In an uncontrolled deorbit, pieces of debris “up to car and train size,” say experts on the official ISS space station advisory committee, will rain down from the sky. NASA confirms this would pose “a significant risk to the public worldwide.”
OK—the nightmare is over. Thus concludes my anxiety-ridden spiral. Here are the facts as they stand in 2026:
As far as WIRED can tell, no one has ever died because a piece of space station hit them. Some pieces of Skylab did fall on a remote part of Western Australia, and Jimmy Carter formally apologized, but no one was hurt. The odds of a piece hitting a populated area are low. Most of the world is ocean, and most land is uninhabited. In 2024, a piece of space trash that was ejected from the ISS survived atmospheric burn-up, fell through the sky, and crashed through the roof of a home belonging to a very real, and rightfully perturbed, Florida man. He tweeted about it and then sued NASA, but he wasn't injured.
For this story, WIRED reviewed dozens of NASA documents, including backup plans and contingencies for emergencies, and spoke to more than a dozen people, including three astronauts who've visited the ISS, and no one seemed that freaked out. One astronaut said the most worrisome scenario that actively crossed his mind in orbit was getting a toothache. The ISS has had some emergencies, including a first-ever medical evacuation in January, but generally things have been remarkably stable. In fact, one of the most impressive things about the ISS is that nothing very dramatic has ever happened to it. No experiment has gone too haywire. It hasn't been hit by an asteroid.
But there's also that annoying, gnawing truth: You don't know what you don't know. This has, for decades, been an apt adage for describing life in this experimental orbital colony. Eventually, though, different aphorisms will come into play. Yes, it's true: You don't know what you don't know. But we do know that all good things come to an end. And that what goes up must come down.
Mostly. This is because, theoretically, we could still save the ISS and move it into higher orbit. NASA has calculated that propelling the station more than 640 kilometers above Earth would keep it alive for 100 years—and also require at least 18.9 metric tons of propellant. That's roughly 2,000 airline carry-ons. A thousand years would require at least 36 metric tons. If that doesn't seem like very much, consider the fact that, right now, no vehicle can transport that amount of gas to the station. The still-in-development SpaceX megarocket Starship might be able to haul a significant percentage, but it would struggle to dock with the station, according to the space agency's estimations.
Perhaps that's the biggest irony of all. Space is huge and mostly empty—and yet there's no easy way to throw things out.
Animation: Jacqui VanLiew; source images: Getty Images
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“El Mencho” is dead.
This weekend, Mexican Army Special Forces killed Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the head of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) in Tapalpa, Jalisco, Mexico. Following confirmation of El Mencho's death by federal authorities, experts anticipate a profound reconfiguration of the global drug trafficking landscape, a scenario that could lead to a new and dangerous wave of violence.
The focus will turn to the CJNG's mechanisms of control, intimidation, financing, and recruitment that granted the cartel unprecedented operational capacity. Much of its strength stemmed from the weakening of long-standing rivals through the sophisticated use of social media and artificial intelligence, state-of-the-art specialized weaponry, and a flexible internal structure.
The US State Department says that CJNG maintains a presence and contacts in “almost all of Mexico,” the American continent, and countries such as Australia, China, and various Southeast Asian nations. The agency underscores the cartel's criminal versatility: In addition to fentanyl trafficking, it is involved in extortion, migrant smuggling, oil and mineral theft, and illicit arms trade.
The CJNG traces its roots to the Sinaloa Cartel, led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as “El Chapo.” Around 2007, this group formed an armed wing in Jalisco under the command of Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villarreal. This was the Milenio Cartel, also known as Los Valencia. During this period, Guzmán's operatives were vying for control of Jalisco territories against Los Zetas, a splinter group of the Gulf Cartel.
In its early years, the CJNG presented itself as “Los Mata Zetas” (The Zeta Killers). According to the BBC, its first documented appearance occurred in September 2011, when it claimed responsibility, through a video circulated on social media, for the discovery of 35 bodies in Boca del Río, a municipality in the state of Veracruz.
By then, the alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel had already fractured after a confrontation with federal forces that culminated in 2010 with the death of Ignacio Coronel. Leadership fell to Oseguera Cervantes, who spearheaded a rapid expansion in methamphetamine production and trafficking.
In less than five years, the CJNG displaced the Knights Templar from southern Michoacán and expelled Los Zetas from northern Jalisco and parts of Zacatecas. After Guzmán Loera's capture and extradition, the group strengthened its strategy by recruiting financial and chemical specialists to boost the manufacture of synthetic drugs and diversify its income through money-laundering schemes in sectors such as livestock, mining, agriculture, and construction, as well as expanding extortion of small- and medium-size businesses.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) notes that the CJNG operates in more than 40 countries and has a financial structure known as Los Cuinis, headed by Abigael González Valencia, Oseguera's brother-in-law. This network coordinates money-laundering operations through international trade, cryptocurrencies, and links with Asian networks.
Several investigations have documented the use of digital tools for recruitment and fraud. In 2024, Interpol warned that groups like the CJNG were involved in large-scale financial scams supported by AI, natural language models, and cryptocurrencies. It also detected the expansion of human trafficking for forced criminal activity in scam compounds.
A study by El Colegio de México, in collaboration with the Civic AI Lab at Northeastern University in Boston, revealed that TikTok has become a recruitment tool for Mexican cartels, including CJNG. The research identified 100 active accounts linked to illicit organizations and categorized their content as recruitment, border crossings, illegal businesses, prostitution, propaganda, and arms sales. Forty-seven percent of the accounts promoted the recruitment of new members, and 31 percent disseminated propaganda messages. The report highlighted that the CJNG accounted for 54.3 percent of the detected accounts, followed by the Sinaloa Cartel and the Northeast Cartel.
Another report, this one on the use of AI by criminal networks, indicates that these structures employ advanced systems to simulate kidnappings, impersonate others, and optimize traffic routes using predictive algorithms that reduce operational risks.
On the military front, according to experts, the CJNG's dominance lies in its sophisticated handling of next-generation weaponry. About five years ago, it began using drones modified with explosives in Michoacán to attack its rivals. Later, it extended its use to Guerrero, where the cartel La Familia Michoacana also operates. These attacks have resulted in dozens of deaths, injuries, and forced displacements.
Figures from the Ministry of National Defense say that in 2020 there were five drone attacks attributed to drug trafficking. Drone attacks soon escalated with 107 recorded in 2021, 233 in 2022, and 260 in the first half of 2023. Most occurred in marginalized or hard-to-reach areas.
Criminals typically use commercial models like the DJI Mini 3 , which costs around $420, modified with galvanized tubes containing gunpowder, pellets, or metal fragments. The CJNG uses DJI Agras T40 agricultural drones, which can cost around $25,000 and are capable of carrying toxic substances or liquid explosives to cause greater damage.
Since 2023, Michoacán state police have deactivated nearly 5,000 explosives, including land mines and drones, which were used by various criminal groups to control drug trafficking routes.
In 2023, researchers found that the CJNG had created a unit specializing in unmanned aircraft known as Drone Operators, made up of experts who use these devices for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, intimidating propaganda, and attacks.
This internal structure and operation have allowed the CJNG to consolidate itself as one of the greatest threats globally. The DEA indicates that the CJNG operates in countries around the world through a network of members, associates, and facilitators distributed across at least 40 nations.
An improvised or "homemade" explosive device used by organized crime in Michoacán, according to the Specialized Group on Explosive Devices and Hazardous Materials of the Michoacán Public Security Secretariat.
The DEA describes the CJNG as “a terrorist organization, at every level, from its leaders to its distribution networks and everyone in between.” The agency concludes that “every arrest, every seizure, and every dollar confiscated from the CJNG represents lives saved and communities protected.”
Some security experts emphasize that the CJNG operates as a network with multiple commanders, logistical structures, and specialized franchises, so its operational capacity does not disintegrate with the death of its leader.
However, as history dictates, fragmentations may arise. Although this may open up space for the birth of new criminal cells, it also represent an opportunity to dismantle criminal networks, now supported by new technologies.
This story originally appeared in WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
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Swiss shoe company On—one of the fastest-growing footwear brands—has done very well for itself, growing into a $3 billion company on the giant puffy soles of its very garish shoes. Today, the company announced three new kicks and the opening of a new production plant in South Korea that will make many, many more—at least, that's the goal.
Specifically, the company is focusing on the production of its newest, weirdest shoe—a giant soled laceless running shoe with a single-piece toe box made of “hyper-foam” plastics sprayed on by robot arms. The plastics are 40 percent biofoam, and the shoe is made of just eight pieces; On says its minimalist approach saves on the shoe's carbon footprint.
The LightSpray Cloudmonster 3 Hyper is a switch-up from On's first shoe that uses its sprayed-on toe box technique, the Cloudboom Strike LS. Along with adding the LightSpray branding to the thing, the primary difference is the switch to the Cloudmonster model, which, in On shoe lore, tends to provide more cushy soles. This new version has 20 percent more foam, for all those runners who like a squishy bounce. They'll have a limited release on the company's website and retail stores in North America starting March 5, with a global expansion on April 16.
The new LightSpray shoes weigh 205 grams apiece (less than half a pound), which puts them a little heavier than the 170-gram Cloudboom Strikes. They're also cheaper at $280 versus the Cloudboom's heftier $330 price.
While WIRED liked the first iteration of the LightSpray shoe, nobody else, except for a few hand-picked marathon runners, had a chance to use it. Production runs were very limited, and the shoes were prohibitively expensive. Now, On has beefed up production in South Korea, enabling it to expand its overall production of LightSpray shoes 30-fold in 2026.
“On's strategy to expand the LightSpray technology from racing to running shoes is to make it available to a broader audience beyond elite athletes,” an On representative tells WIRED via email.
Whether laceless, slip-on shoes are going to find their gait in the shoe market isn't a winning idea yet. While brands like Nike offer slip-ons, the laceless fixation tends to be reserved for one-off shoes like the Back to the Future II-inspired Adapt BB self-lacing shoes. Some serious runners prefer the pursuit of a more natural run offered by slim-soled shoes like barefoot shoes, but On is still doubling down on its doubly big cushions. People seem to like them, as On is also announcing two other Cloudmonster shoes. One is the laced-up Cloudmonster 3, and the other is a regular ol' Cloudmonster 3 Hyper with laces and a non-LightSprayed toe box. (Ugh, laces. How passé.)
On says it has the further strategic goal of scaling up its global production of the LightSpray shoes, “within the next few years.”
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If you were watching the State of the Union address, and you're an iPhone user, then toward the end of the speech, during President Trump's recounting of the story of Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, you might have had Siri triggered—assuming you have voice activation turned on.
Gizmodo's own Matt Novak brought it to my attention:
My phone just lit up and I think it's because it just heard Trump on TV saying “searing pain” as “Siri.”
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) February 24, 2026 at 7:48 PM
This feature once required the user to say “Hey Siri” but now only requires “Siri.”
At least one other Bluesky user confirmed that she experienced the same thing. A user on X said the erroneous Siri trigger word was “serious” not “searing,” but the timing of the post suggests it was the same moment.
Another Bluesky user (whose posts are off-limits to those who are not logged into Bluesky), posted a Google results page Siri pulled up following the Siri-triggering line, featuring a bunch a results about bullets going through legs.
Trump's recounting of Slover's harrowing story very much did include such gory details:
While preparing to land, enemy machine guns fired from every angle and Eric was hit very badly in the leg and hip, one bullet after another. He absorbed four agonizing shots, shredding his leg into numerous pieces. And yet, despite the fact that the use of his legs was vital to a successful helicopter flight — legs are the most important part of flying a helicopter — to deliver the many commandos who would capture and detain Maduro was the only thing Eric was thinking about.
Exactly which word or words woke up Siri—”searing” or “serious” or perhaps some part of “…was hit very…”—are not yet totally clear, but it clearly happened around this moment.
But if your Siri was triggered, I hope it spiced up an otherwise dire night of politics. That speech was rough, folks!
Siri itself is expected to receive an update from Apple next month.
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Even when your power goes down, your Wi-Fi won't.
Someone clearly wants the public to believe Trump will speak for more than two hours.
Apple is finally leaning into fun colors.
If you're an iPhone user and you want Tesla to support CarPlay, updating your phone's OS might help.
The creators and promoters of the coin are facing accusations similar to those faced by the “Hawk Tuah” girl.
Hey Siri, wake me up when Apple finally fixes you like it's been promising to.
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What happens here matters everywhere
by Kurt Schlosser on Feb 24, 2026 at 6:54 pmFebruary 24, 2026 at 6:55 pm
Amazon plans to exit an office building near its Seattle headquarters, 12 years after taking over the space during the height of its growth in the city.
Amazon is not renewing its lease at 1915 Terry Ave. in the Denny Triangle area of downtown Seattle, the company confirmed to GeekWire on Tuesday. The tech giant, which has occupied the seven-story, 251,000-square-foot space owned by Seattle Children's since 2014, will move out at the end of May and relocate employees to other offices.
The Puget Sound Business Journal first reported on the planned move.
Kumo, as Amazon calls it, is a 1950s-era building located just a few blocks from Amazon's main office towers and the Spheres. Amazon did not say how many employees work from the building.
The company employs approximately 50,000 corporate and tech employees in Seattle. More than 1,400 workers in Seattle were impacted by company-wide layoffs of 16,000 people announced at the end of January.
PSBJ reported that since 2020, Amazon has given up more than 1 million square feet of office space in Seattle, most of it in the Denny Triangle.
The company has been growing its footprint across Lake Washington in Bellevue, where it has opened new office buildings and said it plans to employ 25,000 people as part of its regional HQ.
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Rumors of a touchscreen MacBook Pro have been circulating for over three years, and they've always left customers full of questions. First among them: “What in the world would that user experience be like?” The apparent answer, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, is that it will be…kinda muddled? But certainly full of new possibilities! And yes, it sounds like it will be like an iPhone with a keyboard—OLED screen, Dynamic Island, and all. But only if you want that.
At any rate, Gurman's anonymous sources do indeed say a touchscreen MacBook Pro is coming later this year. Just don't expect it to be announced at the next big Apple event. It's still technically a secret—for now—that will be announced in time for a late 2026 release.
Apparently, the display on this laptop will change everything—or maybe nothing. Per Bloomberg:
“Even with the new display, Apple won't position the MacBook Pro as an iPad replacement — or describe its interface as a touch-first experience. Instead, the idea is to let customers use the touch input as much or as little as they'd like, and blend it with the familiar point-and-click approach.”
If Apple is really going to be this wishy-washy, that's understandable. If you've ever worked with a touchscreen PC, you might have experienced it mainly as feature bloat. Articles abound on how to disable the touchscreen option entirely on Windows machines. Then again, some people (myself included) absolutely love the new possibilities in Windows with a touch display, and never plan to look back.
On MacBook Pros, the new Dynamic Island—a version of those shapeshifting pill shapes over the floating camera hole on certain iPhone screens—will reportedly be at the center-top of the screen. On an iPhone, your Dynamic Island becomes your unlock “button,” as well as an instinctive first place to direct your attention when you take your phone out. It can display time remaining on a timer, sports scores, flight info, and more.
Per Bloomberg, the relevant version of macOS will allow for iPhone-style zooming and scrolling, and there will be a new kind of popup menu for when the user taps a button. However, the basic look won't change drastically from current MacBooks.
Interestingly, this change may partly explain why Apple held on so stubbornly to the unpopular Liquid Glass aesthetic, including on MacBooks, even after users threw endless tantrums about it. Gurman writes that Liquid Glass seeded small changes that will smooth the transition to a touchscreen MacBook Pro, including control center sliders that have been made friendlier to touch input, and “more padding” around certain notifications.
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Even when your power goes down, your Wi-Fi won't.
Apple will reportedly focus on computer vision to make AI gadgets that sound a lot like other, existing, AI gadgets.
Apple is finally leaning into fun colors.
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Apple has positioned itself as an alternative to tech stocks dependent on the AI boom to grow.
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The Pistoia Alliance's Methods Database Project is addressing a longstanding challenge in analytical science by creating a standardized, vendor-independent format for the digital exchange of High-Performance Liquid Chromatography–Ultraviolet (HPLC-UV) methods.
Built on the Allotrope Framework and the Pistoia Alliance Data Platform, the project enables machine-readable, semantically consistent method transfer between different Chromatography Data Systems (CDS), fully aligned with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles.
A pilot implementation with Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC and GSK was able to demonstrate the successful two-way exchange of standardized HPLC instructions across instruments and sites. This validated the technical feasibility of digital method sharing and set the stage for wider industry adoption.
This collaborative, pre-competitive effort delivers multiple tangible advantages:
Read the full article now!
SciY is a software brand that provides a broad spectrum of scientific software solutions across the entire life sciences spectrum. SciY is a concept developed by Bruker BioSpin which emerged from collaborative efforts with various brand-neutral software partners, including Mestrelab, Arxspan, Optimal Industrial Technologies, Optimal Industrial Automation, and ZONTAL.
Fueled by a shared progressive entrepreneurial vision and the necessity to recognize the benefits and added value of a unified market presence and a diversified brand portfolio, these partners united their individual ventures under one collective brand - SciY, housed within the newly established Integrated Data Solutions Division of the Bruker BioSpin Group.
SciY consolidates all current vendor agnostic software platform and solution brands, and will encompass future innovations born from this collaborative synergy. A key motivation for SciY is to forge new and innovative, modular software solution platforms, meticulously tailored to meet the specific needs of their target markets and applications.
Sponsored Content Policy: News-Medical.net publishes articles and related content that may be derived from sources where we have existing commercial relationships, provided such content adds value to the core editorial ethos of News-Medical.Net which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in medical research, science, medical devices and treatments.
Last updated: Feb 25, 2026 at 12:08 PM
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A new editorial perspective was published in Volume 17 of Oncotarget on February 20, 2026, titled "CAR-T therapy: Trailblazing CAR(ing) in cancer treatment."
Led by Uzma Saqib - with corresponding author Krishnan Hajela from the School of Life Sciences, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya - the perspective reviews recent clinical and translational advances in chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy and highlights both its promise and its remaining barriers. The piece synthesizes recent clinical advances in hematologic malignancies and emerging applications in solid tumors, while focusing attention on safety (for example, cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity), resistance, antigen specificity, and access disparities.
The authors summarize the CAR-T workflow (leukapheresis → genetic modification and expansion → infusion) and note major recent clinical gains - including improved outcomes in leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma - that support wider adoption of cellular immunotherapy approaches. They emphasize that despite these advances, important clinical challenges remain, particularly for solid tumors, where antigen selection, tumor microenvironment, and T-cell trafficking limit efficacy. At the same time, the perspective highlights technological and clinical strategies under development to overcome these obstacles, including next-generation CAR designs and improved supportive-care protocols.
"Despite its promise, CAR T-cell therapy faces several critical challenges."
The authors call out clear next steps for the field: (1) continued refinement of CAR constructs (dual-targeting, switchable/on-off systems, armored CARs) to improve specificity and reduce on-target/off-tumor toxicity; (2) improved management protocols and prophylactic measures to mitigate CRS and neurotoxicity; (3) expanded investigation of allogeneic or alternative CAR-T platforms to address manufacturing, cost, and access barriers; and (4) focused translational studies to improve T-cell trafficking and efficacy in solid tumors. They also highlight equity issues - socioeconomic and racial disparities that limit access to CAR-T - and urge that broad deployment plans include strategies to expand availability and affordability.
Oncotarget
Saqib, U., et al. (2026). CAR-T therapy: Trailblazing CAR(ing) in cancer treatment. Oncotarget. DOI: 10.18632/oncotarget.28836. https://www.oncotarget.com/article/28836/pdf/
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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a new, easy-to-use blood test score that can help identify when fatty liver disease is being driven by excessive alcohol use, an important distinction that often goes unrecognized in routine care.
The study results, published in the February 25, 2026 online edition of Gastroenterology, found that a new blood test score could help clinicians determine when liver injury is likely driven by alcohol rather than metabolic factors, providing clearer guidance on when additional alcohol testing may be needed.
The tool, called the MetALD-ALD Prediction Index (MAPI), uses five standard lab values that are already collected during most primary care and liver clinic visits. With this information, the score can estimate whether a person with fatty liver disease may have alcohol-related liver injury, even when alcohol use is underreported by the patient. By identifying hidden risk, MAPI gives care teams a head start to intervene early, guide lifestyle changes, and modify treatments with more personalized care.
This new score gives clinicians a simple and accessible way to uncover hidden alcohol-related liver injury. By improving how we classify liver disease, we can help patients achieve better long-term health outcomes."
Rohit Loomba, MD, senior author of the study, professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and gastroenterologist and hepatologist at UC San Diego Health
The study analyzed more than 500 adults in the San Diego region and about 1,800 individuals in Sweden, showing that MAPI outperformed commonly used blood tests and could help determine when more advanced alcohol testing is needed.
Fatty liver disease affects nearly one in three adults worldwide and has multiple causes. Many patients have metabolic drivers, such as obesity or diabetes, while others have liver injury caused or worsened by alcohol consumption. Because people often underreport drinking due to stigma or fear, health care providers may miss the role alcohol plays in disease progression. Missed alcohol-driven liver damage can silently progress for years, which can lead to hospitalization and preventable deaths.
The research team emphasized that while the most accurate alcohol test, called phosphatidylethanol (PEth), is highly reliable, it can be costly or unavailable in many settings. MAPI helps clinicians identify when PEth testing is necessary, making liver disease evaluation more accessible. More accessible testing means earlier intervention and fewer complications.
Researchers say the tool could be especially helpful in primary care settings, where most cases of fatty liver disease are first identified. It may also improve patient counseling by offering a clearer understanding of their condition. This transparency can reduce stigma, empower patients, and encourage honest conversations about alcohol use.
"Our goal was to build something practical," added study first author Federica Tavaglione, MD, PhD. "These lab values are already part of standard care, so MAPI can be implemented immediately without adding cost or complexity for clinics."
The study was conducted at the UC San Diego MASLD Research Center, which is recognized for its leadership in metabolic and alcohol-associated liver disease research.
Researchers are hoping to use MAPI in large observational studies and future clinical trials to expand its potential to improve liver disease detection and patient care on a broader scale.
University of California - San Diego
Tavaglione, F., et al. (2026). The MetALD-ALD Prediction Index: A Phosphatidylethanol-Driven Biomarker Panel for Identifying Individuals With Steatotic Liver Disease and Excessive Alcohol Use. Gastroenterology. DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2025.11.022. https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(25)06582-5/abstract
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A major new study, led by Queen Mary University of London and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has been published in The Lancet Public Health. It found that out of the five million surgical procedures performed each year by the NHS, around 300,000 are carried out on individuals considered high-risk, and within 90 days of surgery, these high-risk patients account for:
While surgery is safer than ever for most people and remains the best treatment option for many conditions, this study highlights the urgent need to identify high-risk patients earlier, to provide care that is better tailored to their individual needs, and for doctors and patients to have more open, honest conversations about the risks and long-term outcomes for surgery at an individual level.
It also shows that high-risk patients, who tend to be older and live with several long-term health conditions such as heart disease, have poor outcomes not because of technical failings in surgery or anesthesia, but due to post-operative complications relating to chronic health conditions, age and frailty. Therefore, the findings demonstrate the need for greater investment in specialist perioperative services that focus on the care of older, high-risk patients before, during and after surgery.
Rupert Pearse, Professor and Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust, and co-lead of the study said: "While surgery is safer than ever before, our findings clearly show that high-risk patients are more likely to have poor outcomes and experience harm after surgery than those deemed low-risk.
"Although these patients make up fewer than one in ten surgical cases, their numbers are increasing as the population ages and more people live longer with chronic illness. It is therefore vital that we work to improve care for this group of patients, pre- and post-surgery, including having open conversations with patients about the individual risk of their procedure."
He continues: "For many years, surgical success has often been judged by survival at thirty days. Our study shows that this measure does not give the full picture of what happens to many high-risk patients in the months and years after surgery. By looking at longer-term survival and other factors such as time spent in hospital and quality of life, we could make a real difference to patients and potentially help relieve pressure on the wider NHS."
Surgery and anesthesia are safer today than ever before, helping to save and improve the lives of millions of people across the UK every year.
This new research emphasizes that the decision to have surgery is a choice each individual should make for themselves, having understood the benefits as well as the risks explained by their surgeons and anesthetists. There will always be a small number of people for whom the risks of surgery outweigh the benefits.
The Royal College of Anaesthetists is working to improve specialist perioperative care services for high-risk patients, so we can provide each person the tailored care they need to have the best chance of a good outcome after their surgery."
Dr. Tom Abbott, co-lead author of the study and Clinical Senior Lecturer in anesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at Queen Mary
The study is one of the largest analyses of surgical outcomes ever carried out in the UK. It analysed health records from 13 million adults who had 16.1 million surgical procedures in England, Scotland and Wales between 2015 and 2019.
Queen Mary University of London
Fowler, A. J., et al. (2026). Long-term outcomes for patients at high risk of death after surgery in the UK: a retrospective cohort study. The Lancet Public Health. DOI: 10.1016/s2468-2667(26)00022-8. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(26)00022-8/fulltext
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IntroductionWhat is duckweed?Nutritional compositionFunctional propertiesHealth implicationsSustainability and food systemsResearch gaps and safety profileConclusionsReferencesFurther reading
A fast-growing aquatic plant may offer a high-quality, bioavailable protein alternative, yet its safety profile and mineral variability could determine whether duckweed becomes a future staple or remains a niche innovation.
Image Credit: ONGUSHI / Shutterstock.com
This article discusses the health potential of duckweed, its biochemical characteristics, clinical evidence, and safety profile. Duckweed (Lemnaceae) is an emerging sustainable plant protein source that provides all essential amino acids, demonstrates short-term human bioavailability, and shows in vitro bioactive potential. However, mineral bioaccumulation risks, regulatory concerns over manganese intake, and limited long-term human data highlight the need for standardized cultivation and further clinical validation.
As the global population continues to grow, the demand for sustainable protein has intensified, prompting exploration of aquatic ecosystems as alternative food sources.1
The Lemnaceae family, commonly known as duckweed or water lentils, comprises five genera, Spirodela, Landoltia, Lemna, Wolffiella, and Wolffia, and approximately 36 recognized species worldwide.1
Under optimal conditions, duckweed can double its biomass in approximately 2–3 days.1,4 Reported protein content ranges between approximately 20–45% of dry weight depending on species and cultivation conditions, with lower values also reported under suboptimal nutrient availability1,6,7. Annual dry matter yields of up to approximately 30–40 tons per hectare have been described in intensive pilot and controlled systems; however, standardized large-scale agronomic comparisons remain limited.1,7 Protein productivity per unit land area may exceed soybean under optimized systems; however, comparative estimates depend strongly on cultivation parameters and system design, and direct field-equivalent comparisons are not yet comprehensively validated.1,7
Duckweed can be cultivated in controlled hydroponic systems and wastewater streams, contributing to nutrient recycling and biomass valorization.6,7
The dominant protein in duckweed is ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO), accounting for approximately 40–50% of total protein.6 Duckweed provides all essential amino acids and has been reported to meet FAO amino acid reference patterns for human nutrition, based primarily on compositional analyses rather than standardized DIAAS trials.1,2
Protein content varies significantly across species and growth conditions; for example, Lemna minor and Wolffia globosa have been reported within the 30–45% dry weight range under optimized cultivation, though values below 30% have also been documented.1,6,7
In a randomized controlled trial, consumption of 30 g protein from Wolffia globosa (Mankai strain) significantly increased circulating essential amino acids postprandially, with responses comparable to cheese and peas for most EAAs.2 Branched-chain amino acids increased significantly from baseline, although increases were greater following cheese consumption, reflecting differences in amino acid kinetics rather than necessarily overall protein quality superiority.2
The same RCT demonstrated that Mankai significantly increased serum vitamin B12 concentrations compared with cheese and peas, confirming bioavailability; however, the trial duration was short and does not establish long-term B12 status maintenance.2
Duckweed contains iron, zinc, carotenoids, polyphenols, and dietary fiber.1,4,7 However, mineral composition is highly dependent on cultivation medium due to the plant's strong bioaccumulation capacity, and concentrations of trace elements can vary substantially between production batches.8
Human data indicate protein digestibility of approximately 89%, as reported in review literature synthesizing available experimental data.3 It should be noted that the cited RCT measured postprandial amino acid responses rather than true ileal digestibility coefficients.
Processing methods including ultrasound-assisted alkaline extraction, high-pressure processing, and pulsed electric field treatment enhance protein yield, solubility, emulsification, and foaming properties, though scalability and cost-efficiency at industrial level require further validation.6
Cell wall rupture techniques (boiling, freeze–thawing, mechanical crushing) significantly affect protein retention and antioxidant activity.4 Freeze–thawing preserved higher protein levels in residues, while boiling increased phenolic content and antioxidant activity in filtrates, demonstrating that processing method materially alters nutritional and functional profiles.4
Bioactive peptides derived from duckweed protein extracts demonstrate antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity in vitro; however, these findings are based on cellular assays and cannot be directly extrapolated to clinical efficacy without human intervention trials.5,6
Protein quality metrics suggest moderate-to-high quality plant protein, but standardized Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) measurements specific to duckweed strains remain limited in the current literature.2,6
Image Credit: komkrit Preechachanwate / Shutterstock.com
Controlled human trials demonstrate that postprandial essential amino acid responses to Mankai are comparable to conventional protein sources over short-term assessment periods.2
In vitro studies show that W. globosa protein extracts reduce IL-1β and IL-6 production and downregulate NF-κB signaling pathways, indicating mechanistic anti-inflammatory potential at the cellular level.5
Antioxidant capacity correlates with phenolic content and is influenced by processing methods, reinforcing the importance of production protocol in determining functional outcomes.4,5
Duckweed cultivation supports nutrient recycling, wastewater remediation, and reduced land competition.6,7 Integration into circular food systems may improve sustainability relative to livestock-derived protein, although comprehensive life-cycle assessment data directly comparing duckweed to established protein systems remain limited.6,7
Challenges remain in scaling production, sensory optimization, and regulatory compliance, particularly regarding mineral standardization and batch consistency.3,6
The EFSA Panel concluded that increased manganese intake from water lentil powder may pose a safety concern under proposed use levels, and therefore the safety of the novel food could not be established.8 The Panel specifically highlighted that manganese exposure from certain proposed uses could substantially increase total dietary intake beyond typical background levels.8
The Panel also noted potential allergenicity due to protein content and emphasized that trace element concentrations depend strongly on cultivation conditions, necessitating strict production controls and monitoring.8
Further long-term human trials are required to assess chronic safety, sustained micronutrient effects, and metabolic outcomes, as current human evidence is limited to short-duration interventions.2,8
Duckweed represents a promising sustainable plant protein with favorable amino acid composition and demonstrated short-term human bioavailability. Nevertheless, mineral accumulation risks, regulatory scrutiny, limited long-term safety data, and variability across species and production systems remain important considerations for broader dietary integration.2,5,8
Further ReadingAll Functional Food ContentWhat Are Annatto Seeds? Uses, Health Effects, and Scientific EvidenceHealth Benefits and Nutritional Value of Mamey SapoteKokum Fruit: Nutrition, Health Benefits, and Scientific EvidenceCan Edible Cactus Improve Blood Sugar and Cholesterol? A Scientific ReviewMore...
