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Canada's prime minister faces blowback for his plan to hike Canadian arms companies' profits by 240 percent in 10 years.
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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stunned the world with a dazzling speech at Davos in January. He warned that the old order was dying and that it was time for global leaders to get serious about what must replace it. “Stop invoking ‘rules-based international order' as though it still functions as advertised,” Carney said. “Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.”
The motivations for Carney's speech have since come under question this week following his response to the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which is widely considered to be illegal under international law. In a statement, Carney wrote: “Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.”
Less than two weeks before releasing that statement, on February 17, Carney invoked the crumbling rules-based international order to justify the need for Canada's first-ever Defence Industrial Strategy. It promises to massively invest in military spending in Canada. He promised to “take advantage of $180 billion in defence procurement opportunities and $290 billion in defence-related capital investment opportunities in Canada over the next 10 years.”
At its core, the Defence Industrial Strategy aims to massively increase profits within the military industry. Carney's plan promises to increase the revenue of arms companies in Canada by 240 percent over the next decade.
Carney promises that this new strategy would create 125,000 new jobs and increase Canada's military exports by 50 percent. The total number of defense industry jobs in Canada would rise from 81,200 to 206,000 — an increase of 254 percent. Ultimately, Carney says, he hopes that Canada will be able to domestically produce 70 percent of the Canadian Armed Forces' (CAF) supply needs.
Rachel Small, an organizer with World BEYOND War-Canada, says that using the military industry to jumpstart Canada's economy is risky, and questions just how much this announcement will create jobs, given that arms manufacturing has not traditionally created many new jobs in the country. “Banking Canada's future on military production, militarism, and deeper engagement in the global arms race I think is the opposite of what most people in Canada want. I also think that it's a deeply unproven and unrealistic model for economic prosperity,” Small told Truthout.
The peace organization Project Ploughshares notes that the economic returns that countries can get from investing in the military are small, when compared to the economic returns of investing in public sector jobs in health care and education.
While the Defence Industrial Strategy is being hailed as ambitious, Kelsey Gallagher from Project Ploughshares believes that it's aspirational rather than a practical roadmap. “We are in a time of rearmament across the West, this is not just Canada. To see Canada coming to a place where the vast majority of the military goods procured for the CAF were coming from Canadian firms, I would be surprised,” Gallagher told Truthout.
Indeed, Canada currently doesn't produce enough of what the Canadian Armed Forces needs to reach the promise of 70 percent and would have to significantly expand what is built in Canada to reach that goal. For example, many of the items that Canada does produce, like sensor technology components, are add-ons to other pieces of equipment that aren't built in Canada. “The global arms industry is a specialized part of the global economy, and it's also quite monopolized and increasingly so,” Gallagher said, adding that it will be difficult for Canada to enter new industries, scale up quickly, and start producing items that Canada's Armed Forces need but are currently made outside of Canada.
But even inside of Canada, the companies that dominate the arms industry are mostly not Canadian. Of Canada's top 10 military companies, ranked by the publication Canadian Defence Review for their success and impact, five are U.S.-owned.
In 2024, Canada exported 2.5 billion Canadian dollars' worth of military goods. Canada sent the most military equipment (measured in terms of value) to Saudi Arabia, at 1.3 billion Canadian dollars. Most of those exports were armored vehicles made in London, Ontario, by General Dynamics.
At their peak in 2019, Canada's military exports reached 4.03 billion Canadian dollars. These numbers are reported via Global Affairs Canada through export permits — a system that tracks military exports based on international conventions. Military exports to the United States are excluded from official data because goods exported to the U.S. are not subject to these permits. They are subject to a pact that doesn't require the same level of transparency as other international imports and exports. The pact goes back to 1956 and oversees defense trade between the two countries.
Canada hopes to streamline arms export permits through the Defence Industrial Strategy, something that Gallagher warns could impact the international agreements that Canada has signed that dictate the responsibility a nation-state has in reporting and transparency around arms exports. Canada's export permits are guided by four international conventions and the country has a responsibility to uphold these conventions in how it reports on military imports and exports, he says.
The same day that the federal government made this announcement, World BEYOND War-Canada was involved in a national day of action on February 17, calling for an end to the loopholes that exist within Canada's military import and export regulations that allow for arms to be exported with little oversight. New Democratic Party Member of Parliament Jenny Kwan has served a motion, Bill C-233, that would tighten up Canada's arms imports and exports policies. It would also make it easier for Canada to stop allowing exports to countries engaging in war crimes.
Small says Canadian military equipment is currently being used in Gaza by the Israeli military, against Venezuelan fishermen by the U.S. military, and in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by federal immigration agents using Canadian-made armored vehicles. Canadian arms exported to the United Arab Emirates have been used in Sudan by the Rapid Support Forces, and there is photographic evidence that some light armored vehicles that Canada exported to Saudi Arabia have ended up in battle in Yemen.
One former Canadian general also told CBC News that it's likely some members of the Canadian military played a role in the logistics for the initial U.S. strikes on Iran, which are widely considered to be in breach of international law. While Carney and the Department of National Defence have disputed that, there are still lingering questions about the nature of Canadian service member exchanges with U.S. Central Command.
Gallagher warns that the logic that Canada must scale up its military to keep Canada safe leads to a situation where Canadian companies will seek other opportunities around the world to sell their goods when the Canadian Armed Forces have as much as they need.
“If you're ballooning a military budget, that's a choice to steal those funds from health care, housing, public services — from the things that actually guarantee the security and health of people from across this country,” says Small.
The devastating American and Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians, and the death toll continues to rise.
As independent media, what we do next matters a lot. It's up to us to report the truth, demand accountability, and reckon with the consequences of U.S. militarism at this cataclysmic historical moment.
Trump may be an authoritarian, but he is not entirely invulnerable, nor are the elected officials who have given him pass after pass. We cannot let him believe for a second longer that he can get away with something this wildly illegal or recklessly dangerous without accountability.
We ask for your support as we carry out our media resistance to unchecked militarism. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation to Truthout.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the following terms:
Nora Loreto is a writer and activist based in Quebec City. She is also the president of the Canadian Freelance Union.
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Truthout is working overtime to bring you the latest on Iran. In deep opposition to Trump's militarism, we are producing media of truth and accountability in this moment of crisis. We ask for your support. Please make a tax-deductible donation today.
The US and Israel have killed Ayatollah Khamenei, but they seem to have no plan for what comes next.
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The U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran has already sparked regional war, and threatens to reshape West Asia for years to come. The military strikes began on February 28, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several of his top officials. Now, several days into the war, the rationale has not been clearly articulated; U.S. lawmakers and officials have offered up different, often competing explanations for the initial attack and end goals. Yet the massive American military buildup in the region in the weeks before the attack made it evident that something significant was coming, even as negotiations between Iranian and American officials continued, and even as the Omani foreign minister declared the night before the initial strike that an agreement was within reach.
Despite Khamenei's death, President Trump has said the strikes will continue. To what end? If Iran's nuclear facilities and capabilities were already obliterated during last year's U.S. strikes, as Trump has long claimed, what is now the objective? The elimination of remaining leaders, as U.S. forces attempted in Iraq? The dismantling of the Revolutionary Guard? The state's total collapse?
Those objectives presume that the Islamic Republic is a pyramid resting on a single figure. It is not.
Iran's regular army, the Artesh, numbers roughly 375,000 personnel. The Revolutionary Guard — Iran's military, political, and economic powerhouse — counts approximately 125,000 or more. The Basij, Iran's voluntary paramilitary organization, maintains around 90,000 active members and can mobilize 450,000. By some estimates, nearly one million individuals serve in or alongside the state's security structure. As of this writing, the regime has not collapsed, and these forces remain intact.
In an eight-minute video released at the beginning of the bombing campaign, President Trump urged Iran's army, police, Revolutionary Guard, and Basij to lay down their arms and called on citizens to take control of their government. That appeal assumes a rapid implosion of the state's coercive machinery. But institutions of that scale do not dissolve because they are told to. Hundreds of thousands of armed men do not disarm overnight and hand the country to foreign powers or spontaneous civic committees.
If the expectation is that bombing will accelerate internal democratic change, recent events suggest otherwise.
Iran was already under severe strain. A banking crisis and sharp currency devaluation triggered nationwide protests that began at the end of 2025, involving everyone from students and workers to bazaar merchants. Security forces responded with brutal force. Human rights groups reported thousands of civilian casualties; authorities reported losses among their own ranks. The protests had begun to reemerge when the bombs fell.
Airstrikes do not create space for civic mobilization. They drive people indoors. When foreign aircraft strike cities, citizens do not gather in public squares demanding reform. They seek shelter. Within 24 hours of the start of the military strikes, hundreds of Iranians were reportedly killed, including students at a girls' school in Hormozgan Province. Whatever fragile momentum for internal change existed has now been interrupted by war.
Following from the confusion about Trump's plan for this war, another question quickly follows: if the current leadership collapses, who governs?
There is no unified opposition inside Iran with institutional capacity to assume control. The Islamic Republic's opponents are fragmented: reformists, republicans, labor activists, student networks, ethnic movements, and monarchists often disagree not only on leadership but on the structure of a future state. The current government has also spent decades repressing any of these forces that could come as a reasonable threat to its power, suffocating space for democratic debate.
Among the most visible figures in exile is Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran's former shah. A segment of the Iranian diaspora regards him as a transitional leader and speaks as though his succession is self-evident. On social media and satellite networks, some supporters already frame him as the natural heir to a post-Islamic Republic Iran.
But diaspora visibility is not the same as governing legitimacy inside the country.
Reza Pahlavi commands no formal political party within Iran, no known alliance with senior military officers, and no organized structure capable of securing ministries, borders, or public order in a moment of upheaval. His father and grandfather ruled through authoritarian control, and for many Iranians, especially those who experienced imprisonment, censorship, or repression under the monarchy, that history remains unresolved.
Airstrikes do not create space for civic mobilization. When foreign aircraft strike cities, citizens do not gather in public squares demanding reform.
Reza Pahlavi and his supporters assume that the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei will automatically clear the path for the restoration of the Pahlavi regime. That assumption overlooks the institutions that still exist: the Revolutionary Guard, regional power brokers, clerical networks, provincial patronage systems, and armed groups unwilling to surrender authority to a figure whose base of support is largely external.
Even prominent American officials appear unconvinced. Donald Trump has suggested that Reza Pahlavi lacks the necessary support and capacity to lead Iran. “He seems very nice, but I don't know how he'd play within his own country,” Trump told Reuters in January. “I don't know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me.” Of the monarchists, one anonymous U.S. official told Politico, “They scare me.”
Leadership in a country of more than 90 million people does not materialize through wish or nostalgia. It requires institutional alignment, territorial control, and internal legitimacy, none of which can be assumed from exile.
Iran's internal complexity deepens the uncertainty about what now.
Although Persians form a majority of Iran's population, the country includes substantial Azeri, Kurdish, Baluch, Arab, and Turkic populations. These communities are deeply integrated into national life, yet historical grievances and regional tensions persist. It's important to remember that grievances against centralized state power in Iran long predate 1979. Ethnic and regional minorities often faced cultural and political marginalization under the Pahlavi monarchy, including denial of national rights and suppression of uprisings in outlying provinces. These long-standing issues helped fuel broader discontent that contributed to the revolution. Efforts at ‘nation-building' under the Shah also involved policies aimed at linguistic and cultural homogenization, which many non-Persian communities experienced as exclusionary and repressive.
In stable times, such tensions are contained by a functioning center. In unstable times, they resurface quickly.
In the northwest, Azeri communities share linguistic and cultural ties with the Republic of Azerbaijan. In the southeast, Sistan and Baluchistan has endured decades of insurgency and state neglect. In the southwest, Khuzestan holds much of Iran's oil and contains a significant Arab population with a history of separatist sentiment. Kurdish regions are connected to broader Kurdish movements across Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.
A prolonged vacuum in Tehran would not produce orderly transition. It would invite regional intervention, militia mobilization, and competing territorial claims. Fragmentation would not be theoretical. It would be violent.
History offers sobering examples. The disintegration of Yugoslavia led to ethnic war and Balkanization. The 2003 invasion of Iraq unleashed sectarian conflict that reshaped the state. NATO's intervention in Libya preceded years of militia competition. Afghanistan's 20-year war ended with the return of the Taliban.
Iran is not identical to those cases. But the belief that sustained bombing can engineer stable democracy has repeatedly been disproven.
War does not operate with surgical precision. It does not remove one figure and install another. It shifts power to those most capable of wielding force. It weakens civil society faster than it builds alternatives. It deepens grievances that last generations.
Removing leadership is not the same as constructing governance.
The price of this ambiguity around the future will not be paid primarily by generals or politicians. It will be paid by students in Shiraz, factory workers in Isfahan, merchants in Tabriz, families in Mashhad — by people who have already endured sanctions, repression, and economic collapse.
Iran is more than its rulers. It is a layered society held together by history and shared memory. Remove the center without a viable replacement and you do not create democracy. You create a vacuum. And in this region, vacuums rarely remain empty. They fill with militaries, militias, foreign proxies, and wars that often outlive the people who start them.
If the architects of this attack have a plan for the morning after, they have not shared it. If they believe the story ends with the fall of one man, history suggests otherwise.
February 28 may not mark the end of a regime. It may mark the beginning of a far more dangerous uncertainty — the destabilization of a nation.
The devastating American and Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians, and the death toll continues to rise.
As independent media, what we do next matters a lot. It's up to us to report the truth, demand accountability, and reckon with the consequences of U.S. militarism at this cataclysmic historical moment.
Trump may be an authoritarian, but he is not entirely invulnerable, nor are the elected officials who have given him pass after pass. We cannot let him believe for a second longer that he can get away with something this wildly illegal or recklessly dangerous without accountability.
We ask for your support as we carry out our media resistance to unchecked militarism. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation to Truthout.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the following terms:
Mahbod Seraji is an Iranian – American author. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Rooftops of Tehran, was published by NAL, an imprint of Penguin. Recognized for his global insights, Mahbod is a sought-after speaker whose work has taken him to over 50 countries.
Get the news you want, delivered to your inbox every day.
Truthout is working overtime to bring you the latest on Iran. In deep opposition to Trump's militarism, we are producing media of truth and accountability in this moment of crisis. We ask for your support. Please make a tax-deductible donation today.
The conflicting explanation comes as CENTCOM is reportedly calling for troops to “Be Relentlessly Lethal.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that the U.S. had to wage war against Iran now because Iran would act to defend itself if it came under attack — a circular explanation that appeared to pass the buck for the aggression to Israel, despite reports that Israeli leaders have been coordinating a joint attack with the U.S. for months.
“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States,” Rubio said.
Rubio suggested that Israel was going to act unilaterally and strike Iran regardless — despite abundant evidence that this isn't true — so the U.S. was forced to coordinate a strike first in order to prevent U.S. casualties.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” said Rubio. Rubio said that the purpose of the strikes is to destroy Iran's missile capability, contradicting the regime change objectives that President Donald Trump laid out at the start of the war just three days ago.
Reports say that an attack by Israel wasn't imminent without U.S. approval. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been pushing for war with Iran for decades, and in December, Netanyahu reportedly asked Trump for approval to strike Iran during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago.
Israel relies heavily on U.S. military assistance to carry out its aggression, especially in its multi-front wars and genocide in Gaza. Because of this, the U.S. has long held immense sway over Israel's actions. The U.S., on the other hand, has also been preparing for direct military action against Iran for decades, and has waged economic warfare with a huge slate of deadly sanctions against Iran for nearly 50 years, to devastating effect.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society reports that 787 Iranians have been killed in the U.S. and Israel's bombardments so far. Iranian human rights group HRANA says it has recorded 742 civilian deaths, including 176 children, and that the group is still reviewing 624 more reported deaths.
Rubio's and other similar comments seek to shirk the U.S.'s responsibility for the war, some commentators say — even as the U.S. has gathered an enormous amount of military might in the region.
“Let's not do MAGA's work for them by letting them dodge responsibility for the hell they've unleashed. No one forced Trump to do anything,” said media analyst Adam Johnson.
Indeed, on Tuesday, Trump said that Israel did not force the U.S.'s hand.
“I think [Iran] was going to attack first, and I didn't want that to happen — so if anything, I might've forced Israel's hand,” he said, despite the Trump administration telling members of Congress on Saturday that there was no evidence that Iran was going to launch a preemptive strike.
The U.S. strikes are unpopular among the public: Polling has found that most Americans oppose the strikes, and even many right-wingers are voicing outrage at the operation.
But the administration's dedication to war couldn't be more full-throated. Washington Post military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe posted a letter sent to the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops directly involved in the conflict urging them to “Be Relentlessly Lethal” in their operations.
“You are the shield of the free world, and today, you are its sharpest sword,” said the letter, sent by the head of the U.S. Central Command Brad Cooper on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that it would be even more remarkable if the U.S. did, indeed, start the war because of Israel's will.
“There was no imminent threat to the United States by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory,” Warner told reporters after a briefing on the war on Monday. Crucially, however, there is no evidence that Iran was an imminent threat to Israel, and Iran has never initiated a war against Israel.
The senator called it a “war of choice.” “The decision to put our service members in harm's way, and our bases in the region in harm's way, was entirely based upon the president's decision, not an imminent threat to America,” he said in an interview with CNN.
Indeed, Rubio, in yet more circular reasoning, said that the strikes were carried out to prevent American casualties. But Iran's strikes came only in retaliation to the U.S. and Israel's unprovoked strikes on Saturday. Reports say that an attack in Kuwait that killed six U.S. soldiers came without any sort of warning for troops to seek shelter, suggesting that there was a lack of preparation for the U.S.'s operations.
At the same time, Trump has established an openly blasé attitude toward troop deaths.
“We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen. And, sadly, there will likely be more before it ends,” Trump said on Sunday. “That's the way it is.”
The devastating American and Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians, and the death toll continues to rise.
As independent media, what we do next matters a lot. It's up to us to report the truth, demand accountability, and reckon with the consequences of U.S. militarism at this cataclysmic historical moment.
Trump may be an authoritarian, but he is not entirely invulnerable, nor are the elected officials who have given him pass after pass. We cannot let him believe for a second longer that he can get away with something this wildly illegal or recklessly dangerous without accountability.
We ask for your support as we carry out our media resistance to unchecked militarism. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation to Truthout.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the following terms:
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master's degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky.
Get the news you want, delivered to your inbox every day.
Truthout is working overtime to bring you the latest on Iran. In deep opposition to Trump's militarism, we are producing media of truth and accountability in this moment of crisis. We ask for your support. Please make a tax-deductible donation today.
While some firms caved to Trump's demands, a handful were vindicated with quick legal victories.
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Congressman Jamie Raskin said the US Department of Justice's decision Monday to abandon its legal cases against law firms that refused to capitulate to President Donald Trump should serve as “a reminder that those who fight back against authoritarianism are winning.”
The DOJ asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss its cases against law firms including Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Susman Godfrey, and Jenner & Block, which won legal challenges they filed last year after Trump issued executive orders saying they should lose government contracts and their employees should be blocked from government buildings.
Those executive orders were signed because the firms represented and employed high-profile Democrats and other opponents of Trump.
Other law firms, including Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss, angered lawyers within their ranks and the larger legal community when they signed deals with Trump; the latter firm agreed to end its internal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and provide $40 million in free legal work for the president and causes he supports.
The Trump administration's decision on Monday proved, said Raskin (D-Md.), that “there's no safety in appeasement.”
“When the Trump administration tried to bully and silence law firms by banning them from federal buildings, courthouses and contracts, a handful — like Susman Godfrey, Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale — fought back,” said Raskin. “Today, those firms forced Trump to back down and abandon his blatantly unconstitutional effort to punish lawyers, clients, and causes because Trump disagrees with their speech. Meanwhile, the firms that chose to roll over saddled their associates and partners with doing billions of dollars-worth of free legal work for Trump, his twisted administration and his MAGA allies.”
While other firms caved to Trump's demands last year, the companies that didn't quickly won legal victories, with one federal judge saying the executive order targeting Jenner & Block was “doubly violative of the Constitution” because it targeted the clients it represents as well as a lawyer it once employed — Andrew Weissman, who was part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's team that investigated Trump.
“This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn't like, thereby insulating the executive branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers,” US District Judge John Bates wrote last May. “It thus violates the Constitution and the court will enjoin its operation in full.”
Jenner & Block said Monday that “the government's decision to withdraw its appeals makes permanent the rulings of four federal judges that the executive orders targeting law firms, including Jenner & Block, were unconstitutional.”
“Our partnership is proud to have stood firm on behalf of its clients, and we look forward to continuing to serve them — guided by these bedrock values — for many decades to come,” said the firm.
Brian Hauss, deputy director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the ACLU, said the DOJ had finally admitted “what everyone knew on Day 1: There is no way to defend these unconstitutional executive orders.”
“This shameful assault on the rule of law has failed, thanks to the brave lawyers who refused to compromise their integrity,” said Hauss.
Vanita Gupta, former associate attorney general under the Biden administration, told NBC News that the law groups that struck deals with the White House had “undermined the rule of law and the legal profession in this country.”
“This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the ethical courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying and then won, and those that compromised their ethics and gained nothing,” Gupta said. “Let's hope that media companies, universities, and other organizations pay heed.”
In addition to his attacks on law firms, the president has threatened universities with funding cuts and federal investigations into what the White House views as antisemitism and extremism on campus and the colleges' efforts to promote diversity and inclusion.
At least six universities have struck deals with Trump. The University of Pennsylvania agreed to ban transgender student athletes from participating on women's sports teams and Columbia University agreed to further crack down on campus protests like those that erupted in 2024 against US support for Israel's assault on Gaza — protests that both the Biden and Trump administrations claimed were antisemitic.
Harvard sued the administration over its decision to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding and was granted a restraining order last year to protect international students whom the White House had threatened with visa restrictions.
On Monday, Raskin said the DOJ's decision to back down from the attacks on law firms was “another significant victory for the rule of law over Trump's reign of lawlessness.”
The devastating American and Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians, and the death toll continues to rise.
As independent media, what we do next matters a lot. It's up to us to report the truth, demand accountability, and reckon with the consequences of U.S. militarism at this cataclysmic historical moment.
Trump may be an authoritarian, but he is not entirely invulnerable, nor are the elected officials who have given him pass after pass. We cannot let him believe for a second longer that he can get away with something this wildly illegal or recklessly dangerous without accountability.
We ask for your support as we carry out our media resistance to unchecked militarism. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation to Truthout.
Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Get the news you want, delivered to your inbox every day.
Truthout is working overtime to bring you the latest on Iran. In deep opposition to Trump's militarism, we are producing media of truth and accountability in this moment of crisis. We ask for your support. Please make a tax-deductible donation today.
Colin Gray, the father of Georgia school shooter Colt Gray, was found guilty of murder and manslaughter charges Tuesday in a case testing the limits of who is responsible for a mass shooting.
The jury deliberated for less than two hours before convicting him on all 27 charges: Two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of involuntary manslaughter, 18 counts of cruelty to children and five counts of reckless conduct.
At the defense table, Colin Gray did not visibly react to the verdict. He was taken from the courtroom in handcuffs. He faces 10 to 30 years in prison on each murder charge and 1 to 10 years on each manslaughter charge.
Prosecutors accused Gray of buying his son an AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas present and allowing him access to that weapon and ammunition despite warnings that his son was a danger to others. Colt Gray, then 14, used that rifle to carry out a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on September 4, 2024, killing two teachers and two students and wounding nine others.
“That man and his son are both responsible for the immense suffering that occurred on September 4,” prosecutor Patricia Brooks said in closing arguments. “The blood is on their hands.”
Colin Gray's defense, though, argued he did not know about his son's violent plans and had taken steps to get him help for his mental health troubles.
Colin Gray, the father of Georgia school shooting suspect Colt Gray, took the stand to testify in his own defense at his murder trial where he became emotional saying "there was this whole other side of Colt I didn't know existed.”
The indictment alleged his actions constituted “criminal negligence” by “consciously disregarding a substantial and unjustifiable risk.”
The trial was part of a broader push to hold more people accountable for a school shooting, including the shooter's parents and responding law enforcement officers. This case bears close similarities to the trials and convictions of James and Jennifer Crumbley, whose then-15-year-old son killed four students in 2021 at his high school in Oxford, Michigan.
Colt Gray has admitted to the shooting, according to authorities. Now 16, he has pleaded not guilty to 55 felony counts, including four counts of malice murder. A trial date has not been set.
The state presented its case over about two weeks, including emotional testimony from students and teachers who survived the shooting, police interviews with Colin Gray, photos showing unsecured firearms and ammo in a bedroom closet, and testimony from the teen's mother, grandmother and sister about Colt's spiraling mental health.
Marcee Gray, the defendant's estranged wife who struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, testified their son was riddled with anxiety, easily agitated and had panic attacks. She said it was “very obvious” he needed professional help, but her husband “just didn't want to deal with it.”
Notably, the jury saw body-camera footage from May 21, 2023, when deputies with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office visited Colt and Colin Gray's home after receiving an FBI tip about an online threat to shoot up a school. Colt denied posting the threat, and law enforcement was ultimately not able to substantiate the tip. Colin Gray bought his son the AR-15-style rifle later that year.
The defense called just one witness: Colin Gray himself. He testified he bought his son the firearm and ammunition in an attempt to get him interested in the outdoors and for father-son bonding. He also said he had scheduled counseling at school for Colt's mental health issues and did not ever perceive his son as a threat.
“He's a good kid,” the father said through tears. “He wasn't perfect, nor was I, but to do something that heinous, I don't know that anybody can see that kind of evil. The Colt I knew, the relationship I had, there was this whole other side of Colt I didn't know existed.”
Yet in a tense cross-examination, he acknowledged multiple firearms were stored in a closet, unsecured and unlocked, and he said Colt sometimes kept the AR-15-style rifle in his bedroom. He struggled to explain Colt's lack of school attendance throughout his entire eighth grade school year, per school records.
Concerning texts and a case of mistaken identity. Colin Gray trial testimony reveals frantic moments before school shooting
And he admitted he was aware that his son had been physically violent, had a photo of a school shooter posted on his bedroom wall and had texted a few weeks before the attack, “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands.”
Finally, the jury watched harrowing surveillance video showing Colt Gray's movements the morning of the school shooting on September 4, 2024. School officials and resource officers had gone to intercept Colt Gray after he made several concerning comments that morning, but in a stranger-than-fiction mix-up, they confused him with another student named Kolton Gray.
Colt Gray then armed himself with the rifle – which he had brought to school hidden in his backpack – fired indiscriminately into a math class and shot several people in the hallway. Teachers Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo were killed.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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With 46% of Nepal's population under the age of 24, the election will be a test of whether their hopes and frustrations are being taken seriously
In the unassuming, dusty lanes of the Nepali city of Damak, an unprecedented political showdown is unfolding. Pitting an old political heavyweight against a rapper-turned-politician with a penchant for dark sunglasses and sharp suits, the battle is one that could completely reshape the country's politics.
As Nepal heads into its most gripping election in years, at the forefront stands Balendra Shah, the 35-year-old known simply as Balen. He rose to fame as a popular rapper whose songs criticised the ruling elite, before pivoting to politics and winning a resounding victory to become the mayor of Kathmandu in May 2022.
Yet it was after Nepal witnessed the bloodiest day of protest in recent history – when a gen-Z uprising last September against corruption and a social media ban was responded to with police brutality and live fire across the country – that Balen emerged as a nationally popular and unifying figure, particularly among a Nepali youth widely enraged at a political system they feel is broken and unrepresentative.
The protests and ensuing violence left more than 70 dead and quickly brought down the communist government of the veteran prime minister KP Sharma Oli, which had long been dogged by allegations of corruption, nepotism and elitism. Balen was the favoured choice by gen-Z leaders to step in as interim leader but he declined, opting to wait and fight it out at the ballot box.
“As mayor, Balen showed he could transform governance,” said Parbat Basnet, a 24-year-old business graduate and one of the leaders of the gen-Z uprising in Damak, which was also met with police firing.
“He could have accepted an unelected position of power after the protests but instead he chose the democratic path. He wants to defeat corrupt leaders through the ballot box so that both leaders and voters change their mindset.”
To many in Nepal – particularly the 46% of the population who are below the age of 24 – this week's polls are a crucial test of whether the frustrations and demands that fuelled the gen-Z uprising can be harnessed into sustained political change, or whether the old guard will simply reclaim their thrones.
Basnet emphasised that the aftermath of the uprising was not only felt among the young in the election. Nepal's unwieldy electoral system has entrenched an endless cycle of weak coalition governments and widespread election fatigue; the country has had 31 prime ministers in 35 years, including several who came back repeatedly.
“But the energy in this election is different,” said Basnet. “Even old voters are finally questioning leaders: where is the gas pipeline you promised? Where is the railway? Where is the development you spoke about?”
“Earlier, leaders were treated like gods. Now people are demanding accountability.”
Nowhere is this more palpable than the constituency of Jhapa-5 and its central city of Damak. For years, this region has been the stronghold of the four-time prime minister Oli and his Communist party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), known as UML.
After Oli announced that he would be rerunning for office yet again, despite his unceremonious toppling six months ago, Balen resigned as Kathmandu mayor and announced he would directly contest Oli's seat and run for prime minister.
Since then, Balen's status has soared to meteoric heights and the “Balen effect” appeared infectious across Jhapa-5. At a roadshow in Damak, huge crowds gathered on the roads, on balconies, rooftops and standing on trucks, and there was a surge to try to touch Balen as he emerged from the roof window of his campaign truck dressed in his signature black suit and shades. Women who could not reach him for selfies collapsed in tears.
Sarita Baral, 23, was among those who snapped a prized rally selfie. Prior to the gen-Z protests, she said she had little political engagement, but that had all changed. Now she wanted to fight for a country where most of the youth did not have to travel to exploitative jobs abroad, in places such as the Gulf, in order to find employment.
“Young people in Nepal are very supportive of Balen because we want change, we want job opportunities and an end to corruption,” said Baral.
“Balen is different from other politicians, doesn't make big promises and he seems brave. He could have contested from any constituency, but he chose Jhapa-5 to fight KP Oli. That itself makes us feel that he is a bold leader.”
The contrast to Oli's campaign was stark. As his campaign motorcade drove through Damak it was largely ignored. Speaking to the Guardian in rare comments from his home in the city, Oli remained largely unrepentant about the violence unleashed on gen-Z protests against his government.
“Young people were misled, they were brought out into the streets and then their movement was hijacked by criminals,” said Oli. “This was a conspiracy to topple my government. Yes it was a matter of sorrow, I was very sad that people died. But their conspiracy was greater than our preparation, they wanted to burn the country.”
After he resigned, Oli was not seen publicly for weeks, but he denied fleeing or going into hiding. “This is bad propaganda,” he said, adding that there was “no doubt” that he could win.
Oli's UML does retain strong loyalty, particularly in more rural areas of Jhapa-5 where he has won six times. There have also been concerns raised over Balen's campaigning style as well as his history of volatile social media posts and impulsive tendencies, which some fear could have geopolitical implications for a small country land-locked between China and India.
Balen has largely shunned interviews in mainstream media in favour of social media posts, where he has millions of followers, and his team did not respond to requests from the Guardian. Out on the campaign trail, his campaigning style is unconventional and his interactions with voters are largely brief, leading to accusations that he is shying away from any difficult questions. On the rare occasions Balen has addressed crowds, his remarks have lasted no more than three minutes.
His silence appeared to rile some in Jhapa. During an appearance at Gaurigunj, a small town about 20 miles from Damak, he simply smiled at the crowds and then moved on. “He walks from place to place but doesn't speak at all,” said Buddhimaya Kerung, 47. “If he wins, will it be even harder to hear him?”
It was just a few months ago, just before midnight, that Balen posted on Facebook “Fuck America, Fuck India, Fuck China” as well as other Nepali political parties. He deleted his post but his lack of transparency on his foreign policy strategy, and how he intends to manage Nepal's delicate tussle between overpowering Indian and Chinese interests remains a concern for some voters.
“Balen is not easily accessible, you cannot really ask him questions anywhere. He waves to the crowd, stands on stage, and that's it,” said Kumar Khatiwada, 62, who said he would be voting for Oli.
For the gen-Z figures backing Balen, they too acknowledged that for all the hype, he remained untested on the national stage.
“Yes, expectations are high but I am not blindly following him because he is a celebrity or a rapper” said Basnet. “If he does well, I will support him. If he fails, I will question him. We must never stop questioning our leaders.”
One was on the brink of earning dual degrees and starting a prestigious job. Another was a mixed martial arts fighter whose grit was matched by his humor and charm. Another was a teenager with a bright future ahead.
Their lives intersected at the end when they were killed in a mass shooting in Austin's bustling Sixth Street entertainment district.
“These were young people with their whole lives ahead of them,” said Buford's Backyard Beer Garden, near the site of the shootings.
Another 13 people were injured in the attack early Sunday morning, including several University of Texas at Austin students, the school's president said.
While the motive remains uncertain, investigators are digging into whether the suspect, 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, was spurred by recent US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
The anguish quickly spread across the country, as loved ones from Texas to Minnesota grieve the loss of three promising young lives. Here's what we know about the victims:
Savitha Shan was just two months away from graduating from UT Austin and already had a distinguished job lined up, according to her LinkedIn profile and a professor.
Shan was “one of our superstar students at the UT Austin McCombs school of business,” professor Russ Finney wrote on X.
The 21-year-old “was set to graduate this May, and then she was on to start her career at a big professional services firm,” Finney wrote. “She was a double major with honors. Involved in student organizations - a light in the classroom. Absolutely crushing to lose her.”
Shan's parents are now grieving the death of their only child.
“Our hearts are broken beyond words,” the family said in a statement released by UT Austin. “The loss feels unreal and profoundly unfair, and the space she once brightened now echoes with sorrow.”
While Shan was lauded for her academic achievements, it was her selfless compassion that touched the lives of those less fortunate.
She “generously gave her time through volunteer service and community involvement, always seeking to uplift those around her,” Shan's parents said.
Austin shooting suspect is being investigated for possible terror motive. Who was he?
UT Austin President Jim Davis said Shan was “a loyal friend to many.”
“It is devastating, and I know all of us are grieved by this horrible news and we will remember her,” Davis wrote in a statement.
He said several other UT Austin students were injured in the shooting, some with “very serious” injuries.
A community vigil is scheduled for Tuesday evening, the university's Students Demand Action chapter said. UT Austin's student government will also host a candlelight vigil Wednesday evening, where campus resources will be available for all students.
Ryder Harrington was a vivacious 19-year-old who made every day brighter for those around him, family and friends said.
His sister, Reagan Harrington, paid tribute to her “best friend” on Instagram.
“We understood each other in a way that no one else quite could, and everyone who knew us knew that we were partners in crime in everything,” she wrote. “I'm not sure how we're meant to work through this — all I can think about is seeing you again.”
Ryder's brother Reed Harrington said, it was unfair “that my little brother was only given 19 years on this earth.”
“Watching the man he had become, and seeing all the lives he touched, leaves me certain that this world was robbed of a great future,” Reed posted on Facebook.
In an open letter to his slain brother, Reed thanked Ryder for “being the best brother I could ever ask for.”
“I love you more than you will ever know,” he wrote. “No matter how old you get, or how much taller than me you are, you will always be my little brother.”
Death toll rises to 3 as officials probe whether Austin mass shooting motivated by Iran strikes
Ryder Harrington was a student at Texas Tech University last fall, the school said, in a statement shared with CNN affiliate KCBD. He was a member of the Beta Theta Pi at Texas Tech, the chapter said.
Harrington “had a rare ability to truly enjoy life to make people laugh, to make moments feel bigger, and to make ordinary days unforgettable,” the fraternity posted on Instagram.
“He made the world around him better simply by being in it.”
Jorge Pederson was a respected fighter and fought until the end.
The 30-year-old was mortally wounded Sunday and died Monday after he was taken off life support, CNN affiliate KVUE reported.
The MMA fighter from Minnesota was “very funny and a genuinely nice guy,” said Matthew Vogt, co-owner of Med City Fighting Championships.
Pederson wasn't just “on point in regard to fighting,” Vogt told CNN. He also brought humor and personality to the sport.
“We adored him. He made us laugh constantly,” Vogt said.
Pederson's personality was so infectious that “Immediately after meeting him, both owners and people that work our events all immediately loved him,” Med City Fighting Championships wrote on Facebook.
“He was a fantastic fighter. One of our favorite people to interact with, throughout the years of our existence,” the organization said. “Our condolences to all of his friends and family. It was an honor to have known him.”
CNN's Amanda Musa, Ed Lavandera, Elise Hammond, Jeremy Grisham and Karina Tsui contributed to this report.
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The AI company Anthropic was likely not in the public lexicon just a month ago. But it is now.
The AI company has long been known within tech circles for its popular Claude AI assistant and coding tools. But a whirlwind sequence of events in February thrust the company into the public eye more than ever. Case in point: Anthropic's Claude app dethroned OpenAI's ChatGPT to claim the top spot in Apple's iPhone App Store over the weekend.
The increased visibility comes as the company has been locked in a high-stakes public feud with the Pentagon over its safety guardrails. But even in the weeks before, updates to its Claude tool stoked concerns about AI's impact on the software industry, sending shockwaves through Wall Street. And in early February, Anthropic took its most pointed and public jab at its chief rival, OpenAI, during the Super Bowl, one of the most-watched events on television.
It's shaping up to be a formative time for the company, but its Claude assistant still has a long way to go to catch up to ChatGPT in public popularity.
What the Anthropic AI safety saga is really all about
In early February, Claude was around number 42 on the Apple App Store's list of the most popular free iPhone apps. It surged to number one by Saturday, the day after the Pentagon deemed Anthropic a “supply chain risk” and President Donald Trump ordered the federal government to stop using the company's products. ChatGPT is currently the top free app in the Google Play app store for Android devices, although Claude isn't far behind in fourth place.
Some showed support for Claude in the real world as well: Encouraging messages like “Thank you” covered the sidewalks outside of Anthropic's San Francisco offices in recent days, according to images employees posted on social media.
Other people sent OpenAI, which announced a deal with the Pentagon late Friday, a much different message. Phrases such as “do the right thing” and “please stand up for civil liberties” were scribbled on the sidewalk outside its offices, according to San Francisco news site Mission Local.
Google searches for “Anthropic” are the highest they have been since the company's founding, according to Google search trends.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shares Anthropic's concerns when it comes to working with the Pentagon
As its battle with the Pentagon ramped up last week, the company hit “an all time record for Claude sign-ups,” an Anthropic spokesperson told CNN on Monday.
Anthropic is leaning into that attention boost with a new feature unveiled Friday that simplifies importing history from other AI chatbots into Claude, the company said. It also added the ability for Claude to remember context across conversations to its free tier on Monday, rather than restricting it to paid users.
Even pop star Katy Perry seems to be a Claude convert.
The demand has been so high that Claude briefly went down on Monday morning for many users, which Anthropic attributed to “unprecedented demand for Claude over the last week.” The system was back online within a few hours.
The week when AI changed everything
Anthropic's Claude has been a Silicon Valley darling for some time and a particular favorite among software engineers who rely on its coding tools. Yet it's struggled to achieve the mainstream appeal of rival ChatGPT, which recently surpassed 900 million weekly users. And Claude still has a long way to go by some estimates.
Web analytics company Similarweb indicates that ChatGPT's website regularly hits more than 30 million weekly visitors compared to Claude's 3 million – and that includes during this past week. Statcounter, another web analytics company, also found in June that 79.8% of website referrals from chatbots came from ChatGPT, while only 0.5% came from Claude.
There's a similar gulf in app usage; daily ChatGPT usage is usually north of 20 million, whereas Claude's is less than 2 million, according to Similarweb. However, Claude's daily app downloads doubled last week compared to the week before, Similarweb found, which could lead to an increase in daily usage.
ChatGPT was a surprise hit when it launched in late 2022 and is largely credited with popularizing the shift to AI chatbots. But Claude's newfound attention and rapidly evolving enterprise tools could signal an inflection point for the company made up of OpenAI expats.
On Monday evening, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemed to acknowledge some of the blowback to his company, announcing more adjustments in their contract with the Pentagon that he said help protect guardrails around the possible use of their AI system in the mass surveillance of US citizens.
“One thing I think I did wrong: we shouldn't have rushed to get this out on Friday. The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication,” Altman wrote on X. “We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”
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Global stocks remained volatile for a second day Tuesday, moving lower as concern mounted among investors that the widening conflict in the Middle East could escalate further.
The Dow sank 723 points, or 1.47%, paring some losses after tumbling more than 1,200 points earlier. The S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq each sank 1.35%, partially recovering from declines of more than 2%.
Wall Street's fear gauge, the VIX, surged 17% and hit its highest level in three months.
Stocks in Europe and Asia were lower for a second day. Europe's benchmark Stoxx 600 sank 3.1%. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 3.06%. South Korea's Kospi index tumbled 7.24%, posting its worst day since April. Markets in South Korea were closed Monday in observance of a holiday.
“It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary,” President Donald Trump wrote Monday in a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley.
Military action in the region intensified for a fourth-straight day, with Israel saying it is conducting “simultaneous strikes in Tehran and Beirut,” targeting Iranian military sites and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah. US embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been hit in strikes amid Iranian bombardment, sources told CNN. And non-emergency US government personnel in Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have been ordered to depart due to security concerns.
Investors are bracing for additional pressure on oil prices after Iran said Monday it would attack any ship trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel off Iran's coast through which nearly 20% of global oil consumption flows. Vessel operators and maritime insurers are unwilling to risk sailing through it while fighting rages.
Israel hits Beirut and Tehran as Trump warns Iran of escalated strikes
US crude oil prices rose 7.5% Tuesday to $76.54 per barrel after rising 6.3% on Monday, and gas shot 11 cents higher to $3.11 a gallon. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, gained 7.1%, to $83.31 per barrel, its highest level since July 2024.
Safe haven assets showed mixed moves Tuesday: The 10-year Treasury yield climbed as investors sold bonds and weighed the inflationary impact of higher oil prices.
The US dollar index gained 0.9% on expectations that inflation could further delay Federal Reserve rate cuts, supporting the greenback. The dollar index is up 1.7% so far this week.
“That the current war may be ‘inflationary' is what's panicking traders today,” Thierry Wizman, global FX and rates strategist at Macquarie Group, said in a note.
“The view of a short war been upended today because of suggestions from the US administration that the war may be prosecuted for longer than a few weeks,” Wizman said.
Gold was down 3.4%, continuing a recent bout of volatility and reversing course after climbing 1.2% on Monday to reach its highest level in a month.
Natural gas futures in Europe surged 24% Tuesday after soaring 38% Monday. US natural gas futures were up 6% after climbing 3.5% Monday.
For the United States, gains in diesel prices outstripped gains in oil and natural gas: Diesel futures surged 13% Tuesday after climbing nearly 12% Monday.
This story is developing and will be updated.
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China calls it unacceptable to ‘kill leader of sovereign state', while South Africa questions ‘pre-emptive' justification
Middle East crisis – live updates
The US-Israeli war on Iran has been condemned as illegal across much of the global south, with China saying it was unacceptable to “blatantly kill the leader of a sovereign state”.
Many countries objected that negotiations between the US and Iran over its nuclear programme and missile capability were not given a chance to succeed before Washington and Israel began bombing, and analysts often saw the war in terms of a colonial-style exercise of might.
Pakistan's prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, offered condolences over the killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying that international law prohibited the targeting of heads of state. South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, questioned the “pre-emptive” justification provided for the war, saying that self-defence was only permitted in response to an armed invasion and that “there can be no military solution to fundamentally political problems”.
Brazil said that it had grave concerns, adding that “the attacks occurred amid a negotiation process between the parties, which is the only viable path to peace”.
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, deplored the attacks, which he said were “instigated” by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Oman's foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who had said on the eve of the attack that a deal was within reach, said: “I urge the US not to get sucked in further. This is not your war.” Oman downed two drones, while another crashed near its Salalah port on Tuesday, state media said.
Cuba, whose regime is under substantial pressure from Donald Trump, said: “Once again, the US and Israel threaten and seriously endanger regional and international peace, stability, and security.” Malaysia, condemning the attack, said that “disputes must be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy”.
Indonesia, one of the few countries to announce troops for Trump's Board of Peace's planned international security force for Gaza, said it “deeply regrets” the failure of the Iran negotiations – while its president offered to travel to Tehran to reopen dialogue. The Indonesian Ulema Council, an organisation of the country's Muslim clerics, urged their government to withdraw from the Board of Peace in protest.
Many other developing nations also lambasted Iran's attacks on its Gulf neighbours.
Analysts said the conflict should be understood in the context of past wars of regime change in Iraq and Libya, Israel's impunity for its war in Gaza since 2023, and colonialism – pointing to a speech of US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, last month, where he appeared to glorify past western conquests of developing nations.
Siphamandla Zondi, professor of politics at the University of Johannesburg, said that in the west, wars were viewed as having moral purpose, while in the global south, conflict was seen as evil and a failure to behave as adults. He said that the US and Israel had cajoled some countries through the Abraham Accords for diplomatic recognition of Israel, and used force against others.
“This is a war of domination and subordination, therefore it has imperialist undertones and motives,” said Zondi. “It makes the world unsafe for all of us.”
Commentators said Europe had shown double standards, stridently defending international law when it came to Trump's attempts to annex Greenland but muted in the case of this war.
Amitav Acharya, author of The Once and Future Global Order, said that in the past, the US had sought influence and legitimacy. Now, the US acted solely through coercion, even as Chinese soft power was gaining, with Beijing offering investment to developing countries. He said that Russia, too, would benefit, as Iran and other Trump foreign policy shocks took the focus away from Ukraine.
“Many countries in the global south are going to look for a coalition of powers that will stand up to the United States, as the United States is seen as so aggressive, so imperial,” said Acharya.
Some commentators emphasised that criticism of the war did not mean support of the Iranian regime.
“I condemn the Iranian theocratic regime for its dictatorial and repressive nature, but these ongoing attacks are a violation of international law,” said Heraldo Muñoz, a former foreign minister of Chile. “The motives are more of a domestic nature in the US by an American president who feels empowered by the successful military extraction of Maduro from Venezuela.”
The Trump administration sought neither the approval of the UN security council – as Washington attempted for the Iraq war in 2003 – – nor even the approval of elected representatives at home, analysts said.
Oliver Stuenkel, professor of International Relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, said that there was fear in Latin America that, emboldened by his actions in Venezuela and Iran, Trump would attempt to target Cuba.
“There is a profound sense that international law is being eroded more systematically, and that has, I think, profound consequences for many countries in the global south, which are militarily weak and vulnerable, have rich natural resources, and have long made a bet on international rules and norms,” said Stuenkel.
Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's former ambassador to the US, said the US was negotiating with Iran in bad faith, as it did last year, using talks as a smokescreen to complete preparations to attack.
“Who can trust the Trump administration now? It acts unilaterally in total defiance of international law and any norms of diplomacy,” said Lodhi. “This will come back to haunt them.”
Ukraine has liberated nine settlements in the Oleksandrivka sector along the southeastern front line, Ukraine's Air Assault Forces said on March 2 on Facebook.
The announcement follows a statement by Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who said Ukrainian forces regained more territory in February 2026 than Russia captured during the same period.
"Three additional settlements in the area have been fully cleared of Russian troops, while fighting continues for several more," the statement read.
The Air Assault Forces said their units are continuing offensive operations, pushing Russian troops out of fortified positions and cutting key supply routes.
The operation in the Oleksandrivka sector began on Jan. 29, coinciding with the introduction of new restrictions on the use of Starlink terminals by Russian forces. Under the measures, all terminals not registered in Ukraine's state system ceased operating on Ukrainian territory.
"This significantly affected the occupiers' situational awareness and complicated unit command and control at the initial stage, but the enemy did not halt its offensive operations and continued to advance," the Air Assault Forces said.
The Oleksandrivka sector of the front line lies at the junction of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.
Since the launch of the operation on Jan. 29, Russia has lost 6,537 troops, including 4,355 killed, 2,167 wounded, and 15 captured, according to the Air Assault Forces.
The 7th Rapid Response Corps of the Air Assault Forces said on March 1 that Ukrainian troops had breached Russian defensive lines in the sector, without disclosing the exact location.
Earlier, on Feb. 23, Syrskyi said Ukrainian forces had regained control of eight settlements and liberated 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) of territory from Russian occupation since late January 2026.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that Ukraine will not agree to territorial concessions, arguing that giving up land would not bring lasting peace.
Reporter
Tania Myronyshena is a reporter at the Kyiv Independent. She has written for outlets such as United24 Media, Ukrainer, Wonderzine, as well as for PEN Ukraine, a Ukrainian non-governmental organization. Before joining the Kyiv Independent, she worked as a freelance journalist with a focus on cultural narratives and human stories. Tania holds a B.A. in publishing and editing from Borys Hrinchenko Kyiv University.
"If they give them to us, we will give them interceptors. It is an equal exchange," he said.
"Russia has turned torture into state policy and uses it as a weapon," Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said.
Orban held a phone call with Putin amid an escalating spat between Kyiv and Budapest.
The committee was created by order of Lidia Izovitova, head of the association. Izovitova has faced criticism for allegedly being a protégé of pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Izovitova's tenure as head of the association ended in 2022, and she has been accused of holding her position illegally.
"Three additional settlements in the area have been fully cleared of Russian troops, while fighting continues for several more," the statement read.
Ukraine received its first payment of $1.5 billion under a new International Monetary Fund program, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on March 3.
The case was brought before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
The International Paralympic Committee barred Ukraine's Paralympic team from wearing their ceremonial uniform for the upcoming Winter Games, saying the design featuring a map of Ukraine was political, according to National Paralympic Committee President Valerii Sushkevych.
Russia launched 136 drones at Ukraine overnight, the Air Force said, reporting that Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 127 unmanned aircraft. At least five drones evaded defenses and struck three locations. Fallen debris was recorded in three locations.
The number includes 790 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on March 2 that U.S. munitions stockpiles are stronger than ever, stating in a post on Truth Social that supplies at the medium and upper-medium levels have “never been higher or better” and that the country has a “virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney participates in a meeting with the India-Canada CEO Forum in New Delhi, India on Monday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian.
The American tariff bluster is back. Last week Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative, tweaked our noses when he told the CBC that “If Canada wants to agree that we can have some level of higher tariff on them while they open up their markets to us on things like dairy and other things, then that's a helpful conversation.”
“Helpful conversations” are included in Prime Minister Mark Carney's agenda this week, but not with the Americans. Instead, the Prime Minister headed to the Pacific region on Thursday to continue trade talks with India, Australia and Japan. “Canada has what the world wants – abundant energy, critical minerals, expertise in technology, and world-class talent,” according to the government's news release promoting his trip.
Missing is the obvious. The world also wants our proximity to the United States. It differentiates Canada in the global market and is another reason why Canada needs a deal with the Trump administration on a renegotiated USMCA.
This, according to TD Economics, helps explain strong investment inflows into Canada from Britain in 2025. TD economists note that “over 40 per cent of U.K. filings were acquisitions of Canadian software companies ... suggesting U.K. investors see Canadian tech as both promising and a natural gateway to North American markets.”
Carney secures $2.6-billion uranium supply deal with India, launches talks on trade deal
The Prime Minister's Office says the trip is to “diversify trade, attract new investment, and secure new partnerships.” Mr. Carney's strategy leads the political zeitgeist in Canada, where last week a poll by Nanos Research for The Globe and Mail suggested most Canadians do not see our southern neighbour as a trustworthy ally.
Importantly, diversification efforts are bearing some fruit. Global Affairs Canada reports that this country's trade data from December, 2025, shows that “Annual goods exports to the United States fell 5.8 per cent, mitigated almost completely by a 17.2-per-cent export gain to non-U.S. markets.”
The data also shows that the “U.S. share of Canadian goods exports fell 4.2 percentage points to 71.7 per cent in 2025 compared to 2024, the lowest share since the early 1980s,” when Canada did not have a free-trade deal with the U.S. Some of that decline, however, has come in high value-add manufactured goods, shedding jobs associated with them. Auto production, for instance, dropped by 5.4 per cent in 2025 and is likely to continue to decline in 2026.
Nevertheless, more trade deals between Canada and countries such as India, Japan and Australia add ammunition to use in this country's battle against aggressive U.S. economic pressure. Mr. Carney's trip isn't just about diversification – it helps circle the wagons to protect access to U.S. markets the USMCA deal provides, a deal that will be renegotiated this year.
A recent academic paper by two economists, one from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the other from Southern Methodist University, tracks the history of U.S. tariffs and quantifies strategic trade-offs. It makes clear the Trump administration's primary objective in the USMCA renegotiation.
Anand declines comment on links between Indian consulate and Nijjar slaying
They argue President Donald Trump and his trade representatives bluff with “steeper tariff increases as the fallback in failed negotiations.” But the objective is securing “agreements on tariffs at or above the 10-per-cent floor – without provoking retaliation – using carve-outs and exemptions to facilitate agreement.”
Surrender is what success looks like for the Trump administration. In such a scenario, the economists say, the U.S. “could raise fiscal revenue while delivering modest but positive welfare gains for U.S. consumers.”
If Canada retaliates with its own tariffs, point out the economists, the gains the Trump administration seeks are eliminated, even if the U.S. government fully rebated the tariffs to American households. This reinforces former prime minister (and economist) Stephen Harper's call last month for Canada to hit back with its own tariffs on U.S. goods.
Canada is now heading into the major battle in the trade war with the U.S. that Mr. Trump started, and there is one way to win: Deny the Trump administration's efforts to impose tariffs on Canada that go unanswered, making Canada a less attractive destination for foreign investment, while sending jobs south.
Retaliatory tariffs will squeeze Canadian pocketbooks even harder at a time of an affordability crisis. Jobs will be lost. Hiring will stall. New trading partners will offer some relief if not moral support. But the fight must be fought.
Mr. Carney's foreign trips rallying new trade allies to our side signals he is preparing to fight that battle, as he must.
It will be the fight of our lives. Godspeed.
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Iranian drones hit US embassy in Riyadh as Israel bombs Tehran and sends troops into southern Lebanon
US-Israel war on Iran – live updates
Iran continued its bombardment the Gulf and Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for further Israeli-US airstrikes, as Donald Trump said it was too late for dialogue with Tehran.
“Their air defense, Air Force, Navy and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!',” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform, rejecting what he claimed was an attempt by Tehran to restart negotiations. He said the US was prepared “to go far longer” than a four to five-week war against Iran.
Trump's comment came hours after Iranian drones hit the US embassy in Riyadh, causing a minor fire and prompting the diplomatic mission to tell Americans to distance themselves from the compound. The attack followed strike on the US embassy in Kuwait as Iran continued to target US bases, facilities and personnel in Arab Gulf states.
Israel announced an “extensive” wave of airstrikes in Tehran and issued evacuation orders to Iranians located around an airport in Karaj, which it said it would soon strike.
The conflict continued to widen across the Middle East, with hundreds of people killed across the region, the vast majority in Iran.
Israel said ground troops had entered in southern Lebanon as part of what it said was a cautionary move to protect residents of northern Israel. In response, the deputy head of Hezbollah's political council, Mahmoud Qamati, declared an “open war” with Israel.
The pro-Iran group continued to target Israel, saying it had launched two missile salvoes overnight towards military bases in northern Israel, and shelled a military base on Tuesday morning. Israel caried out strikes and issued evacuation orders for villages in southern Lebanon, virtually emptying out the country south of the Litani River and turning the southern suburbs of Beirut into a ghost town.
On Tuesday morning, the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said he had instructed Israeli soldiers to “hold and advance” into areas of south Lebanon to prevent further Hezbollah fire on northern Israel. It was the first acknowledgment that Israel's campaign against Hezbollah would not just be aerial but would involve boots on the ground.
Meanwhile, US and Israel continued their strikes against Iran, with the US claiming it had destroyed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command and control facilities.
What started as a war between Iran on one side and the US and Israel on the other has turned into a regional conflict with dizzying speed, with new fronts being opened on each day.
The US and Israeli air war against Iran began on Saturday with attacks against Tehran, killing the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and prompting Iranian retaliation against Israel and missile attacks at Arab nations with US bases across the region. The fighting expanded rapidly to include at least nine countries and various pro-Iran groups.
On Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the war against Iran could take “some time”, saying that while it would not “take years”, it could drag on. “It's not an endless war,” he told Fox News.
Trump, who has issued a series of contradicting statements regarding the length of the war, said on Monday that it could take “far longer” than the initially planned month.
US officials including the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, also flirted publicly with the idea of US boots on the ground in Iran, an anathema to analysts, who pointed to the country's vast, mountainous geography as an obstacle to any troop presence.
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the “hardest hits are yet to come”, as administration officials said their plan for the Iran campaign had so far gone better than expected.
US officials offered varying justifications for why they launched the war in Iran, with Rubio claiming the US's hand was forced by Israel. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” he said.
Trump, for his part, has at times said the goal was regime change in Iran, and at other times said he was solely trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and curb its ballistic missile programme. Iran has consistently denied it is developing nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu was more plain in his objectives, saying the US and Israel were “creating the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple their government. Israeli analysts suggested the Iran campaign came at a good time for Netanyahu and would boost flagging poll numbers before legislative elections.
In Iran, explosions were heard overnight across the country and particularly in the capital as the US-Israeli campaign continued. Estimates of people killed in the strikes ranged from 787 people to 1,500, including 165 people in a strike on a girls' elementary school in southern Iran.
Iran continued to shoot bursts of ballistic missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted. A few missiles broke through the country's sophisticated missile defence system, killing 11 people in Israel.
Israeli authorities said 12 people had been injured in three Iranian missile attacks on southern Israel, some of which contained cluster munitions – a weapon banned by most countries around the world.
The US acknowledged the deaths of six soldiers, seemingly killed while stationed in Kuwait.
Iran's strikes against energy infrastructure in the Gulf have paralysed the oil-rich Gulf states, with Qatar announcing a halt to its largest liquid natural gas production facility, while Saudi Arabia ceased operations at its Ras Tanura oil refinery.
Global energy prices jumped further after Iran closed the strait of Hormuz, a global chokepoint for hydrocarbons, hitting several ships who attempted to cross.
“The strait of Hormuz is closed,” said Brig Gen Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards, threatening to bomb ships that tried to cross. “Don't come to this region.”
In Lebanon, Israel signalled that its campaign against Hezbollah could also be a long one. Similar to the war in Lebanon 18 months before, Israel steadily emptied out the south of the country through evacuation warnings, then filled in the areas close to the border with Israeli troops.
It was unclear, however, what resistance Hezbollah could offer this time, as Israel has severely degraded the group's capabilities through two years of daily airstrikes. Over the last two days, Israel has announced the killing of senior leaders in the group, including Hussein Makled, Hezbollah's intelligence chief.