Last Updated: Feb 24, 2026
Written by
Hugo Francisco de Souza is a scientific writer based in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. His academic passions lie in biogeography, evolutionary biology, and herpetology. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, where he studies the origins, dispersal, and speciation of wetland-associated snakes. Hugo has received, amongst others, the DST-INSPIRE fellowship for his doctoral research and the Gold Medal from Pondicherry University for academic excellence during his Masters. His research has been published in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, including PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and Systematic Biology. When not working or writing, Hugo can be found consuming copious amounts of anime and manga, composing and making music with his bass guitar, shredding trails on his MTB, playing video games (he prefers the term ‘gaming'), or tinkering with all things tech.
Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:
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Francisco de Souza, Hugo. (2026, February 24). Duckweed Protein Benefits: Is This Aquatic Plant a Sustainable Superfood?. News-Medical. Retrieved on February 25, 2026 from https://www.news-medical.net/health/Duckweed-Protein-Benefits-Is-This-Aquatic-Plant-a-Sustainable-Superfood.aspx.
MLA
Francisco de Souza, Hugo. "Duckweed Protein Benefits: Is This Aquatic Plant a Sustainable Superfood?". News-Medical. 25 February 2026.
Researchers at the University of Granada have revealed that the Nutri-Score labeling system, commonly used in Europe to assess food quality, is unable to adequately reflect the nutritional and metabolic complexity of soluble cocoa sold in Spain.
The study, which is a pioneer internationally for integrating non-targeted metabolomics techniques applied to the evaluation of nutritional labeling systems, analyzed 54 products from 19 different brands with Nutri-Score ratings between A and D.
The scientific team has shown that there is no correlation between the Nutri-Score category and the actual nutritional composition of the food products studied, especially with regard to bioactive compounds with beneficial health effects.
The analysis confirms that Nutri-Score classifies products primarily based on their sugar, saturated fat, salt, and calorie content. "However, it overlooks relevant molecules associated with beneficial effects, such as phenolic compounds, bioactive peptides, and antioxidant compounds found in cocoa," explains Marta Palma, a researcher in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the UGR.
In several identified cases, foods with higher cocoa content and more bioactive compounds - and therefore potentially healthier - are penalized with lower ratings (C or D), while other highly processed foods with added sweeteners, thickeners, flavorings, or flours receive a Nutri-Score A, the highest rating. Specifically, some "no added sugar" products, despite being highly processed and containing numerous additives, have better scores than 100% pure cocoa.
The research did not detect clear groupings by Nutri-Score category in the multivariate statistical analyses, revealing the system's limited ability to discriminate between the actual metabolic profiles of soluble cocoa products.
Bioactive compounds correlate closely with actual cocoa content, not with the Nutri-Score category. Scientists have identified peptides, flavonoids, fatty acids, phenols, and other metabolites with potential anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, cardioprotective, or neuroprotective effects.
The results highlight the limitations of current front-of-package labeling systems and underscore the need to incorporate additional information such as metabolomics to provide consumers with a more realistic view of nutritional quality.
Our work shows that the Nutri-Score system does not capture the complexity of foods rich in bioactive compounds, such as cocoa, which can lead to misinterpretations by consumers. Metabolomics is emerging as a key tool for developing more comprehensive labeling systems that integrate not only macronutrients but also physiologically relevant compounds."
Celia Rodríguez, professor, Department of Nutrition and Food Science and secretary of the José Mataix Verdú Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology
This research based on experimental data is the first application of untargeted metabolomics to assess the consistency between nutritional labeling and the actual chemical composition of foods such as soluble cocoa. Its conclusions are particularly relevant for regulatory bodies, the food industry, and consumers, in a context where the future of Nutri-Score in the European Union is under debate.
University of Granada
Palma-Morales, M., et al. (2025). Untargeted metabolomics approaches challenge the nutri-score FOPNL system in soluble cocoa products. npj Science of Food. DOI: 10.1038/s41538-025-00649-8. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-025-00649-8
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Natasha Bury
Targeted protein degradation presents a promising strategy to address antimicrobial resistance, focusing on innovative approaches for gram-negative bacteria.
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Positioning The University of Texas at San Antonio as a national anchor for aging and longevity science, its Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies will receive up to $38 million in federal funding for the first nationwide clinical study in healthy longevity.The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced the contract to the Barshop Institute at UT Health San Antonio, the academic health center of UT San Antonio, cementing its standing as the nation's leading authority in longevity science. The first-of-its-kind study will evaluate the repurposing of FDA-approved medications to delay age-related health and functional decline in generally healthy middle-aged adults, ages 60 to 65.The contract will support the Validation and Intervention Testing for Aging, Longevity and Healthspan (VITAL-H) trial, which is integrated into the ARPA-H Proactive Solutions for Prolonging Resilience (PROSPR) program. Specifically, the Barshop Institute will use the VITAL-H trial to study the medications rapamycin, dapagliflozin and semaglutide, which based on strong preclinical evidence, promising early human data and extensive post-marketing safety experience may positively affect age-related decline in quality of life and lifespan.
PROSPR is designed to identify therapeutics that show the aging process is not an inevitable slide into disability. VITAL-H will help show whether we can preserve everyday abilities during a critical window of midlife aging."
Andrew Brack, ARPA-H program manager and creator of the PROSPR program
For the Barshop Institute, it is the culmination of decades of pioneering biomedical science, a national vote of confidence and a proven model to translate aging research into real-world clinical impact. And it is further evidence of UT San Antonio's growing national research standing, providing a platform for the next decade of leadership in aging science."For decades, the Barshop Institute has helped define the biology of aging," said Jennifer Sharpe Potter, PhD, MPH, senior executive vice president for research and innovation for UT San Antonio. "Today, that foundational science has matured into a national clinical research effort – led from San Antonio – that will shape the future of human health and longevity."Barshop Institute director Elena Volpi, MD, PhD, who along with her team of investigators are nationally recognized leaders in healthy longevity research, will head the new effort."Over the past 50 years, global life expectancy has increased substantially, yet the age of onset of age-related diseases and disabilities has remained largely unchanged," Volpi said. "Our population is living longer but with declining function, increased disability and reduced quality of life with major implications for healthcare utilization, caregiver burden and societal costs. Despite major advances in the biology of aging, no FDA-approved interventions currently exist to delay the onset of age-related functional decline or preserve health span in otherwise healthy adults."This work is focused on changing that trajectory," she said, "advancing science that can help people live not just longer lives, but healthier ones in the decades ahead."The PROSPR program is intended to identify biochemical and physiological markers and develop assessment tools that allow researchers to better understand and target the underlying causes of age-related disease and build interventions focused on maintaining health during aging.The FDA-approved rapamycin, dapagliflozin and semaglutide medications all have distinct mechanisms of action, are orally administered and have favorable safety profiles at low doses, enabling long-term use in generally healthy populations.The trial is designed to deliver evidence on whether repurposed, FDA-approved drugs can slow age-related decline in generally healthy older adults as well as provide the first large-scale validation of Intrinsic Capacity, which is the concept for healthy aging addressing a person's physical and mental capabilities. Intrinsic Capacity is evaluated by testing cognition, mobility (locomotor), psychological, vitality and sensory functions, to gauge health in aging individuals.The VITAL-H trial will use wearable technologies to monitor the study population selected to capture a critical window in which functional decline is measurable, yet disease burden remains relatively low. Participants will be recruited from South Texas, a region with a demographic makeup that closely mirrors the projected U.S. population in the coming decades, making the results relevant to our country's future population aging."By reframing aging as a modifiable functional trajectory rather than an inevitable accumulation of disease, the study establishes a scalable, regulatory-grade framework for preventive interventions that could possibly inform future clinical development and positively affect people's lives as they age," Volpi said.Clinical trials targeting aging have previously focused on treatment after disease onset, are often underpowered, and rely on narrow or single-modality clinic-based outcomes that limit sensitivity, generalizability and scalability. The VITAL-H clinical trial is designed to evaluate aging interventions earlier in the life course using endpoints capable of detecting meaningful functional change within feasible timeframes.While the award will be centered at the Barshop Institute, located in the San Antonio Medical Center, there will be multiple partner locations throughout the city.Regional locations and partners will include the San Antonio Geriatric Research, Clinical and Research Center (GRECC); the South Texas Veterans Health Care System (STVHCS); the Texas Diabetes Institute (TDI); the West San Antonio Food Bank (SAFB); and a UT Health San Antonio mobile clinical research clinic.
The University of Texas at San Antonio Health Science Center
Posted in: Medical Science News | Medical Research News
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A new study published in the journal Addiction shows that cannabis use among Swedish adolescents appears to follow the same population-level pattern previously observed for alcohol. The findings suggest that changes in average cannabis use among young people are reflected across the entire group-from those who use infrequently to those who use frequently.
The study is based on extensive data from the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs' (CAN) national school surveys and includes more than 250,000 students aged 15-18 years (in grade 9 and the second year of upper secondary school in Sweden) between 1990 and 2023. The researchers examined how frequently adolescents who already use cannabis do so, and how the distribution of use has changed over time.
A key finding is that the distribution of cannabis use has remained highly stable over time. When average use increases or decreases, the change occurs in parallel across all user groups.
"Increases in average use are not driven solely by a small group of heavy users, but by broader changes in behavior among users in general," says Thor Norström, co-author and Professor Emeritus at the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University.
The study also shows that periods of higher average use coincide with a marked increase in the proportion of adolescents who use cannabis very frequently. In other words, when average use rises, so does the number of young people at risk of cannabis-related problems.
The findings support the so-called total consumption model, a theory that has had a major influence in alcohol research and emphasizes that preventive efforts cannot be limited to high-risk groups alone. Instead, interventions must target the entire population, as changes in norms, availability, and attitudes affect all users simultaneously.
"Our results suggest that adolescent cannabis use is characterized by collective changes, in which social networks, norms, and the broader societal climate play an important role," says Håkan Leifman, co-author and researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet.
The researchers stress that the findings are particularly relevant at a time when attitudes toward cannabis have become more permissive internationally. Even in a country like Sweden, where cannabis remains illegal, changing norms may influence adolescent behavior.
"This underscores the importance of a broad public health perspective in preventive efforts targeting cannabis use among young people," says Thor Norström.
Society for the Study of Addiction
Norström T and Leifman H. Does the total consumption model apply to cannabis use? Addiction. 2026. DOI: 10.1111/add.70353
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Brain microphysiological systems are reshaping in vitro neurotoxicity testing through functional validation and advanced disease modeling.
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Targeted protein degradation presents a promising strategy to address antimicrobial resistance, focusing on innovative approaches for gram-negative bacteria.
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Connections: Sports Edition
Should the FIFA 'Fan Festival' be a thing of the past? Francois Nel/Getty Images
At the 1998 men's World Cup in France, concerns about ticket shortages led to local authorities hatching a plan.
If fans could not get into the grounds, why not offer what they deemed the next best thing — broadcasting games on giant city-centre screens for the first time in the competition's history?
Four years later, in South Korea, larger-scale public viewing areas were so successful that at Germany 2006, FIFA launched its own official branded events in each of the 12 host cities, attracting more than 18 million visitors, according to the organisation's website.
Across the next three World Cups, supporters were encouraged to attend the “FIFA Fan Fest” in South Africa, Brazil and Russia, which, like in Germany, came alive around matches.
Then, at Qatar 2022, a rebranded “FIFA Fan Festival” took things to the next level: a rolling, continuous “cultural, music and gastronomic” experience that involved 146 artists performing at Doha's Al Bidda Park across four weeks.
Over the past couple of decades, continental governing bodies such as UEFA, which runs European football, and CAF, which does the same job in Africa, have followed the trend. At the most recent Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Morocco, the Nigerian singer-songwriter Burna Boy performed a free concert two nights before the final at Rabat's fan park.
Earlier in the tournament, eight other musicians appeared at eight different locations across Morocco at the same time as part of a strategy, according to CAF, that “highlights the richness and diversity of African music alongside Morocco's cultural heritage”.
Front and centre in many of the videos produced by the organisation for online purposes were brands of multinational sponsors, such as Royal Air Maroc and Total Energies.
CAF, like UEFA and FIFA, is not just hosting these spectacles out of benevolence, recognising that it might be nice if visitors or locals could engage, in some remote way, with what is happening inside the stadiums they cannot reach. These are marketing opportunities for partners and a revenue generator through exclusive food, beverage and merchandising rights.
What was initially a practical solution involving a relatively authentic experience has now become increasingly synthetic, having been harnessed into a moneymaking exercise for the powers that run football.
It makes them even richer, and potentially drives money away from the places that would once have been the beneficiaries of having a major tournament take place on their doorstep — independent cafes, bars and restaurants where people traditionally gathered before rigorous, organised fun came along.
Part of the attraction was the entrance fee. Since 2006, FIFA has not set a charge rate, but in December, for the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, a website set up for the New York/New Jersey “FIFA Fan Festival” came with a link for “early bird tickets” and a page where supporters could select specific days to attend. The Daily Mail reported at the time that it would cost $12.50 (around £10) to watch Mexico vs South Korea on June 11 at Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
Last week, that Fan Festival was scrapped, and organisers are now seeking a new location just four months before the whole thing kicks off, with the issue of admission costs uncertain.
Perhaps it would be no bad thing if other cities, such as Miami, reached the same conclusion before the World Cup rolls into town, as it might due to a wider $625million funding delay highlighted on Tuesday by Ray Martinez, the chief operating officer of the city's host committee.
“We've never handled anything like this,” he told reporters. “We are used to working on major events here in South Florida and Miami, but a 23-day fan festival in downtown Miami and at City Park is something that has never been tried and never been done.”
That is precisely the point: it has never been tried, or done, because the U.S. does not have a “fan fest” culture across its sports. Far better to attend a tailgate party or a city rooftop gathering to catch the match.
The sensible thing, surely, would be to scrap the idea of these forced fan zones and allow the event to go free range. But sadly, it seems the U.S. is having to respond to FIFA's wishes of having a homogeneous way of doing things. If the spirit of any country is meant to be an important feature of tournament hosting, what is the point in delivering something that feels so unnatural?
Foreign visitors to Miami and other hosts, such as Kansas City, might have a more uniquely American experience if they cannot get into a game by pulling up a stool in the intimacy of a bar, starting a conversation, and letting the mood wash over them.
Alternatively, in a time of such depressing division, Americans might do the same and realise they have more in common than they assume.
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Simon Hughes is a senior writer who joined The Athletic from The Independent in 2019. His latest book Chasing Salah was released in 2024. He has also written There She Goes, a modern social history of Liverpool as a city Follow Simon on Twitter @Simon_Hughes__
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MEXICO CITY (AP) — The violence that erupted in Mexico after the death of a powerful drug lord has left many questioning whether the country will be able to co-host the World Cup in just over three months.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino thinks it can.
“Of course, we are monitoring the situation in Mexico these days, but I want to say from the outset that we have complete confidence in Mexico, in its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and in the authorities, and we are convinced that everything will go as smoothly as possible,” Infantino said late Tuesday in a press conference in Colombia.
“Mexico is a great country, like in every country in the world, things happen; we don't live on the moon or another planet,” Infantino added. “That's why we have governments, police, and authorities who will ensure order and security.”
The Mexican army killed Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho,” who led the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, on Sunday, sparking several days of violence. Cartel members burned cars and blocked roads in nearly a dozen Mexican states and authorities report that at least 70 people have died.
Four high-level soccer matches from the local leagues were postponed last Sunday, including one in the central city of Queretaro, where Mexico is scheduled to play against Iceland late Wednesday in a friendly match.
Thirteen World Cup matches are scheduled to be held in Mexico, including the opening game in Mexico City on June 11 between the co-host and South Africa. Guadalajara, the central hub for the Jalisco cartel, is scheduled to host four.
Colombia is set to play one game in Mexico City and one in Guadalajara.
“Our first two matches are in Mexico, but we know they will overcome this and move forward,” said Ramón Jesurún, the president of the Colombian Soccer Federation. “I have absolute and total confidence in my geopolitical thinking that this is an issue Mexico will overcome, and overcome very quickly.”
Other nations have expressed more concern. The Portuguese soccer federation said Tuesday that it was closely monitoring developments ahead of a planned friendly against Mexico in March. Jamaica is set to play New Caledonia in Guadalajara on March 26 in an intercontinental playoff semifinal, with the winner advancing to face Congo for a World Cup spot.
“The games are at the end of March, so we still have another month to see what happens; but it is making me very nervous, to be honest,” said Michael Ricketts, the president of the Jamaican Soccer Federation. "We will be listening out for CONCACAF and FIFA to give us instructions (on) whether they are playing the games or whether they are immediately looking for other options.”
Another Mexican city, Monterrey, will host a playoff where Bolivia plays Suriname and the winner faces Iraq for a spot in the tournament.
On Monday, Sheinbaum said there is “every guarantee” that the World Cup matches in Guadalajara will be played as planned and added that there was “no risk.”
“We are in regular contact with the presidency and the authorities in Mexico and we are monitoring the situation,” Infantino said. “The World Cup is going to be an incredible celebration”.
___
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Carlos Rodriguez, The Associated Press
U.S. men's national team star Weston McKennie is reportedly on the verge of signing a new contract with Juventus ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Question marks have loomed over the midfielder's future in Turin as his current contract—set to expire at the end of the season—winds down. It was unclear whether there was a place for McKennie with the Serie A giants while under the leadership of Igor Tudor.
Yet his resurgence under new boss Luciano Spalletti has seemingly accelerated talks over a new deal. ESPN report McKennie is set to sign a contract extension with Juventus that will keep him with the Bianconeri through 2030.
Teams from Italy, Spain, the U.S. and England were “monitoring” the 27-year-old, but they could not persuade McKennie away from his home in Turin.
Two summers ago, McKennie was heavily criticized for his performances at the 2024 Copa América. The American was out of shape, uncharacteristically sloppy on the ball and generally off the pace of the game.
There were even talks of McKennie potentially losing his place in the XI as the USMNT reached a low point after crashing out of the tournament in the group stage on home soil. Fast forward to 2026 and the midfielder is in the form of his life and now nearing a long-term deal with one of the biggest clubs in the world.
Since the new year kicked off, McKennie has recorded eight goal contributions, double the amount he had in the first four months of the season. He also continues to show his versatility, featuring in central midfield, at fullback, on the wing and even as a center forward under Spalletti.
McKennie's impressive spell in Europe is exactly what USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino will want to see from one of his key players. The midfielder fuels the team's engine and is the best player in red, white and blue at transitioning the ball from defense to attack. Combined with his recent offensive output, the Juventus man is one of the most well-rounded players for the Stars and Stripes ... now he just has to prove it.
Finding success at the club level is all well and good, but McKennie will ultimately be judged on his performance at this summer's World Cup. If he once again falters on the big stage for the USMNT, he will come under intense fire, and a new contract at Juventus will not ease the scrutiny.
McKennie is one of the few established players that has yet to be truly ingratiated into Pochettino's new system. In 2025, the 27-year-old only made four appearances under the new boss—and two came nearly 12 months ago during the Concacaf Nations League.
McKennie missed the Gold Cup, as well as the September and November international windows. When the Stars and Stripes found their grove to close out the year with two victories over Paraguay and Uruguay, the midfielder was back in Italy.
The upcoming March international break will be the first time McKennie tries to fit in with Pochettino's best XI for World Cup tune-up matches against Belgium and Portugal. The pressure will be on the American to reintroduce himself as an integral player in the Argentine's plans or else his shiny new contract will be only consolation as the World Cup looms.
Amanda Langell is a Sports Illustrated FC freelance writer and editor. Born and raised in New York City, her first loves were the Yankees, the Rangers and Broadway before Real Madrid took over her life. Had it not been for her brother's obsession with Cristiano Ronaldo, she would have never lived through so many magical Champions League nights 3,600 miles away from the Bernabéu. When she's not consumed by Spanish and European soccer, she's traveling, reading or losing her voice at a concert.
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FIFA and Miami Dade College hosted a discussion panel Wednesday morning at the Freedom Tower ahead of World Cup 2026, celebrating soccer's growing impact in Miami and across the United States.
The event featured FIFA President Gianni Infantino, MDC President Madeline Pumariega, Miami World Cup 2026 co-chair Rodney Barreto, Jorge Mas, and other leaders.
Watch NBC6 free wherever you are
The panel was followed by a guided tour of the FIFA Museum exhibit, which was announced in 2024 as part of a collaboration between FIFA and Miami Dade College.
At the time of the announcement, Infantino described the exhibit as an opportunity to connect the sport's history with education.
“An exhibit from the FIFA museum about the history of football, the history of football in the Americas in particular, but all over the world, which is a history of opportunity, which is a history of chance and which links together with the educational purpose of an incredible institution like Miami Dade College, with which we are collaborating as well when it comes to internships in FIFA and lecturers at Miami Dade College courses through and with some professionals from FIFA. We are here to work together, we are here in Miami and will have great fun on top of it,” Infantino said at the time.
Telemundo is the exclusive Spanish-language home of the FIFA World Cup 2026 and will air all 104 matches from June 11 through July 19, 2026. Ninety-two matches will air on Telemundo and 12 on Universo, marking the most Men's World Cup matches ever carried by a U.S. broadcast network.
Portions of this story were translated from Spanish with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool. An NBC 6 editor reviewed the translation.
Scotland fans have been given the all-clear to wear their sporrans at the team's matches at this summer's World Cup.
Tournament rules only permitted certain types of bags into stadiums, and the pouch traditionally worn by Scots at the front of their kilt was deemed too large to meet the strict criteria.
As a result, there were concerns that supporters would not be able to wear their sporrans to the matches against Haiti and Morocco in Boston, and Brazil in Miami.
Talks between FIFA and the Scottish Football Association, however, have reached a positive conclusion for the thousands in the Tartan Army expected to descend on the United States.
- Pubs to stay open until 2 a.m. for 2026 FIFA World Cup - if home nations reach knockouts
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An SFA spokesperson said: "FIFA have confirmed that sporrans will be permitted into the stadiums following the standard search and inspection procedures and will continue to work together with the Scottish FA to educate their matchday staff as they prepare to welcome fans to Boston and Miami.
"The ticketing and membership team at the Scottish FA are in continued dialogue with the tournament hosts to ensure that the Scotland fans will be welcomed to venues in the way they have been across the world."
Manchester United winger Amad Diallo has offered a fascinating insight into his footballing tastes, singling out a former rival as one of the most exciting talents in world football. The Ivorian youngster, who has become an increasingly influential figure at Old Trafford, sat down to discuss the players he admires most across the global game and those who defined the Premier League for him. In a series of quickfire questions, the 23-year-old was asked to identify the stars who currently capture his imagination.
When asked by ESPN to name the three best players in the world right now, Amad's selections reflected a deep appreciation for the flair and technical brilliance of La Liga. The United starlet chose Lamine Yamal, Kylian Mbappe and Ousmane Dembele as his top trio, notably overlooking established Premier League names in favour of the explosive talent currently dominating the Spanish and French landscapes.
This preference for the creative hubs of Spain and France suggests that Amad is particularly drawn to 'pure' dribblers who thrive in one-on-one situations. By omitting heavyweights such as Erling Haaland or Manchester City's midfield maestros, he has highlighted a personal bias towards the aesthetic and mercurial nature of the game.
The United starlet's selections reflect a deep appreciation for flair and directness, traits he often attempts to mirror in his own game under the bright lights of the Theatre of Dreams. Diallo names Bayern Munich's Luis Diaz in his top three favourite wingers to watch, grouping him with Lamine Yamal and Vinicius Jr. The inclusion of the former Liverpool man alongside the established dominance of Real Madrid's Vinicius and the meteoric rise of Barcelona's teenage sensation Yamal highlights just how highly the Colombian is regarded by his professional peers.
The conversation then shifted to the greatest of all time debate within the Premier League context. Looking back at the legends who built the division's reputation, Amad identified Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo as the three greatest players in the history of the competition. It is a selection that bridges the gap between United's golden eras and Arsenal's "Invincibles" period, reflecting his respect for the league's heritage.
As a proud Ivorian, Amad also paid tribute to the pioneers of African football. His list of the three greatest African players of all time featured his legendary compatriot Didier Drogba, alongside Samuel Eto'o and Yaya Toure. This selection highlights the immense influence these icons have had on the younger generation of African talents currently making their mark in Europe.
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Beyond his global tastes, Amad provided a glimpse into the dressing room dynamics at Manchester United. When asked about his closest friends at the club, he named Leny Yoro, Bryan Mbeumo and Ayden Heaven
As Amad continues his own development at Old Trafford, he clearly looks to the best in the business for inspiration. Having registered two goals and three assists in 22 appearances across all competitions this season, the young winger is starting to translate that inspiration into tangible output on the pitch. Whether he can fully replicate the devastating impact of the players he admires remains to be seen, but his taste in talent - from the heritage of Henry to the modern brilliance of Díaz - suggests he knows exactly what it takes to reach the pinnacle of the sport.
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Inter Miami superstar Lionel Messi has revealed the "romantic" way he proposed to childhood sweetheart Antonela Roccuzzo during their time in Barcelona. Messi first met Antonela when he was just five years old and the couple went on to marry in 2017 in a huge event in Rosario, Argentina. The family now live in Miami with their three young sons Thiago, Mateo and Ciro.
Messi and Antonela are childhood sweathearts, having first met as kids back in Argentina. Their romance has seen the couple jet across the world with Messi having spent most of his career in Barcelona before heading to Paris Saint-Germain and now Inter Miami. Despite being married to one of the greatest footballers ever to grace the game, Antonela insists her life is pretty routine. She told Grazia magazine: "We love our routine. It's very important for our family, the structure. We wake up really early, we take the kids to school, and then I try to train at least five times a week. Then I try to do meetings or errands or photoshoots in that gap where the kids are in school. And then just picking up the kids and going to all soccer activities or after-school activities. Then having dinner and going to bed. We are like a normal family.”
Messi has now revealed how he popped the question on a night out in Barcelona.
"We had already been together for many years. We already had Thiago and Mateo; we already had two sons," he told Nahuel Guzmán on the podcast Miro de Atrás.
"And well, one time we went out to eat in Barcelona, at a hotel, we spent the night, and that's where I proposed to her-but more or less it was already something that was known, it had to be, but it was more in a romantic style.
"It wasn't like the chain suddenly broke one day and you said, 'Ah, let's get married, that's it.' No, no, it was more romantic, but more or less like that-setting the date, something like that. Yes, because it was already like the bond was being made official."
Messi has also admitted that he would love to return to Barcelona with his family to live at some point in the future. He is contracted to Inter Miami until the end of the 2028 MLS season which will take him past his 40th birthday.
He told SPORT in November 2025: “I really want to go back there, we miss Barcelona a lot. My wife and I, the kids, are constantly talking about Barcelona and the idea of moving back. We have our house there, everything, so that's what we want. I'm really looking forward to going back to the stadium when it's finished because since I left for Paris, I haven't been back to Camp Nou, and then they moved to Montjuic.”
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Messi's focus will now be on Inter Miami after the MLS season kicked off last weekend with a defeat to LAFC. The Herons will aim to pick up their first points of the campaign against Orlando City next time out. Messi is also expected to feature at World Cup 2026 in the summer with Argentina as Lionel Scaloni's side aim to defend their trophy in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The Football Association has officially handed out punishments to both Chelsea and West Ham United following an aggressive multi-player confrontation during their recent Premier League London derby. Tensions reached a breaking point at Stamford Bridge in a match that was already high on intensity, leading to scenes that the governing body deemed a bridge too far for professional conduct. The incident has resulted in significant financial hits for both capital clubs as the FA looks to crack down on mass confrontations.
The flashpoint occurred late in the contest when West Ham's Adama Traore became embroiled in a heated exchange with Chelsea full-back Marc Cucurella. The initial spark quickly turned into a wildfire as Joao Pedro rushed in to support his teammate, leading to a swarm of players from both sides pushing and shoving on the touchline. Match officials struggled to regain control of the situation for several minutes as the "ugly melee" overshadowed what had been a competitive tactical battle between Liam Rosenior's side and Nuno Espírito Santo's Hammers.
Following a thorough review of the match footage and the referee's report, the FA confirmed that both clubs failed to ensure their players behaved in an orderly fashion. A spokesperson for the FA detailed the specific charges and the resulting fines in a statement released on Wednesday.
The official statement from the FA read: "Chelsea and West Ham United have been fined £325,000 and £300,000 respectively for a mass confrontation involving their players at their Premier League match on Saturday 31 January 2026. Both clubs admitted that they failed to ensure their players didn't behave in an improper and provocative way around the 90th minute. An independent Regulatory Commission imposed these fines following a hearing." This decision marks a stern warning to both London outfits regarding their future conduct on the pitch.
While the official charges focus on the collective failure of the clubs, the individual battle between Traoré and Cucurella was undoubtedly the catalyst for the chaos. Traore's physical approach and Cucurella's defensive tenacity led to a persistent niggle throughout the second half. When the Spanish international appeared to impede the former Wolves winger near the corner flag, the situation finally exploded. Pedro's intervention only served to escalate the mood, drawing in players from both sides as tensions boiled over on the pitch.
Under the current regulations, Premier League teams are expected to maintain strict discipline, and Chelsea's slightly higher fine is understood to reflect their recent disciplinary record. The Blues have frequently found themselves in the spotlight this season for a high volume of yellow cards.