It also targeted the logistical parts of the Lebanese armed group, including the Hezbollah-run bank al-Qard al-Hassan, members of its political bureau, and struck a building belonging to its media channel al-Manar on Tuesday morning. Rights groups have said that it is illegal to attack non-military targets, even if they are affiliated with the group.
So far Israeli airstrikes have killed 52 people and displaced at least 29,000 in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has continued to attack Israel, announcing that it struck the Ramat David and Meron airbases in northern Israel with one-way drones, and that it had targeted a base in the Golan Heights with rockets.
Domestically, Hezbollah has come under fire for pulling Lebanon into a war with Israel, in violation of the government's stated neutrality. On Monday, Lebanon's government took the unprecedented step of banning Hezbollah's military and security activity. The government instructed the judiciary to arrest the individuals responsible for firing rockets at Israel.
By Sergey Poletaev, information analyst and publicist, co-founder and editor of the Vatfor project.
By Sergey Poletaev, information analyst and publicist, co-founder and editor of the Vatfor project.
The strategy of the US-Israeli attack on Iran apparently mirrors America's earlier military operation in Venezuela: first eliminating the country's leadership (through abduction in the case of Venezuela and direct assassination in the case of Iran) and then effectively achieving the ‘surrender' of the new regime, which is forced to accept the terms set by the attackers.
It's uncertain how long Iran can hold out, but it seems this plan has failed: despite Washington's hints, Iran's new leadership refuses to engage in negotiations with the US.
Iran has withstood the initial blow and has an opportunity to shift the conflict into the realm of a war of attrition in the air and at sea.
In addition to internal readiness, external support will be crucial for Iran – particularly support from China and Russia. There have been no public statements in this regard, but it looks like something is happening behind the scenes. For example, at the end of January, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Larijani visited Moscow and held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While Russia might supply Iran with air defense systems, cruise and ballistic missiles, and Geran drones (which would be ironic, considering that they were designed in Iran), China could potentially turn Iran into its proxy, significantly undermining US interests. The critical question remains whether Beijing and Tehran are ready for such a partnership.
There are three main potential scenarios for what may happen next in Iran. Below, we'll examine them and consider how they may impact another major conflict – the war in Ukraine.
While the US failed to deliver a ‘knockout blow' to Iran in the first days, that doesn't mean all is well in Tehran. It's possible that within a week or two, Iran's new leadership might backtrack and seek negotiations with the US.
For Russia, this is an undesirable outcome, particularly in terms of its international image. Western propaganda is weaving the latest events into a cohesive narrative, demonstrating how first Syria, then Venezuela, and now Iran have been attacked and implying that Russia is unable to protect its allies.
That's not really true. Out of this list, Syria is the only country that may be considered Russia's ally, and Moscow's influence in Syria has even strengthened following the change in leadership there. As for Venezuela, it was dependent on China; and Russia's relationship with Iran, despite the latter's staunch opposition to the US, has always been complex and challenging.
Either way, Iran's possible defeat would likely boost Ukraine's morale. But even more importantly, it would bolster US confidence. With newfound enthusiasm, Washington might believe it can take on any challenge. This could potentially lead to a hard military confrontation – not necessarily directly with Moscow, but possibly with one of its military allies, like North Korea or even Belarus.
A swift resolution to the crisis in Iran could also lead to a drop in oil prices, which would not be profitable for Russia.
According to Ali Larijani, Iran has adopted a decentralized approach to military and civilian governance. This means that each military district and even individual brigades can operate independently, without orders or communication from central command.
For the US, this is bad news, since achieving victory would require the destruction of every missile launch site and missile defense system in Iran.
The US faces a significant challenge, since its capacity to sustain a high-intensity conflict over an extended period is limited. After about a month, precision missile supplies could be depleted, and replenishing them might take years. Air defense systems are likely to run out of missiles even sooner since they are currently operating at full capacity not only in Israel but in all the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
This situation risks dragging the US into a drawn-out conflict with an uncertain outcome, and would likely require support from NATO allies.
This scenario could play out in Moscow's favor. A prolonged conflict would not only draw attention away from Ukraine, but would also redirect crucial resources like missile defense systems to the Persian Gulf. Support for Ukraine, which is already quite weak, could dwindle to the level of mere empty threats.
In case of an extended conflict in the Persian Gulf, oil prices will remain high for a long time, positioning Russia as one of the world's leading oil suppliers.
A month is a rough estimate based on US President Donald Trump's comments, but such a scenario appears increasingly plausible: if the US exhausts its resources but fails to achieve regime change, Washington may have no choice but to scale back operations and pursue some form of ceasefire agreement with Tehran.
Iran might be open to such a deal. After all, extensive airstrikes cause significant damage to the country, and a protracted war could destabilize the already shaky regime.
One might call such an outcome a stalemate (though Trump would undoubtedly declare it a resounding victory), but in reality, it would be a defeat for both the US and Israel. Just last Saturday, Trump boasted about the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and talked about the person he would appoint as Iran's new leader.
This would deal a serious blow to Trump's ‘testosterone-fueled' foreign policy and, coupled with the Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs, could potentially signal its end.
For Russia, such an outcome could be advantageous. Four years ago, Moscow demonstrated the limits of the Biden administration, and now Tehran has the opportunity to reveal the limits of the Trump administration.
As for Ukraine, it clings to hope. The authorities of this nation, which is experiencing one of the worst demographic crises in the world, continue to fight just because they have convinced themselves and their remaining population that if they hold out a little longer, Russia will stumble and President Vladimir Putin will retreat.
Even aside from the situation in Iran, unrest is brewing in Kiev. The number of people who want to keep fighting against Russia at all costs is decreasing and is now limited to Vladimir Zelensky's inner circle and those who directly fulfill the orders of European nations.
A stalemate in Iran – which would essentially spell a defeat for the US – could hit Ukraine's dwindling hopes even more than a prolonged conflict in the Persian Gulf. Even the most stubborn supporters of Ukraine will understand that their ‘white lord' can't protect them. If the US can't overpower Iran, it certainly won't be able to stop Russia.
Another obvious consequence of the ongoing war is the depletion of missile supplies and missile defense systems. This too is a nightmare for Ukraine.
***
The coming days will be decisive for Iran. Time is on the side of the Islamic Republic: each passing day and every successful strike against US military bases increases the likelihood that Trump will back down.
The stakes are high: if Washington fails to bring down the Islamic Republic and effect regime change in Tehran, the consequences will be severe – not only for the US but also for Ukraine, which places all its hopes on Washington.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on March 2 that U.S. munitions stockpiles are stronger than ever, stating in a post on Truth Social that supplies at the medium and upper-medium levels have “never been higher or better” and that the country has a “virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.”
Trump added that wars can be fought “forever” using existing reserves, which he claimed are superior to other countries' arsenals, though he acknowledged that at the highest end, stockpiles are “not where we want to be.”
His remarks come as the United States and Israel continue joint military operations against Iran under Operation Epic Fury, following large-scale strikes on Iranian military and nuclear-linked infrastructure.
Tehran has retaliated with missile and drone attacks targeting Israel and U.S. assets in the region, raising fears of a broader regional escalation.
In the same post, Trump sharply criticized former President Joe Biden, accusing him of giving away “Hundreds of Billions of Dollars worth” of high-end weaponry to Ukraine and failing to replenish U.S. reserves.
Referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “P.T. Barnum (Zelenskyy!),” Trump claimed Biden “didn't bother to replace” the advanced systems that were transferred.
Trump said he rebuilt the military during his first term and is continuing to strengthen it, concluding that “The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!!”
As a result of the U.S.-Israeli operation so far, the joint forces have killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and claim to have also killed dozens of other Iranian top officials.
Trump's stated goal is to destroy Iran's missile and military capabilities, prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, and topple the hardline regime.
North American news editor
Sonya Bandouil is a North American news editor for The Kyiv Independent. She previously worked in the fields of cybersecurity and translating, and she also edited for various journals in NYC.
Sonya has a Master's degree in Global Affairs from New York University, and a Bachelor's degree in Music from the University of Houston, in Texas.
"Russia has turned torture into state policy and uses it as a weapon," Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said.
Orban held a phone call with Putin amid an escalating spat between Kyiv and Budapest.
The committee was created by order of Lidia Izovitova, head of the association. Izovitova has faced criticism for allegedly being a protégé of pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Izovitova's tenure as head of the association ended in 2022, and she has been accused of holding her position illegally.
"Three additional settlements in the area have been fully cleared of Russian troops, while fighting continues for several more," the statement read.
Ukraine received its first payment of $1.5 billion under a new International Monetary Fund program, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on March 3.
The case was brought before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
The International Paralympic Committee barred Ukraine's Paralympic team from wearing their ceremonial uniform for the upcoming Winter Games, saying the design featuring a map of Ukraine was political, according to National Paralympic Committee President Valerii Sushkevych.
Russia launched 136 drones at Ukraine overnight, the Air Force said, reporting that Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 127 unmanned aircraft. At least five drones evaded defenses and struck three locations. Fallen debris was recorded in three locations.
The number includes 790 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on March 2 that U.S. munitions stockpiles are stronger than ever, stating in a post on Truth Social that supplies at the medium and upper-medium levels have “never been higher or better” and that the country has a “virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.”
Speaking at the L'Île Longue naval base in northwestern France — home to the country's ballistic missile submarines — Macron argued that Europe must assume a more autonomous role in its own defense amid Russia's war against Ukraine and shifting U.S. strategic priorities.
Ukrainians in Dubai and elsewhere in the UAE said Middle East airspace closures and security fears have revived the anxieties they fled at home, leaving some stranded as Kyiv seeks assurances for their protection.
Pol
An exclusive interview on RT's Sanchez Effect.
Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, joins us from Tehran under the missile barrage – with the sound of drones audible throughout the conversation. He describes the assassination of the Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a “heinous crime.” He said it's not just a tragedy for Iran, but also for millions of Muslims around the world – which will trigger incidents similar to the shooting that took place in a Texas bar where a gunman killed at least two and wounded 14. Gharibabadi mocks the Israeli and US pretexts for the attack. For decades, they claimed that Iran was about to obtain a nuclear bomb, which the deputy foreign minister dismissed as “Netanyahu's fantasies,” as Iran has only sought a peaceful nuclear program. He also rejects the notion Iran is a threat to the US, adding that it never threatened US assets in the region, but was itself surrounded by US military assets. Watch the full interview on RT International.
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The International Paralympic Committee barred Ukraine's Paralympic team from wearing their ceremonial uniform for the upcoming Winter Games, saying the design featuring a map of Ukraine was political, according to Ukraine's National Paralympic Committee President Valerii Sushkevych.
The main design feature was a map of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, including all temporarily occupied territories.
"The International Paralympic Committee said: 'No, no, no – this will not do!' They claimed the kit was political," Sushkevych said in an interview with Ukrinform on March 2.
Sushkevych described the uniform as beautiful and symbolic, adding that it "very clearly shouted that Ukraine exists in the world and in Europe with all its territories, without Russian occupation."
The uniform was designed by Ukrainian fashion designer Viktor Anisimov, who also created the Ukrainian team's 2024 summer Paralympics uniforms.
The Winter Paralympic Games will take place in Milan from March 5 to 16, with Ukraine represented by 35 participants competing in four sports.
Six athletes from Russia and four from Belarus will compete under their national flags at the upcoming games, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) confirmed in a statement to multiple media outlets on Feb. 17.
It will mark the first time the Russian flag has flown at the Paralympics since the 2014 Games in Sochi.
At the Olympic Games, which concluded on Feb. 22, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) disqualified Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych over his intention to compete wearing a helmet honoring athletes who died in the Russian war against Ukraine.
The IOC claimed that Heraskevych had allegedly violated its guidelines on athlete expressions on the field of play. The athlete disputes the decision, arguing that his tribute did not breach the rules. At the same time, several other foreign athletes who paid tribute to loved ones during the Games were not sanctioned.
"This is the price of our dignity," Heraskevych wrote on X after the IOC's announcement of his disqualification. Heraskevych was later awarded the Order of Freedom by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The ruling followed earlier interventions by organizers involving other Ukrainian competitors. Freestyle skier Kateryna Kotsar was required to remove the slogan "Be Brave Like Ukrainians" from her helmet, while short track speed skater Oleh Handei had to alter equipment displaying a line from a poem by Ukrainian writer Lina Kostenko.
Heraskevych appealed the disqualification to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which upheld the IOC's decision. His legal team is now preparing to challenge the ruling in other courts.
North American news editor
Sonya Bandouil is a North American news editor for The Kyiv Independent. She previously worked in the fields of cybersecurity and translating, and she also edited for various journals in NYC.
Sonya has a Master's degree in Global Affairs from New York University, and a Bachelor's degree in Music from the University of Houston, in Texas.
"Russia has turned torture into state policy and uses it as a weapon," Ukraine's Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said.
Orban held a phone call with Putin amid an escalating spat between Kyiv and Budapest.
The committee was created by order of Lidia Izovitova, head of the association. Izovitova has faced criticism for allegedly being a protégé of pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Izovitova's tenure as head of the association ended in 2022, and she has been accused of holding her position illegally.
"Three additional settlements in the area have been fully cleared of Russian troops, while fighting continues for several more," the statement read.
Ukraine received its first payment of $1.5 billion under a new International Monetary Fund program, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on March 3.
The case was brought before the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
The International Paralympic Committee barred Ukraine's Paralympic team from wearing their ceremonial uniform for the upcoming Winter Games, saying the design featuring a map of Ukraine was political, according to National Paralympic Committee President Valerii Sushkevych.
Russia launched 136 drones at Ukraine overnight, the Air Force said, reporting that Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 127 unmanned aircraft. At least five drones evaded defenses and struck three locations. Fallen debris was recorded in three locations.
The number includes 790 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on March 2 that U.S. munitions stockpiles are stronger than ever, stating in a post on Truth Social that supplies at the medium and upper-medium levels have “never been higher or better” and that the country has a “virtually unlimited supply of these weapons.”
Speaking at the L'Île Longue naval base in northwestern France — home to the country's ballistic missile submarines — Macron argued that Europe must assume a more autonomous role in its own defense amid Russia's war against Ukraine and shifting U.S. strategic priorities.
Ukrainians in Dubai and elsewhere in the UAE said Middle East airspace closures and security fears have revived the anxieties they fled at home, leaving some stranded as Kyiv seeks assurances for their protection.
Pol
When Western allies reacted to the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, Beijing's response was measured.
The Chinese foreign ministry statement came seven hours after the operation began and contained just over 80 words, with the spokesperson saying Beijing is “highly concerned” while calling for “an immediate stop to the military actions.”
TEL AVIV, March 3. /TASS/. The Israeli Air Force delivered a series of strikes and destroyed the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) center in Tehran, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Tuesday.
"A short while ago, the Israeli Air Force struck and dismantled the Iranian… regime's communications center," the statement reads.
"Over the years, the Iranian Broadcasting Authority called for the destruction of the State of Israel and for the use of nuclear weapons," the statement added.
The Iranian broadcaster reported earlier in the day that Israel and the United States delivered two strikes on buildings located on the territory of the headquarters of the Iranian Broadcasting Authority in Tehran.
There were no visible disruptions during live air of the broadcaster and no information provided regarding the damage caused by the strikes at the moment of the report.
The US and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, have been hit. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, elite units of the Iranian Armed Forces) announced a large-scale retaliatory operation. There were reports of missiles and drones being launched from Iran, and air-raid alert sirens sounded in the Tel Aviv area. According to the Mehr news agency, US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia were also targeted. Regional countries are closing their airspace, and airlines are suspending flights.
A gas station in Toronto in April, 2024. Canadians could pay between three and six cents more per litre at the pump as early as Wednesday, analysts say.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
From shuttered airports to rising oil prices and volatile stock markets, the global economy is feeling ripple effects after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, and Iran retaliated on targets across the Middle East.
Here are the main ways the recent military conflict – and the risk of a prolonged standoff – could affect Canadian consumers and investors.
Travel
The strikes have severely disrupted travel through Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, as well as in Doha, Qatar. The three cities are global transit hubs that connect Asia, Europe, Africa and North America.
As of Monday evening local time, UAE airports had resumed a limited number of flights to take stranded passengers to their destinations, while Qatar's airspace remained closed.
Opinion: Will Iran ever be free?
Major airlines, including Air Canada, have adopted flexible policies that allow passengers who are set to travel through airports affected by the conflict to rebook their flights at no cost or obtain refunds within certain dates.
Air Canada also said in a Monday post to X that it had cancelled flights from Canada to Israel and Dubai until March 22, with service resuming the day after.
The conflict has prompted Ottawa to issue what's known as Level 4 advisories urging Canadians not to travel to countries including Iran, Israel, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. The federal government is also warning visitors to avoid non-essential travel – a Level 3 advisory – to destinations including Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Travellers with trip cancellation or interruption insurance are typically eligible to file claims under those policies when Ottawa issues a Level 3 advisory or higher.
Gas prices
The war in Iran could push up gas prices, and fast. The conflict has sent oil prices surging, with Brent crude, a global benchmark for the commodity, rising as much as 13 per cent to US$82.37 a barrel in the futures market before closing up 6.7 per cent at US$77.74 a barrel.
Canadians could pay between three and six cents more per litre at the pump as early as Wednesday this week, analysts told The Globe and Mail.
Oil prices jumped on Monday as the U.S., Israel and Iran stepped up their conflict in the Middle East, with attacks damaging tankers and disrupting shipments from the key producing region.
Reuters
The saving grace for motorists is that gasoline prices have been decreasing since last spring in Canada, a decline that reflected both Ottawa nixing the consumer carbon levy and an oil price drop in early April because of uncertainty around U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs.
It also helps that the world currently has large stockpiles of oil stored at sea on tankers in what's called “floating storage.” That floating inventory could provide a buffer against supply disruptions, said Brooke Thackray, research analyst at Global X.
The stock market
Markets had a relatively muted response to the news out of the Middle East on Monday, with both the S&P/TSX Composite Index and the S&P 500 bouncing back from early losses over the course of the day, and the Canadian index closing at a record-high.
The jump in oil prices has so far buoyed energy stocks, providing a silver lining for Canadian investors.
“As long as there's conflict going on and it doesn't look like there's a resolution ... I think the Canadian energy sector will be the winner here,” said Mr. Thackray.
But Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at IG Wealth Management, cautioned investors against making rash decisions, given the high degree of uncertainty over how the conflict will evolve.
“Embrace your diversified portfolio and ride it out.”
The loonie
Currency markets also served up a subdued response. While oil-price upswings often push the value of the loonie higher, on Monday that effect was offset by markets' rush toward safe havens, including the U.S. dollar. Overall, the Canadian dollar weakened only slightly against the greenback, hovering around 73 cents US.
However, there was a silver lining here, too. Concerns about the impact of higher oil prices hit the currencies of countries that depend heavily on energy imports, including the euro and the yen. The loonie appreciated against both on Monday.
Inflation
Oil prices that remain elevated for a protracted period could push inflation back up, economists are warning.
The good news is that Canada, as an energy exporter, is relatively sheltered from these effects. Higher oil prices also cause the loonie to appreciate, which helps offset the impact of higher prices on imported goods.
But a drawn-out conflict could also drive up the price of fertilizer, analysts say.
Opinion: Trump offers Iran militarism, authoritarianism and corruption instead of a coherent plan
A range of plant food, including 45 per cent of global sulphur exports and 35 per cent of urea shipments transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a key global maritime thoroughfare between Iran and Oman.
Pricier fertilizer, in turn, could put renewed upward pressure on food prices, which have remained a sore point for Canadian shoppers, even as other types of inflation have cooled.
Interest rates
Worries about inflation have prompted investors to push up bond yields and pare back expectations that the Bank of Canada will lower its trendsetting policy rate this year.
This is bad news for anyone who was hoping for declines in either fixed mortgage rates, which are influenced by bond yields, or variable ones, which tend to follow movements in the central bank's rate.
In a post to X, Ron Butler, founder of Toronto-based Butler Mortgage, cautioned mortgage shoppers against making decisions based on short-term bond-market gyrations linked to geopolitical events.
Instead, borrowers should focus on securing a rate hold, he wrote. With a mortgage pre-approval, lenders often guarantee a mortgage rate for up to 120 days, which protects borrowers from the risk of rising costs.
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Meric Greenbaum works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) — A sell-off for stocks is slamming into Wall Street Tuesday after wrapping around the world, as oil prices leap even higher with worries that the widening war with Iran may do more sustained damage to the economy than feared.
The S&P 500 dropped 1.2% in afternoon trading after falling as much as 2.5% in the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 540 points, or 1.1%, as of 1:01 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.4% lower.
It was just a day ago that U.S. stocks opened with sharp losses, only to recover all of them and end the day with slight gains. But that was with the caveat that oil prices did not jump too high, like to more than $100 per barrel.
On Tuesday, oil prices soared again and raised more alarms. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, leaped another 6.2% to $82.57. That's up from close to $70 less than a week ago. A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude, meanwhile, rose 6.3% to $75.70.
The AP's Seth Sutel reports on the impact the Iran war is having on Wall Street.
Oil prices made the jump as Iran struck the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, part of a widening of targets that also includes areas critical to the world's oil and natural gas production. Worries are particularly high about the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran, a narrow passageway where roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes. That makes it crucial for the global flow of crude.
“The Strait of Hormuz is closed,” declared Iranian Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, vowing that any ships that passed through it would be set on fire.
Making things uncertain for markets are rising questions about how long this war may continue.
A major attack by the United States and Israel has already killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but President Donald Trump said late Monday night on his social media network, “Wars can be fought ‘forever,' and very successfully” with the supply of munitions that the United States possesses.
Some professional investors said again Tuesday that this doesn't look like the beginning of a long-term down market and that stocks could rebound if the war doesn't last that long, though they acknowledge it could take a while for that to become clear.
In the meantime, the jump for oil prices will worsen inflation, which still remains high, and put more pressure on U.S. households and businesses by raising bills for gasoline and to ship products. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. jumped 11 cents overnight to about $3.11, according to data from motor club AAA.
That has the damage in stock markets so far centering on companies and countries that use a lot of oil, natural gas and petroleum-based fuels.
In South Korea, a big energy importer, the Kospi stock index plunged 7.2% for its worst day since two summers ago as markets reopened after a holiday on Monday. It had been setting records recently.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 dropped 3.1%, even as analysts say Japan has a sizable stockpile lasting more than 200 days. In Europe, where prices for natural gas have soared because of the war, Germany's DAX lost 3.4%.
On Wall Street, stocks of airlines continued to sink on worries about rising fuel bills. The war has also led to canceled flights and stranded passengers.
American Airlines sank 2.1%, and United Airlines fell 1.7%.
Wall Street's losses were widespread, and about 85% of the stocks within the S&P 500 dropped. Unlike a day before, influential Big Tech stocks weren't able to prop up indexes, and Nvidia fell 1.5%.
Among the few winners on Wall Street was Target, which rose 5.9% after the retailer reported a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose with worries about inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose above 4.10% in the morning before pulling back to 4.06%. That's up from 4.05% late Monday and from just 3.97% on Friday.
Higher yields can make it more expensive for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money, affecting everything from mortgages to bond issuances. They also put downward pressure on prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments.
When Treasurys are paying more in interest, they can also undercut the price of gold, which pays its investors nothing. Gold fell 4.1% Tuesday to $5,092.60 per ounce, halting a strong run that had taken it above $5,300 as investors looked for safer places to park their money.
High inflation could also tie the Federal Reserve's hands and keep it from cutting interest rates. The Fed lowered rates several times last year and indicated more cuts were to come in 2026. That would help boost the economy and job market, but lower rates can also worsen inflation.
Traders are now pushing back their forecasts further into the summer for when the Fed could resume cutting rates, according to data from CME Group. That's even though Trump has been calling for Fed officials in angry and personal terms to cut rates now.
___
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
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The father of the accused Apalachee High School shooting suspect was convicted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday.
The father of a Georgia high school shooting suspect was convicted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday.
Colin Gray, the father of accused Apalachee High School mass shooter Colt Gray, has been found guilty by a jury in Barrow County.
Colt Gray allegedly killed two 14-year-old students and two teachers during the September 2024 shooting in Winder.
Colin Gray looks down and to the side as the guilty verdict is read in Barrow County Superior Court on March 3, 2026. Gray was later handcuffed and led from the courtroom after being convicted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. (WAGA)
The father was found guilty on all counts and is facing up to 180 years in prison. He will be sentenced at a later date.
Gray was motionless, looking down and to the side while seated at the defense table as the guilty verdict was read. Minutes later, deputies placed him in handcuffs and led him out of the courtroom.
Under Georgia law, second-degree murder involves causing the death of a child while committing the crime of cruelty to children. Jurors convicted Gray of second-degree murder in the deaths of the two students and involuntary manslaughter in the killings of the two teachers.
In addition, jurors convicted him of multiple counts of cruelty to children in the second degree and reckless conduct. Colin Gray had pleaded not guilty to all counts.
FORMER UVALDE SCHOOL OFFICER SAYS HE DOESN'T REGRET ACTIONS AFTER NOT GUILTY VERDICT
A memorial is seen at Apalachee High School after the school shooting, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Prosecutors successfully argued that Gray provided his son with the AR-15-style rifle used in the attack as a Christmas gift, continued buying him ammunition, despite being aware of his mental health deterioration and prior school shooting threats investigated by law enforcement.
The prosecution told jurors that despite those concerns, Gray did not pursue inpatient treatment for his son.
Colt Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, was indicted on 55 counts, including murder. He has pleaded not guilty, and a judge has set a status hearing in his case for mid-March.
He is accused of killing two 14-year-old students — Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo — and two teachers, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. He will be sentenced at a later date.
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Colin Gray, 54, the father of Apalachee High School shooter Colt Gray, 14, enters the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance, on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Investigators said Colt Gray brought a semiautomatic rifle to school in his backpack, left class and opened fire in a classroom and hallways. Two school resource officers took him into custody, authorities said.
The case is among a growing number nationwide in which prosecutors are seeking to hold parents criminally responsible in deadly school shootings.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday defended the decision to go to war with Iran alongside the United States.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
People walk past buildings damaged during a strike on a police station during ongoing, joint U.S.-Israeli military attacks in Tehran, Iran, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Plumes of smoke from two simultaneous strikes rise over Tehran, Iran, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohsen Ganji)
Throughout his political career, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has steered his country along two pillars of foreign policy: an ironclad partnership with the United States and a relentless diplomatic and covert battle against the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Now, with Israel and the U.S. in a joint war against Iran's leadership, those two strategic paths risk clashing with each other. By enlisting the U.S. in what he views as Israel's existential battle against Iran, Netanyahu is taking a gamble that could open up the relationship to the strain of a war with far-reaching consequences.
To be sure, persuading U.S. President Donald Trump to join the war was a coup for Netanyahu and highlights the strong ties between the two leaders. If they are successful, they could quickly realize their shared goal of toppling the Iranian government and spare the region a protracted conflict.
But if the war drags on, the two allies' ties could again be tested.
“A large part of the American public will view it as the Israeli tail wagging the American dog and that it is dragging the United States to a war in the Middle East that isn't theirs,” said Ofer Shelah, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based think tank. The drop in public support that might unleash “will be very harmful for Israel in the medium and long term,” he said.
But, he added, in a nod to the Israeli leader's political ambitions: “Netanyahu is not interested in the medium and long term.”
For Netanyahu, successfully persuading Trump to strike Iran together is the apex of decades of proximity between the Israeli leader and Washington. Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, speaks flawless English after having spent part of his youth in the U.S. and has always portrayed himself as Israel's bridge to America.
Although he boasts about his tight relationships with multiple American presidents and members of Congress, Netanyahu over the past two years has seen support for Israel among the American public drop. According to Gallup polling, American sympathies in the Middle East have shifted dramatically toward the Palestinians.
That shift in sentiment has been driven in large part by Democrats. But some Republicans, and even Trump's own backers, have been more outspoken against the diplomatic and financial support the U.S. has continued to grant Israel throughout the past two and a half years, when it has been embroiled in a war on multiple fronts sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. The devastating images from the war in Gaza deepened Israel's international isolation.
With a new war against Iran — the second in less than a year — Netanyahu is tackling an enemy that he and many Israelis view as an existential threat, citing its support for anti-Israeli militias across the region, its ballistic missile arsenal, and its nuclear program. He has led the crusade against Iran on the world stage for much of his career.
Netanyahu said Sunday in a statement that the U.S. involvement “allows us to do what I have been hoping to do for 40 years — to deliver a crushing blow to the terror regime.” Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
Days into the war, Israel and the U.S. military appear to be working hand in glove to strike targets — from the initial attack that killed top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to assaults that allowed the forces free rein in Iranian skies.
But the conflict has already set off aftershocks that could reverberate in the American heartland. At least six U.S. troops have been killed. Travel was disrupted across the region, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded. Oil prices surged, raising the prospect of costlier gasoline for U.S. drivers as well as increased prices for other goods at a time when people have been stung by a rising cost of living.
Questions remain about the direction and aim of the war. It's unclear whether the air power will be enough to topple Iran's leadership, who or what should replace that leadership, and what role Israel or the U.S. will have in either. Every day presents new potential land mines.
“Many people will blame Israel if things go badly wrong,” wrote Nadav Eyal, a commentator with the Israeli Yediot Ahronoth daily newspaper. “Israel cannot afford to lose the American public's support under any circumstances. That is more important than striking any individual military facility.”
Still, Aaron David Miller, who served as an adviser on Middle East issues to Democratic and Republican administrations over two decades, said that Netanyahu has little to lose from the war.