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Chelsea head coach Rosenior spoke to his players after the match regarding how to handle similar situations in the future, while an unnamed West Ham executive met with head coach Nuno Espirito Santo and captain Jarrod Bowen to discuss player conduct.
For Chelsea, currently sitting fifth in the table with 45 points, the focus now shifts back to their pursuit of a Champions League spot. Conversely, West Ham must find a way to channel their aggression back into their performances on the pitch; languishing in 18th place with 25 points, the Hammers are now desperately fighting to avoid relegation in the coming weeks.
Who could ever not be excited about the FIFA World Cup? All these great team comes come with great players, and with these great players come not just great goals, but some of the best goals in football history. Flashscore takes you through the best goals in FIFA World Cup history.
We've seen our fair share of great World Cup goals over the years. It's a given that at the one tournament with all the best players in the world, we see a grand collection of truly great goals.
Because who could forget when Hakan Şükür scored after just 11 seconds in 2002? Or when an 18-year-old Michael Owen introduced himself to the world with a beauty against Argentina in 1998? And what about the 17-year-old Pelé in 1958, when he lobbed the ball over Bengt Gustavsson and volleyed it in to get Brazil up 3-1 in the final against Sweden?
Unfortunately for them, all these goals are just honourable mentions. It's a testament to the sheer quality of goals we've seen throughout 96 years of FIFA World Cup history.
So, after 2,720 goals in 964 matches across 22 editions, what are the 10 best goals in FIFA World Cup history? Flashscore takes you through them, in no particular order.
Miss nothing of the latest 2026 FIFA World Cup news via Flashscore >
At the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, The Netherlands had just beaten Brazil in the quarterfinals to make their first semis in 12 years. Opponents? Two-time World Cup winners Uruguay, who'd qualified for just their second World Cup since 1990 and were without Luis Suárez after his infamous handball against Ghana.
With the score still at 0-0, nothing seemed to be going after Oranje created a handful of smaller chances in the opening 15 minutes. Then, after 17 minutes, Netherlands captain Giovanni van Bronckhorst decided to just absolutely leather it. Result: a screamer. The ball landed perfectly in Fernando Muslera's top corner. What a knock-out punch.
When even the great Diego Armando Maradona himself says that his goal was a “dream goal”, best believe it's going to be one of the best goals you'll ever see.
Just four minutes after his infamous ‘Hand of God' goal against England at the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, Diego Maradona received the ball on his own half and went 60 metres without any opponent touching the ball, including the legendary Peter Shilton.
Peter Beardsley, Peter Reid, Terry Fenwick, and Terry Butcher, who was beaten twice, were all left for dust by the magisterial Maradona, whose goal would be dubbed the ‘Goal of the Century'. And for very good reason.
Every FIFA World Cup has its standout player. Take Diego Maradona in 1986, Lionel Messi in 2022, or Ronaldo in 2002. For the 2014 FIFA World Cup, that was Colombia star James Rodríguez.
The baby-faced genius was a man on a mission in Brazil, starting his maiden FIFA World Cup campaign with 3 goals and 5 assists in a rampant group stage. In Colombia's round of 16 matchup against Uruguay, James showed that no lights were too bright for him.
Rodríguez controlled a header from Abel Aguilar with his chest and hammered it at Fernando Muslera, who tried his best but could only watch the ball fly in via the crossbar. It was the gorgeous cherry on top of James Rodríguez's masterfully crafted World Cup.
Spain were set for their first-ever title defence at a FIFA World Cup in 2014, having beaten the Netherlands in an extra-time thriller in Johannesburg four years earlier. However, as fate would have it, Oranje would get their shot at revenge just one World Cup game later.
The Group B game between Spain and the Netherlands on June 13th, 2014, will always be remembered for one of the greatest dismantlings of a reigning world champion in sports history. The almighty Spain, who'd won three titles on the spin, were beaten 5-1 in Salvador. And that was after going up 1-0 in the 27th minute.
But as soon as Robin van Persie saw Daley Blind launch a deep ball in the 44th minute, magic was in the air. Van Persie, who'd go through life as the Flying Dutchman from there out, shocked Iker Casillas and the world with a world-class diving header.
The Dutch have a knack for scoring worldies at the FIFA World Cup, don't they?
We go from the Flying Dutchman to the non-flying Dutchman, Dennis Bergkamp. The Arsenal phenom was known for his fear of flying, but luckily for him, the 1998 FIFA World Cup was played in France. On July 4th, 1998, the artistic attacker made Marseille his canvas for one of the greatest goals in football history.
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In the quarterfinal against Argentina, the score was tied at 1-1 in the 90th minute when Frank de Boer, much like Daley Blind, laced one deep onto Argentina's half and found Dennis Bergkamp, who controlled the ball like only he could and cut it past Roberto Ayala before finishing it with the outside of his foot. A true artist at work.
We continue our fair share of goals coming from Dutch or South American feet with Maxi Rodríguez, who lit up the round of 16 at the 2006 World Cup in Germany with an absolute wonder strike.
It was Argentina against Mexico, who were looking to once and for all leave their World Cup curse in the past by making it to their first-ever quarterfinals. The game against Argentina looked to be heading towards extra time when Maxi Rodríguez was played a high ball from captain Juan Pablo Sorín, chested it and launched a rocket into Oswaldo Sánchez's goal from the very corner of the penalty area. A blinding strike, and one that kept Mexico's curse alive and well.
When you talk about the greatest teams in football history, the 1970 Brazil team is very high up that list. It was stacked with talent, with the likes of Pelé, Jairzinho, Rivellino, Tostão, and the team's undisputed leader, Carlos Alberto.
Brazil had dominated the tournament prior to the final against Italy, who boasted the likes of Giacinto Facchetti, Gigi Riva, and Gianni Rivera. The Italians were vastly outclassed by the imperious Brazilians, however, and it showed itself best in Carlos Alberto's championship-winning goal in the 86th minute.
Tostão, Brito, Clodoaldo, Gérson and Pelé, who blindly laid it off to the storming captain, were all involved in the 4-1 before Carlos Alberto finished it off with a thunderous strike into Enrico Albertosi's bottom corner. And that's how 107,000 people were treated to one of the best teams goals, if not the best, in football history.
Mexico 1986 was a tournament for the ages. And it wasn't just Diego Maradona's masterclass that made it that way.
16 years after hosting their first FIFA World Cup, Mexico had a new star to build a team around: Real Madrid striker Hugo Sánchez. The superstar was paired up front with Manuel Negrete, who'd just concluded his seventh season at Pumas. And it wasn't Sánchez, but Negrete who would make the home crowd erupt in their group stage game against Bulgaria.
Negrete controlled a high ball and lobbed it to Javier Aguirre, who lobbed the ball back to Negrete without letting it bounce. Negrete would make himself invincible in Mexico just one second later, when he took it beautifully and fired it in Borislav Mihaylov's goal with a stunning scissor kick.
There was something in the Brazilian water in 2014. There had to be.
In their group stage game against the Netherlands, who'd beaten Spain 5-1 five days earlier, Australia had just conceded the first goal when Arjen Robben slotted the ball into Matt Ryan's bottom left corner. Just one minute later, however, the continent of Australia erupted with joy.
Right-back Ryan McGowan fired a ball deep into the Netherlands' half and found national hero Tim Cahill, who didn't think about it and just volleyed the ball via the crossbar into Jasper Cillessen's goal. You can't reach a higher level of technical prowess.
The 2018 World Cup saw goals, goals, and more goals. The tournament didn't see a goalless draw until nearly two weeks after the opening match, but saw perhaps its biggest highlight in the round of 16, when a certain Benjamin Pavard looked to have ended the hopes and dreams of Lionel Messi's Argentina.
After Antoine Griezmann handed France the lead with a penalty, Ángel Di María and Gabriel Mercado got Argentina in front right before and after half-time. That's when Benjamin Pavard produced a moment of magic by majestically slicing in Theo Hernández's cross. Is there a more satisfying camera angle in football than the one that caught Pavard's goal from behind? Just gorgeous.
Violence has broken out across Mexico, raising concerns only four months before its co-hosting of FIFA World Cup 2026.
FIFA boss confident about Mexico World Cup despite violence
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FIFA President Gianni Infantino says he was “very reassured” about Mexico's hosting of football's 2026 World Cup, in his first comments on the violence triggered by the killing of a drug cartel leader.
Mexico is one of the three host countries for the June 11-July 19 World Cup, along with the United States and Canada.
The country as a whole, but particularly one of the tournament's host cities, Guadalajara, was shaken by the violence that followed the killing of the leader of the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
“Very reassured, everything's good. It's going to be spectacular,” Infantino said on Tuesday in the Colombian city of Barranquilla, two days after cartel members went on a rampage – including in Guadalajara – over the army's killing of their leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera.
At least 74 people were killed during the operation to capture him at a ranch near Guadalajara and subsequent clashes between the security forces and suspected cartel members.
Only one was a civilian, according to the government, but residents and tourists alike were left scurrying for cover as cartel gunmen blocked roads in 20 of Mexico's 32 states and torched vehicles and businesses.
“It feels like we're in a war zone,” Javier Perez, a 41-year-old engineer, told the AFP news agency on Tuesday in the car park of a grocery store replete with burned-out cars, in the Jalisco tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta.
The images of anarchy and violence were beamed around the world less than four months before the start of the World Cup, while FIFA on Monday refused to comment.
Infantino was speaking on Tuesday at a Colombian Football Federation event; however, his optimism was not reflected by the Portuguese Football Federation, which cast doubt on whether their team would play a friendly on March 29 in Mexico City.
The federation said it was “closely monitoring the delicate situation currently unfolding in Mexico”.
It added that the safety of players, coaches and supporters was a top priority, and security considerations would be the deciding factor.
Mexico national team coach Javier Aguirre was more upbeat, declaring: “All is going ahead as planned.”
Earlier, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum assured that there was “no risk” to World Cup fans and said the situation was “gradually returning to normal”.
Guadalajara, the capital of Jalisco state, will host four group-stage matches.
Mexico City and the northeastern city of Monterrey will also host games. Both cities were spared from the recent unrest.
In addition to the four matches, including one of the most anticipated of the first round between Uruguay and Spain, Guadalajara will co-host with Monterrey the playoff tournament that will determine the last two teams to qualify for the World Cup at the end of March.
Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus ruled out the prospect of Guadalajara being dropped from the tournament over security concerns, saying there was “absolutely no risk” of a change in the lineup.
All eyes will be on the central state of Queretaro on Wednesday, when Mexico meets Iceland for a friendly, while a first-division game was suspended on Sunday in Queretaro over the violence.
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World Cup
USMNT midfielder Yunus Musah dribbles against Panama Ronald Cortes / Getty Images
In the 11 months – and counting – since Yunus Musah's last cap for the U.S. men's national team, there has been plenty of uncertainty and instability surrounding the 23-year-old talent, both at the club and country levels. But there is one thing that has remained a constant.
Musah has not given up on his 2026 World Cup dream.
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“I believe it's possible,” Musah told The Athletic last week. “There's still time. I really want to go, and I believe I've got a chance.”
As Musah fights for regular first-team football at Atalanta (on loan from Milan) in Serie A, he remains driven by the goal of participating in this summer's tournament.
“It's huge motivation,” Musah said. “You know what the World Cup does for your career. You don't want to miss out on that.”
Musah knows this well. He started all four U.S. games at Qatar 2022, forming part of the ‘MMA' midfield trio along with Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams, while keeping Jude Bellingham in check during a 0-0 draw with England. “That was the best time,” he said. “A lot can change in four years, but we still have time to push again.”
Now, the New York-born Musah believes his experience can be valuable to U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino, despite the manager's reluctance to bring him back into the squad as it rounds into shape for the summer.
“The manager knows what I can do,” he says. “The national team knows. I've been to a World Cup. I know what it's like. I can bring that experience into the group. If I can get myself in the right position at club level, everything becomes clearer.”
That is easier said than done. Only two of his 13 Serie A appearances in 2025-26 have been starts. He has featured in the Champions League, but only fleetingly, and barring an Atalanta aggregate comeback from 2-0 down to Borussia Dortmund in Wednesday's knockout playoff round second leg, time in that competition will expire. Musah calls it “the most challenging season of his career.” A change in manager has brought disruption, without providing the change in fortunes he was seeking.
There are little more than 100 days until that target tournament, the 2026 World Cup, kicks off. Musah has learned to maximize even the smallest windows of opportunity. With playing time often limited, his mindset is brutally simple.
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“I literally look at the clock,” he explained. “If I've got 10 minutes, then I tell myself: go for it. Get into the box. Make the run. Make the pass. Those moments stick with people.”
It is an approach shaped by necessity, but also by maturity. As the calendar advances, Musah channels the urgency into clarity. There has been dialogue with the international setup over the course of the season. The message has remained consistent: what he's lacking is minutes.
“They've told me to keep working. Keep training hard,” Musah said. “At the end of the day, they pick the team. What I can control is what I do in matches.”
What they haven't done anytime recently is pick Musah. In October, when pressed on why Musah and others hadn't been selected, Pochettino bristled at the question and shot back with an answer that seemed to undercut any entitlement to a place on the team that Musah may have thought he had.
“There's not too many players around the world that they [don't] depend on the level, it doesn't depend if they're good or not,” Pochettino said. “Maybe you can ask me why Messi is not in the roster. No, this type of player — Maradona, Pelé, I don't know — but when you are talking about different names, I think you need to respect the players that are here.”
A recall for the upcoming March friendlies vs. Belgium and Portugal would mean Musah returning to the U.S. squad for the first time since last March – and the first time since he declined an invitation to the Concacaf Gold Cup last summer. Musah's decision sparked considerable debate and appeared to have taken him from Pochettino's good graces.
“Everything in our job is magnified,” Musah said. “After the season at Milan, I needed a break. I wouldn't have been able to give my best physically or mentally.”
He believed that sacrificing his recovery would have left him vulnerable heading into another long campaign, similar reasoning to that used by Christian Pulisic, who also begged off the summer competition.
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“The U.S. went all the way (to the final) in the Gold Cup, and if I'd gone, I wouldn't have had a proper summer. I needed that time to reset, impress my manager in preseason, and also spend time with my family and my daughter,” he said. “That time is precious. You don't get it during the season. I came back sharper, mentally ready, physically ready. For me, it was the right decision.”
Musah accepts that the choice may have carried consequences, even if he believes his decision reflects a broader issue within the modern game — one where physical and mental exhaustion is often normalized.
“It was difficult,” he said. “Fans might not like it. People might not understand it. But what's most important is staying sane and looking after yourself. That has to come first.
“Players are forced to play when they're exhausted. Injections, pressure, constant demands — it takes a toll.”
Privately, he said, many players have expressed admiration for his willingness to step away when necessary.
“A lot of players would like to do that,” Musah said. “To think about what's best for themselves and stand up for it.”
Musah will not only have contemporaries at the World Cup among the U.S. squad. A former Arsenal academy product, he was once captain of an England U-15 team that included the likes of Bellingham, Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers. At one stage, he was considered one of the brightest talents in a generation of England players.
“Those were amazing times,” he said, looking back. “We had a great team and won a lot. It's no surprise to see them succeeding now — they always had the ability, they're just doing it on a bigger stage. I'm proud to have been part of that group and to have captained them.”
Might a return to England, on the club level, be in the offing? Musah was the subject of transfer interest from Nottingham Forest last summer. While Atalanta has a purchase option as part of its loan deal with Milan, Musah's long-term future remains unclear. A potential Premier League return appears to be of interest, though.
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“England feels like home,” said Musah, whose family moved from Italy to England when he was 9. “My family and friends are there, especially London. I'm always open to returning one day.”
Conversation returns repeatedly to the World Cup. It's not necessarily the norm for a player to make such a public declaration of ambition. But Musah, whose life is anchored by his religion – “It's the most important part of my life,” he said – is led by faith rather than fear.
“I want everything to happen now,” Musah said. “But I trust that things will happen at the right time. God has the best plan.”
Musah hopes that plan includes playing in a World Cup on U.S. soil.
“It's not every day you host a World Cup,” he said. “We'd be the faces of it. So many people supporting us. It would be something really special.”
Musah's smile, long a hallmark of his early days with the national team, broadens at the thought. If he had the opportunity, what would his message to Pochettino be?
“He knows what I'm capable of — as a player and as a person,” Musah said. “These last few months could be so important. I believe I can still make it.
“I won't give up.”
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James McNicholas has covered Arsenal extensively for more than a decade. He has written for ESPN, Bleacher Report and FourFourTwo Magazine, and is the co-host of the Arsecast Extra Podcast. Follow James on Twitter @gunnerblog
Your one-stop guide to the 2026 edition of the SheBelieves Cup, running from 1-7 March.
The United States Women's National Soccer Team (USWNT) will return to action in March with the 2026 SheBelieves Cup.
It marks the 11th edition of the invitational tournament, featuring four nations who face each other in a round-robin format in a bid to be crowned champions. Hosts U.S. are the most successful side in the competition's history, with seven titles since the inaugural version.
This year's event will run from 1 to 7 March, with the nation at the top of the table after the final game lifting the title.
Read on to find out how to watch all the action from the States.
Relive the magic ❄️⛷️ Sign up free for full replays, highlights, and medal moments - anytime.
As they do every year, the United States host this tournament. The nations invited to participate this year are:
This will mark the second time the South Americans have contested the SheBelieves Cup, having previously participated in 2021 when they went winless.
Bitter rivals of the U.S., this year will be Canada's fourth participation in the competition. Their first invitation came in 2021, followed by appearances in 2023 and 2024, when they were beaten by their fellow North Americans on penalties in the final.
Much like Argentina, this will be Colombia's second outing at the SheBelieves Cup. They took part in the 2025 edition, winning one of their three games.
The invitational tournament will follow a league-style format.
Teams will play three games, facing each other once over the course of three match days (two matches per day). Three points will be awarded for a win in regulation time, while games that end in a draw will go to a penalty shootout, with the winner receiving two points and the loser one.
At the end of the third match day, the team at the top of the mini-table will be crowned champions.
The 23-year-old defender joined the 'Create the Space' initiative following the tragic suicide of her Stanford teammate Katie Mayer.
*All times local
All U.S. matches will be available to watch on one or more of the following: TBS, TNT, TruTV, Telemundo, Universo, and streamed on HBO Max and Peacock.
All games not featuring the U.S. will be available on TruTV and HBO Max.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The violence that followed the killing of a cartel leader in Mexico is fueling fears that the bloodshed could hurt tourism ahead of the FIFA World Cup later this year. (AP video shot by: Alexis Triboulard and Marco Ugarte)
Maria Dolores Aguirre's family corner store has lived off tourism that has flowed into her charming cobblestoned town of Tapalpa, tucked away in the mountains of Jalisco state. (AP video shot by: Alexis Triboulard and Marco Ugarte)
Twenty-five members of the Mexican National Guard were left dead in six separate attacks after special forces killed the notorious leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the country's security secretary said Monday as much of Mexico feared more violence. (AP/ Megan Janetsky)
A U.S tourist visiting the Mexican city of Puerto Vallarta recalled his fear after being holed up in his hotel room as clashes broke out between the Mexican army and cartel gunmen following the killing of the country's most powerful drug lord.
Akron Stadium, a venue for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, stands in Guadalajara, Mexico, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Charred vehicles sit in a parking lot outside a shopping mall in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, Mexico, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026, as authorities reported that the Mexican Army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” (AP Photo/Alejandra Leyva)
A body lies beside a bullet-riddled vehicle in Tapalpa, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, a day after the Mexican army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Police officers stand guard in downtown Guadalajara, Jalisco state, Mexico, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026, after the death of the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” (AP Photo/Alejandra Leyva)
Fruit vendors walk along a street in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) — Hugo Alejandro Pérez was in his house a few miles from the Mexican stadium that is slated to host FIFA World Cup games when gunfire and explosions erupted just outside his door.
The 53-year-old restaurant owner was already skeptical about his city, Guadalajara, hosting the international sporting event.
He saw a government that failed to fix basic things, like water service to his home, along with cartel violence in the surrounding state of Jalisco and shook his head. The surge of bloodshed this week following the Mexican military's killing of the country's most powerful cartel boss offered more confirmation of his doubts.
“I don't think they should host the World Cup here,” Peréz said. “We have so many problems, and they want to invest in the World Cup? With all the violence, it's not a good idea.”
Soldiers guard a road leading to Tapalpa, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, a day after the Mexican army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
Peréz joined other people Tuesday in questioning Guadalajara's capacity to be a host city for the summer soccer competition, even as the Mexican government vowed that the international event — hosted jointly by Mexico, the United States and Canada — will not be affected.
President Claudia Sheinbaum was asked at her daily news briefing what guarantees there are that World Cup matches will be held in Jalisco. “Every guarantee,” she said, adding that there was “no risk” for fans coming to the tournament.
Jalisco Gov. Jesús Pablo Lemus said he had spoken with local FIFA officials, who have “absolutely no intention of removing any venues from Mexico. The three venues remain completely unchanged.”
The same day, the Portuguese soccer federation said it was “closely monitoring the delicate situation” in Mexico.” Its national team was scheduled to play Mexico's team in a friendly on March 28 at the newly renovated Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, which is scheduled to host the opening World Cup match on June 11.
Jalisco, in western Mexico, was already facing scrutiny. The state has been plagued by some of the starkest examples of cartel violence in recent years, including the discovery of a cartel killing site at a ranch last March and a crisis of disappearances.
The state, with Guadalajara as its capital, is the central hub for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, whose leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, or “El Mencho,” was killed Sunday in a capture attempt by the military.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum gives her the daily, morning news conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, the day after the Mexican army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)
The operation and waves of violence killed 70 people. Cartel gunmen set fire to cars to block streets in states across the country, namely Jalisco, and fought with Mexican forces into Monday as the government said the conflict was under control.
The death of Oseguera Cervantes came as Mexico's government has stepped up its offensive against cartels in an effort to meet demands by U.S. President Donald Trump to crack down on criminal groups. The cartel, also known as CJNG, is one of the fastest-growing criminal networks in Mexico.
The White House confirmed that the U.S. provided intelligence support to capture the cartel leader and applauded Mexico's army for taking down a man who was one of the most wanted criminals in both countries. On Tuesday night, U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to briefly reference the operation during his State of the Union address, saying “We've also taken down one of the most sinister cartel kingpins of all. You saw that yesterday.”
Peréz, the restaurant owner, also commended Sheinbaum's efforts to go after cartels, saying the government has taken cartel violence more seriously than her predecessors. At the same time, he said, local authorities in Jalisco have fallen short in protecting civilians.
A body lies beside a bullet-riddled vehicle in Tapalpa, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, a day after the Mexican army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
The root concern for many is that the death of “El Mencho” could pave the way for more violence. Killing capos, in what's become known as the “kingpin strategy,” has been criticized by Sheinbaum herself because it can often spark internal conflict between cartel factions and push rival cartels to make territorial grabs.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, an academic at the Brookings Institution, said she doesn't see more acts of “revenge” by the cartel as likely, but the future remains uncertain, especially after leading figures in both CJNG and the Sinaloa Cartel have been knocked out in recent years.
“If there is no clear line of succession (in CJNG), we might see a lot of fighting within the cartel, its breakup, and there are a lot of scenarios,” she said.
On Sunday, when firefights broke out between the cartel and soldiers, and gunmen began to burn a car just feet in front of Peréz's house, he let people on the street scramble inside his home to seek cover. The fighting raged for an hour.
Now he says he doesn't see the point of holding the games, adding that he doubts any of the money from the games will trickle down to businesses in working-class neighborhoods like his, even if they are just a 10-minute drive from the stadium. Similar tensions have simmered in Mexico City.
The World Cup is expected to be a $3 billion economic engine in Mexico, according to the Mexican Soccer Federation.
National Guard patrol past a charred vehicle the day after the Mexican army killed Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” in Guadalajara, Mexico, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
“It doesn't help us residents at all, honestly. They should move it to Monterrey or Mexico City. But right now here, we're not convinced,” he said. “Things aren't in good enough shape for foreigners to be coming to Jalisco for an event like this.”
On Monday, some foreign tourists trapped in the violence in the city of Puerto Vallarta took to social media to warn of the violence, with a few remarking that they didn't plan to return.
Despite that, Guadalajara was snapping back to its normal rhythm Tuesday. Many businesses opened their doors for the first time in two days, and streets were packed with traffic.
Workers were busy fixing up the exterior of the soccer stadium that will host World Cup matches. Cyclists zipped around outside the stadium, and parents played with children in parks.
Heavily armed police officers and National Guard members roamed the city, a sign for some that the government had the situation under control.
Juan Carlos Pila, a 55-year-old taxi driver, rolled his eyes at the reports of violence after spending two days waiting with his family for things to calm down. He said social media and local news outlets were overplaying the extent of the violence.
“People should come, man. Everyone is welcome,” he said.
Police officers stand guard in downtown Guadalajara, Jalisco state, Mexico, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026, after the death of the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho.” (AP Photo/Alejandra Leyva)
Others, like Maria Dolores Aguirre, simply hoped for the best. Aguirre runs a small corner story in the cobblestoned tourist town of Tapalpa tucked away in Jalisco's mountains, where Mexico's military killed “El Mencho.”
Aguirre's family business of over 50 years depends on the flow of tourists to the normally sleepy town. Now she worries bloodshed will deal a blow to her livelihood and change towns like hers.
“It's going to affect us. It's collateral damage,” Aguirre said. “The government is going to have to have a lot of security. … The entire world just saw what happened and, of course, people are going to think twice about coming.”
___
Associated Press writer María Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
FIFA are monitoring the situation in Mexico but have "complete confidence" the country can host World Cup games amid the recent unrest and violence.
The killing of cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed 'El Mencho,' by the Mexican army in a targeted attack unleashed a wave of violence across many Mexican states forcing the Mexican Football Federation to postpone some games, including Sunday's Liga MX match between Queretaro and Juarez FC.
"We are analyzing and monitoring the situation in Mexico these days, at this moment," FIFA president Gianni Infantino said while attending an event in Barranquilla, Colombia, on Tuesday.
"But I want to say from the outset that we have complete confidence in Mexico, in its president [Claudia] Sheinbaum, in the authorities, and we are convinced that everything will turn out for the best.
"From my side, and from FIFA's side, I have absolute confidence in President Sheinbaum. We are in regular contact with the Presidency and the authorities, and we are, in any case, monitoring the situation. The World Cup is going to be an incredible celebration."
Mexico's international friendly against Iceland in Queretaro will go ahead as scheduled on Wednesday.
However, the state of Jalisco, including its capital Guadalajara, has been under a state of emergency since Sunday. Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey will stage a total of 13 World Cup matches this summer when the country co-hosts the tournament with Canada and the United States.
Jalisco's Estadio Akron is set to host a World Cup qualifying playoff next month as well as four World Cup games in June.
Mexico's president Sheinbaum insisted there would be "no risks" when asked about safety guarantees for fans at the World Cup.
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The Governor of Jalisco, Pablo Lemus, also reiterated there is no danger of Mexico losing its World Cup host status after Monday's meeting with the world's football governing body. Infantino also reassured supporters.
"We have some matches in Mexico in a month, the World Cup playoffs, and the new Azteca Stadium will also be inaugurated," he said.
"Mexico is a great football country. Like in every country in the world, things happen; we don't live on the moon or another planet. That's why we have governments, police, and authorities who will ensure order and security."
Serie A
Champions League
Play-Offs
Inter head Coach Christian Chivu during the defeat to Bodo/Glimt MB Media/Getty Images
“And you're laughing too, eh?” Cristian Chivu said in astonishment.
It was his “funny how” moment.
The night before the second leg at San Siro, a Norwegian reporter wanted to know if the Inter coach thought going out to Bodo/Glimt in the Champions League play-off round would be a disgrace. He highlighted the population of Glimt and the size of their stadium. Then he chuckled, as if it made a mockery of Inter.
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“Well done,” Chivu said, the sarcasm heavy in his Romanian accent. He took a dim view of the amusement the reporter found in schadenfreude.
“Unlike you, we respect our opponents,” Chivu said. “We have great respect for what they did to us, to Atletico in Madrid, to Manchester City and to Borussia Dortmund.
“Bodo show that with a healthy project and a clear set of ideas, you can carry on a beautiful thing.”
It's five years since Bodo made a name for themselves in Italy.
Back in 2021, Roma's 6-1 humiliation in the Arctic Circle not only left Jose Mourinho red-faced, but it also led to one of the most clipped-up moments in sports television in recent Serie A history.
Paolo Di Canio, the former Lazio skipper turned pundit, couldn't help himself on Sky Italia. “They're salmon farmers,” Di Canio said. “Salmon farmers!” The assumption was Bodo/Glimt would rapidly fade away and only the stain of Roma's defeat would last.
It was, as Chivu still felt obliged to point out, a misjudgement.
Bodo have earned the right to be taken seriously. After beating Roma twice in the Conference League in the 2021-22 season (in addition to one draw and one defeat in Rome later, in the quarter-finals), they upset Di Canio's Lazio in the Europa League last year, en route to the semi-finals. It remains no small miracle in the economic landscape of European football.
Monied vultures have circled Bodo. Inter's cousins, Milan, swooped for Jens Petter Hauge after their last visit to San Siro.
The move did not work out for Hauge. But on Wednesday, he was back under the red girders of the Giuseppe Meazza and made himself a Milan folk hero anyway.
Having scored in Bodo's 3-1 win last week, he pounced on Manuel Akanji's mistake and, in a personal derby of sorts, scored the opener this week too, silencing everyone at San Siro apart from what's left of the ultras in the Curva Nord. Even they went quiet when Hakon Evjen doubled Bodo's lead and made it 5-1 on aggregate.
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Hauge, for what it's worth, has slotted back in at Bodo. Coach Kjetil Knutsen is the same, as is the ethos and culture of this club.
That's what admirers of Bodo's project have been unable to buy. It's what has kept them competitive in defiance of finance.
Much has been made of the artificial surface and the Arctic conditions at the Aspmyra Stadium as if they are a leveller, the pitch and the cold posing as great a challenge as Knutsen and his agile players. But in addition to shocking Manchester City at home in the league phase, they beat Atletico Madrid away.
This has been a season of ups and downs for Inter.
They are 10 points clear in Serie A despite losing to Juventus in August, Napoli in October and Milan in November. Inter's performances, it must be said, didn't deserve those results. When the trend in big domestic games recently reversed, it did not without controversy.