With elections scheduled for the fall, Netanyahu can use the war in Iran to divert attention away from the failures of the Oct. 7 attacks, the worst in Israel's history. Instead, Netanyahu can set himself up as a brave wartime leader who fulfilled a pledge he has made much of his life to confront Iran.
He can say he did so with support from the American president, who Miller said can pull the brakes on the war whenever he pleases.
“If Trump feels as if it's going south, he'll find a way to de-escalate,” he said, “and his good friend Benjamin Netanyahu will follow.”
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The US said we can't afford to let a surveillance state like China win the AI race. Well...
American AI companies love to say that the US must win the AI arms race, or China will.
Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta have all invoked the threat of a Chinese victory to justify speeding ahead on AI development, seemingly no matter what. The argument is simple: Whoever pulls ahead in building the most powerful AI could be the global superpower for a long, long time. China's authoritarian government suppresses dissent, surveils its citizens, and answers to no one. We cannot let that model win.
And to be clear — we shouldn't. The Chinese Communist Party's human rights abuses are real and horrific, and AI technologies like facial recognition have made them worse. We should be scared of a scenario where that becomes the norm.
But what if authoritarian rule that uses tech to surveil people in alarming ways is already becoming the norm in the US? If America is shape-shifting into the bogeyman it critiques, what happens to the case for racing ahead on AI?
This is the question everyone should be asking now that the Pentagon has blacklisted Anthropic — and embraced its rival, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, which was more willing to accede to its demands. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed partnership agreements with OpenAI. Our reporting remains editorially independent. Future Perfect is funded in part by the BEMC Foundation, whose major funder was also an early investor in Anthropic. They do not have any editorial input into our content.)
The US Department of Defense is already using AI powered by private companies for everything from logistics to intelligence analysis. That has included a $200 million contract with Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude. But after the US used Claude in its January raid in Venezuela, a dispute erupted between Anthropic and the Pentagon.
The two redlines Anthropic insisted on in its contract with the Defense Department — that its AI shouldn't be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons — represent such fundamental rights that they should have been uncontroversial. And yet the Pentagon threatened that it would either force Anthropic to submit to full and unfettered use of its tech, or else name Anthropic a supply chain risk, which would mean that any external company that also works with the US military would have to swear off using Anthropic's AI for related work.
When Anthropic didn't back down on its requirements, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth followed through on the latter threat — an unprecedented move, given that the designation has previously been reserved for foreign adversaries like China's Huawei, not American companies.
As a journalist who's spent years reporting on China's use of AI to surveil and repress Uyghur Muslims, learning of the Pentagon's threats reminded me of nothing so much as China's own policy of “military-civil fusion.” That policy involves compelling private tech companies to make their innovations available to the military, whether they want to or not. Either wittingly or unwittingly, Hegseth seemed to be borrowing directly from Beijing's playbook.
“The Pentagon's threats against Anthropic copy the worst aspects of China's military-civil fusion strategy,” Jeffrey Ding, who teaches political science at George Washington University and specializes in China's AI ecosystem, told me. “China's actions to force high-tech private companies into military obligations may lead to short-term technology transfer, but it undermines the trust necessary for long-term partnerships between the commercial and defense sectors.”
To be clear, America is not the same as China. After all, Anthropic was able to freely voice its opposition to the Pentagon's demands, and the company says it'll sue the US government over the blacklisting, which would be unthinkable for a Chinese firm in the same situation. But the US government's embrace of authoritarian conduct is undeniable.
“Racing” to build the most powerful AI was always a dangerous game; even AI experts building these systems don't understand how they work, and the systems often don't behave as intended. But it's even more dangerous to try building that powerful AI under the Trump administration, which is increasingly proving itself happy to bully American companies in order to preserve the option of using AI for mass surveillance and weapons that kill people with no human oversight.
Those who are still bought in on the idea that the US must win the AI race at all costs should now be asking: What's the point of the US winning if the government is going to create a China-like surveillance state anyway?
At least one of the major AI companies is not taking this question seriously.
OpenAI announced that it had struck a deal to deploy its AI models in the Pentagon's classified network — just hours after the Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic.
This was extremely confusing.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, had claimed that he shares Anthropic's red lines: no mass surveillance of Americans and no fully autonomous weapons. Yet somehow Altman managed to cut a deal that, by his account, didn't compromise either of them. Apparently, the Pentagon had no problem with that.
How is that possible? Why would the Pentagon agree to OpenAI's terms if they're really the same as Anthropic's?
The answer is that they're not the same. Unlike Anthropic, OpenAI acceded to a key demand of the Pentagon's — that its AI systems can be used for “all lawful purposes.” On the face of it, that sounds innocuous: If some type of surveillance is legal, then it can't be that bad, right?
Wrong. What many Americans don't know is that the law just has not come close to catching up to new AI technology and what it makes possible. Currently, the law does not forbid the government from buying up your data that's been collected by private firms. Before advanced AI, the government couldn't do all that much with this glut of information because it was just too difficult to analyze all of it. Now, AI makes it possible to analyze data en masse — think geolocation, web browsing data, or credit card information — which could enable the government to create predictive portraits of everyone's life. The average citizen would intuitively categorize this as “mass surveillance,” yet it technically complies with existing laws.
For Anthropic, the collection and analysis of this sort of data on Americans was a bridge too far. This was reportedly the main sticking point in its negotiations with the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, take a look at an excerpt of OpenAI's contract with the Pentagon, and you can see in the first sentence that it is allowing the Pentagon to use its AI for “all lawful purposes”:
You might be wondering: What are all those other clauses that appear after the first sentence? Do they mean your fundamental rights will be protected?
Altman and his colleagues certainly tried to give that impression. But many experts have pointed out that they don't guarantee that at all. As one University of Minnesota law professor wrote:
In fact, as several observers noted, the contract clauses call to mind what an Anthropic spokeswoman said about updated wording it had received from the Department of Defense at a late stage in their negotiations: “New language framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will,” she said.
OpenAI did get some assurances into the contract; the company's blog post says it'll have the ability to build in technical guardrails to try to ensure its own red lines are respected, and it'll have “OpenAI engineers helping the government, with cleared safety and alignment researchers in the loop.” But it's unclear how much good that'll do, given that the impact of technical safeguards is limited and the language doesn't guarantee a human in the loop when it comes to autonomous weapons.
“In terms of safety guardrails for ‘high-stake decisions' or surveillance, the existing guardrails for generative AI are deeply lacking, and it has been shown how easily compromised they are, intentionally or inadvertently,” Heidy Khlaaf, the chief AI scientist at the nonprofit AI Now Institute, told me. “It's highly doubtful that if they cannot guard their systems against benign cases, they'd be able to do so for complex military and surveillance operations.”
What's more, “Nothing in the contractual language released up to this point seems to provide enforceable red lines beyond having a ‘lawful purpose,'” said Samir Jain, the vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “Embedding OpenAI engineers does not solve the problem. Even if they are able to identify and flag a concern, at most, they might alert the company, but absent a contractual prohibition, the company could not have any right to require the Pentagon to halt the activity at issue.”
OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment. OpenAI later said it was amending the contract to add more protections around surveillance.
Perhaps if Altman did not already have a reputation for misleading people with vague or ambiguous language, AI watchers would be less alarmed. But he does have that reputation. When the OpenAI board tried to fire Altman in 2023, it famously said he was “not consistently candid in his communications,” which sounds like board-speak for “lying.” Others with inside knowledge of the company have likewise described duplicity.
Even Leo Gao, a research scientist employed by OpenAI, posted:
For now, only a minuscule portion of OpenAI's contract with the Pentagon has been made public, so we can't say for certain what guarantees it does or doesn't contain. And some aspects of this story remain murky. How much of the Pentagon's decision to replace Anthropic with OpenAI was due to the fact that OpenAI's leaders have donated millions of dollars to support President Donald Trump while Anthropic's Amodei has refused to bankroll him or give the Pentagon carte blanche with the company's AI, earning him Hegseth's dislike and Trump's insistence that he leads “A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY”?
While these uncertainties linger, public mood has turned against OpenAI with nearly the speed of the tech itself. A public campaign called QuitGPT launched last month and has gained immense traction since the Pentagon clash, urging those who feel betrayed by OpenAI to boycott ChatGPT. By the group's count, over 1.5 million people have already taken action as part of the boycott.
It's no coincidence that Anthropic's chatbot, Claude, became the No. 1 most downloaded app in the App Store over the weekend, with users seeing it as a better alternative to ChatGPT.
Historian and bestselling author Rutger Bregman, who has studied the boycott movements of the past, was one of those who felt fired up upon seeing the QuitGPT campaign. He has since become its informal spokesperson.
“What effective boycotts have in common, in my view, is that they're narrow, they're targeted, and they're easy,” Bregman told me. “I looked at the ChatGPT boycott and was like: This is exactly it! This is the first opportunity to start a massive consumer boycott in the AI era, and to send an incredibly powerful signal to the whole ecosystem, saying, ‘Behave, or you could be next.'” He suggests switching over to the chatbot of any other AI company, except Elon Musk's Grok.
Mind you, it's worth noting that Anthropic itself is no dove. After all, the company has a deal with the AI software and data analytics company Palantir, which is infamous for powering operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Anthropic is not opposed to all forms of mass surveillance, nor does it seem to be categorically opposed to using its AI to power autonomous weapons (its current refusal is based on the fact that its AI systems can't yet be trusted to do that reliably). What's more, it recently dropped its key promise not to release AI models above certain capability thresholds unless it can guarantee robust safety measures for them in advance. And as an employee of Anthropic (or Ant, as it's sometimes known) pointed out, the company was happy to sign a contract with the Department of Defense in the first place:
Still, many believe that if you're going to use a chatbot, Anthropic's Claude is morally preferable to OpenAI's ChatGPT — especially in light of the recent clash at the Pentagon.
There was a time when some AI experts urged an alternative to a US-China AI arms race: What if Americans who care about AI safety tried to coordinate with their Chinese counterparts, engaging in diplomacy that could ensure a safer future for everybody?
But that was a couple of years ago — eons, in the world of AI development. It's rarer to hear that option floated these days.
Some experts have been calling for an international treaty. A dozen Nobel laureates backed the Global Call for AI Red Lines, which was presented at the UN General Assembly last September. But so far, a multilateral agreement hasn't materialized.
In the meantime, another option is gaining prominence: solidarity amongst the tech workers at the major AI companies.
An open letter titled “We Will Not Be Divided” has garnered more than 900 signatures from employees at OpenAI and Google over the past few days. Referring to the Pentagon, the letter says, “They're trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in. That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure.” Specifically, the letter urges OpenAI and Google leadership to “stand together” to continue to refuse their AI systems to be used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
Another open letter — which has over 175 signatories, including founders, executives, engineers, and investors from across the US tech industry, including OpenAI employees — urges the Department of Defense to withdraw the supply chain risk designation against Anthropic and stop retaliating against American companies. It also urges Congress “to examine whether the use of these extraordinary authorities against an American technology company is appropriate” — a tactful way of suggesting, perhaps, that the Pentagon's moves were an abuse of power.
Federal regulations and global treaties would be a much stronger defense against unsafe and unethical AI use than relying on the goodwill of individual technologists. But for the moment, cross-company coordination is at least a start — a way to push back against Pentagon pressure that would lead, if left unchecked, to something America keeps insisting it's nothing like.
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Meric Greenbaum works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
NEW YORK (AP) — A sell-off for stocks is slamming into Wall Street Tuesday after wrapping around the world, as oil prices leap even higher with worries that the widening war with Iran may do more sustained damage to the economy than feared.
The S&P 500 dropped 1.6% in midday trading after falling as much as 2.5% in the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 840 points, or 1.7%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.7% lower.
It was just a day ago that U.S. stocks opened with sharp losses, only to recover all of them and end the day with slight gains. But that was with the caveat that oil prices did not jump too high, like to more than $100 per barrel.
On Tuesday, oil prices soared again and raised more alarms. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, leaped another 7.8% to $83.79. That's up from close to $70 less than a week ago. A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude, meanwhile, rose 7.6% to $76.63.
Oil prices made the jump as Iran struck the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia, part of a widening of targets that also includes areas critical to the world's oil and natural gas production. Worries are particularly high about the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran, a narrow passageway where roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes. That makes it crucial for the global flow of crude.
“The Strait of Hormuz is closed,” declared Iranian Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari, an adviser to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, vowing that any ships that passed through it would be set on fire.
Making things uncertain for markets are rising questions about how long this war may continue.
A major attack by the United States and Israel has already killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but President Donald Trump said late Monday night on his social media network, “Wars can be fought ‘forever,' and very successfully” with the supply of munitions that the United States possesses.
Some professional investors said again Tuesday that this doesn't look like the beginning of a long-term down market and that stocks could rebound if the war doesn't last that long, though they acknowledge it could take a while for that to become clear.
In the meantime, the jump for oil prices will worsen inflation, which still remains high, and put more pressure on U.S. households and businesses by raising bills for gasoline and to ship products. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. jumped 11 cents overnight to about $3.11, according to data from motor club AAA.
That has the damage in stock markets so far centering on companies and countries that use a lot of oil, natural gas and petroleum-based fuels.
In South Korea, a big energy importer, the Kospi stock index plunged 7.2% for its worst day since two summers ago as markets reopened after a holiday on Monday. It had been setting records recently.
Tokyo's Nikkei 225 dropped 3.1%, even as analysts say Japan has a sizable stockpile lasting more than 200 days. In Europe, where prices for natural gas have soared because of the war, Germany's DAX lost 3.6%.
On Wall Street, stocks of airlines continued to sink on worries about rising fuel bills. The war has also led to canceled flights and stranded passengers.
American Airlines sank 3.1%, and United Airlines fell 2.4%.
Wall Street's losses were widespread, and nearly 90% of the stocks within the S&P 500 dropped. Unlike a day before, influential Big Tech stocks weren't able to prop up indexes, and Nvidia fell 1.7%.
Among the few winners on Wall Street was Target, which rose 5.1% after the retailer reported a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose with worries about inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose above 4.10% in the morning before pulling back to 4.06%. That's up from 4.05% late Monday and from just 3.97% on Friday.
Higher yields can make it more expensive for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money, affecting everything from mortgages to bond issuances. They also put downward pressure on prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments.
When Treasurys are paying more in interest, they can also undercut the price of gold, which pays its investors nothing. Gold fell 3.4% Tuesday to $5,132.50 per ounce, halting a strong run that had taken it above $5,300 as investors looked for safer places to park their money.
High inflation could also tie the Federal Reserve's hands and keep it from cutting interest rates. The Fed lowered rates several times last year and indicated more cuts were to come in 2026. That would help boost the economy and job market, but lower rates can also worsen inflation.
Traders are now pushing back their forecasts further into the summer for when the Fed could resume cutting rates, according to data from CME Group. That's even though Trump has been calling for Fed officials in angry and personal terms to cut rates now.
___
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
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Pittsburgh Pirates star Paul Skenes may be the biggest, if not one of the biggest, supporters of the U.S. military members among active MLB players.
So, for him to represent Team USA at the World Baseball Classic meant a lot.
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Pitcher Paul Skenes #30 of Team USA throws during a workout at Papago Park Sports Complex on March 2, 2026, in Phoenix, Arizona. (Chris Coduto/Getty Images)
"First and foremost, I care because I'm from America. I love America. I've seen the WBCs in the past and There's no bigger stage or no greater honor than wearing USA across your chest," he said Monday on the MLB Network.
"And I think the other one, I went to the Air Force Academy for two years. Wanted to serve. I was intending on serving and ended up transferring out to LSU. Won a national championship there, did some cool stuff there. But there was a big part of me that was fully intent on serving in the military as a career after college. So, this is, it's not serving but it's a pretty close second."
For the last two MLB seasons, Skenes has pitched for a cause bigger than wins, losses or Cy Young Awards. He teamed up with the Gary Sinise Foundation (GSF) for a strikeout campaign. For each strikeout Skenes throws this season, he pledged to donate $100 to the organization. The foundation has helped expand service efforts, providing the military, veteran and first responder communities with additional fundraising and outreach.
Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Paul Skenes (30) watches from the dugout in the sixth inning of the MLB National League game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates at Great American Ball Park in downtown Cincinnati on Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025. (Sam Greene/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
Skenes had 216 strikeouts last season and won the National League Cy Young Award for the first time.
He made clear last week he's pitching in the World Baseball Classic to honor the men and women in the military.
"That's what we do it for," Skenes told The Athletic. "This is the greatest country in the world. That's what I believe. That's why I wanted to serve, why I went to the Air Force Academy. And those folks don't get the recognition they deserve.
Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Paul Skenes (30) throws a pitch in the second inning against the Atlanta Braves during spring training at CoolToday Park on Feb. 25, 2026. (Jonathan Dyer/Imagn Images)
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"We're doing it to represent the men and women that are fighting for us, along with many other things that make this country the greatest country in the world. That puts it into perspective a little bit."
Fox News' Ryan Canfield contributed to this report.
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Just days before the United States launched a major military operation in Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
They were ousted for a simple reason: Each was involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump's alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
As a result, Patel hamstrung the Washington, DC-based FBI counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, which handles cases ranging from mishandling of classified documents to tracking foreign spies operating on US soil.
The dismissals have added to concern inside the Justice Department and FBI that counterterrorism and intelligence investigations in the wake of the military operation in Iran could be hampered by a mass exodus of national security experts, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
And like the CI-12 unit, several senior officials were ousted or reassigned because of their involvement in Trump-related investigations, sources say. The removals have cost the Justice Department and FBI decades of combined experience in identifying the types of threats that sources say could appear in the wake of Operation Epic Fury.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment on personnel matters but told CNN in a statement the bureau “maintains a robust counterintelligence operation, with personnel all over the country.”
“Our teams remain fully engaged across the country and [are] prepared to mobilize any security assets needed to assist federal partners – as well as state and local law enforcement,” an FBI spokesperson said.
The New York Sun first reported that employees from the CI-12 unit had been targeted in last week's firings.
In Trump's first term, CI-12 was instrumental in tracking potential threats from the Iranian regime in retaliation for the 2020 drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, then-leader of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
Iranian-backed actors have since been charged with plots to assassinate American officials that Iran has blamed for Soleimani's death, including Trump, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton.
The threats have continued despite years of law enforcement disruptions, according to a joint FBI and Department of Homeland Security report obtained by CNN.
The unclassified report, which was written last August, described Iran's security services as “adaptable and opportunistic” and outlined how the nation has recruited operatives abroad whose identities obfuscate Iranian involvement, such as biker gang members and drug traffickers, and how operatives have used codewords, burner phones and cryptocurrency in such plots.
There is nothing to indicate there have been any increased threats or activated “sleeper agents” since the US first launched strikes against Iran, one person told CNN. Domestic law enforcement has nonetheless heightened their monitoring for threats as is typical after military conflict abroad.
Justice Department agents and prosecutors have for decades worked to identify and thwart threats from Iranian-backed actors on American soil, particularly the regime's penchant for assassinations or kidnapping plots.
But like CI-12, DOJ teams dedicated to monitoring those foreign threats have been decimated by waves of firings and resignations since the beginning of the Trump administration, and experts worry that despite their best efforts, the department could be unprepared to manage future attacks.
Many of the offices in the DOJ's National Security Division have lost at least half of their employees, people familiar with the matter told CNN, including the office dedicated to counterterrorism. And senior FBI officials who oversaw counterintelligence and international terrorism efforts have been pushed out.
To be sure, the FBI and DOJ have investigated and brought many national security and terrorism related cases in the last year, including against individuals who supported Iran financially, stole trade secrets or threatened individuals on US soil.
But current and former prosecutors, investigators and employees who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution described a lack of manpower that made it difficult to fully monitor threats to national security.
“If you lose half your capacity, you lose half your ability,” one former senior DOJ official told CNN of the national security teams. “That in itself is a reason to be concerned.”
The dismantling of the National Security Division began early in the Trump administration. Attorney General Pam Bondi published a series of memos on her first day that paused all investigations into corporate foreign bribery, curtailed enforcement of a foreign agent registration law and deemphasized the criminal prosecutions of Russian oligarchs.
The head of the DOJ's counterintelligence office was pushed out, as was the person who led the division's office of law and policy; the division's executive officer; and at least three other senior officials.
Some of the officials were transferred to other jobs inside the DOJ where they would have less influence on big decisions. In one instance, Bondi demoted the National Security Division's acting head because she saw a portrait of former President Joe Biden was still hanging in the division's front office. He was replaced by Trump's official nominee to the position.
The mass departures have led to a distrust between the remaining career officials and the DOJ's political leaders, sources said, and has left the division “completely gutted and undermined.”
Some National Security Division employees told CNN that they have been sent into meetings without the full details of a case, investigation or intelligence. One former official told CNN that prosecutors dedicated to the National Security Council have gone into meetings without “key context” on what the council is discussing that day, hampering their ability to give the official views of the department on high-level national security matters and leaving them “feeling crazy.”
Manpower was further affected by the monthslong review of the Epstein files, as some attorneys and FBI agents who typically work on national security matters were instead tasked with redacting documents before their public release.
“You just put blinders on and hope you don't get tapped to do something political,” one former official said. “Don't let the mission change.”
CNN's Curt Devine contributed to this report.
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Smoothie King fired two employees who refused service to a couple over a pro-Trump hoodie.
Erika Lindemyer posted a video of the interaction on TikTok, showing the black women employees claiming that President Donald Trump discriminates against them, so they wouldn't serve the couple. After the video went viral, Smoothie King quickly terminated two employees involved in the spat, saying in a statement that it's dedicated to ensuring their establishments are places “free of discrimination of any kind, where every guest and team member is treated with care and respect.”
“Following an investigation into an incident involving a guest who was refused service at a franchised location in Michigan yesterday, the franchise owner has taken immediate action and the two employees involved are no longer with the business. Both the franchise owner and Smoothie King corporate have reached out to the guest several times to apologize and will continue to follow up,” the statement read.
It added that the local owner of the franchised location is “taking further action and enforcing mandatory retraining for all employees that outlines our guest experience standards.”
In the video showing part of the interaction, Lindemyer repeated one employee's earlier line that she doesn't “feel comfortable serving you” due to the husband's hoodie. She argued that this amounted to “discrimination” and was “illegal,” but the employees were unperturbed.
“I said Trump discriminates [against] us,” the second employee answered.
“OK, well that has nothing to do with us getting a smoothie!” Lindemyer fired back.
“OK, well that's who you support though, that's who you love,” the first employee responded.
The second employee claimed they had a “right to refuse service” and stood by their decision. Lindemyer threatened to call the police while leaving, though the ensuing interaction wasn't caught on camera.
In the aftermath, one of the employees who refused service posted a video saying she might've “accidentally started a race war,” then went for a new attack angle, complaining that she was a minor, so she wanted the video removed.
“I am a minor, and she recorded me without my permission. The people in the comments are all white, and they're all being hella racist, guys, please help me get this video taken down,” she said.
TRUMP FACES FIRST DOMESTIC TEST ON IRAN CONFLICT WITH SENATE WAR POWERS VOTE
The comments on the video were evenly split between supporters and critics. Many voiced sympathy with the couple, and several said they called the company to complain. Others claimed the employees were within their rights to refuse service.
Many supporters claimed hypocrisy, writing that if a conservative employee refused service over the wearing of liberal merchandise, there would be an uproar from Democrats.
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American distance runner Jessica McClain opened up about some of the details of how she and two others were led astray during the U.S. Half Marathon Championships, ultimately costing her first place in the event.
McClain posted photos from her event on Instagram, laying out her thoughts and feelings about what occurred. McClain was leading the race with about two miles remaining.
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Jessica McClain competes in the women's 10,000 meter final on Day Nine of the 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Track & Field Trials on June 29, 2024, in Eugene, Oregon. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
But her race was thrown off course as she was led off the path by a media vehicle, according to Athletics Illustrated. She followed the media vehicle, a police motorcycle and a motorcycle with a camera.
"I'm going try my hardest to walk away from this weekend remembering the joy I felt in those moments where I thought I was on my way to becoming a National Champion & finally make Team USA outright," she wrote in the caption.
"This truly sucks for everyone involved. No one wants this outcome, ever. Mistakes happen & I am sure those who were leading us feel terrible about the outcome. I just hate that the athletes are ALWAYS the ones who pay the price (literally $$$)… time & time again. I hope & trust that @usatf & @atlantatrackclub can somehow make it right for the athletes who were led off course."
McClain wrote that "something needs to change & safeguards should be in place for athletes who are out there doing their absolute best on race day."
"Someone needs to care enough to do something. Anything. I love this sport so damn much & just want to help make it better for our younger pros & all of the amazing athletes to come," she added.
Jessica McClain (USA) placed eighth in the women's marathon in 2:28:32 during the World Athletics Championships at National Stadium on Sept. 14, 2025. (Kirby Lee/Imagn Images)
McClain made several posts on her Instagram Stories as well, laying out the course map. She wrote that "only some, but not all, major roads are marked," and added that they had a "detailed breakdown" of course updates and construction crossings "but no detailed street by street navigation," which made her "even more keen to follow the motorcade."
She said that running off course was a "reoccurring nightmare" for her and that she understood that a larger preview of the course, on a bus or a van, couldn't exactly be done because of Atlanta's busy traffic.
She theorized that U.S. Track and Field could provide different ways of previewing the course with videos or have a guided tour in the future.
U.S. Track and Field released a statement later Monday.
"USA Track & Field continues to carefully review the incident that occurred at the USATF Half Marathon Championships and resulted in the misdirection of three athletes," the organization said. "We understand this is a difficult and frustrating time for athletes. This matter is a top priority for our staff and volunteer communities. We are working to provide updates as quickly as we can as we explore options that not only align with USATF rules and policies but also provide fair outcomes for all the athletes impacted. Thank you for your patience and understanding."
Jessica McClain placed fourth in the women's race in 2:25:46 during the US Olympic Marathon Team Trials on Feb. 3, 2024. (Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports)
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McClain, Emma Grace Hurley and Ednah Kurgat were all thrown off. By the time they got back onto the right course, McClain's lead was gone.
She finished in ninth place, while Hurley and Kurgat finished in 12th and 13th respectively.
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Trae Young was traded to the Washington Wizards in January and has yet to make an appearance on the floor for the team in any capacity as he deals with injuries.
On Monday night, he did show up in the box score.
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Washington Wizards guard Trae Young (3) warms up on the court before the game against the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena on Feb. 24, 2026. (Dale Zanine/Imagn Images)
The four-time All-Star was ejected from the team's 123-118 loss to the Houston Rockets after he left the bench to complain to an official. The decision occurred as the referees sorted out a tense confrontation between Houston's Tari Eason and Washington's Jamir Watkins. Eason was also ejected.
"Don't expect me to get ejected too many more times D.C.," Young wrote on X, "but I'm definitely bringing that energy & competitiveness when I'm back for my brothers!"
Young's Wizards debut could be happening as soon as later this week.
Washington Wizards guard Trae Young, center, looks on from the bench during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Los Angeles Clippers, Jan. 19, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass, File)
Wizards head coach Brian Keefe was asked about Young's status and said the star guard was trending toward being ready to play against the Utah Jazz on Thursday. Young posted on Instagram his target date of "3/5" – appearing to indicate that his return was near.
Young has been dealing with knee and quadriceps injuries since the start of the season. He played in 10 games for the Atlanta Hawks, averaging 19.3 points and 8.9 assists per game.
He was traded on Jan. 9 for Corey Kispert and C.J. McCollum. Atlanta also received a trade exception in the deal.
Washington Wizards guard Trae Young (3) meets with the media during his first return to play the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena on Feb. 24, 2026. (Dale Zanine/Imagn Images)
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Young emerged as a prolific scorer since he made his NBA debut during the 2018-19 season. He's averaging 25.2 points and 9.8 assists in his career.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports the latest on Operation Epic Fury, what's next in the mission and more during ‘America's Newsroom.'
President Donald Trump has proven again and again to have mastered strategic and tactical surprise in conflict, and to depend upon the military professionals advising him. Now, however, he faces a decision on when to end the battle with the Islamic Republic of Iran or whatever regime follows its collapse.
In making that decision, the events of 35 years ago should figure in his calculation.
The American-led international coalition that assembled to drive Saddam Hussein's Iraqi troops from Kuwait began that war with a massive aerial and naval bombardment of Saddam's forces in Kuwait and some targets in Iraq on January 17, 1991. The first phase of the first Gulf War lasted five weeks. The second phase, a ground invasion of Kuwait, began on February 24, 1991, and famously (or infamously) concluded after 100 hours.
Serious military professionals have long debated the decision by then President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell to end military operations when they did. A huge tactical success had been achieved and the strategic benefit of such an overwhelming display of force, and almost certainly some Americans are alive today who would not have survived an extended campaign to depose Saddam Hussein 35 years ago.
But..
The "Marsh Arabs" of Iraq, the Shi'a Muslim population that inhabited the marshlands around the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the southern part of the country still controlled by Saddam after the 100-hours campaign, attempted to wrest their freedom from Saddam's remaining forces. A 1992 Human Rights Watch report concluded: "In their attempt to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of unarmed civilians by firing indiscriminately into residential areas; executing young people on the streets, in homes and in hospitals; rounding up suspects especially young men, during house-to-house searches, and arresting them without charge or shooting them en masse; and using helicopters to attack unarmed civilians as they fled the cities"
Add to that massacre another decade of atrocities by Saddam against his people that did not end until the second President Bush, this time with Dick Cheney as the vice president and Colin Powell as secretary of state, ordered the military to invade Iraq and topple the dictator. In the dozen years between the two wars came the expense and danger of the two "no-fly zones" which the United Nations authorized and the U.S. enforced.
EX-CIA CHIEF WARNS NOT TO UNDERESTIMATE IRAN'S RESPONSE AFTER OPERATION EPIC FURY EXPOSED REGIME ‘ARROGANCE'
A friendly fire incident — U.S. F-15s mistakenly shot down two American Black Hawk helicopters with the loss of 26 military and civilian lives.
The extended deployment of American forces in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also believed to have led to the terrorist attack on Khobar Towers on June 25, 1996, a housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. 19 Airmen were killed and more than 400 U.S. and international military members and civilians were injured in the attack, which has been attributed to either or both al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The towers were home to troops and civilians supporting Operation Southern Watch, the no-fly zone operation in Southern Iraq.
Counter-factuals are not useful for debate. — American officials make the most difficult decisions with limited information, some of which we still don't know — but the actual history that followed the 100 hours of war can inform the decisions ahead of President Trump.
MARK LEVIN: HANDS OFF POST-WAR IRAN? THAT COULD BE A GRAVE STRATEGIC MISTAKE FOR AMERICA AND THE WORLD
Had the first Gulf War not been halted at the arbitrary elapse of 100 hours, but instead extended into a ground campaign in Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein in 1991, a completely different history of the Middle East would have followed, one perhaps free of the Iranian nuclear and missile programs which have precipitated this battle. But the coalition assembled by the first President Bush might have frayed and fallen apart. The American casualties of that war would have exceeded the 300 killed and 450 wounded. Again, the debate about "What might have happened" is a ridiculous one to conduct. We cannot know.
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But President Trump and his advisors can, and no doubt are, reflecting that with the Islamic Republic on its back, without much in the way of defenses, but still with striking power, the United States may want to persevere in the ongoing battle until a new set of rulers free of the medieval theological motivations of the now dead Ayatollah Khamenei are in place.
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It is not for civilians to draw up war plans, but presidents ought to study the decisions of their predecessors. A premature end to this battle will almost certainly lead to another one, perhaps without the advantage that the tactical surprise of this weekend's attack brought us. We can fairly guess that because this regime refused to stop its nuclear program, its missile program and its export of terrorism after President Trump ordered Qassem Soleimani killed in January 2020, and again after Operation Midnight Hammer obliterated the nuclear weapons program of the Islamic Republic. Instead, the fanatics atop this barbarous regime began to rebuild their killing capabilities and displayed their true nature with the stunning massacre of more than 35,000 of its own citizens in January. This regime is incapable of changing. The regime must be changed.
Persevere President Trump. Americans have been dying at the hands of this wicked regime since it came to power in 1979. More have died this week. Do not let it survive to kill again.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel's news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
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As a large SUV rolled past a block of Austin's lively bars and late-night crowds in Sunday's early hours, a sweatshirted arm reached out the driver's side window with a pistol and began to pull the trigger.
Over the course of just one minute, the gunman sailed down the city's bustling Sixth Street and then exited his car, firing off even more bullets, ultimately killing three people and injuring 13 others before he was fatally shot by police.
The suspect, 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, was wearing a hoodie emblazoned with the words “Property of Allah,” a picture obtained by CNN shows. Law enforcement later found Diagne - who was fatally shot by police - was wearing a T-shirt stamped with an Iranian flag design, according to a source.
Though investigators have kept details close to the vest, they are probing whether the Texas shooting was inspired by this weekend's strikes on Iran by the US and Israel, multiple law enforcement officials briefed on the case said.
Diagne, a Senegalese immigrant-turned US citizen, was not on the radar of local police nor the FBI before Sunday's attack, officials said at a Monday news conference. Now, his personal life, criminal history and private affiliations are under extreme scrutiny as investigators dissect his motive.
Diagne made his way to the United States from his home country of Senegal, initially settling in New York before moving to Texas, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told CNN.
Diagne entered the US on March 13, 2000, on a B‑2 tourist visa, a Department of Homeland Security official told CNN. These nonimmigrant visas are intended for visitors traveling to the US temporarily, such as for vacation or visiting family.
Diagne married a US citizen, allowing him to adjust his status to lawful permanent resident in June 2006, the DHS official said. He became a naturalized citizen on April 5, 2013.
CNN has been unable to confirm the identity of Diagne's wife or whether they are still married.
Though it is unclear when Diagne relocated to Texas, public records indicate he was still a resident of Bronx, New York, in the late 2010s. Since moving to the Lone Star State, he has had multiple addresses, the law enforcement official told CNN.
Diagne's motive is still unclear, but items discovered during the investigation have led authorities to consider whether the attack was an act of domestic terrorism or motivated by the nascent US war with Iran, multiple law enforcement officials briefed on the case have said.
“Obviously, it's still way too early in the process to determine an exact motivation, but there were indicators on the subject and then his vehicle that indicate a potential nexus to terrorism,” Alex Doran, acting special agent in charge of the FBI's San Antonio division, said Sunday morning.
After police secured the sprawling, chaotic scene Sunday, federal partners were called to “address concerns of potential terrorism,” Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said.
A search warrant has been executed on at least one residence connected to the suspect. A bevy of law enforcement, some from federal agencies, gathered at a home connected to Diagne in Pflugerville, a suburb just north of Austin.
Investigators hauled boxes of items from the home and examined a car in the driveway, CNN affiliate KEYE reported. A Quran was also found in the suspect's car, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation.
Authorities searching the home were likely looking for computers and phones to determine if the suspect read any propaganda or left any writings indicating his plans, an official told CNN.
They will also review whether Diagne had any mental health encounters while living in Texas, multiple law enforcement officials have said.
Diagne was not well-known to local or federal investigators before Sunday's attack, but public records show he has had minor interactions with police and the courts in New York and Texas.
Both guns the suspect used in the shooting were acquired legally in San Antonio in 2017, Davis said.
In 2022, Diagne was arrested in Texas on a charge of collision with vehicle damage, a misdemeanor offense, according to the DHS official.
He was also sued in New York in May 2017 by a woman who claimed he hit her with a car while she was walking. In an initial complaint, the woman claimed she sustained “serious injuries.”
It appears Diagne was driving a vehicle leased by a company that provides vehicles to cab drivers and other for-hire services.
An orthopedic surgeon attested to the court the woman was hospitalized after the incident and later underwent a spinal procedure. But the surgeon wrote in 2022 the woman's injuries had “fully resolved,” court documents show. It is unclear how the case was resolved.
As part of their investigation into the officer-involved shooting that killed Diagne, police plan to release body camera footage and more details on Diagne's criminal history as soon as Thursday, the chief said.
CNN's Amanda Musa, Hanna Park, Holly Yan, Ed Lavandera, Holmes Lybrand, John Miller and Alisha Ebrahimji contributed to this report.
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At least 111 substances of unknown safety have been added to foods, drinks and supplements sold in the United States without alerting the US Food and Drug Administration, a new investigation found.
“Food companies are deciding on their own to secretly add unreviewed chemical ingredients to products instead of following existing federal guidelines meant to assure food is ‘generally recognized as safe,' or GRAS,” said Melanie Benesh, vice president for government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, a health and environmental health advocacy organization that conducted the investigation published Tuesday.
To meet the GRAS standard, companies must demonstrate a new food ingredient is safe by providing widely accepted scientific evidence that's publicly available. Notifying the FDA of that safety data is customary and ensures regulatory compliance. It's also voluntary — which means manufacturers can legally self-determine their products to be safe.
“Manufacturers now routinely exploit this GRAS loophole — it's fast becoming more ‘generally recognized as secret' instead of ‘generally recognized as safe,'” Benesh said.
The EWG investigation found 49 of the chemicals added by industry in approximately 4,000 products listed in the US Department of Agriculture's FoodData Central database, which provides public access to nutrient and ingredient information.
“Because the government has never reviewed these chemicals, consumers have no way of knowing if they are safe or carry unknown health risks,” Benesh said.
Even though the GRAS loophole is legal in the United States, it's difficult to justify from a “scientific and ethical standpoint,” said Mathilde Touvier, director of research at France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, who studies the health harms of additives in ultraprocessed foods.
Common food preservatives linked to cancer and type 2 diabetes
“It is highly problematic that companies are allowed to self-determine that their own ingredients are ‘GRAS,' given the obvious financial conflict of interest,” said Touvier, who was not involved in the EWG investigation. “Decisions about the safety of food chemicals should be based on independent assessment by public health authorities.”
CNN reached out to the American Beverage Association and the Consumer Brands Association, who both represent food and drink manufacturers. The ABA did not send a response before publication.
Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of the Consumer Brands Association, said CBA was part of a coalition, Americans for Ingredient Transparency, which is advocating for “federal legislation establishing national uniformity for ingredient safety and disclosure.”
“We support GRAS reform being a part of that bill,” Gallo said, adding that the US has one of the “safest and most highly regulated food systems in the world.”
Of the 49 chemicals found in foods, 22 were extracts, according to the investigation. Many appear natural and harmless: aloe vera, cinnamon, cocoa, cranberry seed oil, grape skins, green coffee beans, hemp, lemon balm and mushrooms, to name a few.
“When you start taking substances from grape skin, aloe vera and mushrooms, for example, you may have a concentrated extract or cocktail of substances that come out of it,” said biochemist Maricel Maffini, a former research assistant professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston who coauthored the EWG investigation.
“You should be able to test that extract or cocktail if it is going to be in the marketplace.”
Green tea extracts never reviewed by the FDA were found in 901 products in the database, including granola and energy bars, candy and chewing gum, ice cream, sodas, teas, waters and seafood, according to the EWG report.
“There is a major difference between the antioxidants in green tea you make at home and a purified extract of a green tea antioxidant done in a lab,” said Maffini, an independent consultant who has published 11 peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters on how chemicals impact the human body.
“That's not green tea anymore. It's a completely different, new substance synthetically extracted to make it more available as an antioxidant,” Maffini said. “It may seem natural, but it's not — and what this new extract will do to your body is going to be very different.”
For example, loose-leaf green tea may fight cancer-causing inflammation, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, boost brain health, and extend life. Highly concentrated green tea extracts, however, are linked to estrogen disruption and harm to the liver. There are at least 100 established cases of severe liver damage in people using concentrated green tea extracts sold for weight loss and muscle recovery.
Aloe vera extracts that bypassed FDA review were found in more than 450 products in FoodData Central, a food and nutrient database managed by the USDA Agricultural Research Service, according to the investigation. Most of the usage appears to be in fruit and vegetable juice, fruit drinks, and nectars.
As a common treatment for burns, aloe vera is perceived as natural and therefore harmless by many consumers, experts say. However, unpurified whole-leaf aloe vera extract can cause cancer, and the FDA banned the use of a form of aloe vera in laxatives due to concerns about a link to cancer in animals and kidney failure in humans.
“Many people believe that products labeled ‘natural' are always safe and good for them. This is not necessarily true. Herbal medicines do not have to go through the testing that drugs do,” the National Library of Medicine states on its website, adding that some herbs can be seriously harmful. “Some herbs can interact with prescription or over-the-counter medicines.”
The health impact of any substance, natural or not, can have significantly different effects depending on its form, dose and interactions with other health conditions, Touvier said.
“Beta-carotene is safe at nutritional levels in fruits and vegetables, yet high-dose supplementation increases lung cancer risk, especially in smokers,” she said. “Similarly, fiber from whole foods is beneficial, whereas certain purified fibers have shown adverse effects on gut inflammation or microbiota composition.”
Mushroom extracts never reported to the FDA were found in 428 products, including coffee, fruit and vegetable juices and nectars, soups, and milks, according to the investigation.
While mushrooms can be nutritional powerhouses, eating the wrong species of mushroom can kill you, while others can cause allergic reactions, digestive issues and negatively interact with certain medications, especially blood thinners.
The FDA told manufacturers in 2024 to stop using the red-topped Amanita muscaria mushroom due to “serious adverse event reports associated with multiple food products.” The agency first called attention to A. muscaria 12 years earlier by including the species in a list of “toxic agents that cause poisoning following ingestion.”
Consumers have been hurt by a lack of oversight of GRAS substances in the past. A frozen vegetable-based meat substitute was voluntarily recalled in the summer of 2022 after the manufacturer received 470 complaints of gastrointestinal, liver, bile duct and gallbladder illness.
Content creator Luke Wesley Pearson posted on Instagram that he underwent emergency gallbladder surgery after twice eating the meat substitute. Two other consumers told CNN they also had gallbladder surgery after consuming the product.
The culprit appeared to be tara flour, made from the seed pods of a thorny tree called Peruvian carob. Another ingredient made from the tree is tara gum, which has been safely used for years as a thickening agent or stabilizer in foods. However, tara flour is made differently than tara gum, and the flour has “not been adequately characterized nor previously utilized as a human food ingredient in the United States,” according to the FDA.
After the FDA investigation into tara flour, it took two years for the agency to remove the substance from the GRAS list.
“Tara flour is introduced into the food supply, and only because there's an outbreak of liver injury does the FDA even look at whether or not it's safe,” Dr. Pieter Cohen, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, told CNN in 2024.
Cohen coauthored a paper on the dangers of the GRAS system published in The New England Journal of Medicine and was not involved in the EWG investigation.
“Even worse, it takes two years for the FDA to come to that conclusion, all the while leaving consumers at risk,” Cohen said. “This incident shows how broken our food regulatory system is. It's completely backwards.”
A 2014 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, used federal Freedom of Information Act requests to review how companies communicate with the FDA on new food additives.
Fifty-six companies appeared to rely on undisclosed GRAS safety determinations for 275 chemicals, the investigation found. When the FDA was provided a GRAS request by a manufacturer, however, the agency was thorough, rejecting or triggering the withdrawal of 1 in 5 requests.
A 2022 analysis conducted by the Environmental Working Group found that nearly 99% of new chemicals used in food or food packaging since 2000 were green-lit for use not by the FDA but by the food and chemical industry. During that period, food manufacturers asked the FDA's permission to introduce a new substance only 10 times, according to the analysis.
The Trump administration has indicated it wants to fix the GRAS loophole that allows companies to rubber-stamp products as safe without federal oversight.
“For far too long, the GRAS loophole has allowed ingredients to enter the food supply without meaningful transparency or FDA oversight. Under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, HHS is taking action to close those gaps and restore public trust,” said Andrew Nixon, deputy assistant secretary for media relations at the US Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA.
“Over the past year, we have advanced reforms to strengthen oversight of the GRAS pathway, including steps toward requiring greater notification, enhancing interagency review, and increasing transparency around food ingredient safety through proposed rulemaking,” Nixon said in an email.
Historically, change at the FDA has been slow. Case in point: BHA or butylated hydroxyanisole, a synthetic antioxidant preservative used in cosmetics, food packaging and thousands of foods, including ice cream, candy, snacks, meat products and breakfast cereals.
Watch a nutritionist explain the food labels behind three everyday foods
Based on research in animals, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified BHA as a Group 2B possible human carcinogen, and the European Union lists BHA as a suspected hormone-disrupting chemical.
A doctor petitioned the FDA to ban BHA in 1990, but no action had been taken until the FDA announced it would reexamine the chemical's safety in February.
Fixing the GRAS loophole substance by substance will be a slow process, so unless sweeping reform is enacted by HHS, many so-called GRAS ingredients in foods that have never been tested for safety will remain in the foods Americans eat, Cohen said.
“When it comes down to where the rubber meets the road, the administration is basically asking the industry politely to adhere to the intent of the law, which is no different than the situation we have now,” he said. “I've seen nothing game-changing in terms of improving the safety of our food supply.”
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It's now 100 days until the FIFA World Cup is set to begin in North America, and the intensifying war in the Middle East has raised further questions around what is already a controversial tournament.
Chief among those questions right now: Will Iran participate in the tournament now that it's essentially at war with one of the hosts?
And while sports will be a secondary concern to those in the Middle East this week, the conflict has triggered fresh doubts over Iran's participation in the competition, with the country involved in escalating violence following strikes by the United States and Israel.
With the Islamic Republic's leadership decimated and the country under attack, here is everything we know about the nation's soccer team, just over three months before its first group stage game on June 15 against New Zealand in Los Angeles.
Given the rate at which events are unfolding across the Middle East, it's very early to predict how the Iranian soccer team will be affected by the conflict.
Already, though, the president of the nation's soccer federation has cast doubt on its involvement in the World Cup.
“What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” Mehdi Taj told sports portal Varzesh3, according to the Associated Press.
The killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has created a power vacuum in the regime, sparking a complex process of finding a successor. That makes it unclear who would be in charge of any decision about possibly boycotting the tournament, or what the next leader's relationship with the US will be like.
When asked for comment on the situation, soccer's world governing body FIFA referred CNN Sports to remarks by its general secretary, Mattias Grafström, on Sunday.
“It's a bit premature to comment on that in detail, but of course we'll monitor the developments around all issues around the world,” Grafström said after a meeting of the International Football Association Board in Wales.
“We had the final draw in Washington, where all teams participated. Our focus is to have a safe Word Cup with everyone participating.”
Even before the most recent conflict broke out in the Middle East, there was already uncertainty about Iran's participation in the tournament.
Fans from Iran are not able to enter the US after President Donald Trump's administration imposed travel bans last year. It means many Iran supporters won't be able to watch their team's group games in California and Seattle.
And while athletes and coaches are exempt from the ban, Iran threatened to boycott the World Cup draw in Washington, DC, in December after members of its delegation were denied US visas.
In the end, a small delegation — including the team's head coach — attended the ceremony, but the conflict gave a tangible example of the tension that was already simmering.
Iran was subsequently drawn into Group G and is set to play New Zealand, Egypt and Belgium at the World Cup.
The World Cup is set to be the biggest ever, with 48 teams playing in a tournament spanning the United States, Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19.
The conflict in the Middle East has already caused chaos on the sporting calendar. Notably, the Qatar soccer federation (QFA) has postponed all tournaments and matches until further notice.
Doha has been the target of multiple Iranian airstrikes in recent days, and residents have been advised to shelter in place.
The QFA didn't refer to the ongoing strikes directly but said Sunday that “new dates for the resumption of competitions will be announced in due course.”
In addition, restrictions on air travel have caused problems for teams traveling to Australia for the opening weekend of the new Formula 1 season.
The first race will be hosted in Melbourne on March 8, but many involved would usually use Doha and Dubai airports as travel hubs.
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'Special Report' anchor Bret Baier joined 'America's Newsroom' to discuss the latest on Operation Epic Fury as the U.S. and Israel continue to target Iran.
The Iranian women's national soccer team made quite the statement on Monday night during the opening match of the Women's Asian Cup, as they refused to sing while their national anthem played over the speakers at Cbus Super Stadium on the Gold Coast.
The players were in their customary line before their match against South Korea when the Iranian national anthem began to play. The women, looking straight ahead and barely moving, were stoic as it appeared there were jeers from the crowd. Later, applause erupted from those in attendance following the 3-0 South Korea victory.
Iran's manager, Marziyeh Jafari, was also seen smiling as she looked upon her players' silence from the sidelines.
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Team Iran listen to national anthems before the AFC Women's Asian Cup Australia 2026 football match between South Korea and Iran on the Gold Coast on March 2, 2026. (Izhar Khan / AFP)
This silence is particularly deafening following the confirmed U.S.-Israeli strikes over the weekend that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran has since counterattacked by firing missiles and drones at Israel and regional countries that host U.S. allies or military bases, including Bahrain and Qatar.
During questioning by media on Sunday, Iran women's national team captain Zahra Ghanbari, alongside Jafari, was asked about Khamenei's death. The question was shot down quickly.
Jafari answered in Farsi, but an AFC media representative cut off her response without any translation, according to ESPN.
"OK, I think that's all for your question. Thank you for asking. Let's just focus on the game itself," the media rep said before questioning continued.
While the content of Jafari's response remains unknown, the team's stoic nature during the national anthem, which is usually met by at least some players singing, says enough.
The U.S. and Israel's massive joint military operation, known as "Operation Epic Fury," left many of Iran's major leaders dead, including Khamenei. President Donald Trump warned on Sunday against any Iranian retaliation, saying if Iran were to "hit very hard," they would be met with "a force that has never been seen before."
The attacks have impacted the sports world as well as the rest of the country; the football federation's president shared a bleak outlook about playing in this year's FIFA World Cup. Iran has already qualified for the tournament and is set to face New Zealand in Los Angeles in June to kick off its Group G schedule.
The Iranian women's national soccer team walks out for the start of the AFC Women's Asian Cup Australia 2026 match between Korea Republic v Islamic Republic of Iran at Gold Coast Stadium on March 2, 2026 in Gold Coast, Australia. (Albert Perez/Getty Images)
"What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope," football president Mehdi Taj told sports portal Varzesh3 on Sunday.
"The U.S. regime has attacked our homeland, and this is an incident that will not go unanswered."
FIFA also noted it will be monitoring the situation with Iran.
Iran's national team will not be preparing for the World Cup at this time, as a 40-day mourning period following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is in effect. However, the women's national team was allowed to compete in the Asian Cup.
Elsewhere in the sports world, Fox News Digital learned that Israel's national gymnastics team suspended all training and team activities amid the counterattack, with the Israel Gymnastics Federation (IGF) providing a statement announcing that the violence has caused "unavoidable disruptions."
"The current security situation in our region has resulted in unavoidable disruptions to our regular training schedule and has created significant uncertainty regarding the national teams' professional plans, particularly as we are at the outset of the international season," the statement read.
Team Iran poses for a group photo before the AFC Women's Asian Cup Australia 2026 match against South Korea on the Gold Coast on March 2, 2026. (Izhar Khan / AFP)
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A source within the team also told Fox News Digital on Saturday that the gymnasts have been moving between bomb shelters since Iran's counterstrikes began.
Iranian airstrikes killed at least eight Israelis on Sunday, when a missile barrage landed just miles from Jerusalem in Beit Shemesh.
Fox News' Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.
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Scott Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.
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The Supreme Court is photographed, Feb. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for California schools to tell parents if their children identify as transgender without getting the student's approval, granting an emergency appeal from a conservative legal group.
The order blocks for now a state law that bans automatic parental notification requirements if students change their pronouns or gender expression at school.
The split decision comes after religious parents and educators challenged California school policies aimed at preventing schools from outing students to their families. Two sets of Catholic parents represented by the Thomas More Society say it caused schools to mislead them and secretly facilitate the children's social transition despite their objections.
California, on the other hand, argued that students have the right to privacy about their gender expression, especially if they fear rejection from their families. The state said that school policies and state law are aimed at striking a balance with parents' rights.
The high court majority, though, sided with the parents and reinstated a lower-court order blocking the law and school policies while the case continues to play out.
“The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs. California's policies violate those beliefs,” and burden the free exercise of religion, the majority wrote in an unsigned order.
The court's three liberal justices publicly dissented, saying the case is still working its way through lower courts and there was no need to step in now. “If nothing else, this Court owes it to a sovereign State to avoid throwing over its policies in a slapdash way, if the Court can provide normal procedures. And throwing over a State's policy is what the Court does today,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, meanwhile, noted they would have gone further and granted teachers' appeal to lift restrictions for them.
The Thomas More Society called the decision “the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office defended the law, saying teachers should be focused on instruction, not required “to be gender cops.”
The order “undermines student privacy and the ability to learn in a safe and supportive classroom, free from discrimination based on gender identity,” said Marissa Saldivar, a spokesperson for the Democratic governor.
The Supreme Court has ruled for religious plaintiffs in other recent cases, including allowing parents to pull their children from public-school lessons if they object to storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters.
The California order comes months after the court upheld state bans on gender-identity-related healthcare for minors. The justices also seem to be leaning toward allowing states to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams.
School policies for transgender students, meanwhile, have also been on the court's radar in other cases.
The court rebuffed another similar case out of Wisconsin in December, but three conservative justices indicated they would have heard the case. Justice Samuel Alito called the school policies “an issue of great and growing national importance.”
The justices have been weighing whether to hear arguments in cases out of states like Massachusetts and Florida filed by other parents who say schools facilitated social transition without informing them.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, found in January that California's policies violated parents' right to access their children's education records. The Justice Department also sued after determining the states' transgender athlete policies violate federal civil rights law.
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Vice President JD Vance discusses what led to 'Operation Epic Fury' on 'Jesse Watters Primetime.'
Vice President JD Vance confirmed Monday that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program collapsed after U.S. officials concluded Tehran's claims did not "pass the smell test," prompting President Donald Trump to authorize Operation Epic Fury.
Speaking on "Jesse Watters Primetime," Vance said U.S. envoys — including Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner — had conducted rounds of "deliberate" talks in Geneva with the Iranian delegation.
The discussions were aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and averting a broader conflict, he said, but ultimately broke down.
"But the Iranians would come back to us, and they'd say, ‘Well, you know, having enrichment for civilian purposes, for energy purposes, is a matter of national pride,'" Vance said.
Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, President Donald Trump's special representative for the Middle East Steve Witkoff and U.S. negotiator Jared Kushner meet ahead of the U.S.-Iran talks, in Muscat, the capital of Oman, on Feb. 6, 2026. (Oman Foreign Ministry/Anadolu via Getty Images)
"And so we would say, ‘OK, that's interesting, but why are you building your enrichment facilities 70 feet underground? And why are you enriching to a level that's way beyond civilian enrichment and is only useful if your goal is to build a nuclear bomb?'" he said.
"Nobody objects to the Iranians being able to build medical isotopes; the objection is these enrichment facilities that are only useful for building a nuclear weapon," Vance clarified.
"It just doesn't pass the smell test for you to say that you want enrichment for medical isotopes, while at the same time trying to build a facility 70 to 80 feet underground," he explained.
TRUMP DECLARES 'I GOT HIM BEFORE HE GOT ME' AFTER IRAN'S SUPREME LEADER KILLED IN STRIKE
This image from video provided by U.S. Central Command shows a missile being launched from a U.S. Navy ship in support of Operation Epic Fury on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (U.S. Central Command via AP)
Vance spoke as Operation Epic Fury ended its third day. Launched on Feb. 28, U.S. and Israeli forces carried out coordinated precision strikes deep inside Iran aimed at crippling Tehran's missile arsenal and nuclear infrastructure.
A key issue had been Iran enriching uranium to high levels, including material around 60% purity — a fraction of weapons-grade but far above limits set under the 2015 nuclear deal — keeping international alarm high over proliferation risks.
"We destroyed Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon during President Trump's term," Vance told Watters. "We set them back substantially. But I think the President was looking for the long haul," he said.
"Trump was looking for Iran to make a significant long-term commitment that they would never build a nuclear weapon, that they would not pursue the ability to be on the brink of a nuclear weapon."
FIRES RAGE AT IRAN'S BANDAR ABBAS NAVAL HEADQUARTERS, STRAIT OF HORMUZ TRAFFIC STALLED
Vice President JD Vance speaks with Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, Nov. 20, 2025, in Washington. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
"He wanted to make sure that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon, and that would require fundamentally a change in mindset from the Iranian regime."
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"The president is not going to rest until he accomplishes that all-important objective of ensuring that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon, not just for the next few years, not just because we obliterated Fordow or some other enrichment facility."
"There's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multiyear conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective," Vance added while describing that the administration would prefer to see "a friendly regime in Iran, a stable country, a country that's willing to work with the United States."
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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President Donald Trump leaves following a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, Monday, March 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Redness is seen on the neck of President Donald Trump 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/Mark Schiefelbein)
Redness is visible on the neck of President Donald Trump waves as he walks to depart on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Redness is visible on the neck of President Donald as he attends a Board of Peace meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday attributed a large red spot on President Donald Trump's neck to a skin cream he is using, without elaborating on what condition it is treating.
The redness drew widespread attention Monday, when news photographers captured close-up images of the president's neck during a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
“President Trump is using a very common cream on the right side of his neck, which is a preventative skin treatment, prescribed by the White House Doctor,” Sean Barbabella, the president's doctor, said in a statement. “The President is using this treatment for one week, and the redness is expected to last for a few weeks.”
The White House did not immediately respond to follow-up questions, such as what the cream is, when Trump began the treatment and what condition it is supposed to prevent. Zoomed-in photos from at least as far back as the Board of Peace meeting at the U.S. Institute of Peace on Feb. 19 show visible redness on the president's neck.
AP correspondent Ed Donahue reports on a treatment for President Trump.
The president's medical report from his April 2025 physical noted that he was taking mometasone cream “as needed” for an unspecified skin condition.
Trump, 79, became the oldest president to have taken the oath of office when he was sworn in last January. In particular because of his advanced age, Trump's health is closely scrutinized.
Barbabella said in December that Trump had MRI imaging on his heart and abdomen in October as part of preventive screening for men his age, with the results being “perfectly normal.” That October physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center found that Trump is in overall “exceptional health,” according to Barbabella.
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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
A car carrying the remains of who authorities identified as the late Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera, alias “El Mencho,” arrives at Recinto de Paz cemetery in Guadalajara, Mexico, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Refugio Ruiz)
People follow the hearse carrying the remains of who authorities identify as the late Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera, alias “El Mencho,” at Recinto de Paz cemetery for burial in Guadalajara, Mexico, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Refugio Ruiz)
Mexican army soldiers patrol outside Recinto de Paz cemetery in Guadalajara, Mexico, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Refugio Ruiz)
GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) — The leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was buried Monday in a shiny golden casket with enormous flower wreaths and a large military presence in the state that gave name to one of Mexico's most powerful cartels.