The Derby d'Italia, in which they prevailed 10 days ago, was only settled in their favour in the last minute, after an entire half with a numerical advantage following Pierre Kalulu's scandalous red card.
The uproar caused by the Alessandro Bastoni dive that hoodwinked the referee was so great, Italy's former prime minister Enrico Letta tweeted he should not be called up for Italy's World Cup play-off against Northern Ireland in March.
It was a not inconsiderable distraction in the build-up to last week's first leg. Lautaro Martinez's injury in Glimt was an inconvenience but not an insurmountable one if you believe the hype around 20-year-old Francesco Pio Esposito or trust in Ange-Yoan Bonny, who has scored more league goals in just over half the playing time of the promising Italian.
Both backup strikers have offered more, for instance, than Marko Arnautovic and Mehdi Taremi did in Inter's run to the 2025 final in Munich.
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Denzel Dumfries, the wing-back who starred in the semi-final against Barcelona last April, has not played in four months. Out of contract in the summer, Inter are having to move on from him. Dumfries' dependable understudy Matteo Darmian has been dogged by injury all season. Luis Henrique, a summer signing from Marseille who, like Esposito, Bonny, Yann Bisseck and Petar Sucic, was brought in to rejuvenate the team, is still feeling his way, timidly.
That list of players illustrates the depth Inter have on paper. Chivu, whose coaching background was largely in Inter's youth setup, has been praised for fast-tracking their integration. Bisseck, for instance, looks more established. Sucic has shown flashes of real quality. Gianluigi Buffon, the legendary former Juventus goalkeeper, was on a podcast this week, adding his voice to those declaring Esposito to be the next big thing.
But the bedrock has cracked a little this season. Francesco Acerbi, one of the heroes against Barcelona, has lost his place at 38, as has 34-year-old Stefan de Vrij. Two-thirds of the midfield that reached two Champions League finals in three years — Hakan Calhanoglu and Henrikh Mkhitaryan — have been intermittent presences, compensated by the form of Piotr Zielinski. He has had to cover for both. Nicolo Barella has also been a shadow of himself.
Chivu is also still learning. Parma hired him in a state of emergency 12 months ago. It was his first job in senior football and he acquitted himself well, keeping Parma in Serie A.
Inter was, undeniably, a step-up, though. Did the job come too soon? The club doesn't feel that way. There's an appreciation that this was no easy brief. Simone Inzaghi did a tremendous job the previous four years. He left near the end of a long season that wasn't even over. Chivu stepped into the breach at the last minute as Inter flew to the United States for the Club World Cup. He had to pick up a team that had lost the league on the final day and, worse still, was still reeling from a 5-0 defeat in the Champions League final. He then had to deal with the fallout from Martinez calling out a team-mate for a lack of commitment and the president Giuseppe Marotta naming the player as Calhanoglu.
It looked like the dressing room had split at the end of a cycle. If you've forgotten all that, then it is even more credit to Chivu, as Inter have, broadly and perhaps unexpectedly, kept winning.
“We're scoring two goals a game. We've won 21 games in the league and five in the Champions League and we're top in many different things,” Chivu reminded everyone on the eve of the second leg against Bodo. Regrets? Inter have more than a few. Darmian and Martinez hit the post last week. Marcus Thuram missed a presentable one-on-one this week. “Probably not being able to break the deadlock and make it 1-0 gave them the mental comfort to do certain things, knowing that we were forced to score two goals to take it to extra time,” Chivu said.
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Making the round of 16 would have brought Inter's earnings to at least €82million (£72m; $97m) for the season in the Champions League. Tuesday could have been avoided, of course, if only Inter had finished in the top eight, as they were on course to do halfway through the league phase. After winning their first four games, they then lost three of the next four. Those defeats largely mirrored what happened in Serie A, as Inter were, to some degree, unfortunate to come up short in the big games. A stoppage-time corner was the difference at Atletico. A soft penalty went against them in Liverpool's visit to the Meazza. The only team that truly outclassed them were the ‘winners' of the league phase, Arsenal, who won every game.
“This is the difference,” Barella told Sky Italia. “When you don't go through (as part of the top eight) for a single point because of a penalty given against you in the 90th minute (for Liverpool), then you could have saved yourself two games and an away game in a place like Bodo. That's football and the new Champions League.”
Bodo, as Chivu said, had more energy. He remarked on how many games Bodo had played in 2026, as they went into the tie: four compared with Inter's 12. The out-of-sync nature of Scandinavian seasons, which aren't underway again by the time the Champions League's league phase finishes, has often been cited as a limitation on the progress of their teams in Europe, as they tend to be undercooked. But, as they showed last season by making the Europa League semis, not Bodo. It has not held them back.
To lose to Knutsen's side not once but twice and to concede five goals in the process was, in Chivu's words, a source of “bitterness”. Asked before the game where Bodo would finish in Serie A, Federico Dimarco seemed lost for words. “Good question,” he said. “What can I say? You don't beat Atleti and City by chance.”
Still, some on social media declared it Inter's worst elimination in Europe since Goteborg in 1987, Malmo in 1990 and Helsingborg in 2000. But people forget Frank de Boer and Hapoel Be'er Sheva in 2016. That was in the midst of Inter's biggest rivals, Juventus, winning nine league titles in a row and reaching two Champions League finals. It was in the midst of six years without qualifying for the Champions League. Since then, Inter have been spoiled.
As far as hurt goes, this does not come remotely close to what happened in Munich in May. There were no tears on the metro from San Siro back to the city centre afterwards, only anti-Milan songs. At least Inter had won at the weekend while Milan lost. At least Milan won't, it seems, be adding a second star to their shirts in the summer to commemorate a 20th league title. At least Inter, barring a collapse, will claim a 21st at their expense. At least they won't lose another title on the final day like in May and in 2022.
“And you're laughing too?”
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James Horncastle covers Serie A for The Athletic. He joins from ESPN and is working on a book about Roberto Baggio. Follow James on Twitter @JamesHorncastle
* Translated by Papago
Published : 2026.02.25 ・ 13:54
*This content was translated by AI.
Los Angeles FC ace Son Heung-min (34) was replaced in just 45 minutes. Son Heung-min, who had already devastated the opponent's defense by playing a one-man show in the first game, rested on the ground in the second game and then retreated to the bench.
LAFC beat Real España (Honduras) 1-0 in the second round of the first round of the 2026 season of the North American Caribbean Football Confederation (CONCACAF) Champions Cup at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, California at 12 p.m. on the 25th (Korea time). As a result, LAFC won a total of 7-1 in the first and second games, and will meet Alahuelense (Costa Rica) in the round of 16.
LAFC, which won 6-1 in the first game, operated a partial rotation. He made changes to the second line, the midfield, the defense and the goalkeeper.
On this day, Son Heung-min started as a one-top striker in the 4-2-3-1 formation after wearing the captain's armband. Dennis Buanga, Amin Boudry and Tyler Boyd applied for the second term. The midfield was formed by Stephen Eustachio and Mathieu Chooniere, with Ryan Hollingshead, Nkosi Tapari, Kenneth Nilsson and Ryan Laposo in charge of the four backs. The goal was defended by Thomas Harshal.
Real Spain, which collapsed due to consecutive runs early in the first half against LAFC, solved the game with a different tactic in the second game. After lowering the line, he efficiently blocked LAFC's attack, and operated mainly on counterattacks. LAFC had a high ball share of 6 to 4. However, Real Spain's defense was so tight that he could only try shooting twice. The first half ended 0-0.
After the end of the first half, LAFC coach Mark dos Santos replaced Son Heung-min. Neither the main strikers Son Heung-min, Buanga, and midfielder Eustachio played in the second half. Nathan Ordaz, Timothy Tillman and Jude Terry took the ground.
LAFC led with Tapari's first goal in the 19th minute of the second half. In a set piece situation, he put in a left footed shot. The total score of the first and second games was 7-16.
At the end of the second half, LAFC allowed a penalty kick after VAR. Goalkeeper Harshal read the direction and hit the ball out of the goal. The game ended in a 1-0 victory for LAFC without additional points.
LAFC continued its upward trend with three consecutive wins since the opening of this season.
Son Heung-min's performance in the first game was already phenomenal. At that time, Son Heung-min scored only one shot (penalty kick) and showed an overwhelming performance of one goal and three assists. Masugar helped through a through pass following a solo dribble breakthrough in the 11th minute of the first half, then succeeded in a direct penalty kick and later helped Buanga and Tillman's goals in turn, sweeping four offensive points in 39 minutes. Son Heung-min smashed his opponent with a nine-point rating in the first round, including "Sofa Score" and "Foot Mob."
This tournament is the most prestigious club competition in the North-China Caribbean Football Federation Champions Cup region, and the winning team will be eligible to participate in the 2029 FIFA Club World Cup. A total of 27 teams from member countries such as the United States, Mexico and Honduras will participate in the tournament.
Son Heung-min is still strong this season. Son Heung-min, who played an active role in the first game against Real Spain, helped Lionel Messi (39) to the first final against Inter Miami in the opening game of the U.S. Major League Soccer (MLS). In the match, LAFC defeated defending champion Miami in the MLS Cup, 3-0.
LAFC, which has achieved three consecutive wins since the opening, will play Houston in the second round of MLS at 10:30 a.m. on the 1st.
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What a battle we have at striker for the U.S. Men's National Team and the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
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What a battle we have at striker for the U.S. Men's National Team: Folarin Balogun scored, Patrick Agyemang notched an assist, and in his return from a broken arm, striker Ricardo Pepi scored for PSV Eindhoven. Meanwhile, Tyler Adams returned to the pitch, Antonee Robinson has a knock, and is it time to move Timmy Tillman up a notch or two on the defensive midfielder depth chart?
Also, I did it (Peer pressure is a thing…). I added U.S. citizen and FC Augsburg center bank Noahkai Banks to the tracker. Let's face it, the 19-year-old deserves it! He has gone the full 90 in 13 of Augsburg's matches and has impressed.
All in all, twenty-six of the top candidates for the U.S. Men's National Team roster for the 2026 FIFA World Cup this summer started for their clubs across Europe and Major League Soccer with two others seeing time.
The first match of the FIFA World Cup on June 12 is approaching somewhat rapidly for the U.S. Men's National Team. A strong showing as one of the three host countries with Mexico and Canada is a must. Anything else is unacceptable. Coach Mauricio Pochettino will be faced with whittling the roster down to 23-26 players for the three group stage matches… and beyond. Maybe, just maybe, the USMNT will end up in Kansas City for a quarterfinal.
Thus, we will be following the top players (at the moment) who are the strongest candidates for the final roster per the latest callups and history. Who fits the 3-4-2-1 formation Pochettino seems to now favor? How much playing time is each seeing? Are they being productive? Will a strong show of form mean a surprise addition, and subsequent subtraction, from the roster?
Consider this weekly column your reference.
as of Tuesday early evening, February 24, 2026
Strikers –
Folarin Balogun, F, 24, AS Monaco: Scored the first goal and went 85 in 3-1 comeback win at Lens, February 21. Started and pushed Monaco to a 2-0 lead in an eventual 3-2 loss to PSG on February 17 in Champions League. Next match: Wednesday, February 25 v PSG in second leg of Champions League round.
Haji Wright, F, 27, Coventry City: Started and went 75 minutes in 2-0 win over West Bromwich Albion, February 21. Scored a hat trick – tap in, strong route one finish, and a well-placed pen – and went 82 minutes in 3-1 win to overtake Middlesbrough atop the Championship table on February 16. Next match: Wednesday, February 25, v Sheffield United.
Patrick Agyemang, 25, Derby County: Garnered an assist and went all 90 in 4-2 loss at Hull City, February 24. Started and went 90, February 21, in 2-0 loss to Watford. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v Blackburn Rovers.
Ricardo Pepi, F, 23, PSV Eindhoven: In his first match since returning from a broken arm, Pepi entered in the 75th minute and scored the third goal in a 3-1 win over SC Heerenveen, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28, 2026, v Heracles Almelo.
Attacking Midfielders
Christian Pulisic, F, 27, AC Milan: Started and played 62 minutes in 1-0 loss to Parma, February 22. Came off the bench in the 82nd minute in a 1-1 draw with Como, February 18. Next match: Sunday, March 1 v Cremonese.
Gio Reyna, MF, 23, Borussia Monchengladbach: Due to not being match fit, not in the 20 for a 2-1 loss at Freiburg, February 22. Next match: Saturday, February 28 v Union Berlin.
Weston McKennie, MF, 27, Juventus: Went all 90 in 2-0 loss to Como, February 21. Went all 90 in a 5-2 loss to Galatasaray, February 17 in Champions League. Next match: Wednesday, February 25, v Galatasaray in second leg of Champions League series.
Brenden Aaronson, MF, 25, Leeds United: Started and went 73 minutes in 1-1 draw with Aston Villa, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v Manchester City.
Malik Tillman, 23, Bayer Leverkusen: Started and went 81 minutes in 1-0 loss at Union Berlin, February 21. Stepped on in the 64th minute in Bayer's 2-0 win over Olympiacos, February 18, in Champions League. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v Mainz.
Diego Luna, MF/F, 22, RSL: Not in 18 in 1-0 loss to Vancouver Whitecaps, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28 v Seattle Sounders.
Wing backs
Tim Weah, MF, 25, Marseille (on loan from Juventus): Went 90 in 2-0 loss to Brest, February 20. Next match: Sunday, March 1, 2026, v Lyon.
Sergino Dest, D/MF, 25, PSV Eindhoven: Started and went all 90 in 3-1 win over SC Heerenveen, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28, 2026, v Heracles Almelo.
Antonee Robinson, D, 28, Fulham: A minor ankle injury kept him out of a 3-1 win over Sunderland, February 22. Next match: Sunday, March 1 v Tottenham.
John Tolkin, D, 23, Holstein Kiel: Started and went 69 minutes in a 3-1 loss to Karlsruhe, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28 v Elversberg.
Alex Freeman, WB, 21, Villarreal: Did not see the pitch in a 2-1 derby win over Valencia, February 22. Subbed on in the 88th minute of a 1-0 win over Levante UD, February 18. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v Barcelona.
Max Arfsten, D. 24, Columbus Crew: Started and went all 90 in 3-2 loss to Portland Timbers, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v Sporting Kansas City.
Holding midfielders (one a 6 one an 8)
Tyler Adams, MF, 26, AFC Bournemouth: Started first match in return from injury and went 66 minutes in a 0-0 draw with West Ham, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28 v Sunderland.
James Sands, MF, 25, FC St. Pauli: Entered in the 80th minute of a 2-1 over SV Werder Bremen, February 22. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v TSG Hoffenheim.
Tanner Tessmann, MF, 24, Olympique Lyonnais: Started and went 58 minutes in 3-1 loss to Racing Club DE Strasbourg Alsace, February 22. Went 90 in 2-1 win over OGC Nice, February 15. Next match: Sunday, March 1 v Marseille.
Aidan Morris, MF, 24, Middlesbrough: Went 90 in 1-1 draw with Leicester City, February 24. Started and went 74 minutes in nil-nil draw with Oxford United, February 21. Next match: Monday, March 2 v Birmingham City.
Timmy Tillman, MF, 27, LAFC: Started and gained two assists in 82 minutes in a 3-0 win over Inter Miami, February 21. Scored and went 90 in 6-1 win over Real Espana, February 17, in CONCACAF Champions Cup. Next match: Tuesday, February 24, 2026, in second leg v Real Espana.
Cristian Roldan, MF, 30, Seattle Sounders: Started and went all 90 in 2-0 win over Colorado Rapids, February 22. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v Real Salt Lake.
Sebastian Berhalter, MF, 24, Vancouver Whitecaps: Started and went all 90 in 1-0 win over Real Salt Lake, February 21. Went all 90 in 0-0 draw with CSC in CONCACAF Champions Cup, February 18. Next match: Wednesday, February 25, v CSC in second leg.
Center Backs
Auston Trusty, D, 27, Celtic FC: Went all 90 in 2-1 loss, February 22 v Hibernian. Next match: Thursday, February 26 v Stuttgart in Europa League.
Joe Scally, D, 23, Borussia Monchengladbach: Started and went 90 in 2-1 at Freiburg February 22. Next match: Saturday, February 28 v Union Berlin.
Mark Mckenzie, D, 26, Toulouse FC: Was not in matchday 20 for 1-1 draw with Paris FC, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28 v Lens.
Chris Richards, D, 25, Crystal Palace: Went all 90 in 1-0 win over Wolverhampton, February 22. Went all 90 in 1-1 draw with Zrinjski Mostar, February 19 in UEFA Conference League. Next match: 2nd leg v Zrinjski Mostar, Thursday, February 26, 2026.
Miles Robinson, D, 28, FC Cincinnati: Drew massive praise for 90-minute performance in 2-0 win over Atlanta United, February 21. Started and went 38 minutes in 4-0 win over OYM, February 18, in CONCACAF Champions Cup. Next match: second leg v OYM, Wednesday, February 25, 2026.
Tim Ream, D, 38, Charlotte FC: Started and went all 90 in 1-1 draw with St. Louis City, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28 v LA Galaxy.
Noahkai Banks, D, 19, FC Augsburg: Started and went all 90 in 3-2 win over Wolfsburg, February 21. Next match: Friday, February 27, v FC Cologne.
Goalkeeper
Roman Celentano, GK, 25, FC Cincinnati: Started and went all 90 in 2-0 win over Atlanta United, February 21. Started and went 90 in 4-0 win over OYM, February 18, in CONCACAF Champions Cup. Next match: Wednesday, February 25 in second leg v OYM.
Patrick Schulte, GK, 24, Columbus Crew: Started and went all 90 in 3-2 loss to Portland Timbers, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28, 2026, v Sporting Kansas City.
Matt Turner, GK, 31. New England Revolution (from Lyon): Went all 90 in 4-1 loss to Nashville SC, February 21. Next match: Saturday, February 28, v Red Bull New York.
Matt Freese, GK, 27, NYCFC: Between the posts for all 90 in 1-1 draw with Los Angeles Galaxy, February 22. Next match: Sunday, March 1, v Philadelphia Union.
Amid a successful club and high school coaching career, Robert began writing for Major League Soccer as a stringer in 2004, doing weekly coverage and being sent to MLS Cup and the SuperDraft in subsequent seasons. Since then, Robert has continued playing and writing about soccer, although he chose to stop coaching in 2015. Catch his tactical and humanity-based articles and his musings on the Shades of Blue podcast at KCSoccerJournal.com.
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Stan Wawrinka was honoured under the desert sun on Wednesday afternoon, when he played his final match at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.
The Swiss wild card, who triumphed at the ATP 500 event in 2016, fell to Daniil Medvedev in straight sets before staying on court for a touching farewell ceremony. With 2026 marking his final season on the ATP Tour, the 40-year-old soaked in the applause from the crowd.
Tournament Director Salah Tahlak and ATP CEO Eno Polo were among those on centre court to present Wawrinka with a traditional dagger, a commemorative cake and a framed photo featuring memories from his appearances in Dubai.
“I came here for the first time more than 15 years ago and I always feel really welcome,” said Wawrinka, who owns a 6-4 record in Dubai, according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index. “It was amazing for me to have one last chance, one last opportunity, to play here. I will always have amazing memories from here [at] the tournament.”
Wawrinka made his first appearance in Dubai in 2006, when he fell to countryman Roger Federer, which marked just the second of 26 Lexus ATP Head2Head meetings between the two players.
Beyond Dubai, Wawrinka built a respected career, during which he rose to a career-high No. 3 in the PIF ATP Rankings in 2014 and won three major titles. He has captured 16 tour-level trophies so far and, as he embarks on the closing chapter of his professional journey, he continues to embrace some of his most cherished moments: the roar of the crowd and the appreciation of fans around the world.
“It's my last time here, but I always had amazing support from you guys,” Wawrinka said to the crowd. “It's always special. The reason why I kept playing for so long is because of those emotions that I receive on court, but I think at 40 it's time to play for one last year. I'm enjoying it a lot and hopefully I will see some of you throughout the year.”
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Tennis fans reported an increased security presence at the GNP Seguros Arena as a wave of unrest erupted in multiple Mexican states.ByStephanie LivaudaisPublished Feb 24, 2026 copy_link
Published Feb 24, 2026
© AFP or licensors
The Abierto Mexicano Telcel will “go on as scheduled” this week in Acapulco, organizers said, as a wave of violence rocks the nearby state of Jalisco.Tournament organizers issued a statement on Sunday denying the reports of a possible postponement or even total cancelation that circulated on social media over the weekend, following the Mexican army's killing of the leader of the country's most powerful drug cartel in a move that sparked violent clashes across multiple states.“The Abierto Mexicano Telcel reports that the rumors circling in the press and on social media about the tournament's supposed cancelation due to the security issues in Jalisco are false,” organizers said in a statement shared to the tournament's official social media pages.“The tournament has not issued any cancellation notice. The event will go on as scheduled and tournament operations will proceed as normal.“We remain in coordination and in constant communication with federal, state and municipal authorities, following the established security protocols.”Read More: Alexander Zverev's 2026 game plan: Win by hitting harder, not by being physically fitter
Tournament organizers issued a statement on Sunday denying the reports of a possible postponement or even total cancelation that circulated on social media over the weekend, following the Mexican army's killing of the leader of the country's most powerful drug cartel in a move that sparked violent clashes across multiple states.“The Abierto Mexicano Telcel reports that the rumors circling in the press and on social media about the tournament's supposed cancelation due to the security issues in Jalisco are false,” organizers said in a statement shared to the tournament's official social media pages.“The tournament has not issued any cancellation notice. The event will go on as scheduled and tournament operations will proceed as normal.“We remain in coordination and in constant communication with federal, state and municipal authorities, following the established security protocols.”Read More: Alexander Zverev's 2026 game plan: Win by hitting harder, not by being physically fitter
“The Abierto Mexicano Telcel reports that the rumors circling in the press and on social media about the tournament's supposed cancelation due to the security issues in Jalisco are false,” organizers said in a statement shared to the tournament's official social media pages.“The tournament has not issued any cancellation notice. The event will go on as scheduled and tournament operations will proceed as normal.“We remain in coordination and in constant communication with federal, state and municipal authorities, following the established security protocols.”Read More: Alexander Zverev's 2026 game plan: Win by hitting harder, not by being physically fitter
“The tournament has not issued any cancellation notice. The event will go on as scheduled and tournament operations will proceed as normal.“We remain in coordination and in constant communication with federal, state and municipal authorities, following the established security protocols.”Read More: Alexander Zverev's 2026 game plan: Win by hitting harder, not by being physically fitter
“We remain in coordination and in constant communication with federal, state and municipal authorities, following the established security protocols.”Read More: Alexander Zverev's 2026 game plan: Win by hitting harder, not by being physically fitter
Read More: Alexander Zverev's 2026 game plan: Win by hitting harder, not by being physically fitter
📢 Aviso oficial.Nos vemos hoy 4 PM en el Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC. #AMT2026 pic.twitter.com/HOGGdbXFFc
According to the Associated Press, the violence erupted after the Mexican army killed Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), during an operation to capture him on Sunday. The cartel reportedly has an estimated 19,000 members operating in 21 of Mexico's 32 states, and was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2025.The ensuing violence included burned vehicles as cartel members reportedly blocked roads at more than 250 points across 20 states—a tactic used to impede military operations. Videos shared on social media showed Guadalajara, the country's second-largest city, and tourist hotspot Puerto Vallarta under lockdown.The State Department advised U.S. citizens and tourists to shelter in place until further notice, issuing a security alert for the states of Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Michoacan, Nuevo Leon and Guerrero—where Acapulco is located.Security concerns also led to the cancellation of four soccer matches on Sunday, including two in the top-tier Liga MX and Liga MX Femenil. Several Mexican and international airlines also canceled flights.
The ensuing violence included burned vehicles as cartel members reportedly blocked roads at more than 250 points across 20 states—a tactic used to impede military operations. Videos shared on social media showed Guadalajara, the country's second-largest city, and tourist hotspot Puerto Vallarta under lockdown.The State Department advised U.S. citizens and tourists to shelter in place until further notice, issuing a security alert for the states of Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Michoacan, Nuevo Leon and Guerrero—where Acapulco is located.Security concerns also led to the cancellation of four soccer matches on Sunday, including two in the top-tier Liga MX and Liga MX Femenil. Several Mexican and international airlines also canceled flights.
The State Department advised U.S. citizens and tourists to shelter in place until further notice, issuing a security alert for the states of Jalisco, Tamaulipas, Michoacan, Nuevo Leon and Guerrero—where Acapulco is located.Security concerns also led to the cancellation of four soccer matches on Sunday, including two in the top-tier Liga MX and Liga MX Femenil. Several Mexican and international airlines also canceled flights.
Security concerns also led to the cancellation of four soccer matches on Sunday, including two in the top-tier Liga MX and Liga MX Femenil. Several Mexican and international airlines also canceled flights.
#VIDEO 📹 | Este es parte del dispositivo de seguridad de la Arena GNP Seguros, donde mañana empezará el cuadro principal del Abierto Mexicano de Tenis.🏟️ Negocios cercanos al recinto cerraron temprano, tras la violencia que se desató en el país por la detención del “Mencho”. pic.twitter.com/vfouANPJ2t
In Acapulco—which is about 500 miles or roughly 10 hours away by car from Guadalajara—tennis fans reported an increased security presence at the GNP Seguros Arena. Businesses near the venue reportedly closed early on Sunday, the final day of qualifying.Main draw action began on Monday, with players taking the court as scheduled starting at 4:00 p.m. local time. The tournament successfully hosted Kid's Day, while player activities like Media Day and the traditional White Party have also proceeded without incident.Top seeds include world No. 4 Alexander Zverev, two-time champion Alex de Minaur and Casper Ruud, while American players Frances Tiafoe, Brandon Nakashima and Patrick Kypson also feature in the draw. The Acapulco event is a favorite among players, who voted it the Best ATP 500 Event on three occasions, in 2007, 2017 and 2019.Meanwhile, the WTA 500 event in Merida, Yucatan, located about 1,100 miles away from Guadalajara in southern Mexico and featuring Emma Navarro and Jasmine Paolini as top seeds, also proceeded as scheduled.
Main draw action began on Monday, with players taking the court as scheduled starting at 4:00 p.m. local time. The tournament successfully hosted Kid's Day, while player activities like Media Day and the traditional White Party have also proceeded without incident.Top seeds include world No. 4 Alexander Zverev, two-time champion Alex de Minaur and Casper Ruud, while American players Frances Tiafoe, Brandon Nakashima and Patrick Kypson also feature in the draw. The Acapulco event is a favorite among players, who voted it the Best ATP 500 Event on three occasions, in 2007, 2017 and 2019.Meanwhile, the WTA 500 event in Merida, Yucatan, located about 1,100 miles away from Guadalajara in southern Mexico and featuring Emma Navarro and Jasmine Paolini as top seeds, also proceeded as scheduled.
Top seeds include world No. 4 Alexander Zverev, two-time champion Alex de Minaur and Casper Ruud, while American players Frances Tiafoe, Brandon Nakashima and Patrick Kypson also feature in the draw. The Acapulco event is a favorite among players, who voted it the Best ATP 500 Event on three occasions, in 2007, 2017 and 2019.Meanwhile, the WTA 500 event in Merida, Yucatan, located about 1,100 miles away from Guadalajara in southern Mexico and featuring Emma Navarro and Jasmine Paolini as top seeds, also proceeded as scheduled.
Meanwhile, the WTA 500 event in Merida, Yucatan, located about 1,100 miles away from Guadalajara in southern Mexico and featuring Emma Navarro and Jasmine Paolini as top seeds, also proceeded as scheduled.
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Has “Scrubs” finally found its moment?
When Bill Lawrence's medical sitcom first premiered in October 2001, J.D. (Zach Braff) was an outlier, as was the show built around him. Sure, he shared the fears common among his fellow interns at Sacred Heart Hospital, like his best friend Turk (Donald Faison) and instant crush Elliot (Sarah Chalke). But Dr. John Dorian always felt distinctly out of place. He was prone to outlandish fantasies at inopportune moments, and his demeanor pivoted from silly to serious at the needle-drop of a “Coldplay” record. “Scrubs” followed its lead, indulging in goofy bits complete with knowingly crass sex jokes and cartoonish sound effects, all with an underlying earnestness for the hard-working patients, doctors, and hospital staff.
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Still, what set J.D. apart from everyone else wasn't his daydreaming — everyone in “Scrubs” had their weird quirks — it was his sensitivity. He's thoughtful (hence the daydreaming), compassionate (he loves his patients), and effeminate (look no further than the “hairmet”), especially compared to his colleagues. J.D.'s mentor, Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley), called him by a different girl's name every day. His boss, Dr. Kelso (Bob Jenkins), berated him for putting patient care over hospital policy. His nemesis, the Janitor (Neil Flynn), got off on torturing him, and even J.D.'s BFF was a traditional dude-bro: cocky, sporty, and not too keen on discussing his feelings with the fellas.
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Ostensibly, the original “Scrubs” was about J.D. growing up — a simple coming-of-age story boosted by a zany sitcom spirit. But underneath that straightforward broadcast appeal, the series was about J.D. proving — to himself and the world — that his style of doctoring could work; that his big emotions weren't a flaw to be ironed out by the hospital's day-to-day grind, but an asset to be developed and applied to the hospital's benefit.
Over nine seasons, J.D. did exactly that. He held onto his singular personality while succeeding as a doctor. Some would argue “Scrubs” followed suit: Setting aside the limited awards recognition and early ratings peak (ahead of Season 4, Variety reported it was “never a broad hit”), nine seasons is a long run for any TV show (even in the early 2000s), reruns proved popular after the series ended in 2010, and now ABC is investing in a revival. When there's still demand for J.D. and Turk in 2026, beyond their omnipresent T-Mobile ads, that's a success. (Are the ads to blame for bringing “Scrubs” back? Maybe! But I can't go down that rabbit hole.)
But that was then. Can they do it again? Can J.D. do it again? Can he prove his sensitive approach to medicine, slightly matured over time, is still what Sacred Heart needs? What little narrative hook there is for the “Scrubs” revival — which plays like a safe combination of the short-lived soft-reboot, “Scrubs: Med” (aka Season 9) and the original series — hinges on that question, while inviting a new one: What if J.D. was ahead of his time?