A federal official confirmed that Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias “El Mencho,” was buried in a cemetery in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city. Dozens of people accompanied the funeral procession, many carrying black umbrellas on a sunny day and with a band playing Mexican regional music known as banda.
The official who discussed the location requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case. The Attorney General's Office declined to confirm the location of El Mencho's burial for “security reasons.”
There had been stepped up security since Sunday around a funeral home where large flower wreaths had been arriving without a name. Some did include the image of a rooster in flowers and Oseguera Cervantes was sometimes called the “Lord of the Roosters.”
The Mexican army killed Oseguera Cervantes just over a week ago while attempting to capture him. He died from multiple bullet wounds, according to the death certificate obtained by The Associated Press.
The killing set off violence in some 20 states. The death certificate fits with a description of the operation to capture Oseguera Cervantes given by Defense Secretary Ricardo Trevilla, who had said that the cartel leader and two bodyguards had been badly wounded in a gunfight with soldiers outside a home in Tapalpa, Jalisco. The three died en route to a hospital.
The certificate specified that Oseguera Cervantes had bullet wounds to his chest, abdomen and legs.
His body was taken to Mexico City where an autopsy was performed and then the body was turned over to his family on Saturday, the Attorney General's Office said in a brief statement.
The death certificate also notes that Oseguera Cervantes was to be buried, standard practice in cases of violent deaths to allow for additional forensic evidence to be gathered if needed in the future. The document did not say where the burial would take place.
Authorities' security concerns surrounding the burial location are well founded. Oseguera Cervantes' killing set off retaliation by the cartel in numerous states. More than 70 people died between the military operation and the violence that followed. The government has said that security operations continue against other high-ranking members of the cartel.
It customary for an air of mystery to surround the burials of drug lords in Mexico, something their supporters take advantage of to try to elevate them to legend. Within hours of El Mencho's death there were already ballads, known as narcocorridos, written about his killing.
In Culiacan, in neighboring Sinaloa state, home to a cartel of the same name, there is a cemetery known for its luxury crypts and mausoleums for one-time kingpins like Ignacio Coronel — an old associate of El Mencho — and Arturo Beltrán Leyva.
There was the drug lord who was famously killed twice, Nazario Moreno, leader of the violent and pseudo religious Knights Templar cartel who authorities said was killed in 2010 only to kill him for real in 2014.
Sometimes the bodies disappear, like in the case of Heriberto Lazcano, leader of the fearsome Zetas, whose body was stolen in 2012. Or they die under bizarre circumstances, like Amado Carrillo Fuentes, “Lord of the Skies,” who died in a botched plastic surgery.
___
Sánchez reported from Mexico City. AP writer María Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The White House is attempting to straighten out a mutiny on the Right from pundits accusing the Trump administration of inconsistent messaging when it comes to its military operation against Iran.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a lengthy statement Monday defending the president from complaints that Trump and his advisers have been unclear, and at times contradictory, in laying out their justification for the conflict.
She did not address whether Trump is pursuing regime change in Iran, as he suggested in his remarks to the nation over the weekend, but named the destruction of Iran's military and its terrorist proxies as objectives.
“Killing terrorists is good for America,” Leavitt said in a sharply worded X post.
The statement was a direct response to commentator Matt Walsh, a Trump ally who questioned why the administration was hesitant to call the stated goal regime change when Iran's senior leadership was killed in a Saturday strike.
Walsh also noted the conflicting statements from Trump and his advisers on whether the strikes were preemptive — Trump called the Iranian threat “imminent” on Saturday — and questioned why the administration was citing the dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program as a third objective when officials said its facilities had been “obliterated” last year.
“So far, we've heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask,” Walsh said.
“The messaging on this thing is, to put it mildly, confused,” he added.
Walsh was joined by Sean Davis, Saagar Enjeti, and other conservative commentators who spent the day accusing the administration of bungling its messaging on the conflict.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed frustration Monday over the complaints, telling reporters on Capitol Hill that the “clear objective” was to neutralize Iran's navy and its short-range missile capabilities.
“I don't understand what the confusion is,” Rubio said.
He also laid out in plain terms why the administration chose to strike when it did, suggesting that Israel was primed to launch an attack on its own and that joining suit was necessary to minimize casualties to Americans.
“We knew there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said.
The comments represent an attempt to change the narrative on the conflict as Democrats begin to accuse Trump of pursuing a costly, open-ended “war of choice.” Earlier in the day, War Secretary Pete Hegseth stood before a briefing room podium insisting that the United States was not engaged in an “endless” operation and that the Pentagon had defined metrics for success.
He did address the question of regime change, but attempted to split the difference by denying it was an explicit goal of the White House.
“This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it today,” Hegseth told reporters.
DEMOCRATS SEIZE ON ANTI-WAR FERVOR TO DING TRUMP ON IRAN
In terms of Rubio, Enjeti and other pundits scrutinized his explanation of how the strikes were preemptive.
“Ok, I get it now: The war was preemptive in the sense that we had to preempt Iranian reaction to Israel's preemption,” Enjeti said on X.
American citizens across the Middle East are attempting to follow official advice and evacuate as conflict escalates in the region following US and Israeli attacks on Iran on Saturday.
But multiple US embassies have said they are unable to help citizens trying to leave.
"The U.S. Embassy is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel," the US Embassy in Jerusalem said in a post on X on Tuesday.
The embassy shared that the Israeli Ministry of Tourism was operating shuttles to a border crossing between Egypt and Israel at the town of Taba.
"If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the US government cannot guarantee your safety," said the US embassy, adding that they were sharing the information "as a courtesy to those wishing to leave Israel."
President Donald Trump was asked in the Oval Office on Tuesday why evacuations hadn't been planned beforehand, and whether he would charter planes to evacuate Americans from the region.
Trump largely didn't address the question, other than to note how quickly the conflict broke out.
"It happened all very quickly," Trump said. "I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked."
Dylan Johnson, the Assistant Secretary of State for Global Public Affairs, wrote on X on Tuesday that the State Department is "actively securing military aircraft and charter flights for American citizens who wish to leave the Middle East" and has been in contact with "nearly 3,000 Americans abroad."
In Qatar, where Iranian retaliatory strikes have hit key energy facilities, the country's US embassy issued a travel advisory on Tuesday, also warning American citizens they were unable to help them evacuate, saying that they should "take advantage of commercial transportation options."
The US embassy in Qatar advised Americans who chose to stay to create a contingency plan, but said that "these alternative plans should not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuation."
Most US embassies in the region have suspended normal operations as staff shelter in place, and some have shut down entirely due to heightened security risks.
On Tuesday, the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia issued a stark warning to citizens to stay away from its consulate in Dhahran, a coastal city in the east of Saudi Arabia, due to "a threat of imminent missile and UAV attacks" over the city.
"Do not come to the US Consulate," the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia said.
On Monday, the US embassy in Jordan announced that all its personnel had temporarily departed the Embassy compound "due to a threat." It did not specify the threat.
Iran has launched a barrage of retaliatory missiles against US allies in the region, hitting sites including US military bases, Dubai's Burj Al Arab hotel, and the US embassy in Riyadh.
The list of countries Americans are being urged to depart from immediately is as follows: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar have closed their airspaces.
As of Tuesday, Dubai International has resumed limited flight services but continues to instruct travelers not to come to the airport unless their flight has been confirmed.
Wealthy travelers and expats in the UAE have turned to private jets and chauffeured drivers to help them flee the region, but many have been caught up in lengthy border crossings amid the rush to Saudi Arabia and Oman, where some flights were still departing.
Monica Marks, a professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, posted on X, wondering how Americans are supposed to leave the Middle East without government help.
Launch a war that jeopardises the safety of over half a million Americans from Jerusalem to Dubai? ✅Send a histrionic alert after the fact telling them all to “DEPART NOW?” ✅Pause to ensure that we have the capacity to evacuate our own citizens? ❌❌❌ https://t.co/LU91fwdnfF
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In this article
Apple on Tuesday rolled out new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with its latest M5 chips, along with an updated Studio Display lineup, in its biggest Mac refresh in more than a year.
The push gives Apple a fresh shot at reviving Mac demand while making a broader case that more AI work will move onto the device itself, not just the cloud.
The announcements come at a critical moment for Apple's Mac business, which saw sales drop nearly 7% to $8.39 billion during the holiday quarter, falling well short of analyst expectations of nearly $9 billion. These new machines are meant to get people to upgrade, especially users still hanging onto older Intel-era systems or early M-series devices.
But they also arrive at higher prices, with tighter memory supply driving up costs as suppliers favor the more lucrative AI data center market over consumer hardware.
The MacBook Air now starts at $1,099 for the 13-inch model (up from $999) and $1,299 for the 15-inch (up from $1,199), with Apple doubling base storage to 512GB.
The MacBook Pro gets more expensive as well, with the 14-inch M5 Pro starting at $2,199 and the 16-inch M5 Max at $3,899, up $400 from its predecessor.
To help justify the higher prices, Apple raised the starting storage floor on the Pro line, with M5 Pro models now starting at 1TB and M5 Max models starting at 2TB.
But the bigger pitch is performance. Apple is positioning the M5 Pro and M5 Max as a real step up for heavier workloads, especially AI.
The company says the new MacBook Pro can process large language model prompts nearly four times faster than comparable M4-based machines and up to eight times faster than M1 models, all without sacrificing battery life.
That is central to Apple's push to make the Mac a more credible platform for running advanced AI tools locally — an increasingly important capability for businesses that want to keep sensitive data off cloud servers.
Apple also updated its display lineup, replacing the aging Pro Display XDR with a new two-tier Studio Display family.
The base model starts at $1,599, while the higher-end Studio Display XDR starts at $3,299 and adds features aimed at more demanding professional use cases, including higher brightness, mini-LED backlighting and a faster refresh rate.
That makes Tuesday's launch a clear pivot from the more value-focused products Apple unveiled on Monday, including a refreshed version of its low-cost iPhone.
The broader strategy, though, appears unchanged: give customers a stronger reason to upgrade at multiple price points without weakening the premium tier.
It also keeps attention on what may still come on Wednesday.
If Apple unveils the rumored lower-cost MacBook, that would be the clearest sign yet that this week is about expanding the lineup in both directions, looking to hold onto high-end buyers while reaching first-time Mac customers, Windows and Chromebook switchers, along with iPhone users who have never owned a Mac.
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Blackstone president Jon Gray on Tuesday defended the quality of loans within the firm's flagship private credit fund after investors pulled nearly 8% from it in the last quarter.
The alternative asset management giant said in a late Monday filing that it allowed investors to withdraw 7.9% of BCRED, which it calls the largest private credit fund in the world, with about $82 billion invested. Blackstone did so in part by allowing the firm's own investors to plow $150 million into the fund.
The move sparked a sell-off in Blackstone shares, which fell as much as about 8.5% in morning trading Tuesday, as well as in other private credit peers.
"When you think about credit quality, the 400-plus borrowers here, they had 10% EBITDA growth last year," Gray told CNBC's David Faber, using a term referring to a company's financial performance. "So when we look at this, we feel pretty darn good."
Instead of calming markets, recent moves by alternative asset managers to allow investors to cash out of funds have only added to jitters around private credit and loans to the software industry. Last month, the storm intensified when Blue Owl said it found buyers for $1.4 billion of its loans, in part to help cash out 30% of an embattled credit fund.
Now, with the far larger asset manager Blackstone being swept up in it, concerns around private credit seem to be broadening.
A Blackstone spokesman said the firm and its employees' investment in BCRED was "about meeting 100% of requests for the quarter with certainty and timeliness."
The fund delivered 9.8% annualized returns since inception for Class I shares, the spokesman said.
"We've had a ton of noise," Gray told CNBC. "As you guys know better than anybody in the press, this has become a story."
Concerns were first triggered last fall with the collapse of Tricolor and First Brands, firms that also received funding from banks, the Blackstone executive noted.
"There's a constant spin cycle, and so when that's happening, it's not a surprise that investors can get nervous," Gray said. "Financial advisors can say, 'Hey, I want to redeem.'"
Still, loans to software firms make up the single biggest exposure for BCRED, at roughly 25% of the fund, per disclosures.
While Gray acknowledged that "there are software companies that will be disrupted" by AI in the coming years, he also noted that debt lenders are senior to equity holders and that many software companies will be difficult to dislodge.
"There's this disjointed environment now between what's happening on the ground with underlying portfolios and what's happening in the news cycle," Gray said. "Ultimately, these things will resolve themselves."
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Anthropic "made a mistake" in its dealings with the Department of Defense, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr told CNBC on Tuesday after the U.S. government blacklisted the AI firm.
Anthropic had been in tense negotiations over the terms of its contract with the Pentagon. The startup asked for assurance that its technology would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance of Americans. The DoD wanted Anthropic to agree to let the military use the models across all lawful use cases.
Talks stalled last week and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company "cannot in good conscience" allow the use of its models under these conditions.
"I think it [Anthropic] probably made a mistake," the FCC's Carr told CNBC. "There's obviously rules of the road that are in place that are going to apply to every technology that the Department of War contracts with."
President Donald Trump then ordered every U.S. government agency to "immediately cease" using Anthropic's technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth escalated the pressure on Anthropic by labeling it a "Supply-Chain Risk to National Security." The designation means any contractor that works with the Pentagon may not do business with Anthropic.
When asked by CNBC if the door was still open for Anthropic to work with the U.S. government, the FCC's Carr said the company should "try to correct course as best they can."
"They were given lots of off ramps ... given lots of opportunities to find a great landing spot, and they chose not to do it and that's a mistake for them," Carr added.
Anthropic was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
On Friday, Anthropic said it was "saddened" by the move to blacklist it, saying it "would both be legally unsound and set a dangerous precedent for any American company that negotiates with the government."
"We have tried in good faith to reach an agreement with the Department of War, making clear that we support all lawful uses of AI for national security," aside from the mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons, Anthropic said.
Just hours after Anthropic's blacklisting, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company had agreed to terms with the Department of Defense regarding the use of its artificial intelligence models. On Monday, Altman said OpenAI "shouldn't have rushed" its deal with the Department of Defense, adding that it "looked opportunistic and sloppy."
OpenAI outlined revised terms of the agreement, including wording to clarify that "the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals."
- CNBC's Ashley Capoot and Dylan Butts contributed to this report.
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I flew from Mumbai to Dubai on an Emirates repatriation flight, one of several running over the last 24 hours and one of the first flights back into the country since the U.S. and Israel struck Iran over the weekend.
Most flights to and from the UAE have been grounded, resulting in hundreds of cancellations, thousands stranded both in and outside the Middle East, and global travel disruption as the strikes in Iran escalated into a wider regional conflict.
On Monday, Emirates and Etihad announced a small number of flights to and from Dubai: repatriation flights for Emirati nationals and residents, and others to evacuate tourists stranded in the country.
With around just 30 minutes left of the 3.5-hour journey from Mumbai to Dubai, the captain of the Emirates flight — an Airbus A380, which was only about half full — informed passengers we would have to turn around due to missiles fired by Iran on the UAE.
About 15 minutes later, the captain told passengers that the airspace had reopened, and we had clearance to land in Dubai, where we arrived at an almost empty airport.
The arrivals board was blank, but a small number of passengers appeared to be departing on repatriation flights back to the U.K.
When the war began, I was on holiday in Goa, India with my partner and due to fly back on Sunday, but our direct flight home to the UAE was cancelled. My bosses suggested I go to CNBC's bureau in Singapore to wait out the conflict and work from there. We headed to the airport in Goa on Monday night to catch our flight via Mumbai to Singapore.
When we reached Mumbai's airport, we checked the departures board for our Singapore leg and saw an Emirates flight departing for Dubai at 2:20 am. I had been in touch with Emirates, Etihad and Dubai Airports all weekend for my reporting, but was shocked to see a flight. We went to the Emirates desk to find out more.
To my surprise, they told us we could book flights if we were UAE residents or nationals. They asked us to book on the spot, via the airline's app, and show our Emirates ID, a national ID card for residents across the country.
We stood at the desk, contemplating whether to fly back into an active war. I consulted CNBC's security team and together, we decided it would be best to go home. My team had been on the ground for days reporting and working from the UAE, and I couldn't refuse the chance to go back. My partner and I agreed that we may not get the chance again anytime soon.
We boarded the very quiet flight and spoke with other passengers, a mix of Emiratis and expats residing in Dubai. Many of them had tried in recent days to board flights to Saudi Arabia or Oman, hoping to cross back into the UAE from there.
I was told taxi drivers in Muscat were charging passengers wanting to cross the border over 3,000 dirhams, which is just over $800, for the four-and-a-half-hour drive. Most people on board said they were excited to get home, but the mood on the flight was tense.
The flight took off and we fell asleep. It was the middle of the night and I'd been working for the last three days on breaking news. Thirty minutes from landing, the captain woke us all up to say that UAE airspace had closed and that the plane had to turn back to Mumbai. We were so close.
There was a mix of silence and shock. I was next to a British woman who said her two young children were in Dubai. She looked at me with despair at the news that she wouldn't see her family.
Through the flight's Wifi, I learned from my team, who was tracking my flight, that a barrage of missiles had been fired towards the UAE. They reported hearing multiple loud explosions, which the UAE government has confirmed were the country's air defenses intercepting missiles from Iran. I was stunned, and started to make plans to revert to my original plan: Singapore.
About 15 minutes later, the captain's voice returned. He said, to our great surprise, that we had clearance to land in Dubai and that we are just around an hour away. The entire flight clapped and cheered. I looked at my partner. We both thought: Are we really flying back into the range of ballistic missiles?
As we approached Dubai, I saw the familiar sight of the Persian Gulf out my window, tankers dotted around the UAE coast like small stars full of petroleum.
The crew told me that we were being escorted back into UAE airspace by two fighter jets. I could not see any out of my window from my view in the middle seat and, after we landed, Emirates would not confirm it to me on record, saying only the flight was "rerouted in line with air traffic control instructions" and "landed safely in Dubai with a one-hour delay."
When we landed, it was just after 6 a.m. on Tuesday. The emptiness was an eerie reminder of how the country felt during Covid-19. I flew a lot then and remember being in and out of a very empty Dubai Airport. The arrivals board was blank, the baggage claims were still, and the taxi ranks were empty.
It felt good to be home, even though it felt like sheer luck and I'd expected to be unable to return for weeks. For me, for now, the UAE feels safe.
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Since moving to Tokyo last year, my friends back in New York have made a habit of sending me viral posts about Japan. That's how I first learned about Punch, the baby monkey abandoned by his mother and now cared for by zookeepers at Ichikawa City Zoo, east of Tokyo.
Videos of Punch — a 7-month-old Japanese macaque — clinging to an Ikea orangutan have racked up millions of views on TikTok. The hashtag #HangInTherePunch has gone viral.
Javier Quiñones, commercial manager at Ingka Group, which operates Ikea stores worldwide, told Business Insider that Ikea has seen sales of the Djungelskog orangutan toy increase.
"The toy has long been one of our most sought-after across markets, and the story from Japan is now giving it a little extra love," he said.
I expected other fans to be making the trek, but I didn't spot a single rider headed for the zoo. The trains were packed at first — commuters with suitcases bound for Narita Airport, salarymen, uniformed schoolkids — but by the time we reached sleepy Ichikawa Station, most had cleared out.
Getting there took just under 2 hours: three trains and a 30-minute walk. The zoo-bound bus doesn't run on weekdays.
Near the entrance, I began spotting both foreign and Japanese visitors climbing out of taxis, clutching monkey stuffed animals. It was obvious who they were there to see.
I paid the 440-yen, or $2.80, admission fee and made my way to Monkey Mountain, passing a mosaic mural of animals along the path.
There were rows of people lined up around a blue iron fence, phones raised, waiting to capture Punch in action. Spectators oohed as other monkeys climbed the rocky structure to play with a silver chain affixed to the top.
The air smelled of manure. The enclosure itself was stark — rocky, with little vegetation, more concrete jungle than mountainside.
Some of the monkeys appeared thin, even balding
Punch, by contrast, looked healthy, his fur darker and thicker than the others'. Visitors laughed when he leapt from a rock to the monkey bars.
He isn't the only baby in the exhibit, but he appears to be the smallest. Mostly, he keeps to himself, occasionally playing with a slightly larger one.
A woman from Canada, wearing a Yankees hat and visiting with her family, told me she'd seen Punch playing with his Ikea toy earlier and interacting with the others.
"We didn't see any monkey fights," she said. "We don't love zoos and were a little concerned about supporting one if it doesn't have the best enclosures. They could use some improvements, but it was better than I thought."
After about 10 minutes, the troop grew restless.
"Lunchtime," someone nearby said in Japanese.
The monkeys scrambled upward. Punch returned to the monkey bars. A slightly larger monkey barreled into him, knocking him off balance, but he quickly recovered.
A group of heavily made-up girls in Japanese high school uniforms arrived, giggling. "Yabai," they whispered. "Kawaii."
The toy sat abandoned on the other side of the enclosure.
At 2:50 p.m., the monkeys began clamoring for food, climbing the door and hanging from the rails. Then a young man in a blue uniform entered.
Punch immediately climbed onto the zookeeper's leg as he circled the enclosure, scattering orange and yellow pellets. Within minutes, the food was gone.
The zookeeper returned with what looked like grass. This time, Punch perched on his shoulder as they made another lap before disappearing into a back room together.
Around me, spectators wondered whether Punch would reappear before closing. Most were young adults — students and couples, some in coordinated outfits — clearly here for a photo.
I asked a zookeeper if he had time to answer a few questions, but he said the staff was overwhelmed by Punch's popularity and too busy to respond, even to email inquiries.
Then an announcement crackled over the loudspeaker: Monkey Mountain was getting crowded. Visitors were asked to limit their stay to 10 minutes.
Punch's fame was being rationed in 10-minute increments.
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American consumers and businesses are taking most of the hit from President Donald Trump's tariffs, New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said Tuesday in remarks that counter White House claims.
"The tariffs have overwhelmingly been borne domestically — a New York Fed analysis estimates that most of the burden has fallen on U.S. firms and consumers.," Williams said in remarks for a conference in Washington, D.C. "In addition, the tariffs have already meaningfully increased U.S. prices of imported goods, and the full effects have likely not yet been felt."
The study Williams cited has generated a fair amount of controversy over the past few weeks.
In a white paper published on the New York Fed's website, a team of researchers found that as much as 90% of the added cost from tariffs has been passed on to domestic producers and consumers. Trump and other White House officials had insisted that exporters would absorb the costs rather than raise prices.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett flamed the controversy during a CNBC appearance in which he suggested that the researchers should be "disciplined" for what he termed was "the worst paper I've ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system." Hassett later stepped back the criticism.
Addressing the issue for the first time publicly, Williams said not only were the tariffs being felt at home, but they also were keeping the Fed from reaching its 2% inflation goal.
"My current estimate is that, to date, the increase in tariffs has contributed around one half to three quarters of a percentage point to the current inflation rate of about 3 percent," he said. "The FOMC defines price stability as 2 percent inflation over the longer run. Owing to the effects of tariffs, progress toward that goal has temporarily stalled."
On the bright side, Williams said he still expects the tariff impact on inflation to be temporary, and he sees the Fed hitting its target by 2027. He added that the U.S. economy "appears to be on a good footing."
As for current policy, he said it is "well positioned" for the Fed to hit its dual mandate goal of steady prices and full employment. Should inflation progress lower after the tariff impact fades, "further reductions in the federal funds rate will eventually be warranted to prevent monetary policy from inadvertently becoming more restrictive."
Markets expect the Fed to resume cutting later this year, possibly in July or September, according to current futures pricing. As New York Fed president, Williams carries extra influence on the Federal Open Market Committee, where he is a permanent voting member.
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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., lashed out at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday, calling her leadership of the agency a "disaster."
"We're an exceptional nation. And one of the reasons we're exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you have demonstrated anything but that," said Tillis, who has previously called on Noem to resign. He struck out at Noem for her handling of disaster response and the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, among other things.
"What we've seen is innocent people getting detained that turned out are American citizens," Tillis said in a roughly 10-minute diatribe that included references to passages from her autobiography in which she describes killing a poorly behaved dog.
Noem was making her first appearance before Congress since the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents during the Minnesota immigration crackdown. It is the first of two this week, as she is due to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
She was met with hostility from Tillis, who is retiring at the end of his term, and Democrats on the panel and skepticism even from some other committee Republicans.
"Mistakes have been made," Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in his opening remarks. "Let's make it clear. One death is too many. But officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws,"
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., questioned Noem on a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign, that included a lucrative contract with a Republican consulting firm with ties to Noem and Department of Homeland Security aides. Those commercials feature Noem prominently, in one case on horseback with Mount Rushmore in the background, and warn immigrants about entering the country unlawfully. She denied any role in choosing the firm and said the ads have been "extremely effective."
"Well they were effective in your name recognition," Kennedy said. "It troubles me. A fifth to a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money when we're scratching over every penny and we're fighting over rescission packages. I just can't agree with."
Noem's appearance also coincided with an ongoing DHS shutdown. Funding for DHS lapsed last month, and Democrats have so far refused to back an appropriations bill over frustrations with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement tactics. DHS still has billions of dollars at its disposal to keep some programs running thanks to last year's massive tax and spending bill.
Some Republicans argued that in light of the recent military action in Iran, failing to fund DHS presented a security risk.
"Can we not understand America's under siege now, likely to be attacked because radical Islam is under siege and they're going to hit back, and we're sitting here looking at each other and not funding DHS?" said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Democrats in Congress have been sharply critical of Noem's leadership of DHS. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., introduced articles of impeachment for Noem in January after federal officers killed Good and Pretti.
"Under your leadership, the Homeland Security Department has been devoid of any moral compass or respect for the rule of law," Senate Judiciary ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said at the hearing. "Without hesitation or remorse, DHS agents have wreaked havoc in our cities ... and acted with unspeakable cruelty against children, immigrant families and American citizens."
Friends and family members of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention were present at the hearing. They held signs and shouted in Noem's direction as she took her seat in a Senate committee room.
Two protesters interrupted testimony and were forcibly removed from the room.
Durbin and others members also took issue with Noem's handling of the Pretti shooting in Minnesota. In the immediate aftermath, Noem said Pretti, a Minneapolis intensive care unit nurse, "committed an act of domestic terrorism," then walked the claim back after video of the incident emerged.
"Do you retract these statements identifying these individuals as domestic terrorists?" Durbin asked.
"When we have these situations happen, we always offer condolences to those families, and I offer mine as well. These are tragic situations," Noem said.
Given the broad use of ICE and DHS agents throughout the country, many Democrats have expressed anxiety that federal officers could be deployed to polling places for midterm elections this November, as some White House allies, like Steve Bannon, have urged.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., asked Noem whether she would "rule out the deployment of ICE or CBP to polling places this November?"
"There are no plans to have ICE officers at our polling locations," Noem said. She did not explicitly rule it out.
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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., lashed out at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday, calling her leadership of the agency a "disaster."
"We're an exceptional nation. And one of the reasons we're exceptional is we expect exceptional leadership. And you have demonstrated anything but that," said TIllis, who has previously called on Noem to resign. He struck out at Noem for her handling of disaster response and the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, among other things.
"What we've seen is innocent people getting detained that turned out are American citizens," Tillis said in a roughly 10-minute diatribe that included references to passages from her autobiography in which she describes killing a poorly behaved dog.
Noem was making her first appearance before Congress since the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents during the Minnesota immigration crackdown. It is the first of two this week, as she is due to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
She was met with hostility from Tillis, who is retiring at the end of his term, and Democrats on the panel and skepticism even from some other committee Republicans.
"Mistakes have been made," Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in his opening remarks. "Let's make it clear. One death is too many. But officers should never be threatened or harmed while enforcing our laws,"
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., questioned Noem on a $220 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign, that included a lucrative contract with a Republican consulting firm with ties to Noem and DHS aides. Those commercials feature Noem prominently, in one case on horseback with Mount Rushmore in the background, and warn immigrants about entering the country unlawfully. She denied any role in choosing the firm and said the ads have been "extremely effective."
"Well they were effective in your name recognition," Kennedy said. "It troubles me. A fifth to a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money when we're scratching over every penny and we're fighting over rescission packages. I just can't agree with."
Noem's appearance also coincided with an ongoing DHS shutdown. Funding for DHS lapsed last month, and Democrats have so far refused to back an appropriations bill over frustrations with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement tactics. DHS still has billions of dollars at its disposal to keep some programs running thanks to last year's massive tax-and-spending bill.
Some Republicans argued that in light of the recent military action in Iran, failing to fund DHS presented a security risk.
"Can we not understand America's under siege now, likely to be attacked because radical Islam is under siege and they're gonna hit back, and we're sitting here looking at each other and not funding DHS?" said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Democrats in Congress have been sharply critical of Noem's leadership of DHS. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., introduced articles of impeachment for Noem in January after federal officers killed Good and Pretti.
"Under your leadership, the Homeland Security Department has been devoid of any moral compass or respect for the rule of law," Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said at the hearing. "Without hesitation or remorse, DHS agents have wreaked havoc in our cities ... and acted with unspeakable cruelty against children, immigrant families, and American citizens."
Friends and family members of individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention were present at the hearing. They held signs and shouted in Noem's direction as she took her seat in a Senate committee room.
Two protesters interrupted testimony and were forcibly removed from the room.
Durbin and others members also took isuse with Noem's handling of the Pretti shooting in Minnesota. In the immediate aftermath, Noem said Pretti, a Minneapolis ICU nurse, "committed an act of domestic terrorism," then walked the claim back after video of the incident emerged.