I know how that sounds, given this century has featured almost as many years with “Scrubs” as without it, but our surreal modern world is better acquainted with the likes of J.D. than the one he first walked into. Beta masculinity obviously wasn't widely accepted in the early 2000s. (If it had been, the character wouldn't have stood out — at Sacred Heart, or in a TV sitcom landscape headlined by “The King of Queens,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and “Yes, Dear.”) Emotionally vulnerable men didn't really gain prominence in the 2010s either — not when hope ceded so much ground to hate. But at a time when the male loneliness epidemic gets as much attention as actual diseases and HBO is touting a “nice” version of “Game of Thrones”… is it finally J.D.'s time to shine?
The new “Scrubs” (with Aseem Batra as showrunner) premieres after series creator Bill Lawrence (who's only an executive producer this time around) has spent the last six years bending the world to his will — of kindness. “Ted Lasso” made being nice cool again (for two seasons, at least), and Lawrence's chipper, sensitive male leads continue to undermine toxic traits. In “Shrinking,” Jimmy (Jason Segel) tries to be a better dad than his own car-loving, incommunicative, commitment-phobic father (Jeff Daniels). In “Bad Monkey,” Yancy (Vince Vaughn) is the most talkative private eye on TV. He'd rather crack a case by connecting over a few beachside beers than connecting his closed fist with the suspect's jaw.
J.D. predates these guys by two decades, but when “Scrubs” (2026) picks up again, he's their age (late 40s, early 50s). Working as a concierge doctor for rich Californians isn't exactly his dream job. Sure, there are perks — more time for his kids, more money for his kids, wait, do you remember J.D. has kids? — but he's isolated and, yes, lonely. So when Dr. Cox calls asking for a favor, J.D. leaps at the chance: Come by the old hospital, visit your wealthy patient (who was admitted for an emergency procedure), and while you're here, help get the new group of interns to fall in line?
“I can't work them crazy hours or even abuse them anymore,” Dr. Cox says by way of explaining his newfound ineffectiveness as a teacher. Perhaps J.D. can think of ways to connect with “TikTok Doc” (played by Ava Bunn, who's always recording herself), ‘Fraidy Doc (Jacob Dudman, who “gets a little woozy” doing any procedure whatsoever), and Rude Doc (David Gridley, who has a classic case of Bad Bedside Manner). There's also Normal Doc (Amanda Morrow), one of Turk's interns who's basically Young Turk (no connotation), but that's a bit dismissive of ‘Fraidy Doc, who's basically a Young J.D.
For those who remember, J.D.'s first hurdle as an intern was that he couldn't perform any of the procedures himself. Dr. Cox forced him to step up (or man up, perhaps?), so it's fitting that J.D. has to find a way to get ‘Fraidy Doc over his fears, especially when he proves to be just as sensitive as J.D. ‘Fraidy Doc actually says “kindness is the best medicine,” which not even J.D. can let stand. (“No, medicine is the best medicine,” he impatiently replies.)
Aside from serving as mirrors into the past, the interns don't really matter to “Scrubs” (which is why I haven't bothered to use their proper names). Through the first four episodes, they're given only the loosest character traits and the corniest dialogue. (Netflix isn't the only studio mandating redundant dialogue to assist bored viewers.) Unlike Season 9, when Kerry Bishé's intern took over the voiceover and Braff was relegated to guest star appearances, interns aren't the focus anymore. In 2026, “Scrubs” is still J.D.'s show, for better or worse.
The “better” parts arise when “Scrubs” simply tries to be its old self: Turk and Elliot fight over J.D., medical and surgical interns fight over who's smarter, a random person immediately hates J.D. and spends the rest of his life (presumably) fucking with him. (While Neil Flynn is missed, J.D.'s new rival, played by Joel Kim Booster, admirably commits to filling the viciousness void.)
What's “worse” may not override what's working like it did in Season 9 (and, if memory serves, for a few seasons prior), but things get clunky when the silly fantasy sequences fade into serious life lessons, and too many of Season 10's jokes are as predictable as the plotting. It's also slower and uglier, with too much space in between dialogue and too little life in the hospital sets.
But the familiarity is also a problem. J.D. becoming a common character in 2026 puts the onus on “Scrubs” to distinguish itself in other ways. We've already got Ted Lasso (returning this year), Jimmy Laird (releasing new episodes through early April), and Andrew Yancy (“Bad Monkey” Season 2 is in production), not to mention characters not created by Bill Lawrence, including Stede Bonnet, Dave Burd, and Ser Dunk. What can “Scrubs” offer that they aren't already providing? What edge does it have other than a two-decade head start? It's pretty clear J.D. fits in 2026, but why do we need him?
Fans who just want to bask in nostalgia should be happy, and they may even be rewarded if “Scrubs” dares to question what a world of empowered J.D.s could look like. Might his need to be liked by everyone conflict with his job's more impersonal responsibilities? Is he too easily manipulated or too oblivious to playing favorites? Is he the right guy to steward a new generation, or is he just another old white guy who gets the chance?
Looking for answers may be enough to justify returning to “Scrubs” one more time. Finding them may actually make it meaningful.
“Scrubs” Season 10 premieres Wednesday, February 25 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC with two episodes. New episodes will be released weekly and available on Hulu the next day.
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Ian Tuason's “Undertone” builds its scares entirely based on what you hear and don't hear. It's essentially “The Blair Witch Podcast,” and audiences have eaten it up ever since its premieres at both Fantasia Fest and at Sundance last month.
So to make sure you get the chance to hear every minute detail you're supposed to while watching the film, A24 is planning a series of screenings in the best format for movie theater sound: Dolby Cinema.
A24 will release “Undertone” in over 100 Dolby Cinema theaters as early-access screenings on March 9, prior to the wider theatrical release on March 13, IndieWire can exclusively reveal. The film will play across the entire Dolby Cinema network of screens, and each venue is equipped with a combination of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos sound. The experience is meant to be completely immersive, no matter your seat in the theater.
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“Dolby Atmos gave me the opportunity to create a theatrical haunted house amusement park ride for you and your friends to experience together,” Tuason said in a statement to IndieWire. “What's more fun than screaming your head off with your friends?”
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Atmos operates on a 3D plane, putting speakers above you and moving sound vertically in addition to traditional surround sound that only goes horizontally, so it feels like you're sitting in a dome of sound. It's probably as close as you'll get to feeling like you're listening to it in the headphones the film's main character is using, even though you're in a theater with other people.
“‘Undertone' plunges audiences into a terrifying soundscape and partnering with A24 to bring this chilling cinematic experience to Dolby Cinema allows audiences to experience every whisper, silence, and scream in Ian Tuason's film,” said Jed Harmsen, VP & General Manager of Cinema & Group Entertainment at Dolby Laboratories. “Immersive Dolby Atmos sound will reveal greater details in each scare in this auditory horror film while the precision of the Dolby Vision picture quality provides sharper clarity in the darkness, making a suspenseful experience like no other.”
This is a big step up for the indie film that first premiered at Fantasia Fest, as the movie was made for an ultra-low budget but has gotten some updates and other touches since it was acquired by A24 and then showed its new version at Sundance last month.
Tuason both wrote and directed “Undertone,” which follows the host of a popular paranormal podcast who becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way. The film stars Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet, Keana Lyn Bastidas, and Jeff Yung.
Speaking to IndieWire at Sundance, Tuason explained that the film is deeply personal, one he shot in his own house as inspired by his experience caring for his parents and turning to podcasts during that period in his life, but also how he meticulously studied the patterns of other horror films to understand their beats and rhythms in order to inform his own.
“And I saw a formula, kind of a rhythm, to the number of creepy parts … leading up to a scare or leading up to nothing,” he said. “I remember color-coding my script. If it's highlighted green, it's just a creepy part, like a light turning on. And then if it's a blue part, it's a scream, right? … A scream, something like a jump scare. And I just made sure that the rhythm was the same as these other movies.”
You can buy tickets to the film in advance here.
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By Rosy Cordero
Associate Editor, TV
A new TV series that reimagines the 2009 film Bride Wars is in development at Peacock, with Emma Roberts (American Horror Story, Valentine's Day) set to star and executive produce through her Belletrist prodco. New Regency will serve as the lead studio with co-studios 20th Television and UCP on the project, written and executive produced by multi-Emmy Award winner Sascha Rothchild (GLOW, XO, Kitty).
Set against the charming backdrop of North Carolina, Bride Wars, the TV series, follows a big-city wedding planner (Emma Roberts) whose arrival in a small town sparks an epic showdown with a beloved local planner. As the two women battle to plan the same wedding, their rivalry quickly escalates into a larger clash over friendship, community, and, ultimately, love.
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The original Bride Wars starred Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway as longtime besties Liv and Emma, respectively, whose weddings accidentally end up booked for the same day at the same venue, The Plaza Hotel in New York City. Drama, chaos and confusion abounds. The women fight over who should keep the date and which should sacrifice for the other. In the film, they struggle between being a true friend and losing their buddy forever.
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The series' executive producers include Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan, and Natalie Lehmann for New Regency; Roberts, Karah Preiss, and Matt Matruski for Belletrist, and Alexandra Milchan and Martin Salgo for Crescent Line.
Rothchild is currently adapting Young Rich Widows for Amazon, and her debut novel, Blood Sugar, was a New York Times Best Book of 2021 and 2022.
Roberts is in production on the feature film Hal opposite Alexander Ludwig and also serves as an executive producer on the hit Hulu series Tell Me Lies, which recently concluded its 3-season run. Roberts is represented by Sweeney Entertainment and lawyer JR McGuiness.
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The KATSEYE standout has earned a tidal wave of support from her industry peers in recent days.
By
Kyle Denis
Last week (Feb. 20), KATSEYE sent shockwaves through the global music industry with the announcement that Manon, one of its buzziest members, would be taking a hiatus to “focus on her mental health and wellbeing.”
Born in Switzerland, Manon (full name: Manon Bannerman) first gained notoriety through sharing fashion and lifestyle videos on TikTok and Instagram in 2021. Her departure has rocked KATSEYE's fanbase, as well as the culture, largely because of her status as the group's sole Black member. The current situation has triggered reflections on professional and fan-driven anti-Black slights that impacted the industry experiences of Normani (Fifth Harmony's sole Black member), Leigh-Anne (Little Mix's sole Black member) and Melody Thornton (The Pussycat Dolls' sole Black member).
The initial announcement of Manon's hiatus came via the KATSEYE fan community on Weverse in a post shared at 6:45 p.m. ET Friday night by HYBE and Geffen.
“After open and thoughtful conversations together, we are sharing that Manon will be taking a temporary hiatus from group activities to focus on her health and wellbeing,” the message reads. “We fully support this decision. KATSEYE remains committed to showing up for one another and for the fans who mean everything to us. The group will continue scheduled activities during this time, and we look forward to being together again when the time is right. Thank you to our EYEKONS for your continued love, patience, and understanding.”
A few hours later, Manon allegedly shared her own statement through Weverse DMs, writing, “I'm healthy, I'm okay, and I'm taking care of myself. Thank u for checking in! Sometimes things unfold in ways we don't fully control, but I'm trusting the bigger picture.”
Although the group is currently prepping for its Coachella debut in April, none of the other five KATSEYE members have spoken out about Manon's temporary hiatus. In a Feb. 17 interview, Manon told The Cut, “Being called lazy, especially as a Black girl, is not fair. Now I feel like I always need to put in extra work to prove something, even though I really don't.”
Formed through the reality competition series The Debut: Dream Academy in 2023, KATSEYE has quickly scaled the music industry ladder, meaningfully breaking through with its 2025 Beautiful Chaos EP. With that project, the six-piece global girl group earned its first two Billboard Hot 100 hits: “Gnarly” (No. 82) and “Gabriela” (No. 26).
Notably, “Gabriela” also earned the group a Grammy nomination for best pop duo/group performance, which it ultimately lost to Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande's “Defying Gravity” — earlier this month (Feb. 1). KATSEYE also earned a nod for best new artist, though Olivia Dean ended up taking that trophy home.
In the days following HYBE and Geffen's shocking announcement, several music stars have publicly supported Manon by following her Instagram in recent days, including RAYE, London On Da Track, Halle Bailey and Normani.
Keep reading for a full round-up of celebrities who have shown support for Manon following her hiatus announcement.
The Little Mix alum, who coincidentally dropped her debut solo LP (My Ego Told Me To) the same day as Manon's hiatus announcement (Feb. 20), took to X to share her support for the KATSEYE star.
“We need to protect each other,” she replied to a fan who noted that she, Manon and Normani had all followed each other on Instagram in light of recent events.
In 2021, Leigh-Anne teamed up with director Natasha Guant for Leigh-Anne: Race, Pop & Power, a documentary chronicling her experiences with racism and colorism in the music industry. The doc also featured an appearance by Keisha Buchanan, the sole Black member of Sugababes.
We need to protect each other ❤️
Manon hasn't posted to her Instagram feed in over a week, but that didn't stop SZA from heading to the comment section of the most recent picture to share some words of support. Alongside two sweet emojis (a hug and a pink heart), the Grammy winner wrote, “Perfect girl” on Sunday (Feb. 22).
Like SZA, Kehlani also ran to Manon's most recent IG post to show her some love, proclaiming, “Ball out time” in all-caps on Tuesday (Feb. 24).
On Monday (Feb. 23), Grammy-winning comedian Tiffany Haddish added her voice to the choir of Manon support, writing, “Queen tings,” under her most recent Instagram post.
Grammy-nominated singer-producer Chloe Bailey, who's one-half of the sister duo Chloe x Halle, took to her official Discord server, writing, “I'm sad about Manon” on Sunday (Feb. 22).
Shade, one of two Black members from rising boy band Soulidified (which was formed through Netflix's Building the Band), posted a heartfelt video message to his TikTok page, opening up about his own experiences battling racism in the pop music sphere.
“To Manon, if this video reaches her in any way, I get you,” he said. “I feel you, and I understand. I'm with you, and I support you, and I stand with you because these people don't know how hard it is to be Black in a group where everybody's not Black. If you don't understand what I'm saying, your awareness is probably trash because it's been happening in groups — and it's just been happening since the beginning of American history.”
One more thing…
On Monday (Feb. 23), Thornton, the sole Black member of The Pussycat Dolls, shared a portrait of Manon on her official Instagram feed with the caption, “We see you.”
O'Shea Jackson Jr., an NAACP Image Award-winning actor and the eldest son of rap icon Ice Cube, reflected on Manon's hiatus via X, writing, “My daughter put me on to Katseye. What's happening right now hurts my heart because of her. Manon.”
My daughter put me on to Katseye. What's happening right now hurts my heart because of her. Manon.
On Wednesday, a two-time Brit Award nominee and rising pop star hopped into the comment section of Manon's most recent Instagram post, writing, “Superstar,” and punctuating it with a pink heart emoji.
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The KATSEYE standout has earned a tidal wave of support from her industry peers in recent days.
By
Kyle Denis
Last week (Feb. 20), KATSEYE sent shockwaves through the global music industry with the announcement that Manon, one of its buzziest members, would be taking a hiatus to “focus on her mental health and wellbeing.”
Born in Switzerland, Manon (full name: Manon Bannerman) first gained notoriety through sharing fashion and lifestyle videos on TikTok and Instagram in 2021. Her departure has rocked KATSEYE's fanbase, as well as the culture, largely because of her status as the group's sole Black member. The current situation has triggered reflections on professional and fan-driven anti-Black slights that impacted the industry experiences of Normani (Fifth Harmony's sole Black member), Leigh-Anne (Little Mix's sole Black member) and Melody Thornton (The Pussycat Dolls' sole Black member).
The initial announcement of Manon's hiatus came via the KATSEYE fan community on Weverse in a post shared at 6:45 p.m. ET Friday night by HYBE and Geffen.
“After open and thoughtful conversations together, we are sharing that Manon will be taking a temporary hiatus from group activities to focus on her health and wellbeing,” the message reads. “We fully support this decision. KATSEYE remains committed to showing up for one another and for the fans who mean everything to us. The group will continue scheduled activities during this time, and we look forward to being together again when the time is right. Thank you to our EYEKONS for your continued love, patience, and understanding.”
A few hours later, Manon allegedly shared her own statement through Weverse DMs, writing, “I'm healthy, I'm okay, and I'm taking care of myself. Thank u for checking in! Sometimes things unfold in ways we don't fully control, but I'm trusting the bigger picture.”
Although the group is currently prepping for its Coachella debut in April, none of the other five KATSEYE members have spoken out about Manon's temporary hiatus. In a Feb. 17 interview, Manon told The Cut, “Being called lazy, especially as a Black girl, is not fair. Now I feel like I always need to put in extra work to prove something, even though I really don't.”
Formed through the reality competition series The Debut: Dream Academy in 2023, KATSEYE has quickly scaled the music industry ladder, meaningfully breaking through with its 2025 Beautiful Chaos EP. With that project, the six-piece global girl group earned its first two Billboard Hot 100 hits: “Gnarly” (No. 82) and “Gabriela” (No. 26).
Notably, “Gabriela” also earned the group a Grammy nomination for best pop duo/group performance, which it ultimately lost to Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande's “Defying Gravity” — earlier this month (Feb. 1). KATSEYE also earned a nod for best new artist, though Olivia Dean ended up taking that trophy home.
In the days following HYBE and Geffen's shocking announcement, several music stars have publicly supported Manon by following her Instagram in recent days, including RAYE, London On Da Track, Halle Bailey and Normani.
Keep reading for a full round-up of celebrities who have shown support for Manon following her hiatus announcement.
The Little Mix alum, who coincidentally dropped her debut solo LP (My Ego Told Me To) the same day as Manon's hiatus announcement (Feb. 20), took to X to share her support for the KATSEYE star.
“We need to protect each other,” she replied to a fan who noted that she, Manon and Normani had all followed each other on Instagram in light of recent events.
In 2021, Leigh-Anne teamed up with director Natasha Guant for Leigh-Anne: Race, Pop & Power, a documentary chronicling her experiences with racism and colorism in the music industry. The doc also featured an appearance by Keisha Buchanan, the sole Black member of Sugababes.
We need to protect each other ❤️
Manon hasn't posted to her Instagram feed in over a week, but that didn't stop SZA from heading to the comment section of the most recent picture to share some words of support. Alongside two sweet emojis (a hug and a pink heart), the Grammy winner wrote, “Perfect girl” on Sunday (Feb. 22).
Like SZA, Kehlani also ran to Manon's most recent IG post to show her some love, proclaiming, “Ball out time” in all-caps on Tuesday (Feb. 24).
On Monday (Feb. 23), Grammy-winning comedian Tiffany Haddish added her voice to the choir of Manon support, writing, “Queen tings,” under her most recent Instagram post.
Grammy-nominated singer-producer Chloe Bailey, who's one-half of the sister duo Chloe x Halle, took to her official Discord server, writing, “I'm sad about Manon” on Sunday (Feb. 22).
Shade, one of two Black members from rising boy band Soulidified (which was formed through Netflix's Building the Band), posted a heartfelt video message to his TikTok page, opening up about his own experiences battling racism in the pop music sphere.
“To Manon, if this video reaches her in any way, I get you,” he said. “I feel you, and I understand. I'm with you, and I support you, and I stand with you because these people don't know how hard it is to be Black in a group where everybody's not Black. If you don't understand what I'm saying, your awareness is probably trash because it's been happening in groups — and it's just been happening since the beginning of American history.”
One more thing…
On Monday (Feb. 23), Thornton, the sole Black member of The Pussycat Dolls, shared a portrait of Manon on her official Instagram feed with the caption, “We see you.”
O'Shea Jackson Jr., an NAACP Image Award-winning actor and the eldest son of rap icon Ice Cube, reflected on Manon's hiatus via X, writing, “My daughter put me on to Katseye. What's happening right now hurts my heart because of her. Manon.”
My daughter put me on to Katseye. What's happening right now hurts my heart because of her. Manon.
On Wednesday, a two-time Brit Award nominee and rising pop star hopped into the comment section of Manon's most recent Instagram post, writing, “Superstar,” and punctuating it with a pink heart emoji.
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IndieWire can exclusively share that the previously-announced An Evening with Chloé Zhao, presented by Film Independent, will be moderated by Oscar-winning actress and filmmaker Regina King.
Until last summer, King had taken a step back from the spotlight after going through a familial tragedy in early 2022 that was akin to what the characters face in “Hamnet.” She returned to screens with her appearance in the recent Darren Aronofsky film “Caught Stealing.”
The conversation between Zhao and King will cover more than just the latter's latest film, currently nominated for eight Academy Awards. Appearing onstage, the will pair will run through film clips and have a conversation about Zhao's entire film career, starting from “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” through Best Picture winner “Nomadland,” which also made her the third woman and first woman of color to win the Oscar for Best Director.
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During that 2020 – 2021 awards run, King and Zhao developed a friendship, as the former was on the same circuit promoting her directorial debut “One Night in Miami,” made shortly after she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
As for Zhao's connection to Film Independent, the award-winning director was a Screenwriting Lab Fellow in 2011, where she developed her debut feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me.” In addition to the Screenwriting Lab, both Zhao and the film were supported by Film Independent's Artist Development programs, including the Producing Lab and Fast Track.
At the 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards, “Songs My Brother Taught Me” was nominated in three categories, including Best First Feature. Her sophomore film “The Rider” was later nominated for Best Feature (and Zhao was nominated for Best Director) at the 2018 ceremony.
Her third feature “Nomadland” starring Frances McDormand won four Spirit Awards in 2021, including Best Feature and Best Director for Zhao. King won the Robert Altman Award for “One Night in Miami” at that same ceremony.
An Evening with Chloé Zhao will take place on Thursday, February 26, 2026 at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles. While general tickets to the event are sold out, there are still select members tickets available.
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A Jane Schoenbrun summer is on the horizon. The auteur behind “We're All Going to the World's Fair” and “I Saw the TV Glow” is returning with their third feature film, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” a love letter to slasher franchises with endless sequels that appears to be filled with the themes that have defined Schoenbrun's entire career.
Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder star in the film, which tells the story of a torrid romance between a filmmaker tasked with resurrecting a tired horror franchise and its reclusive star. Schoenbrun has previously described the film as the kind of movie they would have discovered in the ignored sections of a video store in their youth.
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“I make movies I wish existed when I was a kid and ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' is my best attempt at the ‘sleepover classic:' an insane yet cozy midnight odyssey that beckons to unsuspecting viewers from the horror section at the local video store,” they said in a statement announcing the project. “I couldn't be more excited to be heading to sleepaway camp this summer with the mad comic genius Hannah Einbinder, the legendary Gillian Anderson, and the daring folks at MUBI and Plan B, who by greenlighting this movie have summoned a plague-like flood of blood, guts, and various other fluids to rain down on us all.”
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An official synopsis for the film reads: “After years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom, the Camp Miasma slasher franchise is handed over to an enthusiastic young director for resurrection. But when she visits the original movie's star, a now-reclusive actress shrouded in mystery, the two women fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.”
Fans of Schoenbrun's distinct style should have no shortage of projects to feast upon in the near future. Their debut novel, “Public Access Afterworld,” will be published this fall by Random House imprint Hogarth Books. They'll also be making their TV debut on the Netflix series “Black Hole,” an adaptation of Charles Burns' cult comic book series of the same name.
MUBI will release “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” in theaters on Friday, August 7. Watch the first teaser below.
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The long-rumored stay-put will continue the band's No Repeat Weekend tradition, with no songs duplicated on each Thursday and Saturday throughout the series.
By
Gil Kaufman
After months of rumors, the news Metallica fans have been waiting for finally came on Wednesday morning (Feb. 25): the iconic metal band is coming to Las Vegas' Sphere. Metallica is slated to debut its Life Burns Faster residency at the high-tech venue during an eight-show run in October that will continue the No Repeat Weekend tradition they began with the 2023 launch of their M72 world tour.
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See latest videos, charts and news
That means that no songs will be repeated on each Thursday and Saturday throughout the course of the run. Two-night No Repeat Weekend tickets and single-night tickets will go on sale on March 6 at 1 p.m. ET; fans can register for tickets and get further information about presales, enhanced experiences and travel packages here.
“About 12 seconds into the opening night of Sphere with U2 back in ‘23, I thought ‘We have to do this, it's completely uncharted territory!,'” Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said in a statement. “This residency gives us another chance to reinvent how we interact with our fans in a live setting. We are beyond excited to share this with the world in six months time, and way f–kin' psyched to go next level!”
Metallica's three-year running M72 world tour has played to more than four million fans across Europe, North America, the Pacific Rim and the Middle East since its April 27 kick-off in Amsterdam. The journey will continue this year on May 9 when the band plays at the Olympic Stadium in Athens, Greece as part of another run of European shows slated to run through a July 5 gig at London Stadium in London, England.
The dates for Metallica's Sphere run are: Oct. 1 & 3, Oct. 15 & 17, Oct. 22 & 24 and Oct. 29 & 31.
The immersive venue with the world's highest resolution LED display that wraps up, over and around the audience opened in Sept. 2023 with a residency by U2 and has so far hosted a range of pop, rock, country and dance acts including Phish, Dead & Company, the Eagles, Anyma, Kenny Chesney, the Backstreet Boys, Chase & Status and the Zac Brown Band. Upcoming bookings include a 9-show run by Illenium in March, 9 more shows from Phish in April and early May, an 18-gig run by the reunited No Doubt in May and June and seven shows from Carín León in September. Metallica will be the first hard rock/metal band to play the venue.
In addition, the Sphere just announced its first live boxing match, an anticipated rematch between Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. and Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao, slated to take place on Sept. 19 and air live on Netflix. The bout will be a sequel to the pair's somewhat underwhelming 2015 “Fight of the Century,” during which Mayweather (50-0, 27 KOs) bested Pacquiao (6-8-3, 39 KOs) in a unanimous decision.
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The Duffer Brothers were sitting around wondering when someone was going to make a modern riff on Ron Howard's 1985 film Cocoon, so they decided to make it happen themselves. That's more or less what they've said, at least, to accompany the first look at The Boroughs, a new series from Netflix that follows the over 50 set as they encounter and battle aliens in their retirement community. The show is created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews and executive produced by the Duffers. “They were adamant that — unlike so many stories about older characters — this wouldn't treat aging as a punchline,” the Duffers say of the pitch. “Instead, it would treat its characters as real people facing real challenges … along with a few supernatural ones. It was exactly the show we'd been dreaming of.”
They certainly found a good group of actors for the project. Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Clarke Peters, Denis O'Hare, and Bill Pullman all star. Molina's Sam Cooper is described as the “heart” of the series. “He recently lost his wife, and he's trying to figure out what to do with the time he has left, which is a question we all face, no matter our age. It's just the stakes get higher the more years you have under your belt,” say the creators. “[A] show about a group of retirees who fight monsters really plays to both our strengths. The result is an adventure about a group of unlikely heroes that we can't wait for everyone to fall in love with.”
The entire first season of The Boroughs premieres on Netflix on May 21. Check out the first-look images below.
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By Greg Evans
NY & Broadway Editor
EXCLUSIVE: Lena Waithe and Cynthia Erivo are signing on as producers to Broadway‘s upcoming Cats: The Jellicle Ball, the production announced today.
“I am so proud to be joining this production as a producer alongside wonderful creatives such a Lena Waithe,” said Erivo in a statement. “Cats: The Jellicle Ball astounded me and truly was a theater experience unlike any other I have had, so to have the opportunity to support it in its next iteration is an honor. I'm so excited for audiences to have a chance to experience its magic, for the first time or once, twice, three times again.”
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Added Waithe, “This musical was introduced to me by the great Cynthia Erivo. I can always trust her taste, so I flew out to see it and was changed. I wasn't the same person when I walked out of the theater. I understood this musical in a way I never have. Cats needed Ball culture in order for it to finally make sense. And now that I've been changed – I want everyone to have the same experience we did. I'm honored to be a part of this historic production.”
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Producers Michael Harrison and Mike Bosner are bringing the new Broadway production of the acclaimed Cats re-imagining to Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre this spring, with previews set to begin Wednesday, March 18, ahead of a Tuesday, April 7 opening night.
Directing are Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch with choreography by Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons. Cats: The Jellicle Ball has music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and is based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot.
The musical reimagining, in which Lloyd Webber's long-running Broadway hit Cats is set in New York's underground LGBTQ+ ballroom scene, premiered at Perelman Performing Arts Center | PAC NYC in 2024, with the production extended three times due to audience demand.
Actor-singer-author-producer Erivo currently is starring on the West End through May 31 in Kip Williams' Dracula, a one woman show where she is playing all 23 characters. She won the Tony Award in 2016 for her performance as Celie in the revival of The Color Purple and also produced the Tony-nominated play Fat Ham.
Waithe is an Emmy-winning writer, producer, and actor. She produced Jordan Cooper's Tony-nominated play Ain't No Mo' on Broadway and recently made her playwright and stage debut with trinity at Baltimore Center Stage (that production has been extended through March 15).
The Broadway Jellicle Ball cast includes André De Shields, Ken Ard, Kya Azeen, Bryson Battle, Sherrod T. Brown, Jonathan Burke, Baby Byrne, Tara Lashan Clinkscales, Bryce Farris, Sydney James Harcourt, Dava Huesca, Dudney Joseph Jr., Junior LaBeija, Leiomy, Robert “Silk” Mason, “Tempress” Chasity Moore, Primo Thee Ballerino, Xavier Reyes, Nora Schell, Bebe Nicole Simpson, Emma Sofia, Phumzile Sojola, Kendall Grayson Stroud, B. Noel Thomas, Kalyn West, Donté Nadir Wilder, Garnet Williams and Teddy Wilson Jr.
The Perelman Performing Arts Center production of Cats: The Jellicle Ball is produced on Broadway by Michael Harrison for Lloyd Webber Harrison Musicals and Mike Bosner by arrangement with LW Entertainment.
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By Denise Petski
Senior Managing Editor
Netflix has set May 21 for the premiere of The Boroughs, The Duffer Brothers‘ supernatural mystery series, created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance). The streamer also released some first-look photos which you can see above and below.
In The Boroughs, in a seemingly perfect retirement community, a grieving newcomer's monstrous encounter inspires him to join a misfit crew of unlikely heroes who uncover a dark secret that proves their “golden years” are more dangerous, and they are more formidable, than anyone expects.
Main cast includes Alfred Molina (Sam), Geena Davis (Renee), Alfre Woodard (Judy), Denis O'Hare (Wally), Clarke Peters (Art), Bill Pullman (Jack), Carlos Miranda (Paz), Jena Malone (Claire), Seth Numrich (Blaine), Alice Kremelberg (Anneliese).
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Additional cast includes Ed Begley Jr. (Edward), Dee Wallace (Grace), Eric Edelstein (Hank), Rafael Casal (Neil), Mousa Hussein Kraish (Dr. McGinnis), Beth Bailey (Kayleigh), Karan Soni (Toby) with Jane Kaczmarek (Lilly) and more.
“For years, we've wondered why no one has made a film like Ron Howard's wonderful Cocoon since, well, Cocoon, The Duffer Brothers told Tudum. “Then, out of nowhere, Jeff and Will emailed us an idea for The Boroughs: a story about retirees and monsters. They were adamant that — unlike so many stories about older characters — this wouldn't treat aging as a punchline. Instead, it would treat its characters as real people facing real challenges… along with a few supernatural ones. It was exactly the show we'd been dreaming of.”
Addiss and Matthews serve as creators, showrunners and executive producers. The Duffer Brothers and Hilary Leavitt executive produce for Upside Down Pictures, along with Ben Taylor, who also directs the first two episodes. Augustine Frizzel directs episodes 103, 104, 107, & 108, and Kyle Patrick Alvarez directs episodes 105 and 106.
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Congrats Will & Jeff! So excited for you two lovely, talented gentlemen.
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By
Daniel Kohn
In April 2023, Mike Ness was ready for Social Distortion to finally get back in the studio. The Orange County punks were set to record their first studio album since 2011's Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, with Ness armed with an arsenal of riffs, grooves, lyrics, and ideas he'd been sitting on as far back as 1996's White Light White Heat White Trash. About halfway through the next year's recording sessions in Los Angeles, Ness was diagnosed with Stage 1 tonsil cancer. Not only was the album indefinitely postponed, but the singer-songwriter also faced his biggest challenge in a life full of adversity. After a year on the sidelines undergoing surgery, treatment, and recovery, Ness received a clean bill of health and, along with producer Dave Sardy and his bandmates, got back to work.
“I can't tell you just how grateful I am, because some people have much different stories with cancer,” Ness tells Rolling Stone over Zoom from his OC hideout. “Even if they do survive, they're struggling days, years, and maybe they don't even beat it. I don't say I beat it. I got lucky that it was curable.
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“The doctors told me [that this type of cancer] had a very good success rate,” he continues. “So I get into a positive headspace and really like envisioning the future. I had a grandson on the way. I had a record to finish. I had unfinished business here. I found myself bargaining, ‘God, just let me finish the record, please.'”
Nearly two years later, Born to Kill, Social Distortion's long-awaited eighth studio album, is set to arrive May 8, through Epitaph. Beginning with the hard-charging title track, which the band test-drove live for years before recording, the album is a look back at nearly 50 years of defiance and hell-raising that began on the streets of Fullerton, California. The nostalgic “The Way Things Were” references Ness's teenaged years, roaming around with late Social Distortion guitarist and friend, Dennis Danell. Akin to a heavyweight boxer in the latter rounds of a title fight, Ness is bruised and battered at this point in his career, but ready to fight with a wink and a smile.
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With his 64th birthday around the corner and now a grandfather, Ness is content spending time with his family and writing, rather than wreaking the havoc that marked his formative years: He'll raise his hell onstage, when the band kicks off a North American tour in August (ahead of that they'll play Europe and set sail on Little Steven's Underground Garage Cruise). Here, he breaks down Born to Kill, the music he still has left to make, and why Oasis made a mark on him three decades after dismissing them as “pop stars.”
This record takes stock of everything you and Social Distortion have been through over the past five decades. Why did you decide that was the approach for this album?I mean, some of it is conscious. I wanted to write a record that paid homage to the beginning of my career, or even pre-career, just knowing I wanted to be in a band, and just listening to records over and over again, getting inspired even though I didn't even own a good guitar yet. I'm always searching for grooves that really move your body and then writing a song to that groove. A new album is always a chance to experiment with what you're showing people you can do. I think those are the two main elements that went into this, but I wanted a real Seventies vibe. I feel like that's a period of time that needs to be constantly referenced and respected.
I want these kids today to realize what it was like back then, and that we have similar things in common. Every generation had to go through something like this. The hippies were not welcome into people's homes, right? And in the Fifties, rock & roll was the devil's music. They wanted the kids to just keep listening to Pat Boone, right? So, every generation has a rebellious movement, and this is a period I don't want to be forgotten.
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What bands and artists are you specifically referencing? You've been unabashed about your appreciation for the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. My uncles were giving me records when I was five years old. So, the Beatles and Creedence, and eventually, the glitter stuff, Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and T Rex. It's funny because not only did I go back to the beginning with my idols, but I also kind of wanted to recapture that spirit.
How did that inform the lyrics?As I was writing, I noticed a recurring theme: revisiting the feeling of being suppressed. I had no voice in my family. My father was a tyrant, and I was not allowed a voice. And so when I started the band, I saw that that was a way that I could express myself. Then I had the people in my school, the people at parties, the people on the streets, telling me, “Fuck you and fuck your music. We're gonna kill you.” I just don't have that personality to go, “OK, I'll try something else.” In other words, the worst thing you can do to me is tell me I can't do something.
How far back do some of these songs go?For “Tonight,” I wrote that riff and melody 15 years ago. And there are a couple of songs on this album that are 30-year-old songs that never got finished, really, but I thought they fit the vibe.
How many were written for Born to Kill?We had 40, then narrowed it down to 11. I had White Light in my mind when I was writing this because, even though that album is particularly dark, the angst of that record, the attitude, the snarl, I felt like that's still me. I wanted this to be a record that could have followed that.
I've got another Social D studio record ready to go. I've got a solo record, and I've always wanted to do a record of Social D songs that are completely reworked. If you could imagine “Dear Lover” with a grand piano and strings, maybe an electric guitar accompaniment, but just a stripped-down, beautiful version.
Did your cancer diagnosis inform part of the recording?We were halfway done with the record. I was done with the writing. But, getting older and…I think it's important to reflect, especially in these times. They're suppressing free speech right now. It's fucking insane. I've never seen this in my 60 years of being on this earth. It's bad, and maybe it's subconscious.
There are a few guests on here, like Lucinda Williams on “Crazy Dreamer,” and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers. How did that happen?I wanted to do a duet. I wanted it to be a female, and I had some ideas, and it just made sense because we're friends. I'm a big fan of [Williams], and our tones are so similar. It just worked perfectly. This almost seems as if it were meant for her to sing on. People don't know this, but I'm a huge, huge Tom Petty fan. Mike Campbell is one of my favorite guitar players. Tom Petty is one of my favorite songwriters, and it only made sense that his keyboardist would be one of my favorite keyboardists.
You usually include a cover on SD albums, and on Born to Kill, it's Chris Isaak's “Wicked Game.” It's been in the set for a while now, but why record it here?It's just such a good song! When I hear a good song, I want to try to put my own spin on it. [Isaak] started right around the same time we did. I've heard hundreds of versions of that song, which partly made me not want to do it. No one's really done a just swinging rock & roll version of this, and it's got a thick groove to it.
Seeing that you were at one of the Oasis reunion shows on Instagram was a surprise. Outside of the intrigue that the reunion was the biggest rock story of 2025, have you been a fan of theirs?Well, in the Nineties, I was very narrow-minded, and I'm guilty of contempt prior to that investigation. [Laughs]I thought they were just an annoying pop band. My producer called me, and he had just seen them at Wembley, and he said, “Listen, when they come to L.A., you have to go. They don't move around on stage and don't jump in the air. They're not doing anything except playing their instruments and singing, but to hear 100,000 people all singing this song.”
It just goes to show you what really good songwriting is and how long it can last. So, it turns out my son, Julian, is a fan. He's really into British and European soccer, and he's a huge Oasis fan. He and I went to a father-son night, and it was the best night. I was so impressed. It was a warm night. [Noel Gallagher's] songwriting, I thought, was very clever, his tone, his vocal tone, the guitar playing. I was entertained from start to finish and became a huge fan.
How are you doing healthwise?It was amazing to have gone through what I did and be working again in less than a year. I think our tour started in April, and I was at my kid's house in November before that, and just finished treatments. I told my kids that if I'm singing by April, it'll be a freaking miracle because I still feel like shit. I'm still in a lot of discomfort. I'm still having trouble eating and speaking, but man, when it came around, and we hit the first chord at rehearsal, I was like, “OK, I know how to do this.”
When you posted your first clip since your diagnosis, singing “Story of My Life,” it galvanized your fans.The support and the fans during that period were mind-blowing for me. They were so positive, telling me, “We need you, we need more.” And it really helped me on days that I felt that I didn't have what it took. I had three or four purposes in the forefront of my mind, and I just had to visualize them, including becoming a grandfather.
You have a conflicted relationship with your hometown of Fullerton. How did you feel when they gave you the key to the city in 2024?That was such a great feeling: to have a city that would have liked to put me away, lock me up, and throw away the key, and to honor me with the key to the city. It felt good because you don't really set out to do this. You don't set out to be a role model. You don't set out to change; you help people get through hard times. Those things aren't on your mind. You just want to write, and you want to play. That town was a great town to do it in, and that was a great town to grow up in. Had I been from some other small town in the rural Southeast, I could have gotten in with a different crowd and ended up in prison. You're just a young kid looking up to the older guys, and you want to do what they're doing. That was me. Fortunately, none of them were bank robbers or gang bangers, or I could have been easily influenced.
Instead, it was the little-known but highly influential punk band the Mechanics who did that.I had the Rolling Stones and the Ramones, but the Mechanics were right in my living room. Listening to them rehearse every night, and watching them, I picked up rhythm guitar more than lead from them, because the rhythm guitar player was a songwriter, and his style resonated with me.
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You touched on speech suppression earlier. With all that's going on in the country, are you optimistic about its future?I backed off from following Instagram by 85 percent because I felt like I was doing what they wanted me to do. These people invented these phones; they knew what they were doing psychologically, and even when I say I'm not going to even look tomorrow, I find myself doing it. It's like, “The visceral feeling that I get because of the algorithm, it's only showing me the worst of the worst.” The freedom of speech, losing PBS and NPR, and the suppression of speaking against what they're trying to do. But this can't last forever. I just need to tell myself that. I also get visceral watching these ICE agents. If I went to a protest and I saw that, things would not end well for me or someone else. That's how affected I am by it. The mentality reminds me of this conservative white nationalist, high school jock, full of fear and just white fear.
Daniel Kohn is the co-author of Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World, for which Ness wrote the foreword.
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Film Festival Alliance (FFA), the consortium that represents over 300 film festivals from across the world, has appointed a new executive director, Mallory Martin, who was most recently the artistic director for the Cleveland International Film Festival, IndieWire can reveal exclusively.
Martin was selected among a pool of 250 applicants, and she succeeds Barbara Twist in the role, who exited Film Festival Alliance as of January 9 after being elevated to the role in 2022. Gray Rodriguez, currently the director of member engagement for the FFA, has been its interim director.
Martin has over 15 years of film festival leadership experience and sector advocacy, and she's also the co-founder of rePRO Film, a film organization that focuses on reproductive justice and rights. She served as artistic director for the Cleveland International Film Festival between 2020 to 2025, helping the organization's pandemic recovery, overseeing a transition in the festival's venue, securing sponsorships, grants, and donations, and building out a programming slate of around 300 screenings annually. Martin also worked as the director of programming and projection at the Cleveland film festival before being elevated into the Artistic Director role.
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“Mallory Martin is a leader who embodies the spirit and purpose of Film Festival Alliance. She is deeply respected across the festival community, understands both the artistic and operational realities our members face, and shares FFA's belief that collaboration and advocacy are essential to the future of independent exhibition. We are confident she will be a unifying and strategic leader for our membership and for the field. We are thrilled to welcome her as FFA's next Executive Director,” said Karen Cardarelli, Board President for the Film Festival Alliance.
“I am truly honored and energized to step into the role of Executive Director of Film Festival Alliance at such a transformative time for our field. Festivals are at the heart of the independent film ecosystem, and together, we can ensure they thrive in this dynamic landscape. My vision is to ensure every member festival, no matter its size, knows that FFA is indispensable to their success: a home base for advocacy, education, and meaningful connection. I'm excited to listen, to engage directly with our membership, and to build on the strong foundation already in place so that together we can amplify our collective voice and strengthen the field we all care so much about. Film festivals bring us together through story; Film Festival Alliance brings together the people who make that possible, and I am honored to lead this community,” Martin said in a statement.
Martin's organization rePRO, which she co-founded in 2020, supports films and filmmakers that celebrate bodily autonomy. It began as a virtual film festival and in 2022 launched a newsletter called The Periodical that curates a short film, a podcast interview, news, and more.
Martin has participated in juries and panels at events including the Independent Film Exhibition Conference, The Gotham Week, New Orleans Film Festival, Milwaukee Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, Heartland International Film Festival, and more, and was named to The Cleveland 500's Leadership in Action list in 2024.
Martin will officially join Film Festival Alliance as executive director on March 9, 2026.
Film Festival Alliance along with Art House Convergence annually puts on its Film Exhibition Conference, which IndieWire helped announce the launch of back in 2023. The event takes place in Chicago between June 22-25 and is a conference that gives exhibitors the resources they need to effectively platform independent film.
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New information has surfaced regarding the Guthrie family's decision to offer an additional reward for tips related to Nancy Guthrie's disappearance.
On Tuesday, Savannah Guthrie announced that they are offering “up to $1 million” for the recovery of her beloved 84-year-old mother, who was abducted from her home on February 1.
Many are questioning why the Guthrie family did not offer a reward earlier and what prompted the decision to do so now.
A source close to the family told PEOPLE that the Guthries have considered offering a reward from the very first day.
However, they were reportedly advised against it due to concerns that it could potentially complicate the investigation.
“The family first raised this on the first day of the investigation and has been ready to do this ever since,” the source told the outlet. “They were advised by all involved in the investigation that doing so earlier might overwhelm the infrastructure set up to field leads, tens of thousands of which have been coming in organically.”
The outlet also noted that Savannah used the words “up to $1 million” because if there is more than one valid tip, the reward may be split.
Meanwhile, NBC News correspondent Liz Kreutz reported that the Guthries were advised by law enforcement not to offer a reward early on in the investigation “out of concern that it can overwhelm and inundate the infrastructure for handling tips.”
Even before the $1 million reward was announced, the communications center handling incoming leads had already received tens of thousands of tips. The call center reportedly added an extra shift to manage the overwhelming volume.
Kreutz added that Nancy Guthrie's family moved forward with offering the reward after “careful consultation with law enforcement.” They hope it will encourage someone who has been reluctant to come forward to finally share what they know.
In the latest video, the “Today” host said the family still believes in a miracle but acknowledged that the worst may have happened to Nancy Guthrie.
“We also know that she may be lost, she may already be gone,” Savannah said. “She may already have gone home to the Lord that she loves and is dancing in Heaven… and if this is what is to be, then we will accept it. But we need to know where she is. We need her to come home.”
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The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2026 nominees have been revealed. This year's shortlist includes Sade, Phil Collins, Mariah Carey, Joy Division and New Order, and Oasis. Rounding out the field are the Black Crowes, Iron Maiden, and Billy Idol, as well as first-time nominees Luther Vandross, Lauryn Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, Jeff Buckley, Melissa Etheridge, INXS, New Edition, Shakira, and P!NK. The inductees will be unveiled in April, with the official ceremony set to take place in the fall.
Artists are eligible for the Rock Hall 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording. Alicia Keys, the Strokes, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs were among those eligible this year but not nominated.
The Rock Hall's class of 2025 included Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Salt-N-Pepa, and the White Stripes.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the Rock Hall ceremony would take place in Cleveland. The location has not yet been announced. Additionally, the story wrongly suggested that Cher, a 2024 inductee, had been overlooked this year.
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Ten artists receive Rock Hall nominations for the first time.
By
Joe Lynch
Executive Digital Director
It's a nice day for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominations; it's a nice day to start again on the lobbying, handwringing and arguing over which of the nominees deserves to make the Rock Hall's Class of 2026.
On Wednesday (Feb. 25), the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced a hefty list of 17 nominees for this year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony—a slightly larger number of names than in recent years, which have put 14 or 15 artists up for the honor.
Of those 17 nominees (18 different artists, technically), we have a sizable number of first-time nominees (10) and a decent showing of artists who have been nominated for this honor at least once before (seven).
The artists nominated for the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame are: Southern blues-rockers The Black Crowes; haunting singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley; powerhouse pop singer-songwriter Mariah Carey; innovative pop-rock hitmaker Phil Collins; rootsy singer-songwriter mainstay Melissa Etheridge; R&B/rap trailblazer Lauryn Hill; New Wave punk Billy Idol; charismatic ‘80s hitmakers INXS; heavy metal gods Iron Maiden; post-punk-turned-dance pioneers Joy Division/New Order; R&B vocal group standard-bearers New Edition; Britpop icons Oasis; gutsy pop star P!NK; sophisticated R&B group Sade; Colombian pop juggernaut Shakira; smooth R&B legend Luther Vandross; and culture-shifting hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan.
An artist becomes eligible for Rock Hall nomination 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording. This means that of the first-time nominees, P!NK – whose debut album Can't Take Me Home dropped in 2000 — is the most recent name; Lauryn Hill's solo debut, the Grammy album of the year winner The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, came out in 1998; the late Jeff Buckley's revered debut (and sole) album Grace came out in 1994; Wu-Tang Clan's monumentally important debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) hit in 1993; and while she broke internationally in the mid-to-late ‘90s, Shakira technically debuted in 1991 when she was just a teenager with Magia.
Of the other first timers: Melissa Etheridge's stunning self-titled debut dropped in 1988; before evolving into a mature force in R&B, New Edition made their debut in 1983 with the teen-pop LP Candy Girl; after spending the ‘70s as one of the most sought-after backup singers, Luther Vandross struck out on his own and hit gold with his 1981 debut Never Too Much; 1981 is also the year Phil Collins' solo debut, Face Value; the oldest of the new noms, as it were, is INXS, whose self-titled debut came out in 1980.
Collins, it should be mentioned, is a first-time nominee as a solo artist but is already in the Rock Hall as a member of the prog-rock outfit Genesis. If Collins is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2026, he will become the 29th artist to be inducted in the Rock Hall at least two times.
But enough about these fresh-faced youngsters: what about those who are up for the Class of 2026 but have been through this song and dance before? This is the third nomination for Mariah Carey (previously up in 2024 and 2025), the third for Iron Maiden (previously up in 2021 and 2023), the third for Joy Division/New Order (previously up in 2023 and 2025) and the third for Oasis (previously up in 2024 and 2025). It's the second go-round for the Black Crowes and Billy Idol, who were both up in 2025, and the second try for Sade, who were nominated in 2024.
In terms of hits, Mariah Carey is far and away the biggest commercial force here: she ranks fifth on Billboard's Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Artists list and has earned 19 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s, more than any other solo artist (and the second-most of all time, after the Beatles). Phil Collins is no slouch either: he's 27th on our chart-based Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Artists tally and has netted seven Hot 100 toppers as a solo act (plus one with Genesis). P!NK, meanwhile, is 51st on our Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Artists list and has four Hot 100 No. 1s.
The 2026 inductees will be decided by ballots cast by an international panel of more than 1,200 artists, historians and music industry professionals. The Rock Hall's Class of 2026 will be revealed in April with the induction ceremony taking place this fall.
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It's supposed to be rock and roll hall of fame not music hall of fame. Let's please get back to what it is and always was supposed to be. Rock and Roll.
Why don't they just change the name to the Music Hall of Fame?
Half of these nominees (at least) aren't even rock and roll. That place has become a joke.
I can't believe AMERICA has not been inducted?!?!?!!!!! Their greatest hits album could have been 2 albums!!
Must be politics…
Wu-Tang is for the children.
Not having Grand Funk on the list is a travesty.
Why is Jethro Tull, one of the best groups of the 70's still not in the R&R Hall of Fame?
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By
Andy Greene
The nominations for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2026 are in, and the list contains Phil Collins, Lauryn Hill, Mariah Carey, Oasis, Pink, the Black Crowes, Jeff Buckley, Melissa Etheridge, Billy Idol, INXS, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, New Edition, Sade, Shakira, Luther Vandross, and the Wu-Tang Clan.
The inductees will be announced in April alongside the acts receiving the Musical Influence Award, the Musical Excellence Award, and the Ahmet Ertegun Non-Performer Award. The annual ceremony will take place in the fall.
“This diverse list of talented nominees recognizes the ever-evolving faces and sounds of rock & roll and its continued impact on youth culture,” says John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. “Induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is music's highest honor, and we look forward to celebrating the class of 2026 this fall.”
To qualify for this year's ballot, each nominee's first single or album had to have been released in 2001 or earlier. Ten of the 17 nominees (Buckley, Collins, Etheridge, Hill, INXS, New Edition, Pink, Shakira, Vandross, Wu-Tang Clan) are on the ballot for the first time. They've all been eligible in prior years.
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This is the third nomination for Carey, Iron Maiden, and Joy Division/New Order, and the second for the Black Crowes, Oasis, Sade, and Idol.
If Iron Maiden get in, odds are fairly decent they won't show. “I actually think the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is an utter and complete load of bollocks, to be honest with you,” Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson said in 2018. “It's run by a bunch of sanctimonious bloody Americans who wouldn't know rock & roll if it hit them in the face. They need to stop taking Prozac and start drinking fucking beer.”
Liam Gallagher of Oasis has expressed similar sentiments. “As much as I love Mariah Carey and all that, I want to say: Do me a favor and fuck off,” he told The Sunday Times in 2024. “It's like putting me in the rap hall of fame, and I don't want to be part of anything that mentally disturbed. Besides, I've done more for rock & roll than half of them clowns on that board, so it's all a load of bollocks.”
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But when a fan on X asked what he'd do if they got last year, he wrote, “Obv go and say it's the best thing EVER.” (If he pulls that move, he'll join a long of acts — including Cher, Rush, and Def Leppard — who sang a very different tune about the Hall of Fame once they actually got in.)
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The induction ceremony would be an opportunity for Collins to make a rare live appearance, the Black Crowes to take the stage with estranged drummer Steve Gorman, and Joy Division/New Order to appear with ex-bassist Peter Hook for the first time since he left the band in 2007.
“It will be a difficult awards ceremony if we get there, but as my wife said, we've got to rise above these things … and be nice and be courteous and think the best,” Hook told Billboard in 2023. “Maybe this is the olive branch that we may need to end the injustices that were done with New Order in the end. It's a very strange position to be in but, y'know, we're not the first group that's been ostracized by each other, and we won't be the last.”
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George Kay's upcoming drama, starring David Morrissey and Eve Myles, has also been pre-sold to other markets by All3Media International.
By
Georg Szalai
Global Business Editor
BritBox has struck a deal to take the upcoming psychological thriller series Gone from George Kay, the creator and writer behind the likes of Hijack, The Long Shadow and Lupin, for the U.S. and Canada. The drama star David Morrissey (Sherwood) and Eve Myles (Keeping Faith).
All3Media unveiled the deal on Wednesday as part of a raft of pre-sales during the London TV Screenings week in the British capital.
The six-part series, set to premiere in the U.K. on ITV this spring, centers on the disappearance of Sarah Polly, with suspicion quickly falling on her husband, local headmaster Michael, played by Morrissey. “Outwardly respectable and obsessively ordered, Michael finds his carefully controlled world unravelling when he comes up against Detective Annie Cassidy, portrayed by Eve Myles,” reads a synopsis. “What follows is an intense psychological duel, as Annie chips away at Michael's composed exterior in a tense game of cat and mouse that threatens to expose what lies beneath.”
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Beyond the central mystery, Gone also digs into themes of trauma, trust, and the long shadow cast by elite institutions.
Further pre-sales for Gone include deals with Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, Australian streaming service Stan, and Sky New Zealand, which will show the seeies on Three and stream it on ThreeNow.
Gone has also sold to BBC Studios for its drama streamer BBC First and its broad-based streamer BBC Player across Asia.
Kay created and is writing the drama, with Richard Laxton (Mrs Wilson, The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe) directing. The cast also includes Jennifer Macbeth, Arthur Hughes, Nicholas Nunn, Elliot Cowan, Billy Barratt, Rupert Evans, Jodie McNee, Oscar Batterham, and Clare Higgins.
The show, produced by New Pictures (The Long Shadow) in association with Kay's Observatory Pictures, is partly inspired by the book To Hunt a Killer and the real-world work of former Detective Superintendent Julie Mackay and ITV crime correspondent Robert Murphy, both of whom serve as consultants on the series.
Other pre-sales on the upcoming, starring take in both top broadcast networks and streaming services in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe.
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By
Emily Zemler
Late-night hosts had a field day with Donald Trump‘s lengthy, fear-mongering State of the Union address. The rambling speech saw the president speaking to lawmakers for 108 minutes on Tuesday, breaking the record he set last year for the longest speech ever delivered to Congress.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Show both ran special episodes to respond to Trump's address, with Jimmy Kimmel declaring, “What a speech it wasn't.”
“The theme of tonight's speech was all foreigners are murderers,” Kimmel recounted. “And Trump said zero illegal aliens have been allowed into the United States on his watch, but the door is always open to those who come in legally to be his next wife. So that's something. He bragged about DEI. He bragged about kicking 2 million people off food stamps. It was like a Christmas message from the Grinch.
“When you ramble incoherently for two hours is that technically still a speech or does it at some point become a conniption fit?” Kimmel wondered. “The speech went on so long, Kristi Noem‘s dog shot itself.”
After playing a few clips from the address, Kimmel offered his own take on the current state of the country.
“Here's the real State of the Union,” Kimmel said. “We have a nutjob wannabe king who's doing everything he can to censor opinions he doesn't want to hear. He has his goons arresting, incarcerating, and killing American citizens. He's cut funding for cancer research at children's hospitals while he rakes in literally billions of dollars for himself and his family. He's coming after our right to vote. He's protecting pedophiles and won't explain it. He's lining the pockets of billionaires, all while neglecting the sick, the poor, and the hungry — in the name of Jesus, by the way.”
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert delivered a live monologue following the speech, joking that he “dropped an edible and strapped in” to watch.
“According to Trump's team, the official theme of the speech was ‘America at 250: Strong, Prosperous, and Respected,'” Colbert explained. “Though if you have to say you're strong, prosperous, and respected, it kind of feels like you're not.”
Colbert noted that Trump arrived at the address “looking a little tired, but his hair was nice and fluffy.” “Personally, I think he could have kept his head in the cotton candy machine a little bit longer,” the host said.
Jimmy Fallon briefly commented on the State of the Union on The Tonight Show, noting that Trump's speech focused on “his major accomplishments.” “And when those eight seconds were up, he just riffed for an hour and a half,” Fallon quipped.
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He added, “It was basically two hours of Trump telling us how great he is. I feel like we've been getting that State of the Union address every day since he took office.”
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By
Emily Zemler
Late-night hosts had a field day with Donald Trump‘s lengthy, fear-mongering State of the Union address. The rambling speech saw the president speaking to lawmakers for 108 minutes on Tuesday, breaking the record he set last year for the longest speech ever delivered to Congress.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Show both ran special episodes to respond to Trump's address, with Jimmy Kimmel declaring, “What a speech it wasn't.”
“The theme of tonight's speech was all foreigners are murderers,” Kimmel recounted. “And Trump said zero illegal aliens have been allowed into the United States on his watch, but the door is always open to those who come in legally to be his next wife. So that's something. He bragged about DEI. He bragged about kicking 2 million people off food stamps. It was like a Christmas message from the Grinch.
“When you ramble incoherently for two hours is that technically still a speech or does it at some point become a conniption fit?” Kimmel wondered. “The speech went on so long, Kristi Noem‘s dog shot itself.”
After playing a few clips from the address, Kimmel offered his own take on the current state of the country.
“Here's the real State of the Union,” Kimmel said. “We have a nutjob wannabe king who's doing everything he can to censor opinions he doesn't want to hear. He has his goons arresting, incarcerating, and killing American citizens. He's cut funding for cancer research at children's hospitals while he rakes in literally billions of dollars for himself and his family. He's coming after our right to vote. He's protecting pedophiles and won't explain it. He's lining the pockets of billionaires, all while neglecting the sick, the poor, and the hungry — in the name of Jesus, by the way.”
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert delivered a live monologue following the speech, joking that he “dropped an edible and strapped in” to watch.
“According to Trump's team, the official theme of the speech was ‘America at 250: Strong, Prosperous, and Respected,'” Colbert explained. “Though if you have to say you're strong, prosperous, and respected, it kind of feels like you're not.”
Colbert noted that Trump arrived at the address “looking a little tired, but his hair was nice and fluffy.” “Personally, I think he could have kept his head in the cotton candy machine a little bit longer,” the host said.
Jimmy Fallon briefly commented on the State of the Union on The Tonight Show, noting that Trump's speech focused on “his major accomplishments.” “And when those eight seconds were up, he just riffed for an hour and a half,” Fallon quipped.
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He added, “It was basically two hours of Trump telling us how great he is. I feel like we've been getting that State of the Union address every day since he took office.”
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Life wasn't always easy for the actress, who played Kathy "Kitten" Anderson for six seasons.
By
Mike Barnes
Senior Editor
Lauren Chapin, who portrayed the precocious Kathy “Kitten” Anderson on the iconic 1950s TV series Father Knows Best, has died. She was 80.
Chapin, who said she was molested as a child before dealing with drug abuse, jail sentences, several miscarriages and divorce after her show ended, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer, her son, Matthew, reported on Facebook.
Following appearances on a 1952 episode of CBS' Lux Video Theatre and in the Judy Garland-starring A Star Is Born (1954), Chapin was hired for Father Knows Best when she was 9.
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She said she got the job in part because she bore a strong resemblance to one of star Robert Young's four daughters, also named Kathy. (Norma Jean Nilsson had played the part on the preceding NBC Radio version.)
Chapin's older TV siblings were Betty “Princess” Anderson (Elinor Donahue) and James “Bud” Anderson Jr. (Billy Gray), and their mom was the level-headed homemaker Margaret Anderson (Jane Wyatt). Young played Jim Anderson, an insurance salesman.