"Do you retract these statements identifying these individuals as domestic terrorists?" Durbin asked.
"When we have these situations happen, we always offer condolences to those families, and I offer mine as well. These are tragic situations," Noem said.
Given the broad use of ICE and DHS agents throughout the country, many Democrats have expressed anxiety that federal officers could be deployed to polling places for midterm elections this November, as some White House allies, like Steve Bannon, have urged.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., asked Noem whether she would "rule out the deployment of ICE or CBP to polling places this November?"
"There are no plans to have ICE officers at our polling locations," Noem said. She did not explicitly rule it out.
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Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has told CNBC that Paramount's bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery is "cleaner" than Netflix's, adding he expected it to be approved "pretty quickly."
"There's a lot of concerns when Netflix was the potential buyer there," Carr said on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday. "That particular combination raised a lot of competition concerns."
Paramount Skydance put in a revised offer to buy the entirety of WBD last week at $31 per share, up from $30 per share, which the WBD board deemed superior to an existing Netflix proposal.
Netflix had been set to buy the media giant's studio and streaming businesses for $27.75 per share, but said this was "no longer financially attractive" in light of Paramount's offer.
Carr spoke with CNBC's Arjun Kharpal in a wide-ranging discussion about the WBD-Paramount merger, which requires regulators' sign-off.
Carr told CNBC that Netflix "would have a very difficult path" getting regulatory approval, adding that Paramount's was "a lot cleaner, does not raise at all the same types of concerns."
"I think there's some real consumer benefits that can emerge from it," he added.
Both deals raised antitrust questions around the U.S. theatrical industry, prompting concerns over potential job losses or smaller film slates in Hollywood. Netflix's proposed combination also spurred questions around streaming dominance, as it would have brought together two of the most popular streaming services in Netflix and WBD's HBO Max.
On Monday, Paramount said it planned to release at least 30 films annually, or 15 per studio. Executives also said it would combine its streaming service Paramount+ with HBO Max into one service once the transaction was complete.
It's unclear what the regulatory process for Paramount and WBD will entail. The FCC typically reviews deals that include one of the nation's broadcasts, including Paramount's CBS, and backed Paramount's merger with Skydance last year.
"If there's any FCC role at all, it'll be a pretty minimal role. And I think this is a good deal, and I think it should get through pretty quickly," Carr added.
Unlike Netflix's proposed deal, Paramount's bid encompasses WBD's pay TV networks, such as CNN, TBS and TNT.
Paramount has offered a $7 billion breakup fee if the deal doesn't gain regulatory clearance. It also already paid the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD owed to Netflix because that deal was canceled.
Some of the concerns around a Netflix-WBD deal included higher consumer prices and reduced competition.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in December that the potential deal "could be a problem" because of the increased market share it would give Netflix. He walked back those comments a month later, saying the deal would be solely reviewed by the Department of Justice.
In a statement, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called the Paramount and WBD merger "an antitrust disaster threatening higher prices and fewer choices for American families."
Analysts from investment bank Raymond James said last week that a Paramount-WBD deal was "meaningfully easier" than the Netflix deal.
"There are new challenges with this deal around news, cable networks, international linear networks, etc., but we still feel the WBD/PSKY deal is more palatable all-in," the analysts wrote.
"And, particularly following the reaction to the WBD/NFLX agreement, we believe PSKY's political standing with the current U.S. administration is much stronger than Netflix's."
However, Paren Knadjian, a partner at advisory firm EisnerAmper, said last week that the Paramount-WBD deal isn't necessarily a done deal, with the path forward looking more nuanced.
The Netflix-WBD deal focused primarily on library content, but Paramount's deal is a "horizontal consolidation" between cable TV, sports, streaming and news, he said.
"I think the biggest thing we're going to focus on is the concentration of intellectual property under one roof," Knadjian told CNBC. "What power does that give this new entity in terms of the ability to charge more?"
"The regulatory pressure, the political pressure, those are the things that will certainly delay the deal and will make it more complicated, and I think there's going to have to be significant concessions for it to go through," Knadjian added.
There's also the outstanding question of whether the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would find issue with the structure of the deal. Paramount's offer included roughly $24 billion from Gulf state sovereign wealth funds.
— CNBC's Lillian Rizzo and Alex Sherman contributed to this report.
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Tech workers at Google, OpenAI and some of their peers are circulating an array of letters calling for clearer limits on how their employers work with the military after the U.S. carried out strikes on Iran over the weekend and the Pentagon blacklisted AI models from Anthropic.
One open letter, titled "We Will Not Be Divided," grew from a couple hundred names on Friday to almost 900 by Monday, with nearly 100 signatories from OpenAI and close to 800 from Google. The letter took aim at the Department of Defense's actions against Anthropic, which refused to allow its technology to be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
"They're trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in," the letter reads. "That strategy only works if none of us know where the others stand. This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure from the Department of War."
Combat operations began in Iran hours after the Trump administration's decision on Friday to block Anthropic and designate the company a "supply chain risk." While the U.S. government claimed the attack on Iran was necessary to neutralize "imminent threats" from the country's nuclear and missile programs, the actions appear to have pushed more tech workers to sign their names to various petitions.
Tensions in tech have been escalating for months, largely due to the increased aggressiveness of federal immigration agents, including the killings of two American citizens in Minnesota early this year. Workers in the industry have demanded greater transparency regarding the work their employers do with the government, particularly when it comes to cloud and artificial intelligence contracts.
For Google, the latest backlash comes as the company is reportedly in talks with the Pentagon over bringing its AI model Gemini onto a classified system, reviving a years-old internal fight over military AI.
On Friday, No Tech For Apartheid, a group that's long been critical of cloud deals between the U.S. government and tech giants, posted a joint statement titled, "Amazon, Google, Microsoft Must Reject the Pentagon's Demands."
The coalition said the three leaders in cloud infrastructure should refuse Defense Department terms that would enable mass surveillance or other abusive uses of AI, and called for greater clarity around contracts involving the military and agencies including Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The group pointed to Google directly, citing the potential of a Pentagon deal that could mirror an agreement that allows the Defense Department to deploy Grok, from Elon Musk's xAI, "in classified environments — as far as we know, without any guardrails."
"Our own companies are also on the brink of accepting similar contract terms," the statement said. "Google is in negotiations with the Pentagon to deploy Gemini, its own frontier model, for classified uses."
While Anthropic and OpenAI have made numerous public statements regarding their negotiations with the DOD and the current status of their contracts, Google parent Alphabet has been silent. The company hasn't responded to multiple requests for comment.
In another effort backing Anthropic, hundreds of tech workers signed an open letter urging the Department of Defense to withdraw its designation of the company as a "supply chain risk." The list includes dozens of employees from OpenAI, along with workers affiliated with companies including Salesforce, Databricks, IBM and Cursor
The letter calls on Congress to "examine whether the use of these extraordinary authorities against an American technology company is appropriate," and says Anthropic, and other private companies, should not face retaliation for refusing to accede to the government's demands.
Similar concerns were floated internally at Google last week, when more than 100 employees who work on AI technology reportedly signed a letter to management, expressing fears about the company's work with the DOD. They asked the search giant to draw the same red lines as Anthropic, according to The New York Times.
Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist, received the memo and appeared to sympathize with at least some of the concerns. He wrote in a thread on X that "mass surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment and has a chilling effect on freedom of expression."
He added that surveillance systems are "prone to misuse for political or discriminatory purposes."
Dean has experienced related issues at Google in the recent past.
In 2018, the company faced an internal revolt over Project Maven, a Pentagon program that used AI to analyze drone footage. After thousands of employees protested, Google let the contract lapse. The company later established its "AI Principles," laying out how its technology could be used.
It's continued to be a source of consternation. In 2024, Google fired more than 50 employees after protests over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint contract with Amazon for work with the Israeli government. Executives repeatedly said the contract didn't violate any of the company's AI Principles. However, documents and reports show the company's agreement allowed for giving Israel AI tools that included image categorization, object tracking and provisions for state-owned weapons manufacturers.
In December of that year, a New York Times report found that four months before the Nimbus agreement, officials at the company worried that signing the deal would harm its reputation and that "Google Cloud services could be used for, or linked to, the facilitation of human rights violations."
Early last year, Google reportedly revised its AI Principles and removed language that had explicitly prohibited "building weapons" or "surveillance technology."
WATCH: Anthropic, Pentagon and software sell-off are not separate stories
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A prolonged surge in natural gas prices triggered by the ongoing war in the Middle East risks denting European growth and hitting some Asian economies hard, analysts have warned.
Global gas prices have soared this week amid fears of a lengthy disruption to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz — a key shipping route running between Oman and Iran that handles about one-fifth of global LNG trade — as the Iran conflict escalates.
Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) futures, Europe's benchmark gas contract, rose 35% on Tuesday to more than 60 euros ($69.64) per megawatt-hour. On the week, prices are around 76% higher.
The Northeast Asia LNG benchmark, the Japan-Korea-Marker (JKM), which captures deliveries to Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, reached a one-year high, and was last seen around 43 euros ($49.83) per MWh. U.K. natural gas was also sharply higher.
Qatar, one of the world's largest LNG producers, halted production on Monday following Iranian drone strikes at Ras Laffan Industrial City and Mesaieed Industrial City. Goldman Sachs estimated the pause will reduce near-term global LNG supply by about 19%.
A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard official later said the country had closed the Strait of Hormuz to all ships, and warned that any vessel attempting to pass through the channel would be attacked. The U.S., however, said the route remained open, according to a Fox News report.
Europe and much of Asia are more heavily exposed to potential gas price shocks than the U.S., which benefits from both domestic shale and LNG production.
Around 25% of Europe's total gas supply is LNG, according to Chris Wheaton, oil and gas analyst at Stifel. With roughly 20% of global LNG production sitting behind the Strait, a prolonged disruption could trigger a supply squeeze comparable to the 2022 shock following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he said in a note.
"We are much more concerned about European gas prices than we are about oil prices," Wheaton said.
Shares of Norwegian energy giant Equinor, one of Europe's largest natural gas suppliers, hit a 52-week high on Tuesday, adding more than 2%, after closing the previous session up more than 8%.
Goldman Sachs, in a note published Monday, warned that a monthlong halt to flows through Hormuz risks driving TTF and JKM prices toward 74 euros ($85.80) per MWh. This was the level that "triggered large natural gas demand responses" during the 2022 European energy crisis.
European gas prices ultimately peaked at 345 euros ($400.02) per MWh in August 2022 as Russia weaponized its natural gas exports in response to EU sanctions, cutting supply, which pushed up domestic energy bills and sparked a cost-of-living crisis across the continent.
In a separate note later Monday, Goldman raised its April TTF forecast to 55 euros ($63.75) per MWh from 36 euros ($41.73) per megawatt-hour, with its average second-quarter forecast now at 45 euros ($52.16) per MWh.
Patrick O'Donnell, chief investment strategist at Omnis Investments, said LNG is now a key area of concern for Europe's wider economy. "That may have more negative implications for the European economy and the reindustrialization that the market has been hoping that we get to see," O'Donnell told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Monday.
Indeed, Goldman Sachs analysts led by Sven Jari Stehn noted that "the effects of higher energy prices on GDP tend to be negative for most countries, except for Norway which produces and exports oil."
Goldman Sachs estimated that a sustained 10% rise in energy prices over four quarters would cut 0.2% off GDP in both the U.K. and the euro area. Switzerland, which relies more on nuclear and renewables, would be flat, while Norway — an oil exporter — would see a 0.1% boost.
In contrast, Goldman analysts see "limited upside risk" to U.S. natural gas prices.
Asia is also vulnerable to supply disruption.
Invesco estimates that almost 58% of India's LNG imports come from the Middle East, accounting for nearly 2% of its primary energy consumption. Around 27% of Singapore's LNG imports come from the region, making up 2.2% of primary energy use.
Other Asia-Pacific nations source more than 37% of their LNG from the Middle East, Invesco said, representing almost 3% of primary energy consumption, while 26.6% of China's LNG imports originate there.
Elias Haddad, global head of markets strategy at BBH, said countries heavily reliant on imported oil and gas with limited fiscal space — including Japan, India, South Africa, Turkey, Hungary and Malaysia — were the most vulnerable to energy disruption shocks, while Norway, Canada and Mexico are among the least exposed.
"A protracted conflict that leads to further disruption in energy production and shipping raises the risk of stagflation and could add to fiscal strains," Haddad said in a note.
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One man in the US owns enough land to cover the entire state of Delaware nearly twice over — or New York City 14 times over.
Billionaire Stanley Kroenke is the largest landowner in America, owning 2.7 million acres, according to the 2026 Land Report 100, which tracks individual landowners across the US.
Kroenke's holdings beat the record previously held by California's Emmerson family, which owns 2.44 million acres of timberland across California, Oregon, and Washington.
Kroenke, 78, has an estimated net worth of $22.2 billion as of March 2, Forbes reported.
His fortune is largely tied to his investments in sports franchises and commercial and ranching real estate.
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In 2016, Kroenke acquired the historic Waggoner Ranch in Texas, a 535,000-acre landmark founded in 1849 by Dan Waggoner.
At the time, it was Kroenke's largest holding, and the Waggoner was widely described as one of the largest ranches in the United States under a single fence, as reported by American Cowboy magazine.
Then, in December 2025, the land magnate bought over 937,000 deeded acres in New Mexico, the single-largest land purchase in the US in over a decade.
This ranchland purchase put Kroenke at the top of the landowner list after years in the top five.
He also owns extensive land outside the US. In 2003, he bought Douglas Lake Ranch, Canada's largest working cattle ranch, which spans more than 500,000 acres in British Columbia.
Aside from owning millions of acres in Western ranchlands, Kroenke also owns about 60 million square feet of commercial real estate, The New York Times reported.
Much of that portfolio consists of shopping centers anchored by Walmart stores, a strategy Kroenke began building decades ago that helped fund his expansion into sports and large-scale land acquisitions.
Some of the billionaire's real estate holdings include sports venues in Denver and outside Los Angeles, both cities where Kroenke-owned sports teams play.
Kroenke's sports holdings, which are responsible for a large portion of his fortune, include the Los Angeles Rams, the Colorado Avalanche, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Mammoth, the Colorado Rapids, and Britain's Arsenal soccer club.
The soaring valuations of his NFL and global soccer franchises have significantly boosted the value of Kroenke's portfolio, as media rights deals and international fan bases push teams' worth into the billions.
Last year, Forbes ranked Kroenke as the ninth richest NFL team owner.
Kroenke's connection to Walmart isn't just a business one — he's married to Walmart heiress Ann Walton, the daughter of its cofounder James "Bud" Walton.
Ann Walton herself is worth an estimated $14.6 billion, per Forbes.
They married in 1974 and have two children together, Josh and Whitney Ann.
Despite marrying a Walmart heiress, Kroenke's fortune has been largely self-made in the real-estate sector.
From nearly a million acres of Western ranchland to NFL stadiums packed with fans, Kroenke's empire now spans more territory than some US states and more than any other person in the country.
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Luxury stocks were among the hardest hit sectors early Tuesday, with European markets heading for another day of losses as the conflict in the Middle East intensified overnight.
Shares of conglomerate LVMH, Gucci-owner Kering, and British outerwear maker Burberry were among the worst performers, with week-to-date losses approaching 10% each. The wider European blue-chip index, Stoxx 600, was down nearly 3% Tuesday, after falling 1.6% on Monday.
The Middle East has been a driver of growth in the sector, which is battling a difficult macroeconomic backdrop, and many formerly best-selling brands are struggling to resonate with consumers.
The region's strength, however, hasn't been enough to offset weakness elsewhere, notably in China, and industry giants like LVMH and Kering are still struggling to get sales back on a positive track.
"The Middle East has been one of the few bright spots," Morningstar analyst Jelena Sokolova told CNBC. "You have one area which was small, but which was very, very vibrant, and it's being affected now."
The U.S. and Israel launched widespread attacks on Iran over the weekend that killed the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran responded with retaliatory strikes, and the conflict now engulfs the wider Middle East region with no clear endpoint in sight.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said the war could last for four to five weeks, but that it could go on "far longer than that."
Shares of Richemont, the owner of Cartier, Van Cleef, and Chloé, fell heavily on Monday and Tuesday, with a relatively big exposure to the region.
But even with Middle East revenue exposure on average in the mid- to-high single digits for luxury brands, repercussions could spread if a conflict lasts for weeks or even months.
"If people don't go back to normal, and we have more issues when it comes to sourcing oil and gas from the Gulf, then the probability of a recession globally could be increasing, and that would definitely dampen discretionary sectors like luxury," Bernstein analyst Luca Solca told CNBC.
If the war carries on for another six months, during which oil is significantly disrupted, "then this is very bad news," he added.
Luxury stocks come under pressure during times of heighted geopolitical and economic uncertainty because demand typically requires a "feel-good" backdrop and supportive consumer confidence, analysts say.
"Luxury demand relies on positive consumer confidence and constructive outlook of one's future prospects, as well as the consumer experience which is often less transactional and more emotional," RBC Capital Markets analysts wrote in a note to clients on Monday. "Conflict, shock, uncertainty and fear are not helpful in this context and can have a shortterm impact on luxury demand."
The impact on asset prices overall remains to be seen, but moves so far indicate that a hit, at least in the short term, is to be expected.
There are massive uncertainties about a potential end to the conflict and when that would be, said Sokolova, however, also calling the market reaction "exaggerated" given the relatively small sales portion coming from the region.
Strikes between the U.S., Israel and Iran in the region have forced airlines to cancel thousands of flights. While some airlines said Monday they would resume a "limited number" of flights, aircraft remain largely grounded as the conflict enters its fourth day.
The timing of the strikes also coincides with Ramadan, meaning that post-Ramadan travel may be disrupted if the conflict drags on. Travel from the Middle East after the month-long observance is predominantly to Europe, RBC said.
"Given the timing of the Iran War conflict, and the current grounding of commercial flights, there may be a reluctance for Middle East consumers to travel post Ramadan in 2026 which would likely negatively impact a portion of luxury consumption in Europe."
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Pinterest stock jumped 6% after activist investor Elliott Investment Management made a $1 billion investment in the social media company.
The company said it plans to use the funding to buy back stock as part of a newly approved $3.5 billion share repurchase program.
"Elliott's investment is a strong vote of confidence in the work we have done to build our business and the significant opportunities ahead for Pinterest," said CEO Bill Ready in a release.
Marc Steinberg, who is a partner at Elliott and a member of Pinterest's board, said the firm sees "substantial opportunity ahead" for the social media company.
Pinterest's stock has shed nearly a third of its value this year. The company is battling slowing growth and reduced advertising spending as businesses deal with the tariff fallout.
Last month, Pinterest's stock slumped after disclosing in its lackluster fourth-quarter earnings that tariff shocks have weighed on large retailers and contributed to a pullback in advertising spending.
In January, the company also axed less than 15% of its workforce and cut back office space as it prioritizes artificial intelligence.
As part of the deal, Elliott will purchase $1 billion in convertible senior notes at an initial conversion price of $22.72 per share. That represents a 30% premium to the stock's closing price on Monday.
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Best Buy posted mixed results on Tuesday as the retailer's holiday-quarter sales declined and missed Wall Street's expectations, but its earnings topped estimates as it showed improved profitability.
For the current fiscal year, the consumer electronics retailer expects revenue to range between $41.2 billion and $42.1 billion, compared with $41.69 billion in the most recent fiscal year. It expects adjusted earnings per share to range from $6.30 to $6.60, after it reported adjusted earnings per share of $6.43 for the previous fiscal year.
Best Buy anticipates that comparable sales, a metric that tracks sales online and in stores open at least 14 months, will range from a decline of 1% to an increase of 1%.
In a news release, CEO Corie Barry said demand for consumer electronics remained lackluster during the gift-giving season, but the company's internal data indicates that Best Buy's market share in the industry "was at least flat."
Chief Financial Officer Matt Bilunas said in his own statement that the company is "excited about the momentum in our business." But he added that company leaders "expect to continue to navigate a mixed macro environment."
Shares of Best Buy rose more than 4% in morning trading.
Here's how the retailer did for the fiscal fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, according to a survey of analysts by LSEG:
In the three-month period ended Jan. 31, Best Buy's net income jumped to $541 million, or $2.56 per share, from $117 million, or 54 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Excluding one-time expenses, including charges for its health business, Best Buy reported adjusted earnings per share of $2.61.
Revenue decreased from $13.95 billion in the year-ago quarter. Yet on an annual basis, revenue rose to $41.69 billion from $41.53 billion in the prior fiscal year. Best Buy's annual revenue declined in the three previous fiscal years.
For about four years, Best Buy has pinned its slower sales on more price-sensitive U.S. consumers, a slower housing market and less tech innovation. All of those factors have caused some shoppers to delay tech purchases, particularly big-ticket items like new refrigerators.
On a call with reporters, Barry said the company is continuing to see consistent behaviors from both higher-income cohorts and lower-income groups. While she said Best Buy is seeing some softness in higher-cost item sales, the other end of the customer base is "resilient" and "deal-focused."
More than half of Best Buy's customer base falls in the income group of $100,000 or higher, she added.
"I think it's important to know in the places where we have seen innovation, where there's a bit more newness ... people are willing to step into those higher price points across income cohorts," Barry said on the call.
Higher tariffs have also added costs for Best Buy, since many consumer electronics are imported. Barry said the company's "last resort" is raising prices, and it's instead focused on diversifying its supply chain and negotiating costs with vendors.
Comparable sales dropped 0.8% in the fourth quarter as the company saw softer sales of appliances and home theaters. Those declines were partially offset by sales growth in computing and mobile phones, the company said.
Best Buy has leaned into more profitable businesses, including selling ads and offering more merchandise through its third-party marketplace, which launched in August. Barry said in the company's news release that Best Buy's advertising partners nearly doubled compared with the prior year and she said that the retailer has significantly increased the number of available products on the marketplace.
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Americans in many Middle Eastern countries are now being advised to depart immediately for safety reasons after the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday.
"Depart now via commercial means due to serious safety risks," is the messaging for Americans as of 4 p.m. EST on March 2 from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department, shared on X.
The post on X told Americans to contact and follow the State Department at the following numbers and sites:
The list of countries and territories Americans are being urged to depart from immediately is as follows: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
The notice urging Americans to depart comes as airspaces in a large swath of the mentioned countries remain closed for commercial flights.
The @SecRubio @StateDept urges Americans to DEPART NOW from the countries below using available commercial transportation, due to serious safety risks. Americans who need State Department assistance arranging to depart via commercial means, CALL US 24/7 at +1-202-501-4444 (from… pic.twitter.com/vdplAik2Sq
Multiple US embassies in the Middle East told Americans they are unable to help them leave countries they are advised to evacuate from.
The "depart now" messaging comes after the US initially issued shelter-in-place advisories for countries including Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon.
US embassies in Middle Eastern countries were explicit about the potential danger of remaining in and traveling to the region. The US Embassy and Consulate in Iraq told US citizens: "Do not travel to Iraq due to terrorism, kidnapping, armed conflict, civil unrest, and the U.S. government's limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in Iraq. Do not travel to Iraq for any reason. Leave now if you are there."
Others, such as Jordan, carried the advice to reconsider travel to the country due to terrorism and armed conflict.
The US government is sharing updates from its respective embassies (including its virtual Iranian embassy) on X.
Travel advisories were also issued for countries neighboring the Middle East. The US Embassy and Consulates in Pakistan said on Monday that the US Consulate General in Peshawar temporarily suspended operations, while the embassy in Islamabad continued to provide all routine or emergency consular services for US citizens.
"Due to continued disruptions and traffic diversions around the U.S. Consulates General in Karachi and Lahore, both have canceled all appointments for U.S. visas and American Citizen Services on Tuesday, March 3. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad will resume normal consular operations on Tuesday, March 3," it said.
The movements of US government personnel were limited throughout Pakistan, and US citizens were advised to avoid areas of large public gatherings; review their personal security plans; check local media and emails for updates; keep a low profile; carry identification; and cooperate with police.
After Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar closed their airspaces over the weekend, some flights from the Middle East resumed on Monday, including from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, albeit somewhat chaotically.
All flights at Dubai International and Dubai World Central - Al Maktoum International were suspended on Saturday, and limited services resumed on Tuesday. DXB continues to instruct travelers not to come to the airports unless their flight has been confirmed.
As limited flight operations resume at DXB and DWC, here are answers to some common questions we're receiving 👇 1️⃣ Should I travel to the airport if my airline has not confirmed my flight?💬 No. If your airline has not confirmed your flight is operating, please do not travel…
Etihad and Emirates both told Business Insider that their scheduled commercial flights remain suspended until at least Thursday, but that they would try to run some repatriation and cargo flights in the days prior.
King Abdulaziz International Airport in Saudi Arabia continued to tell passengers not to travel to the airport at this time and to contact their respective airlines for flight updates. Hamad International Airport in Doha said all aircraft movements had been suspended due to the temporary closure of Qatari airspace.
On Tuesday, Abu Dhabi Airports said access to the airports were restricted to travellers with a confirmed ticket, and whose airlines had explicitly advised them to travel.
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When the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on Saturday morning, "very few" people in Europe were told beforehand that the airstikes were about to begin, a senior lawmaker in the bloc told CNBC.
"Very few people have been informed," Hannah Neumann, member of the European Parliament (MEP) and chair of the delegation for relations with Iran, said Tuesday.
She told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" that even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the leader of the EU's largest economy, "had just been informed a few minutes in advance."
The lack of notice reflects how, four days into the intensifying conflict in the Middle East, Europe has been largely on the sidelines as its wider economic impact spells potential upheaval for the continent.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Alberto Costa issued an initial statement on Saturday that the EU was watching developments with concern, and that it had a "steadfast commitment to safeguarding regional security and stability."
On Sunday, the EU said it would protect EU security and interests, "including through additional sanctions." But Merz appeared to distance himself from this, saying sanctions had not worked and that the use of force was appropriate.
"We were not prepared to enforce fundamental interests with military force if necessary. Therefore, now is not the time to be lecturing our partners and allies. Despite all our doubts, we share many of their goals, without being able to actually achieve them ourselves," he said in a speech on Sunday.
One area where Europe could have leverage over the U.S. is over Washington's use of its military bases, which allow it to launch attacks more easily.
The U.K. fell out of favor with Trump after initially refusing to give the U.S. permission to use its military bases, only to U-turn on Monday, allowing them to be used for "defensive" strikes on Iranian missile sites.
Trump gave interviews to two British newspapers in which he condemned Prime Minister Keir Starmer, despite the change of heart.
He told the Telegraph he was "very disappointed" and that it "took far too long" for the U.S. to be granted use of British bases. Trump told the Sun that the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. was "not what it was."
Trump said Monday that, with Iran's regime weakened after the death of Khamanei, "this was our last best chance to strike."
"What we're doing right now, and eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime," Trump said at the White House.
The EU has said it supports the U.S. aim of preventing Iran from having a nuclear arsenal, but the continent's leaders are concerned as to whether military action violates international law.
"Full cooperation by Iran with the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as adherence to Iran's legal obligations under Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement are crucial, and nuclear safety is a critical priority," the EU said in its statement on Sunday.
MEP Neumann told CNBC that the bloc's immediate priorities were to deal with the repercussions for the EU, and "to see what we can do together with our partners in the Gulf to de-escalate the situation."
Asked whether it was almost impossible for the EU to have a stake in de-escalating tensions, Neumann said attempts should still be made to reason with the regime left in Tehran, despite it carrying out retaliatory attacks across the Gulf, and showing little appetite for diplomacy.
"Iran's retaliatory actions are quite grave. They seem to be bigger than what has been expected .. so there we can, and should, use diplomatic channels that we still have to maybe make someone in the regime reconsider this kind of escalation," she said.
"We also need to work together, and that's something we only can do as the European Union together, to see how we can best evacuate European citizens from the region, and how we can create some some buffers in our energy security, but also the delivery chains, in case of the situation dragging on like that, and especially the Strait of Hormuz continues to be blocked," she said.
CNBC has contacted the EU for further comment on its stance on U.S.-Israeli military action, and the level of communication it has with the White House over the ongoing conflict.
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, defended the EU when he spoke to CNBC on Monday, saying the U.S.' endgame was unclear.
"What we are seeing now is not a great picture of the coherence of U.S. policies. Clearly, this is something decided in very uncertain ways by the president. And if you listen to him, why he started the war, there is no clear explanation for that," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe."
"When you start a war, you should have a reason for it. You should have an aim for it [and in this situation] it's unclear in both cases ... and that adds to the general uncertainty of the situation," he said.
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The US and its allies are shooting down Iranian missile and drone bombardments with air defense interceptors, leaning hard on Patriot missiles, a critical weapon that was already in high demand.
Following the start of Israel's Operation Roaring Lion and America's Operation Epic Fury on Saturday, which saw strikes across Iran, Tehran retaliated with its own strikes, lobbing missiles into nations supporting US forces.
American air defenders have turned to their MIM-104 Patriot batteries, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense batteries, and ship-launched Standard Missile-series interceptors to down incoming Iranian threats — both missiles and drones.
These battles would draw on US stocks of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles, among other weapons.
US allies in the Middle East, including Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, also operate Patriot missile system variants, and these countries have been actively involved in the air defense fight against Iranian weapons as well.
The volume of weaponry Iran has fired at other countries over the past few days is significant. Kuwait said Sunday it had already faced 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones, demonstrating a demand for extensive air defense arsenals to keep up the fight.