Father Knows Best ran for six seasons, from October 1954 through May 1960, with two stints at CBS sandwiched around one at NBC. Reruns then aired for another couple of years in primetime on ABC and for decades in syndication, and the cast reunited for a pair of TV specials in 1977.
Chapin was born in Los Angeles on May 23, 1945. Her older brothers, Billy Chapin (The Night of the Hunter) and Michael Chapin (It's a Wonderful Life), were child actors as well.
She was signed to a contract at Columbia Pictures and studied with choreographers Gower and Marge Champion and famed French mime Marcel Marceau.
Clockwise from top: Jane Wyatt, Lauren Chapin, Billy Gray, Elinor Donahue and Robert Young of ‘Father Knows Best.'
When she was about 6, her mom, Marguerite, whom she said was an alcoholic, took her brother Billy to New York to build his stage career, and she was left with her father, William, whom she said molested her. By age 11, she said was a “manic depressive personality” and once attempted suicide.
“It was very difficult to understand how Kathy Anderson could be loved and protected and Lauren Chapin lived a whole different kind of life,” she said during a 1989 appearance on Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee. “I didn't understand how God could let me suffer.”
Five months after Father Knows Best ended, Chapin appeared on an installment of General Electric Theater alongside Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, but that would mark her final acting appearance for 16 years.
She dropped out of Pasadena High School as a junior, and on the Regis and Kathie Lee program, she said got married at 16 and divorced at 18; another marriage was annulled after she discovered her husband was still married. Another man she was involved with turned her into a call girl and on to heroin, which she said she did for seven years until she was 25. Along the way, she lost eight children to miscarriages.
She said she also had to sue her mother to claim a portion of the money she had earned from Father Knows Best.
After achieving sobriety in the 1970, Chapin worked as a minister and as a talent manager; on her website, it was noted that actress Jennifer Love Hewitt “got her start in show biz” through Chapin.
She also published a memoir, 1989's Father Does Know Best, and appeared on a 2016 YouTube series, School Bus Diaries.
In addition to her son and brother Michael, survivors include her daughter, Summer.
“If I could be on television again, I would pray for a series like Father Knows Best,” she told People magazine in 1981, “one that has no violence, no sex and shows nothing but purity and love.”
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By
Charisma Madarang
Following news of the tragic death of Martin Short's daughter, Katherine Elizabeth Short, the comedian postponed dates for his tour with longtime friend and collaborator Steve Martin.
The comedy duo's Feb. 27 show at Milwaukee's Miller High Life Theatre for The Best of Steve Martin & Martin Short tour and two shows at the Orpheum Theatre on Feb. 28 in Minneapolis have been pushed back. “Due to unforeseen circumstances, Steve Martin & Martin Short's show, originally scheduled for Friday, February 27th in Milwaukee, has been postponed,” reads a message on the Milwaukee theatre's website. Both venues stated that tickets will be honored for a future rescheduled date when determined.
Katherine was the eldest of the three children Short adopted with his late wife Nancy Dolman, along with her two brothers, Oliver and Henry. “It is with profound grief that we confirm the passing of Katherine Hartley Short,” a rep for Short said in a statement. “The Short family is devastated by this loss, and asks for privacy at this time. Katherine was beloved by all and will be remembered for the light and joy she brought into the world.”
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According to People, authorities responded to a call at a Hollywood Hills residence on Monday evening, Feb. 23. The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to the outlet that the call was regarding a possible suicide. An official cause of death has not been disclosed at this time.
Katherine reportedly had her own private practice and worked part-time at the Amae Health clinic. The 42-year-old was also involved with Bring Change 2 Mind, an organization that works to eradicate the stigma around mental health, especially among young people, and help others share their stories.
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Halle Berry is revealing the one thing she refuses to put on a performance for. When it comes to sex, the Oscar-winning actress, 59, says she won't be faking anything in the bedroom with her fiancé, Van Hunt.
Berry, appearing on Tuesday's episode of the “Sex With Emily” podcast, detailed that she's not into pretending having an orgasm to please her partner.
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“We had to get there so that he felt good about bringing us to orgasm,” she noted. “We had to say that we did it so that he would feel good about himself. Because what is that doing? That's putting his needs before our own. And now I don't do that anymore.”
“I'm like, ‘No, I come first like you come first to you,'” Berry continued. “We both deserve to have this be a mutually enjoyable experience, so we both can roll over and go to sleep because we feel good — not one snoring and the other one looking at the ceiling, going, ‘What the hell?'”Berry confirmed this month that she's engaged to Van Hunt, 55, after the two have been dating for nearly six years. The “Catwoman” actress revealed the news during the Feb. 5 episode of “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” clearing up some rumors that she'd rejected him initially.
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“There's some confusion that he asked me to marry him and I said no, but that's not the case,” she noted. “I did not say no, we just don't have a date but of course I said yes, I will marry him!”
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Back in June 2025, Hunt revealed he had proposed to Berry, but her answer was “on hold.”
“So I put out the proposal, and it's still on hold, as you can see,” the musician noted at the time. “It's just out there floating.”
Berry has noted that she has hesitancy about getting married due to having attempted it three times before. She was married to retired MLB player David Justice from 1993 to 1997. She was then married to Eric Benét from 2001 to 2005, followed by French actor Olivier Martinez from 2013 to 2016.
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Berry also explained regarding Hunt and her relationship, saying, “We don't feel like we have to get married to validate our love in any way. We don't.”
However, “I think we will get married just because, out of the people I've been married to, this is the person I should have married,” she said.
“And I feel like I should, we should get married, but it's not because we feel like we have to. I think it's something that we would like to do just because we want that expression.”
Berry confirmed their romance with a post on social media in September 2020.
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Jonathan Bennett has been tapped to host the ceremony, scheduled to take place in L.A. on March 5.
By
Chris Gardner
The GLAAD Media Awards program is heating up.
Demi Lovato is confirmed to perform at the 37th annual event — taking place in Los Angeles on March 5, and streaming on Hulu March 16 — ahead of launching her arena tour, It's Not That Deep, in April. The show has also found a host in Jonathan Bennett. Both Lovato and Bennett are GLAAD Award winners; a Vanguard Award for her and outstanding film, streaming or TV, for Hallmark's The Groomsmen: Second Chances for him. (Lovato's GLAAD performance will be presented by Hyundai Motor America.)
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Along with news of the host and performer, GLAAD has also announced a roster of confirmed guests who will be in the room next month, including “cast and creatives” from the pop culture phenomenon Heated Rivalry, which is nominated. Also coming: Abe Sylvia, Camila Mendes, Cara Delevingne, Claybourne Elder, Colton Underwood, Don Lemon, Eugene Daniels, George Wallace, Jessica Hargrave, Jonathan Capehart, Karolina Wydra, Kristen Wiig, Lauren Chan, Laverne Cox, Lili Reinhart, Mason Blomberg, Megan Falley, Melissa Fumero, Miles Heizer, Mindy Cohn, Paul Feig, Rhea Seehorn, Rob Mac, Ryan White, Scott Hoying, Mark Hoying, Stef Willen, Stephanie Beatriz, Tig Notaro, Tom Daley, Tonatiuh and more.
Bennett, a breakout from Mean Girls opposite Lindsay Lohan, has been dubbed “the gay king of Christmas” by fans thanks to ongoing holiday franchises like The Christmas House and Cherry Lane. His latest, A Keller Christmas Vacation, earned a GLAAD Media Award nomination.
The full list of nominations, which can be found here, finds Jacob Tierney's Heated Rivalry starring Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams nominated for outstanding new TV series alongside Boots, Chad Powers, Clean Slate, The Four Seasons, The Hunting Wives, I Love L.A., Long Story Short, Mid-Century Modern, Overcompensating and Pluribus.
Nominated for outstanding film in wide theatrical release are Blue Moon, the Sydney Sweeney-starrer Christy, Clown in a Cornfield, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, The History of Sound starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor, the slasher redo I Know What You Did Last Summer, Kiss of the Spider Woman with Jennifer Lopez, On Swift Horses, Twinless and Andrew Ahn's The Wedding Banquet.
There's some star power in the roster for outstanding music artists, a list that includes Lady Gaga, Elton John and Brandi Carlile for the joint record, Maren Morris, Reneé Rapp, Conan Gray, Durand Bernarr, Ethel Cain, G Flip, Ty Herndon and Young Miko.
The Hollywood Reporter snagged a nomination again for outstanding magazine overall coverage in a list that also includes The Advocate, Cosmo, Gaye Magazine, Out, People, Poz, Rolling Stone, Time and Variety.
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Lindsey Vonn is speaking candidly about the emotional toll of her horrific crash at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The 41-year-old alpine ski racer took to X on Feb. 24 to reflect on where she stands in her recovery. “Today was a hard day,” she wrote, according to a post shared on her official account. While her physical recovery began the moment she hit the snow, Vonn said the mental weight of what happened is only now settling in.
“My physical battle began the second I got hurt but the mental battle started today,” she continued. “It hit me like a ton of bricks.” Vonn acknowledged that she is no stranger to setbacks, having fought back from multiple injuries throughout her career. Still, she admitted that “the battle of the mind can be dark and hard and unrelenting.”
Vonn's message comes weeks after her devastating fall on Feb. 8 during the women's downhill event at the Milan Cortina Games. Just 13 seconds into her run, she clipped a gate and veered off course, resulting in a violent crash that required her to be airlifted to a hospital.
The Olympic gold medalist later revealed she suffered a complex tibia fracture in which, as she described on Instagram, “everything was in pieces.” The trauma also led to compartment syndrome, a dangerous buildup of pressure in her leg that threatened circulation and caused severe damage to muscles, nerves and tendons.
In a Feb. 23 video update, Vonn shared that her surgeon, Dr. Tom Hackett, performed an emergency fasciotomy to relieve the pressure and ultimately saved her leg from being amputated. She has since undergone multiple surgeries, including a six-hour reconstructive procedure, and spent two weeks hospitalized before being discharged.
She also broke her right ankle in the crash and is expected to use a wheelchair for the next couple of months as she begins rehabilitation.
While Vonn has often framed her comeback stories around grit and determination, she made clear this chapter is testing her in new ways. In her X post, she shared that someone close to her described her as a “master at the psychological game of life,” though she admitted she is unsure if that title fits.
“I don't know if that's true,” she wrote. “I do know hard days are coming but I will find a way back to the top of the mountain of life.”
Even as she confronts the emotional side of recovery, Vonn's focus remains forward. As she previously told followers in her video update, “It's going to be a long road, but I always fight. I'll keep going. No regrets.”
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Benny Blanco's dirty feet have some Selena Gomez fans in an uproar.
The music producer, 37, debuted his new podcast with his best friend, Lil Dicky, and Lil Dicky's wife, Kristin Batalucco, called “Friends Keep Secrets,” on Tuesday.
At one point during the episode, Blanco lounged barefoot on a couch, wearing an orange and white T-shirt and tan pants. His feet were visible to the camera, and what appeared to be dirt covered his soles and toes.
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At another point in the podcast, he purposely farted so everyone could hear.
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“Wait, see if you guys could pick this up,” he said as he passed gas.
Some of Gomez's fans weren't amused as they expressed their feelings on social media.
”I can't believe she lets him touch her,” one person wrote under a clip of the podcast.
“LITERALLY WHY would she marry him out of all the men in the world,” another commenter wrote.
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One X user wrote, “That is disgusting idk how selena dealing with this.”
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Some fans even urged the former Disney Channel star to divorce Blanco.
“Selena needs to divorce him and find someone better,” one X user wrote.
Another comment reads, “I have never been more disappointed in Selena than I am right now.”
This isn't the first time Blanco has raised eyebrows with his hygiene habits. He admitted he doesn't shower every day in an interview with People back in November 2024.
“Some people I know shower two to three times a day, but I feel like the oils on your skin don't have time to rejuvenate and get juicy,” he explained.
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“I like to use a hodgepodge. I want to smell [like] tobacco, but also like cotton candy,” he continued. “I want there to be an aroma as I'm walking by. I want it to smell a little bit like man, a little bit feminine — I definitely lean a little more feminine in every sense.”
Gomez, 33, and Blanco married in November 2025.
She gave some insight into why she fell for Blanco after he received an honorable mention in People magazine's “Sexiest Man Alive” 2024 issue.
“Not only do you love me unconditionally… You always get me my Taco Bell Mexican pizza,” she wrote in an Instagram Story.
Melania Trump is all business.
The first lady looked effortlessly gorgeous at Tuesday evening's State of the Union 2026 address, wearing a pantsuit by Dolce & Gabbana, paired with Manolo Blahnik heels and a white cotton shirt.
Donald Trump and Melania are big fans of Dolce & Gabbana and they have been frequently seen wearing the label at various public events.
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Melania, 55, supported husband Donald as he gave his presidential speech, joined by son Barron Trump as well as her stepchildren, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Tiffany wore a monochrome two-piece skirt suit by Oscar De La Renta. The ombre metallic single-breasted jacket has a price tag of $4,990, while the matching skirt costs $2,390, according to the Daily Mail.
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The family were also accompanied by two guests in Trump's box seating that represent issues she's passionate about: the foster system and the Presidential AI Challenge.
The addition of the first lady's own guests separate from the president's is a break from precedent that reflects her values.
Melania previously attended the State of the Union address in 2018, when she wore a white Dior pantsuit, and in 2020, for which she chose a black Dolce & Gabbana skirt suit.
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The latter look stood in contrast to the all-white outfits the Democratic attendees, including Nancy Pelosi, wore to honor the suffragettes on the 100th anniversary of white women earning the right to vote.
Last week, the first lady donated her second inaugural gown, a black-and-white design by Hervé Pierre, to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
To deliver remarks at the event, Melania wore a monochromatic look that included leather leggings, snake-embossed Christian Louboutin boots and a double-breasted Bottega Veneta coat.
Martin Short's family is going through a devastating loss. Short's daughter, Katherine Hartley Short has died at 42, according to a report from TMZ.
The report further states that the law enforcement sources told the outlet that officers responded to a residence in the Hollywood Hills shortly after 6 p.m. Monday.
Authorities have not released an official statement detailing the circumstances, and it remains unclear whether foul play is suspected.
Short, 74, is an Emmy- and Tony-winning comedian and actor known for “Only Murders in the Building,” “Father of the Bride,” and his years on “Saturday Night Live.”
The loss comes just weeks after Short mourned the death of his longtime friend Catherine O'Hara, whom he paid a heartfelt tribute to in January.
Further details about Katherine's death have not been confirmed
Katherine was the adopted daughter of Short and his late wife, Nancy Dolman, who died in 2010 after 30 years of marriage. She was the eldest of the couple's three children.
While her father built a decades-long career in comedy and film, Katherine largely stayed out of the public eye.
Katherine Elizabeth Short was born on December 3, 1983. People reported that she earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and gender sexuality studies from New York University in 2006. She later received her master's in social work from the University of Southern California in 2010.
As a graduate student, Katherine interned at the pro bono law firm Public Counsel. She later trained at the West L.A. Veterans Administration.
After completing her degree, she joined UCLA's Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, where she worked for more than four years. She then moved to the dual-diagnosis outpatient program, Camden Center.
She occasionally accompanied Short to public events over the years but lived a private life.
She worked as a social worker in Los Angeles and dedicated time to mental health advocacy.
Katherine was also involved with Glenn Close‘s charity Bring Change 2 Mind, a nonprofit focused on ending the stigma around mental health and supporting those who struggle in silence.
In recent years, she worked in private practice as a licensed clinical social worker. She also served part-time at Amae Health, providing community outreach, family support groups, peer support, and psychotherapy.
Though Martin Short has long kept his family life private, Katherine occasionally joined her father at public events. In May 2003, she attended the afterparty for “The Producers” with Short and her late mother, Nancy Dolman, posing alongside Goldie Hawn at the Hollywood Palladium.
Years later, she appeared at Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project “Hulaween” event, wearing a prom queen sash as part of her costume.
In February 2011, she accompanied Short to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, where the two posed together on the red carpet in a series of father-daughter photos.
Our hearts are with Martin Short, his children, and Katherine's loved ones as they navigate this devastating loss.
This is a developing story.
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My condolences and prayers to Mr. Short and his family.
VERY SORRY FOR THE LOSS OF YOUR BELOVED DAUGHTER.
KEEP HER AND HER
LIFE IN. YOUR HEART AND MEMORIES..SHE WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU AND YOUR FAMILY❣️
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Plus, Xavi & Carín León take "La Morrita" to the top of Regional Mexican Airplay.
By
Pamela Bustios
Sr. Charts & Data Analyst (Latin & Billboard Español)
Danny Ocean's “Corazón” surges 7-1 on Billboard's Latin Airplay chart (dated Feb. 28), becoming his third straight chart-topper among six career entries.
“Seeing ‘Corazón' join my other two songs at No. 1 fills my soul,” Ocean tells Billboard. “None of this would be possible without the people who have made each of these songs their own.”
“Corazón,” which stems from Ocean's No. 2-peaking album Babylon Club on Top Latin Pop Albums (2025), rises after a 30% growth across Latin stations in the United States, earning 8.1 million audience impressions during the Feb. 13-19 tracking week, according to Luminate.
The Venezuelan singer/songwriter lands his third consecutive ruler on the overall Latin Airplay ranking among six career entries. Prior, he led with “Amor” and “Imagínate,” with Kapo, for one week each in 2024 and 2025, respectively. Along with “Corazón,” “Imáginate” is also part of Ocean's Babylon Club album, which earned him finalist spots for Top Latin pop album of the year and Latin pop song of the year at the 2025 Billboard Latin Music Awards.
Ocean's “Corazón” stands out as the first solo artist track to claim the No. 1 spot on the Latin Airplay chart in 2026. This achievement breaks the trend of the year's seven previous chart-toppers, all of which reached the summit through collaborations. Among the collaborative No. 1s, Karol G and Marco Antonio Solís' “Coleccionando Heridas” holds the longest reign in 2026, spending two weeks atop so far. Additionally, Romeo Santos and Prince Royce's “Lokita Por Mí” also enjoyed a two-week run at the top, split across late 2025 and early 2026.
Beyond its Latin Airplay coronation, “Corazón” also marks Ocean's third No. 1 on Latin Pop Airplay, where it lifts 3-1 with the Greatest Gainer honors of the week.
Xavi and Carín León Team Up to New No. 1 With “La Morrita”: Following his solo of performance of “La Morrita” at Premios Lo Nuestro on Feb. 19 in Miami, Xavi takes the lead on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart, as the song, with Carín León, climbs 6-1 in its sixth week on the chart.
Boosted by a 6.9 million increase in audience impressions (a 23% gain in the U.S. during the tracking week), “La Morrita” secures Xavi's sixth career No. 1. The feat comes just three weeks after he hit the top spot with “No Capea,” with Grupo Frontera, which ruled Regional Mexican Airplay for one week in November.
For Carín León, this marks his 12th No. 1 on the tally, dating to “El Tóxico,” his 2021 collaboration with Grupo Firme.
Beyond its dominance on Regional Mexican Airplay, “La Morrita” is gains momentum on Latin radio overall. The single jumps 11-3 on the Latin Airplay, Xavi's second top 10 on the chart this year. His previous entry, “No Capea,” reached No. 1 on the February 7-dated ranking.
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With Google and the BBC apologizing for failing to censor the involuntarily uttered racial slur during Sunday's British Academy of Film and Television Awards, the fallout from the shocking and shockingly nuanced situation continues. Earlier today, Variety published the first exclusive interview with John Davidson, the Tourette's Syndrome activist who shouted the N-word as Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo took the stage to present the award for Best Visual Effects. Davidson was in attendance because a film based on his life with Tourette's, I Swear, was nominated for six BAFTAs and won three. Aside from sharing some much-needed information about his condition, coprolalia, the type of Tourette's that can lead to the involuntary use of obscene or offensive language, he also reiterated his regret over the situation.
“Initially, my tics were noises and movements, but the more nervous I got, the more my tics ramped up,” Davidson told Variety via email. “When my coprolalia tics came out, my stomach just dropped. As always, I felt a wave of shame and embarrassment hit me all at once. You want the floor to swallow you up. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to hide—just get away from all the eyes […] I was hoping people would understand. My mind was saying: These people have seen the film. They will know I can't help this. They will know it's not me. This is exactly why we are here. I was saying in my head, ‘Please don't judge me. Please understand this isn't who I am.'”
Following the outburst, Davidson left the auditorium and watched the rest of the ceremony from a private room with a monitor. However, he was a bit confused about how the BBC handled the situation. Davidson, who has spent many periods of his life avoiding public appearances because of his condition, says that I Swear‘s distributor, StudioCanal, worked closely with BAFTA, which “made us all aware that any swearing would be edited out.” Davidson says that the much-publicized incident was not his only outburst that night. “I ticked perhaps 10 different offensive words on the night of the awards,” he says. “The N-word was one of these, and I completely understand its significance in history and in the modern world, but most articles are giving the impression I shouted one single slur on Sunday.” Even still, he says, the BBC should have been aware of his condition and been ready to cut any outbursts from the broadcast. He also probably shouldn't have been seated next to a microphone.
“I have made four documentaries with the BBC in the past, and feel that they should have been aware of what to expect from Tourette's and worked harder to prevent anything that I said—which, after all, was some 40 rows back from the stage—from being included in the broadcast,” he continues. “As I reflect on the auditorium, I remember there was a microphone just in front of me, and with hindsight I have to question whether this was wise, so close to where I was seated, knowing I would tic.”
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Martin Short's daughter Katherine Hartley Short's neighbors are remembering her with quiet heartbreak, describing the 42-year-old as a kind presence whose absence has already left a noticeable void.
In an exclusive with Us Weekly, a next-door neighbor said Katherine was a “great neighbor and gardener,” adding, “It's incredibly sad.”
Others in the Hollywood Hills area echoed that sentiment, noting that she was friendly, peaceful and respectful of the quiet community.
One resident recalled her holiday decorations, including a Valentine's wreath adorned with pink ribbons and flowers around a red heart, a small but meaningful sign of the care she put into her home.
Another neighbor said Katherine “was very nice,” though she largely kept to herself and rarely hosted gatherings.
A third resident remembered seeing her on the porch from time to time, where she would wave and say “Hi,” keeping interactions brief but warm.
Neighbors also shared that they noticed emergency responders on the street the day of her passing but had no sense of what had happened until news broke hours later.
Katherine, the daughter of beloved comedian and actor Martin Short and the late actress Nancy Dolman, built a life focused on helping others.
After earning degrees from New York University and University of Southern California, she worked as a social worker in Los Angeles, dedicating her career to supporting vulnerable communities.
Authorities, including the Los Angeles Police Department and local fire department, responded to Katherine's Hollywood Hills home Monday evening, where she was found deceased. Her family later confirmed the heartbreaking news in a statement.
A representative for the family told TMZ, “It is with profound grief that we confirm the passing of Katherine Hartley Short. The Short family is devastated by this loss, and asks for privacy at this time. Katherine was beloved by all and will be remembered for the light and joy she brought into the world.”
The loss is especially poignant for the Short family, who also mourned Nancy Dolman's death in 2010 after her battle with ovarian cancer.
Though neighbors described her as private, they also spoke of her warmth, kindness and dedication to her home and garden — small, everyday details that now feel deeply meaningful.
In a neighborhood where people often keep to themselves, Katherine's gentle presence stood out.
As tributes continue to come in, those who knew her, even in passing, say they will remember her not for fame, but for grace, generosity and the simple kindness she showed.
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Sony film boss Tom Rothman also reveals China banned 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' because it showed the Statue of Liberty.
By
James Hibberd
Writer-at-Large
You can stop holding your breath for a Madame Web 2.
Or a Kraven the Hunter 2…
Or a Morbius 2…
Yet the Spider-Man extended universe isn't dead, either.
Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tom Rothman confirms the studio is planning a “fresh reboot” to the Spider-Man extended universe after the franchise's string of box office disappointments (aside from the trio of Venom films, which performed well).
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Rothman was asked by Matt Belloni on The Town podcast, “Where are we in the Spider-Man franchise? Not the animated Spider-Verse. Is the larger Spider-Verse dead?”
“No,” replied Rothman.
“Are you going to go back to those at some point?”
“Yes,” Rothman confirmed.
“But it'll be a fresh reboot?”
“Yes.”
“New people?”
“Yes, yes.”
The executive added that “scarcity has value … you got to make the audience miss you.”
Rothman also, for the first time, confirmed a 2021 report that Spider-Man: No Way Home was banned in China due to the film's climax taking place at the Statue of Liberty.
The executive pointed out the film made $1.9 billion globally, which “pisses me off to have to say this.”
“You say, ‘$1.9 billion, what's wrong with [saying] 2?' Well, it didn't get into China, but in my mind [the film's box office is] over 2 [billion] because I know what we would have done in China.”
“[The China Film Administration] just said, ‘Small thing, no problem, just cut out the Statue of Liberty' — which is where the climax is. That was their request.”
Needless to say, Rothman did not change the film — which might have been impossible given the sheer amount of screen time that takes place at the iconic New York landmark.
“Also, I really didn't look forward to sitting in front of Congress telling them why I cut the Statue of Liberty out at the request of the Chinese Communist Party,” he added.
Sony reportedly courted China heavily for Spider-Man: No Way Home, even releasing a Chinese poster amid hopes it would be the first Marvel Phase 4 film to clear censorship approvals. The prior film, Far From Home, made $200 million in China.
Rothman was also asked about his relationship with Marvel boss Kevin Feige, and opined, “They're two people about whom I would say this — and maybe more if I think about it — but never bet against Jim Cameron and never bet against Kevin Feige.”
The live-action Spider-Man universe movies were plagued by both poor reviews and weak box office. Launched with 2018's hit Venom, which set a high-water mark for the franchise with $856 million globally, the efforts included 2022's Morbius ($162 million globally), 2024's Madame Web ($100 million globally) and 2024's Kraven the Hunter (an abysmal $60 million globally against an estimated production budget of more than $100 million).
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WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's face lit up while he was answering a series of questions this week about his recent assignment to identify and release government files on whether aliens exist.
"Did you ever think that you would be the Secretary of War in charge of potentially declassifying extraterrestrial life?" a reporter asked in a video clip shared on C-SPAN's X account.
"I did not have that on my bingo card at all," Hegseth replied, smiling.
President Donald Trump recently directed Hegseth, and other federal agencies, to "begin the process of identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."
The president made that request Thursday, and Hegseth said people were already working on it by Monday.
"We're digging in," he said. "We're going to be in full compliance with that executive order, eager to provide that for the president. There will be more coming on that as far as the process of what we'll do."
There is no clear timeline on how long it will take federal officials to release the relevant files, but Hegseth seemed enthusiastic about finding out about the mystery himself.
"Do you think aliens exist?" he was asked. "We'll see," he replied. "I get to do the review and find out along with you."
Interest in the topic has surged after former President Barack Obama recently suggested in a YouTube podcast interview with Brian Taylor Cohen that aliens were real.
“They're real,” he told Cohen. “But I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in Area 51.”
The former president later released a statement on Instagram, appearing to clarify what he meant by his comments that have since gone viral.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
Secrecy around Area 51, a top-secret Cold War test site in the Nevada desert, has long fueled conspiracy theories among UFO enthusiasts.
In 2013, the CIA acknowledged the existence of the site but not UFO crashes, extraterrestrials or staged moon landings.
Declassified documents referred to the 8,000-square-mile installation by name after decades of U.S. government officials refusing to acknowledge it.
The base has been a testing ground for a host of top-secret aircraft, including the U-2 in the 1950s and later the B-2 stealth bomber.
Public interest in unidentified flying objects and the possibility of the government hiding secrets of extraterrestrial life remerged in the public consciousness after a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos of unknown objects to The New York Times and Politico in 2017.
The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to hold the first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022, though officials said that the objects, which appeared to be green triangles floating above a Navy ship, were likely drones.
Since then the Pentagon has promised more transparency on the topic. In July 2022 it created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, which was intended to be a central place to collect reports of all military UFO encounters, taking over from a department task force.
Curiosity about the government's possible knowledge about extraterrestrial life exploded again in the summer of 2023, when a former Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress.
Retired Maj. David Grusch told the lawmakers at the time that U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects.
When asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.
The Pentagon readily denied Grusch's claims of a coverup, which ended up further fueling questions about extraterrestrials and the like.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's face lit up while he was answering a series of questions this week about his recent assignment to identify and release government files on whether aliens exist.
"Did you ever think that you would be the Secretary of War in charge of potentially declassifying extraterrestrial life?" a reporter asked in a video clip shared on C-SPAN's X account.
"I did not have that on my bingo card at all," Hegseth replied, smiling.
President Donald Trump recently directed Hegseth, and other federal agencies, to "begin the process of identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."
The president made that request Thursday, and Hegseth said people were already working on it by Monday.
"We're digging in," he said. "We're going to be in full compliance with that executive order, eager to provide that for the president. There will be more coming on that as far as the process of what we'll do."
There is no clear timeline on how long it will take federal officials to release the relevant files, but Hegseth seemed enthusiastic about finding out about the mystery himself.
"Do you think aliens exist?" he was asked. "We'll see," he replied. "I get to do the review and find out along with you."
Interest in the topic has surged after former President Barack Obama recently suggested in a YouTube podcast interview with Brian Taylor Cohen that aliens were real.
“They're real,” he told Cohen. “But I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in Area 51.”
The former president later released a statement on Instagram, appearing to clarify what he meant by his comments that have since gone viral.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
Secrecy around Area 51, a top-secret Cold War test site in the Nevada desert, has long fueled conspiracy theories among UFO enthusiasts.
In 2013, the CIA acknowledged the existence of the site but not UFO crashes, extraterrestrials or staged moon landings.
Declassified documents referred to the 8,000-square-mile installation by name after decades of U.S. government officials refusing to acknowledge it.
The base has been a testing ground for a host of top-secret aircraft, including the U-2 in the 1950s and later the B-2 stealth bomber.
Public interest in unidentified flying objects and the possibility of the government hiding secrets of extraterrestrial life remerged in the public consciousness after a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos of unknown objects to The New York Times and Politico in 2017.
The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to hold the first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022, though officials said that the objects, which appeared to be green triangles floating above a Navy ship, were likely drones.
Since then the Pentagon has promised more transparency on the topic. In July 2022 it created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, which was intended to be a central place to collect reports of all military UFO encounters, taking over from a department task force.
Curiosity about the government's possible knowledge about extraterrestrial life exploded again in the summer of 2023, when a former Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress.
Retired Maj. David Grusch told the lawmakers at the time that U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects.
When asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.
The Pentagon readily denied Grusch's claims of a coverup, which ended up further fueling questions about extraterrestrials and the like.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's face lit up while he was answering a series of questions this week about his recent assignment to identify and release government files on whether aliens exist.
"Did you ever think that you would be the Secretary of War in charge of potentially declassifying extraterrestrial life?" a reporter asked in a video clip shared on C-SPAN's X account.
"I did not have that on my bingo card at all," Hegseth replied, smiling.
President Donald Trump recently directed Hegseth, and other federal agencies, to "begin the process of identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."
The president made that request Thursday, and Hegseth said people were already working on it by Monday.
"We're digging in," he said. "We're going to be in full compliance with that executive order, eager to provide that for the president. There will be more coming on that as far as the process of what we'll do."
There is no clear timeline on how long it will take federal officials to release the relevant files, but Hegseth seemed enthusiastic about finding out about the mystery himself.
"Do you think aliens exist?" he was asked. "We'll see," he replied. "I get to do the review and find out along with you."
Interest in the topic has surged after former President Barack Obama recently suggested in a YouTube podcast interview with Brian Taylor Cohen that aliens were real.
“They're real,” he told Cohen. “But I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in Area 51.”
The former president later released a statement on Instagram, appearing to clarify what he meant by his comments that have since gone viral.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”
Secrecy around Area 51, a top-secret Cold War test site in the Nevada desert, has long fueled conspiracy theories among UFO enthusiasts.
In 2013, the CIA acknowledged the existence of the site but not UFO crashes, extraterrestrials or staged moon landings.
Declassified documents referred to the 8,000-square-mile installation by name after decades of U.S. government officials refusing to acknowledge it.
The base has been a testing ground for a host of top-secret aircraft, including the U-2 in the 1950s and later the B-2 stealth bomber.
Public interest in unidentified flying objects and the possibility of the government hiding secrets of extraterrestrial life remerged in the public consciousness after a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos of unknown objects to The New York Times and Politico in 2017.
The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to hold the first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022, though officials said that the objects, which appeared to be green triangles floating above a Navy ship, were likely drones.
Since then the Pentagon has promised more transparency on the topic. In July 2022 it created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, which was intended to be a central place to collect reports of all military UFO encounters, taking over from a department task force.
Curiosity about the government's possible knowledge about extraterrestrial life exploded again in the summer of 2023, when a former Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress.
Retired Maj. David Grusch told the lawmakers at the time that U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects.
When asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.
The Pentagon readily denied Grusch's claims of a coverup, which ended up further fueling questions about extraterrestrials and the like.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The false tsarist text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion theorized that Jews controlled world affairs. Today, the Epstein affair offers antisemites around the world an opportunity to revive this myth of an international Jewish conspiracy.
Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, and those of some of his associates, do not belong to the realm of conspiracy or fantasy: They are real and of extreme gravity. But the way they are being exploited today fits into a growing conspiratorial and antisemitic drift.
In this complex and sprawling case, a particular interpretation has emerged in certain circles, pushed, for instance, by antisemitic conspiracy theorist Candice Owens: the claim that Epstein was affiliated with the Mossad and possessed compromising material on all the world's powerful figures, allowing Israel to blackmail them and thereby control the entire world.
This narrative resonates all the more as the Epstein affair involves the trafficking of young girls, international finance, and elites – recurring tropes in the history of antisemitic stereotypes.
Far-right polemicist Tucker Carlson, close to US President Donald Trump, hosted on his show a far-left influencer with a large following, Cenk Uygur. At first glance, the two men have little in common. Yet they converged on the idea that Israel was directly linked not only to the Epstein affair but also to the September 11 attacks and the assassination of president John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Journalistic work that patiently cross-checks facts – even if it means dismantling certain theories – is now viewed as collusion and an attempt to bury the case and protect those involved. It must be acknowledged, moreover, that the scandalously lenient 2008 sentence given to Epstein at least partially justifies this mistrust.
The absence of these theories in the mainstream media further strengthens their power on social media, where the “unfiltered truth,” allegedly not “subject to the Zionist lobby,” is said to be revealed. It is to be feared that even after full disclosure of the case files, the machinery of fantasy will continue to claim that such revelations are merely “the tip of the iceberg.”
As 50% of Americans, including 77% of Democrats, say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza (together with 40% of American Jews), antisemitism is being fueled by parts of the far Left and by Islamists over the Gaza conflict, as well as by a nationalist far Right that is regaining strength in the United States, leading to the generalization of antisemitism among young Republicans. In this context, the Epstein affair adds a particularly dangerous dimension for Jews around the world.
A complex and far-reaching case in an age of constant distraction, the Epstein affair demands simple, definitive answers, complete with culprits or even scapegoats. Jewish history shows that such configurations have rarely worked in the Jews' favor – especially in an unstable and anxious world.
Born and raised in France, the writer is the correspondent of French Jewish radio, Radio J, in the US, where he has been living for 16 years. He also holds US and Israeli citizenships. His opinions are his only.
Copyright ©2026 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved
•
•
The Duffer Brothers are keeping things moving in 2026 with new projects following the end of Stranger Things. First, they are executive producing a wedding horror series called Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, which will hit Netflix in March. And, there's the upcoming animated Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85 adventure that will take fans back into Hawkins. Now, The Duffer Brothers supernatural series The Boroughs is taking shape with first look photos and a May release date.
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The series will run for eight episodes and boasts a stacked cast including Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Bill Pullman, Jena Malone, Denis O'Hare, and more. We get a chance to peek at a few characters in The Boroughs below in the show's first look images, and it is absolutely giving us that feel we love from The Duffer Brothers content.
Click To View Gallery
Here's a logline for The Boroughs to go along with those photos:
In a seemingly perfect retirement community, a grieving newcomer's monstrous encounter inspires him to join a misfit crew of unlikely heroes who uncover a dark secret that proves their “golden years” are more dangerous, and they are more formidable than anyone expects.
Well, this is certainly intriguing. I cannot wait to see a trailer for this show. And I am sure one is coming quickly because The Boroughs will hit Netflix on May 21.
The post Duffer Brothers Supernatural Series THE BOROUGHS Drops First Images appeared first on Nerdist.
Netflix will open the doors of "The Boroughs" later this spring — but you might want to think twice before paying them a visit.
The supernatural series, which counts "Stranger Things" creators Matt and Ross Duffer among its executive producers, will release on Thursday, May 21, with all eight episodes, TVLine has learned.
"The Boroughs" takes place in a seemingly perfect retirement community, where a grieving newcomer (played by Alfred Molina) has a monstrous encounter that inspires him to join a misfit crew of unlikely heroes. Together, they "uncover a dark secret that proves their 'golden years' are more dangerous, and they are more formidable, than anyone expects," the official synopsis reads.
In addition to Molina, the main cast includes Bill Pullman ("The Sinner"), Geena Davis ("Commander in Chief"), Alfre Woodard ("Luke Cage"), Denis O'Hare ("American Horror Story"), Clarke Peters ("The Wire"), Carlos Miranda ("Station 19"), Jena Malone ("Goliath"), Seth Numrich ("TURN: Washington's Spies"), and Alice Kremelberg ("Renegade Nell"). Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews — who previously created Netflix's "The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance" — serve as creators and showrunners, and they'll executive-produce alongside the Duffer Brothers.
"For years, we've wondered why no one has made a film like Ron Howard's wonderful 'Cocoon' since, well, 'Cocoon,'" the Duffers said in a statement. "Then, out of nowhere, Jeff and Will emailed us an idea for 'The Boroughs': a story about retirees and monsters. They were adamant that — unlike so many stories about older characters — this wouldn't treat aging as a punchline. Instead, it would treat its characters as real people facing real challenges... along with a few supernatural ones. It was exactly the show we'd been dreaming of."
Will you give "The Boroughs" a shot in May? Tell us in the comments below.
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The post Lady Wonder: The “Psychic” Horse Who Offered Hope to a Disillusioned America appeared first on A-Z Animals.
Lady Wonder, a chestnut horse in mid-20th century Virginia, gained national fame by seemingly answering questions and predicting events using a letter board.
She was credited with predicting elections, sports outcomes, and helping authorities locate a missing child, captivating Americans during a time of uncertainty.
Scientific investigation later revealed that her “answers” relied on subtle, unconscious cues from her trainer, Claudia Fonda, rather than true psychic ability.
Lady Wonder's story reflects Americans' enduring fascination with the paranormal, highlighting the desire for hope, guidance, and meaning in uncertain times.
Long before psychic hotlines, YouTube prophets, and TikTok tarot readers, Americans traveled dusty back roads to a quiet Virginia farm to ask Lady Wonder what the future held. They asked about elections, illnesses, lost loved ones, and the fate of the nation. For several decades in the mid-20th century, Lady Wonder was one of the most famous psychics in America. “Okay, so what?” you may be asking yourself. After all, psychics—or those claiming to be—have been around for all of recorded history. What was so special about Lady Wonder? Not much—except for the fact that Lady Wonder was a horse.
Lady Wonder was neither the first nor the last animal said to possess extraordinary intelligence or insight, but her story sits at a strange crossroads of cultural hunger, media spectacle, and human psychology—rising to prominence in a wildly transitional time in America in the years surrounding World War II and the early Cold War. At a moment marked by anxiety, loss, and rapid change, a chestnut mare with a letter board offered something irresistible: certainty, comfort, and the illusion that the universe could be understood if you just asked the right question.
Lady Wonder reportedly tapped letters with her snout on a board, seemingly spelling out answers to questions beyond any horse's normal understanding.
©Francis Wickware, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons – Original / License
Lady Wonder was born in 1924 and eventually came into the care of Claudia Fonda, who lived on a small farm in Richmond, Virginia. According to Fonda, the horse displayed unusual intelligence from an early age. Lady Wonder didn't just respond to commands; she allegedly spelled out words by tapping letters with her snout on a large board, answering questions posed by visitors.
The setup was simple but theatrical. A person would ask a question aloud. Lady Wonder would then tap letters one by one, forming words and sentences. Witnesses claimed she could answer questions beyond what a horse could plausibly comprehend, including details about strangers' personal lives, future events, and hidden objects.
By the 1940s, word of mouth turned into national attention. Newspapers, magazines, and radio programs covered Lady Wonder's abilities. Journalists watched as the horse spelled out answers. Some walked away convinced. Others were skeptical but intrigued. Either way, the spectacle made headlines.
Lady Wonder's fame exploded because her answers seemed to reach beyond parlor tricks. She was credited with predicting election outcomes—including presidential races—and major sports results, such as World Series winners. In an era when information traveled more slowly and polling was far less sophisticated than it is today, these accurate predictions felt uncanny.
Perhaps most compelling were claims that Lady Wonder helped locate a missing child. According to widely reported accounts, authorities consulted the horse during a search, and her spelled responses pointed them toward the child's location. While later investigations cast doubt on how much her information directly influenced the outcome, the story cemented her reputation as more than just entertainment.
High-profile visitors followed. Celebrities, politicians, and military officials reportedly made the trip to Virginia. For many Americans, the fact that powerful and educated people were willing to ask a horse for guidance suggested there must be something to it.
Lady Wonder emerged at a time when the American media was hungry for wonder. The country was grappling with the aftermath of the Great Depression and the trauma of World War II. Millions had lost family members. Nuclear weapons had introduced the possibility of sudden, incomprehensible destruction. The future felt unstable.
Newspapers and radio shows didn't just report the news—they also offered escape, reassurance, and spectacle. A psychic horse fit perfectly into that ecosystem. She was wholesome, rural, and oddly comforting. This wasn't a shadowy fortune-teller in a back room; this was a farm animal, in broad daylight, answering questions in front of witnesses.
Coverage often leaned into the mystery rather than challenging it; skepticism rarely sold as well as amazement. Psychologists have long noted that belief in the paranormal tends to spike during periods of social stress. When people feel powerless or uncertain, they seek guidance. A psychic horse offered answers without judgment. She didn't scold, preach, or politicize, nor did she have an agenda. She simply tapped out words.
During the 1940s, Americans sought comfort and spectacle in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, making a psychic horse irresistible.
©AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons – Original / License
As Lady Wonder's fame grew, so did scientific interest. Psychologist B.F. Skinner and others pointed out parallels to Clever Hans, a horse in early 20th-century Germany that appeared able to do math but was later shown to respond to unconscious human cues.
In Lady Wonder's case, her responses closely followed cues from Claudia Fonda, whether through posture, breathing, or tone. Even if Fonda wasn't consciously signaling, intention was irrelevant; the horse still picked up on it. In controlled settings where Fonda could not see or hear the questions, Lady Wonder's accuracy collapsed. This didn't necessarily mean Fonda had intentionally deceived anyone, but it did suggest that the miracle relied on human involvement.
There's also the psychology of projection. Humans are remarkably good at seeing intention where none exists. When an animal appears to respond meaningfully, we fill in the gaps. Subtle cues, unconscious movements, and expectations can guide outcomes without anyone realizing it. This phenomenon, known as the ideomotor effect, explains everything from Ouija boards to dowsing rods.
The media and public perception also acted as a powerful filter. Newspapers and radio programs favored sensationalism over skepticism. This was fueled by a “hit-counting” effect: visitors and journalists marveled at her rare, accurate predictions, while conveniently forgetting her frequent misses. In an era of slower information, these curated successes felt like miracles, cemented by a public more than willing to ignore the failures to keep the wonder alive.
While Lady Wonder's feats were impressive to witnesses, careful investigation revealed a natural explanation. Controlled tests showed she couldn't reliably produce answers when Fonda didn't know the expected response or when cues were removed. Magicians and psychologists demonstrated that subtle, unconscious signals like head tilts, body posture, or whip movements were enough to guide her letter choices. Many of the “correct” answers were broad, iterative, or clarified through repeated questioning, and observers naturally remembered the hits while forgetting the misses. Taken together, it becomes clear that Lady Wonder wasn't reading minds.
Controlled tests revealed Lady Wonder's accuracy depended on unconscious cues from her trainer, highlighting the ideomotor effect in human-animal interaction.
©AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons – Original / License
Lady Wonder died in 1957, but her story persists. She's remembered alongside other chapters in America's long fascination with the paranormal, from spiritualist séances to modern psychic influencers. That fascination continues to this day; only the platform has changed. Algorithms have replaced newspapers, and livestreams have replaced farm visits. But the desire remains the same. People want reassurance. They want meaning. They want to believe that someone, somewhere, has answers.
Lady Wonder didn't actually predict the future, but she revealed something real and enduring about us. In uncertain times, we'll listen anywhere for hope. Even if it comes, quite literally, straight from the horse's mouth.
The post Lady Wonder: The “Psychic” Horse Who Offered Hope to a Disillusioned America appeared first on A-Z Animals.
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Known as the R-36Orb inside the military, the weapon was designed by Soviet military to bypass American defenses.
In the spring of 1967, a series of unusual sightings began to grip the Soviet Union. From the rural landscapes of Ukraine to the robust Caucasus Mountains, thousands of citizens reported seeing massive, glowing crescent shapes gliding silently through the evening sky.
The sightings were so consistent and widespread that they sparked a national UFO craze. Local newspapers shared eyewitness accounts, and amateur research groups formed to track the “visitors.” However, the truth behind these strange lights was far more terrestrial and dangerous.
While people searched the skies for aliens, the Soviet military was secretly testing a revolutionary and controversial delivery system for nuclear warheads: the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS). Known as the R-36 Orb inside the military, the weapon was designed to bypass American defenses by launching a warhead into low Earth orbit and then “dropping” it onto a target from an unexpected direction.
The mysterious crescent shapes were actually the physical footprint of these tests. When the R-36 Orb reached the end of its orbit, it fired retro-rockets to slow down for re-entry. In the thin upper atmosphere, the exhaust from these engines spread out into a wide, curved trail. Since the tests happened at dusk, the setting sun lit up these exhaust particles, making them glow against the dark sky.
The timing of these tests raised diplomatic concerns for the Kremlin. At the time, the Soviet Union had signed the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited the placement of weapons of mass destruction in orbit.
While Soviet citizens wondered about extraterrestrials, U.S. intelligence was already piecing the puzzle together. By November 1967, the U.S. Department of Defense publicly accused Moscow of building an orbital nuclear strike weapon.
On realizing that UFO reports were giving Western intelligence clues about rocket technology, the Soviet government abruptly restricted media coverage of the sightings, and later tests were moved to times when the sun wouldn't light up the exhaust plumes.
The FOBS program finally came to an end after more than a decade of operation. A small fleet of these orbital missiles was stationed in silos until 1983, when they were finally dismantled under the terms of the SALT II treaty.
The mystery of the crescents was not made public until decades later. Comparisons with modern rocket launches, such as those by SpaceX, have since confirmed the science behind the 1967 sightings. Infrared footage of today's rockets performing “boost-back” burns shows the same crescent-shaped pressure waves that once terrified the Cold War observers.
Today, the “Great Soviet Crescent” stands as a reminder of a time when science fiction and military reality mixed during the space race. What felt like an encounter with the unknown was actually the glowing exhaust of the world's first orbital nuclear weapon.
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February 25, 2026e-Paper
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February 25, 2026e-Paper
Published - February 25, 2026 02:45 pm IST
AI-generated image of alien invasion
| Photo Credit: Google Gemini
Aliens are real. Or maybe not.
The possibility of mystical beings watching over us or even walking among us is not just the ramblings of the fringe and Reddit users, but a key political and societal debate in the U.S.
President Donald Trump, on Thursday, February 19, 2026, announced that he was directing the Pentagon to review and release all government files related to “alien and extra-terrestrial life,” and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), earlier known as UFOs or Unidentified Flying Objects.
This was triggered after former President Barack Obama said on a podcast that “aliens are real,” then clarified that he only meant the odds of there being aliens out there is very real -- just as the distances between worlds are vast, which could be why they have yet to make contact with earth.
Mr Trump accused Mr Obama of revealing “classified information” and said that he would get him out of trouble by “declassifying” documents.
Questions about the existence of aliens (not non-citizens and illegal migrants, who are also called “aliens” in the U.S.) are not new. It has been part of the American political debate for decades, with at least two Presidents claiming to have seen UFOs themselves.
Critics have called Mr. Trump's and his predecessors' claims as being more political than scientific and have hinted at the possibility of aliens being used as cover-ups for domestic issues.
The history of America's obsession with “little green men” is almost as interesting as finding extra-terrestrial beings. Let's take a look.
President Jimmy Carter is the first and only U.S. president to officially report a UFO sighting. On January 6, 1969, while waiting for a Lions Club meeting in Georgia, he and others allegedly witnessed a bright, self-illuminated object in the sky.
In 1973, he submitted a report to the International UFO Bureau and said that “he would never again ridicule anyone who says they've seen unidentified objects.”
During his 1976 campaign to be President, Carter vowed to release every piece of information that the U.S. government had on UFOs, a promise he later broke, citing ‘national security.'
Ronald Reagan also expressed interest in the study of extra-terrestrial life and reportedly saw a strange light accelerating at high speed while flying near Bakersfield.
Famously, during the 1985 Geneva Summit, Mr. Reagan asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev if the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would unite to fight an alien invasion. Gorbachev agreed, and this is said to have contributed to nuclear disarmament talks during the Cold War era.
On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot flying near Mount Rainier, Washington, allegedly spotted nine shimmering objects flying in a diagonal chain. Arnold described the objects as moving “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” Headlines later changed this term into “flying saucer”, setting the tone for UFO sightings and alien studies till date.
Saucers over Washington, D.C.
| Photo Credit:
National Archives and Records Administration
Following the alleged saucer sighting by Arnold, the US government started Project Sign, the first attempt to determine if “flying saucers” were real. In 1948, an official document authored by the project's staff concluded that the UFOs were likely interplanetary in origin.
But the Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg rejected the report and ordered the burning of the document, citing lack of physical evidence.
During 1949-1951, the U.S. government undertook a project with only one goal in mind: to debunk and explain away every theory about aliens. The project concluded that all sightings were either a result of misrepresentation of conventional entities like balloons, mass hysteria or hoaxes.
This project's opinion led to the most famous project to examine extra-terrestrial life.
This project, run from 1952 to 1969, was the most rigorous examination of UFO sighting claims yet and was the first time that IBM computers and mathematical modelling were used to examine such data.
First page of the packet given to people claiming to have seen a UFO, from the Status Report: Project Blue Book, Dec. 31, 1952
| Photo Credit:
National Archives and Records Administration
The project appointed a dedicated Blue Book Officer at every U.S. Air Force base who collected data about UFO sightings for the project to examine. The results, though still non-committal, were the first time the country became serious about these sightings.
Aliens have always fascinated filmmakers, authors and even songwriters. Be it H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds or Katy Perry's song E.T., extra-terrestrial beings have long been used as allegories to warn citizens of external threats like nuclear bombs, social apathy or even a lack of communal cohesion.
The U.S. leads the world in reporting UFO sightings. According to the National UFO Reporting Centre, a non-profit organisation, the country has reported over 100,000 such incidents since 1947. This is vastly different from other countries, where such sightings are few and far between. Do aliens only visit America?
Critics have argued that the political heft extra-terrestrial life gets in the U.S. may be just to distract the electorate from ‘real issues.'
Federica Bianco, an astrophysicist at the University of Delaware, told Scientific American that “the timing (of Mr. Trump's announcement) convinces me that this is but a move to distract the people in the United States from multiple ongoing political and societal crises and the failures of this administration.”
In February 2026, Congressman Thomas Massie criticised President Trump's order to release ‘alien files' as a “weapon of mass destruction” to take away attention from the ‘Epstein files.'
But a 2019 Gallup poll found that four in 10 Americans believe that some UFOs that people had spotted were indeed alien spacecraft. Conversely, half believe that all such sightings can be explained by human activity or natural phenomena.
Just like Mr Obama, many scientists believe that there is a statistical likelihood of extra-terrestrial life existing in the universe. They may not be the anthropomorphised, green beings of the movies, but microorganisms or other similar life.
The other possibility is that humans are totally alone in a universe that is constantly expanding.
Whatever the case may be, aliens and UFOs are back in American polity, and they are here to stay, seemingly as tools of distraction and hopefully also of real, rigorous scientific inquiry.
(With inputs from Reuters)
Published - February 25, 2026 02:45 pm IST
World
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Donald Trump
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science (general)
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February 25, 2026e-Paper
The View From India
Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective.
First Day First Show
News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming.
Today's Cache
Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day.
Science For All
The weekly newsletter from science writers takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in!
Data Point
Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers
Health Matters
Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there
The Hindu On Books
Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features.
February 25, 2026e-Paper
Published - February 25, 2026 02:45 pm IST
AI-generated image of alien invasion
| Photo Credit: Google Gemini
Aliens are real. Or maybe not.
The possibility of mystical beings watching over us or even walking among us is not just the ramblings of the fringe and Reddit users, but a key political and societal debate in the U.S.
President Donald Trump, on Thursday, February 19, 2026, announced that he was directing the Pentagon to review and release all government files related to “alien and extra-terrestrial life,” and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), earlier known as UFOs or Unidentified Flying Objects.
This was triggered after former President Barack Obama said on a podcast that “aliens are real,” then clarified that he only meant the odds of there being aliens out there is very real -- just as the distances between worlds are vast, which could be why they have yet to make contact with earth.
Mr Trump accused Mr Obama of revealing “classified information” and said that he would get him out of trouble by “declassifying” documents.
Questions about the existence of aliens (not non-citizens and illegal migrants, who are also called “aliens” in the U.S.) are not new. It has been part of the American political debate for decades, with at least two Presidents claiming to have seen UFOs themselves.
Critics have called Mr. Trump's and his predecessors' claims as being more political than scientific and have hinted at the possibility of aliens being used as cover-ups for domestic issues.
The history of America's obsession with “little green men” is almost as interesting as finding extra-terrestrial beings. Let's take a look.
President Jimmy Carter is the first and only U.S. president to officially report a UFO sighting. On January 6, 1969, while waiting for a Lions Club meeting in Georgia, he and others allegedly witnessed a bright, self-illuminated object in the sky.
In 1973, he submitted a report to the International UFO Bureau and said that “he would never again ridicule anyone who says they've seen unidentified objects.”
During his 1976 campaign to be President, Carter vowed to release every piece of information that the U.S. government had on UFOs, a promise he later broke, citing ‘national security.'
Ronald Reagan also expressed interest in the study of extra-terrestrial life and reportedly saw a strange light accelerating at high speed while flying near Bakersfield.
Famously, during the 1985 Geneva Summit, Mr. Reagan asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev if the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would unite to fight an alien invasion. Gorbachev agreed, and this is said to have contributed to nuclear disarmament talks during the Cold War era.
On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot flying near Mount Rainier, Washington, allegedly spotted nine shimmering objects flying in a diagonal chain. Arnold described the objects as moving “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” Headlines later changed this term into “flying saucer”, setting the tone for UFO sightings and alien studies till date.
Saucers over Washington, D.C.
| Photo Credit:
National Archives and Records Administration
Following the alleged saucer sighting by Arnold, the US government started Project Sign, the first attempt to determine if “flying saucers” were real. In 1948, an official document authored by the project's staff concluded that the UFOs were likely interplanetary in origin.
But the Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg rejected the report and ordered the burning of the document, citing lack of physical evidence.
During 1949-1951, the U.S. government undertook a project with only one goal in mind: to debunk and explain away every theory about aliens. The project concluded that all sightings were either a result of misrepresentation of conventional entities like balloons, mass hysteria or hoaxes.
This project's opinion led to the most famous project to examine extra-terrestrial life.
This project, run from 1952 to 1969, was the most rigorous examination of UFO sighting claims yet and was the first time that IBM computers and mathematical modelling were used to examine such data.
First page of the packet given to people claiming to have seen a UFO, from the Status Report: Project Blue Book, Dec. 31, 1952
| Photo Credit:
National Archives and Records Administration
The project appointed a dedicated Blue Book Officer at every U.S. Air Force base who collected data about UFO sightings for the project to examine. The results, though still non-committal, were the first time the country became serious about these sightings.
Aliens have always fascinated filmmakers, authors and even songwriters. Be it H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds or Katy Perry's song E.T., extra-terrestrial beings have long been used as allegories to warn citizens of external threats like nuclear bombs, social apathy or even a lack of communal cohesion.
The U.S. leads the world in reporting UFO sightings. According to the National UFO Reporting Centre, a non-profit organisation, the country has reported over 100,000 such incidents since 1947. This is vastly different from other countries, where such sightings are few and far between. Do aliens only visit America?
Critics have argued that the political heft extra-terrestrial life gets in the U.S. may be just to distract the electorate from ‘real issues.'
Federica Bianco, an astrophysicist at the University of Delaware, told Scientific American that “the timing (of Mr. Trump's announcement) convinces me that this is but a move to distract the people in the United States from multiple ongoing political and societal crises and the failures of this administration.”
In February 2026, Congressman Thomas Massie criticised President Trump's order to release ‘alien files' as a “weapon of mass destruction” to take away attention from the ‘Epstein files.'
But a 2019 Gallup poll found that four in 10 Americans believe that some UFOs that people had spotted were indeed alien spacecraft. Conversely, half believe that all such sightings can be explained by human activity or natural phenomena.
Just like Mr Obama, many scientists believe that there is a statistical likelihood of extra-terrestrial life existing in the universe. They may not be the anthropomorphised, green beings of the movies, but microorganisms or other similar life.
The other possibility is that humans are totally alone in a universe that is constantly expanding.
Whatever the case may be, aliens and UFOs are back in American polity, and they are here to stay, seemingly as tools of distraction and hopefully also of real, rigorous scientific inquiry.
(With inputs from Reuters)
Published - February 25, 2026 02:45 pm IST
World
/
USA
/
Donald Trump
/
science (general)
/
space programme
Copyright© 2026, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
BACK TO TOP
Terms & conditions | Institutional Subscriber
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.
Federal government files on UFOs (unidentified flying objects) and UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) have sparked widespread curiosity. Scientists anticipate the upcoming release could shed light on many previously unexplained sightings.
Scientists emphasize that while the existence of extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe is considered likely, direct evidence of alien presence on Earth remains elusive. These files may help clarify what the government has observed without confirming alien visits.
Insights from Former Government Investigator
Sean Kirkpatrick, who led the U.S. Defense Department's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, cautions the public not to expect proof of extraterrestrial technology. He described many investigated sightings as misidentifications, secret military activities, or even hoaxes. Kirkpatrick views the release of these files more as a political gesture than a revelation.
Scientific Perspectives on Probability and Evidence
Astronomers like Federica Bianco and Shelly Wright highlight the vastness of the cosmos and the near certainty that life exists elsewhere. However, they point out that reported phenomena so far do not violate physical laws or require alien explanations. Wright also warns that many documents will likely be redacted due to national security concerns but suggests historical data could eventually provide new scientific insights when re-examined with modern technology.
Public Misconceptions and the Role of Skepticism
Neil deGrasse Tyson stresses the human tendency to attribute unknown aerial phenomena to aliens, calling it “aliens of our ignorance.” He explains that many UFO reports stem from unfamiliarity with natural or atmospheric phenomena. Tyson also expresses skepticism that any secret alien encounters could be successfully hidden in today's connected world, where billions of images and videos are shared daily.
The Search for Microbial Life and Early Signs
Physicist Janna Levin encourages an open mind about the files but tempers expectations, noting that astronomers are more focused on finding microbial life or its precursors than advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. She highlights the possibility that microbial life could have been transported to Earth via natural objects like meteorites.
Targeting Truly Unexplainable Incidents
Harvard physicist Avi Loeb hopes the files will help isolate a small number of genuinely anomalous cases. He emphasizes the importance of applying established physics to assess whether unidentified objects could be of human origin or represent phenomena beyond current scientific understanding. Loeb directs the Galileo Project, which searches for extraterrestrial artifacts near Earth, and advocates examining data without bias toward terrestrial technology.
Scientists collectively suggest that while the release of government UFO files may not confirm alien visitors, it could allow for rigorous analysis of previously unexplained phenomena. This process could demystify many reports and improve scientific understanding of aerial anomalies, advancing both public knowledge and the search for extraterrestrial life in a methodical and evidence-based manner.