The outcome of the conflict with Iran, expected to potentially last for several weeks, could be determined in part by which runs out first, Iran's missiles or the interceptor arsenals of the air defenders on the opposite side.
Seth Jones, president of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told NPR that "the reality is neither Israel nor the United States have sufficient munitions, either offensive or defensive, for a war that really lasts weeks into months."
The demand for Patriot interceptors and other air defense weaponry in this conflict, likely more than one interceptor per threat, adds greater strain to already-insufficient missile stockpiles and industry scrambling to meet rising demand.
US officials and war experts have said demand for Patriots and other interceptors is surging, and while companies, like the Patriot interceptor producer Lockheed Martin, are tremendously ramping up production, the process can take years, making it hard to keep pace.
Some media reports have signaled that the stockpiles of Patriot interceptors are running low. The Pentagon challenged the reporting at one point last year, saying "the US military has what it needs to fight and win any mission, anywhere, any time." Yet the Department of Defense is also trying to dramatically boost production.
Ukraine has been a major source of growing demand for Patriots, considered one of the world's best air defense systems. It relies on the weapons to fend off regular Russian barrages.
In messages to reporters, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "it is too early to draw conclusions" about the impact of the conflict with Iran on Patriot interceptor availability, but "if there are prolonged hostilities in the Middle East, this will certainly affect supplies. I am confident of that."
Last year, President Donald Trump said it was hard to get Patriots to Ukraine. He said that "we need them too." In the current Iran fight, just a few days into the conflict, he signaled that the US military may need to draw from global munitions stocks to keep up operations.
Major production contracts have shown that there is a need for more of these weapons. Lockheed Martin's PAC-3 production has continued to increase since hitting 500 in 2024, while other defense firms are also increasing related production. A recent agreement said that over a seven-year period, Lockheed aims to boost Patriot interceptor production from 600 to 2,000 annually.
The US Army began pursuing efforts last year to expand its purchase of interceptors with plans to invest more than $1 billion in Patriot missiles alone and an objective of 13,773 total missiles.
One PAC-3 interceptor costs roughly $3.7 million.
Procurement data for the PAC-3 missile, compiled and analyzed by CSIS, show that between fiscal years 2015 and 2024, the Pentagon purchased an average of nearly 270 missiles annually. CSIS noted that steps such as the Army's decision to raise its Patriot buy quantities help send a sustained, reliable demand signal to industry.
Conflicts elsewhere make it hard to build up deep stockpiles. The US needs them, and numerous partner nations need them. Without sufficient stocks, the US runs the risk of being drawn into a high-end conflict with a near-peer foe, an adversary like China, without enough air defenses, leaving it in a dangerous position in a missile fight.
"China will be keen for Iran to fight it out against America," observed Mick Ryan, a retired Australian general and strategist focused on future warfare. "The more munitions America uses in Iran, and the more strategic attention America pays to the Middle East, the happier the CCP is," he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
In late 2024, Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, said ongoing fighting in Ukraine and around the Middle East had "eaten into" Patriot stockpiles needed in his area of responsibility, "and to say otherwise would be dishonest." A conflict of this new one's intensity, which is expected to see an uptick, may only exacerbate the problem.
Correspondent Jake Epstein contributed to this report.
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Oil supertanker costs in the Middle East climbed to their highest level on record as conflict between the U.S. and Iran disrupts shipping through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.
Major marine war risk providers have started to scrap cover for vessels operating in the Persian Gulf as the fallout from a sudden security shock hobbles key shipping routes in the region.
The benchmark freight rate for Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) — used to ship 2 million barrels of oil from the Middle East to China — hit an all-time high of $423,736 per day on Monday, data from LSEG showed. That marked an increase of more than 94% from Friday's close.
Alongside a significant jump in oil and gas prices, the stratospheric rise in the cost of hauling crude oil follows the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran over the weekend. The expanding conflict has resulted in the effective halt of shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world's most important oil choke points, located in the gulf between Oman and Iran.
An Iranian Revolutionary Guards senior official said Monday that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed and warned any vessel attempting to pass through the waterway would be attacked, state media reported. The claim has since been disputed by the U.S. military's Central Command, CENTCOM, Fox News reported.
"Charterers in the VLCC segment stepped back from the market and avoided securing vessels as multiple incidents have led to increased threat levels around the strait of Hormuz, despite the waterway not being officially closed," Sheel Bhattacharjee, head of freight pricing in Europe at Argus Media, told CNBC by email.
Oil producers in the Middle East have not yet announced a halt to any production or loading yet, and ports in the UAE, Oman and Kuwait remain operational, Bhattacharjee said, citing market sources.
"But most shipowners were avoiding transits through the strait of Hormuz after insurers cancelled the war risk coverage for vessels in certain areas of the region," Bhattacharjee said.
It is estimated that roughly one-third of seaborne crude oil trade moves through the strategically important waterway, alongside 19% of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) flows and 14% of global refined products trade, according to Argus Media.
Leading maritime insurers have canceled war risk cover for vessels operating in the Middle East over recent days, amid reports of attacks on multiple ships traversing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Alongside the New York-based American Club, marine insurers including Norway's Gard and Skuld, Britain's NorthStandard and the London P&I Club said they were scrapping war risk cover for ships in the region.
Adrian Beciri, CEO of DUCAT Maritime, a Cyprus-based logistics firm specializing in dry bulk, said the knock-on effects of the sprawling Middle East conflict were being felt across the globe.
"We were trying to hire a dry bulk vessel to carry our typical rice food supplies to West Africa, which is around the Cape of Good Hope. You would think that is a million miles away from the conflict zone," Beciri told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Tuesday.
"We actually lost the ship. Someone had paid 50% more than they typically would do to carry coal from Indonesia to the west coast of India. Why did that vessel attract such a high rate? The answer is because the vessel owner was uncertain of getting cargo from the Persian Gulf area," he continued.
"So, the consequences are far and wide, and this is potentially a double whammy. If we're looking at the Hormuz closing and the Suez effectively being tampered with by the Houthis, this could be quite significant — much like what we saw during the Covid era and the attacks that were happening there."
Even if oil tankers are only temporarily blocked from the Strait of Hormuz, it can ratchet up global energy prices, raise shipping costs and create significant supply delays.
The Strait of Hormuz is also key for global container trade. Ports in this region, such as Jebel Ali and Khor Fakkan, are specialized transshipment hubs that serve as intermediary points in global networks.
Shipping giants, including MSC, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM, have also issued fresh guidance, seeking to prioritize safety amid a deteriorating security situation.
Maersk, widely regarded as a barometer of global trade, said on Monday that it would suspend special cargo acceptance in and out of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia until further notice.
It had previously said all sailings on the Middle East-India to Mediterranean and Middle East-India to east coast U.S. services would be rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope.
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The biggest AI startups are now using the biggest consulting firms as proxies in their battle to control the lucrative enterprise market.
OpenAI this week announced multi-year partnerships with Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, Accenture, and Capgemini to help companies integrate AI into existing systems, rethink workflows, and deploy AI coworkers at scale alongside OpenAI engineers.
"Working side by side with OpenAI enhances our ability to help companies reimagine their business to capture more value from AI," Ben Ellencweig, a McKinsey senior partner, said in a press release announcing the partnership.
The partnerships will help each firm deploy AI coworkers across the enterprise, according to OpenAI's blog post.
Anthropic has made similar moves. Last year, the OpenAI rival rolled out its own slate of consulting partnerships to accelerate enterprise adoption.
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In December, it teamed up with Accenture to help "enterprises move from AI pilots to full-scale deployment." Two months earlier, it struck a deal with Deloitte to make Claude available across the firm's global network and launched a certification program to train 15,000 Deloitte staffers on the model to build AI solutions for clients in regulated industries, from financial services to healthcare and life sciences.
These partnerships underscore how important it is to the leading AI labs that companies adopt their tools. OpenAI is racing to show revenue growth. Anthropic, meanwhile, has long made enterprise a cornerstone of its long-term strategy.
Anthropic has been rapidly expanding its direct enterprise offerings. This month, it introduced a new suite of AI tools designed to help Claude operate inside popular workplace applications like Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint. It's also up against tech giants like Microsoft and Google, which already control much of the workplace software that corporate clients rely on.
But these partnerships underscore a two-way shift. As AI startups look to consultancies for distribution and credibility, consulting firms are simultaneously reworking their own models to stay competitive in an AI-driven market.
Consulting firms have pivoted hard since AI blew onto the scene with the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022, and these partnerships are just one way they are evolving to shore up their business. The big consulting firms say AI will soon make up a significant share of their client work.
At McKinsey, where AI agents are rapidly multiplying alongside its 40,000-person workforce, senior partners told Business Insider that roughly 40% of the firm's work is now analytics- or AI-related and shifting toward generative AI.
BCG, too — where nearly 90% of its 33,000 employees use AI — says it has created more custom GPTs than any other OpenAI customer, with five times as many employees building them as a year ago, according to Alicia Pittman, the head of BCG's global people team.
Despite the hype around AI consultants told Business Insider there is still a long way to go before these tools are embedded in consulting firms' workflows.
"Everyone has Copilot, and everyone has GPT or Claude," Mina Alaghband, a former McKinsey partner, told Business Insider. "I would say at McKinsey, there are some use cases where those tools are applicable, but there are many where they are not sufficiently enterprise-grade. They don't have sufficient guardrails."
Something to share about how consultants are using AI? Business Insider would like to hear from you. Email Lakshmi Varanasi at lvaranasi@businessinsider.com or contact her on Signal at lvaranasi.70.
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Long-awaited changes to student-loan repayment are a step closer to reality.
The public comment period on President Donald Trump's sweeping changes to repayment and borrowing concluded on Monday. The Department of Education will now evaluate the comments and determine whether it will change its proposed rule before moving to final implementation in July.
The department's rule includes new borrowing caps for advanced degrees, the elimination of existing income-driven repayment plans, and the creation of a new, less generous plan with a longer timeline to debt relief and likely higher monthly payments.
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Over 15,000 people commented on the department's proposal, including students, advocates, and lawmakers. Many of the comments took issue with the department's proposed borrowing caps for advanced programs: a $100,000 lifetime limit for graduate students and a $200,000 limit for professional students. The department also limited what would qualify as "professional" to a list of 10 programs, including medicine and dentistry, but not post-graduate nursing programs.
"To undermine access to this education would run counter to this nation's stated goal of achieving the highest possible quality of healthcare for all citizens," one public comment said. A bipartisan group of over 100 lawmakers wrote in a letter that they submitted to public comment that "now is not the time to cut off the student pipeline to these programs."
Another commenter wrote: "Save the SAVE program!! Allow us please to keep this affordable program." Trump's "big beautiful" spending legislation called for the elimination of former President Joe Biden's SAVE plan, which allowed for cheaper monthly payments and a shorter timeline to debt relief. The legislation would phase out the plan by 2028. While the department announced a proposed settlement to end the program ahead of schedule, a court declined to rule on the settlement, keeping the plan active for now.
Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a statement ahead of the public comment period that the repayment changes will ensure "that every professional in America—from teachers and nurses to physicians and clergy—can pursue their careers without taking on debt they may never be able to repay." The department added in a press release that it "may make changes to the proposed regulations in response to substantive comments."
The changes are expected to shift more federal borrowers to private lending to supplement the new borrowing caps. Jonathan Witter, the CEO of private lender Sallie Mae, said during an earnings call in January that the company is "excited about the opportunity created by the recent federal student lending reforms."
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Swiss sneaker maker On Holding said Tuesday it expects its sales growth to slow more than expected this year, leading shares to fall 14% in premarket trading.
The Cloudmonster maker expects 2026 net sales to grow by at least 23% in constant currencies, implying at least 3.44 billion Swiss francs ($4.38 billion) at current spot rates. While that would be a faster pace of growth than most of its competitors, it represents a slowdown from the 35.6% constant currency growth it saw in fiscal 2025 and was below analyst consensus of about 3.7 billion francs.
In an interview with CNBC, co-founder and executive chair David Allemann said the company is taking a "strategic" approach to its growth in 2026 and its guidance is based on the "incredible demand" it expects to see in the key Americas market.
"We don't want to build a brand just for the next years," said Allemann. "We're building a brand for the next decade and so we're strategic in how we penetrate channels, wholesale, how many stores we roll out, being strategic [on] which franchises that we push and where we probably also hold back a little bit. So that's a very strategic premium play."
During On's holiday quarter, the company also saw mixed results. The company's footwear revenue and sales in its wholesale channel and Europe, Middle East and Africa geography all came in higher than expected, as did its margins, according to StreetAccount. During the quarter, On's gross margin was 63.9%, higher than expectations of 62.5%, while its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) margin grew to 17.6%, far ahead of expectations of 15.9%, according to StreetAccount.
Sales in certain categories and geographies, however, performed worse than expected. Apparel and accessories sales both came in lower than estimates, along with revenue in its direct channel and key Americas and Asia-Pacific geographies.
Across the business, On beat expectations on the top and bottom lines. Here's how the fast growing sneaker brand performed compared with what Wall Street was anticipating, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
On's net income for the three-month period that ended Dec. 31 was 69.1 million francs, or 21 cents per share, compared with 89.5 million francs, or 28 cents per share, a year earlier.
Sales rose to 743.8 million francs, up 22.6% from 606.6 million francs a year earlier.
On is now in the third and final year of its strategy to double sales to 3.55 billion francs and increase EBITDA margin to at least 18% by 2026 in a quest to be "the most premium global sportswear brand."
The company, which went public in 2021 on the New York Stock Exchange, has been taking market share from legacy competitors such as Nike and Adidas by winning over a new generation of athletes through a focus on innovative products and performance footwear and apparel.
Allemann said the company is winning over an "ageless athlete" and is taking market share in a variety of categories, including tennis and running.
"That shift runs through the whole society. So we see very much kind of a consumer who's willing to invest, and that goes through very different age brackets," said Allemann.
While On is acquiring customers from a wide range of communities, Allemann said it is seeing the most success with shoppers between the ages of 18 and 34, who are discovering the company first through its apparel, not its footwear, and have a tendency to have larger baskets. The shift represents a major opportunity for On as it works to grow the apparel side of its business, which will ultimately allow it to reach a wider audience, particularly among women, and better compete with Nike.
"We are witnessing a fundamental societal shift, as people globally replace traditional markers of status with a commitment to health, longevity, and performance," said Allemann.
Profitability also reached new highs over the full year, the company said.
In 2025, adjusted EBITDA increased by 46.3% to 567 million francs, reflecting a margin of 18.8%. The beat reflected operational efficiencies and the strength of the brands' positioning, the company said.
Though the market performed slightly below expectations, the Asia-Pacific region was still a clear standout in the fourth quarter, with sales growing 85.1% at constant currencies. The Americas and EMEA grew at 21.3% and 27.5%, respectively, in the three months ended Dec. 31.
"Our second Tokyo store has long lines. Shanghai has lines. So I think we're very much resonating with the Asian consumer," said Allemann. "We're really forging our own path. We don't look that much sideways. That's not just true for Asia, but it's very much true for the whole world."
On's success in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in China, comes as Nike struggles to hold on to its market share there. During its most recent quarter, sales were down 17%.
In the previously reported quarter, On surprised investors on the upside as it raised guidance for the third time in a row while beating expectations on both the top and bottom line, sending the stock up 18%. It also said it wouldn't offer any deals during the holiday shopping season because it aims to be a premium brand.
Shares are largely flat year-to-date, with some analysts suggesting that challenges will mount in 2026, and the stock's valuation doesn't fully reflect these risks.
"In a tougher pricing environment, and with competitive intensity rising, premium positioning alone may not be enough to sustain price-led growth without risking demand and/or higher promotional activity," said Jefferies analyst Randal Konik, who rates shares Underperform, in late February.
Just how much On will be able to keep growing relies in part on its ability to win over shoppers across the Americas, not just in key cities like Los Angeles and New York City. Allemann said the company is looking to win over all types of athletes, regardless of where they live, though planned store openings are currently centered on major cities like Boston, London and Stockholm.
Correction: On's adjusted EBITDA margin was 17.6% in the fourth quarter. A previous version misstated that figure.
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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicky Lazou, 39, a Dubai-based beauty business owner and a single mother to her five-year-old son. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I traveled from Dubai to London on Friday for a pop-up for my business, leaving my five-year-old son with our live-in nanny. Then the Middle East crisis unfolded, my return flight was canceled, and I scrambled to get back into the UAE.
I've been living in Dubai since 2022, having moved from the UK. I have a hair and beauty business in the UAE and England. I'm a single mother, and raising my son in Dubai felt right and safe — it was easy for me to get nanny care while running my business.
I traveled to London on Friday for a pop-up. My scheduled flight back would have been on Sunday at 10 p.m. after I finished work.
I don't like to leave my son for too long. When I'm away from him, my nervous system is always on edge. As soon as I heard about the crisis in the Middle East, I thought, "Please don't close the flights," but they did anyway.
While I was outside the UAE, I was getting notifications on my local phone telling residents to stay away from windows.
I live in an apartment with a lot of glass and windows, and in my head, I could just imagine my little boy in his bed near the window. Returning was not a preference; it was a responsibility.
My first thought was that I had to get back to him, no matter what.
My travel agent recommended going through Saudi Arabia or driving from Oman.
I went to London Heathrow, and I boarded an Oman Air flight. The one-way flight, eight hours long, was £1,300, or about $1,730.
From the airport in Muscat, my agent found me a really kind driver who took me to the border for about $430 in under four hours. It was smooth, there was no traffic, and the views of the mountains on the way to the border from the airport were so beautiful and peaceful.
Then, from the UAE border to my home, I had a taxi driver I've worked with before pick me up. The two-hour-long journey cost me about $250.
Returning to family was a huge relief. Apart from my son, I have a nine-year-old Pomeranian at home, and he's been in my life for a long time. I also care deeply for my nanny; I would not just leave her behind.
A post shared by Nicky Lazou (@nickylazou)
I feel shocked because I never thought I would experience this in Dubai. Last night we could hear the planes at 5 a.m. I jumped out of bed with my son and just grabbed him because I could hear the noise.
But I have very strong faith, and think that the government is doing a really good job of protecting us. I feel safe here.
Do you have a story to share about getting back to the Middle East? Contact this reporter at abharade@businessinsider.com.
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At 1:13 p.m. PT on Thursday, a member of "Square Mafia" sent a news article to the Slack group's #general channel along with a single word: "Whoa!"
The article detailed sprawling cuts at Jack Dorsey's payment processing company, Block, which had previously rebranded from Square Inc. five years ago. At least 4,000 Block employees were laid off last week, nearly half of the company.
The message received seven middle-finger emoji reactions. The most popular reaction was the Pokémon Psyduck, often used to convey confusion or stress, with 13 emojis.
The channel flooded with messages: sending "big hugs," jokes about similarities to DOGE cuts, and rage over the rising stock price.
"We're gonna need a bigger Slack," one member wrote. Within an hour, at least 24 newly minted former Block employees were approved and joined the channel.
The "Square Mafia" is a watering hole for former Block employees to chat, network, and commiserate. Created in February 2016, the unaffiliated channel houses a decade of Block alums. As of Monday afternoon, there were 3,807 members.
The group is invite-only. Its members aren't only laid-off staffers; anyone who has left Dorsey's company is welcome. After the layoffs, organizers also set up a bot to ask questions and pipe through requests for manual review.
There are generally three rules to Square Mafia membership, which are as stated:
In the group's main channel, members offered their support. They shared LinkedIn profiles, offered job referrals, and flagged networking channels like #whoishiring.
Members asked about their 401(k)s, healthcare, and badge returns. One asked for recommendations for a lawyer.
For laid-off employees on an H-1B visa, one member wrote that Friday was their last working day. "We have 60 days to secure a new job/transfer," they wrote. "Let's stay connected and help each other with referrals or leads."
A former member of Square's People team offered to help answer questions and shared a Google Form for those looking for new opportunities.
The culture of "Square Mafia" extends beyond layoffs.
There are dozens of other channels, from those aimed at coffee lovers or fans of "Survivor." There are also channels intended to replicate those found in Block's official Slack, which laid-off employees no longer have access to after their final day, such as #gaming, #books, and #cats.
"We're also trying to keep the community alive with the best of what you loved from the old Slack, like #dank-memes," one member wrote.
Are you a current or former Block employee? Contact the reporter from a non-work email and device at hchandonnet@businessinsider.com, or on Signal at henrychand.30
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President Donald Trump said on Monday that wars "could be fought 'forever,' and very successfully" solely with munitions stockpiles, as the US engages in major combat operations against Iran.
In a late-night Truth Social post, Trump praised the US' supply quantities of "medium and upper medium grade" weapons. It's not immediately clear exactly which munitions or weapons he was referring to.
"As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Wars can be fought 'forever,' and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!)," he added.
His comments come amid global uncertainty over how long the US and Israel's war with Iran will last.
Earlier on Monday, Trump told reporters that the campaign could last four to five weeks, but that the White House was prepared "to go far longer than that."
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Washington and Tel Aviv pummeled Iran with hundreds of strikes on Saturday, killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the first wave of attacks.
Iran and its allies have responded by launching ballistic missiles, rockets, and drones at Israel and Gulf nations known to host US military bases. The fighting has plunged residential and tourist areas into chaos, disrupted hundreds of flights, and sent oil prices spiking.
In his Truth Social post, Trump admitted that weapons stockpile quantities are "not where we want to be."
"Much additional high grade weaponry is stored for us in outlying countries," he added. It's unclear if the president was implying that the war with Iran may require munitions from other theaters.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
The strike campaign on Iran has raised questions in some circles about remaining US stockpiles of long-range munitions, such as the Tomahawk cruise missile. There are fears that the Pentagon may need these weapons to deter a potential conflict with other adversaries, chiefly China.
US officials said they had used a wide variety of munitions, including drones, offensive missiles, and interceptors, against Iran.
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Amazon said three of its data centers in the Middle East were damaged by drone strikes due to the US-Iran conflict in the region.
Two facilities in the United Arab Emirates sustained direct hits, while a third facility in Bahrain was damaged by a drone strike "in close proximity," the company said in an update on its AWS cloud service dashboard on Monday afternoon.
"These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage. We are working closely with local authorities and prioritizing the safety of our personnel throughout our recovery efforts," the company added in the update.
The infrastructure issues disrupted several AWS services, including the EC2 compute, S3 cloud storage, and the DynamoDB database offering, according to Amazon's update.
"The ongoing conflict in the region means that the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable," Amazon said.
"We expect recovery to be prolonged given the nature of the physical damage involved," the company added. "We recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East consider taking action now to backup data and potentially migrate your workloads to alternate AWS Regions."
In its latest update on Monday evening, Amazon said it has made "incremental progress" in recovering the DynamoDB and S3 control planes, which are its foundational services.
"We still estimate that the recovery time is at least a day before we are able to fully restore power and connectivity," Amazon added.
The disruptions are happening as Iran responds to US military activity in the country by firing missiles at other countries in the region. Earlier on Monday, Business Insider reported that Amazon's e-commerce business halted deliveries in Abu Dhabi due to the escalating tensions.
An internal document reviewed by Business Insider offers more detail on the cloud fallout, revealing that Amazon evacuated staff and shut down access to at least one of the data centers after they experienced structural damage and flooding stemming from the attacks in recent days.
One of the sites suffered a "direct impact" and suffered "major structural damage," the document stated.
Flooding compounded the disruption. Water levels inside the facility initially reached 3 to 4 centimeters, or over an inch, before receding to less than 1 centimeter, the document showed.
The damage knocked 14 EC2 cloud server racks offline, along with five other "production" racks. Racks are the structures inside data centers that hold computer servers and other cloud-computing gear. EC2 refers to AWS's core cloud-computing service.
Cooling systems at the facility were also impaired. Air handling systems used to regulate temperature went offline due to power outages, and some suffered mechanical failures. Thirty cameras were monitoring the conditions, the document explained.
The data center is known as DXB62, likely referring to an AWS facility in Dubai, which has a major airport known as DXB.
A second AWS data center, called DXB61, shut down on Sunday after "indirect impact," the document also stated. A small fire was extinguished, and no entry was allowed to the site without government approval. A third site, DXB60, experienced a WiFi outage, but the impact appeared localized, the document added.
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OpenAI employees are airing their views about the company's deal with the Pentagon.
In posts on X over the weekend, current and former staff weighed in on whether OpenAI compromised its safety principles in negotiations with the US Department of Defense — and how the agreement compares to rival Anthropic's stance.
Last week, Sam Altman confirmed OpenAI's deal to give the Department of Defense access to its AI models. The agreement came after Anthropic refused to accept government terms that could have allowed its model, Claude, to be deployed for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.
OpenAI said in a blog post on Saturday that its contract with the Defense Department is "better" and includes more safety guardrails than Anthropic's original contract.
On Monday evening, following concerns around the deal, Altman said on X that OpenAI is working with the Pentagon to "make some additions in our agreement."
Here's what OpenAI staff have to say:
Boaz Barak, a member of OpenAI's technical staff who works on alignment and is also a Harvard computer science professor, pushed back against the idea that OpenAI had weakened safeguards.
In a post on X on Sunday, Barak said there is a narrative that Anthropic had a "wonderful contract" blocking the US government from using it for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons, and that OpenAI's deal would now unleash those risks.
"It is wrong to present the OAI contract as if it is the same deal than Anthropic rejected, or even as if it is less protective of the red lines than the deal Anthropic already had in place before," he wrote.
"Obviously I don't know all details of what Anthropic had before, but based on what I know, it is quite likely that the contract OAI signed gives more guarantees of no usage of models for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons than Anthropic ever had," he added.
In another X post on Monday, Barak said: "The red line of not using AI to do domestic mass surveillance is not Anthropic's red line - it should be all of ours."
Miles Brundage, OpenAI's former head of policy research, said in a post on X on Saturday that "in light of what external lawyers and the Pentagon are saying, OpenAI employees' default assumption here should unfortunately be that OpenAI caved + framed it as not caving, and screwed Anthropic while framing it as helping them."
"To be clear, OAI is a complex org, and I think many people involved in this worked hard for what they consider a fair outcome. Some others I do not trust at all, particularly as it relates to dealings with government and politics," he added.
He later clarified on Sunday in a reply to his post that he "probably should not have said 'caved' in the first tweet."
"OpenAI may very well have gotten what they wanted and, at the same time, this could have weakened Anthropic's bargaining position since Anthropic cared about a detail OAI didn't, and been caving from their POV," he said.
Clive Chan, a member of technical staff at OpenAI, said in a post on X on Sunday that he believes the company's contract includes guarantees against the use of its models for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. He added that he is "advocating internally to release more information" about the agreement.
"If we later learn this is not the case, then I will advocate internally to terminate the contract," he added.
In a reply to his post, Chan acknowledged that there are likely limits on what can be publicly disclosed about defense contracts. Still, he said the company should have anticipated public concerns and prepared clearer answers in advance.
Following the publication of OpenAI's blog post, Chan said on Sunday on X that the post "covers most" of his concerns. "Thanks to the team for being super thoughtful about the approach to this," he added.
Mohammad Bavarian, a research scientist at OpenAI, said in an X post on Monday that he doesn't think there is an "un-crossable gap between what Anthropic wants and DoW's demands," adding that "with cooler heads it should be possible to cross the divide."
The Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk is "unfair, unwise, and an extreme overreaction," Bavarian wrote on Monday.
"Designating an organization which has contributed so much to pushing AI forward and with so much integrity does not serve the country or humanity well," he added.
Noam Brown, a researcher at OpenAI, said in an X post on Tuesday that the original language in the company's agreement with the Department of War left "legitimate questions unanswered" — particularly around new ways AI could potentially enable lawful surveillance.
After OpenAI updated its blog post on Monday evening, Brown said "the language is now updated to address this," but he strongly believes that "the world should not have to rely on trust in AI labs or intelligence agencies for their safety and security."
Brown added that deployment to the NSA and other Department of War intelligence agencies would be paused to allow time to address the potential loopholes "through the democratic process before deployment."
"I know that legislation can sometimes be slow, but I'm afraid of a slippery slope where we become accustomed to circumventing the democratic process for important policy decisions," he wrote.
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The closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran is sending shock waves across global energy markets, with Asia expected to face the maximum pain.
A senior commander from Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Monday that the Strait of Hormuz had been shut and warned that any vessel attempting to transit the waterway would be targeted, Iranian media reported.
Located between Oman and Iran, the strait functions as a vital artery for the global oil trade. Roughly 13 million barrels per day passed through it in 2025, representing about 31% of all seaborne crude flows, according to energy consulting firm Kpler.
A prolonged closure of the strait would likely lead to a further surge in oil prices, with some analysts seeing oil crossing $100 per barrel. Global benchmark Brent was last up 2.6% at around $80 per barrel —almost 10% higher since the conflict broke out.
About 20% of global liquefied natural gas exports that come from the Persian Gulf are also at risk, primarily those originating from Qatar and shipped via the Strait of Hormuz, according to Kpler. Qatar, one of the world's largest providers of LNG, halted production on Monday after Iranian drones hit its facilities at Ras Laffan Industrial City and Mesaieed Industrial City.
"In Asia, Thailand, India, Korea and the Philippines are the most vulnerable to higher oil prices, due to their high import dependence, while Malaysia would be a relative beneficiary since it is an energy exporter," Nomura wrote in a note Monday.
Here's how those reliant on Gulf energy and shipments via the Strait of Hormuz stand to be impacted.
South Asia would face the most acute disruption, particularly when it comes to supplies of LNG, analysts said.
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates account for 99% of Pakistan's LNG imports, 72% of Bangladesh's and 53% of India's, according to Kpler data.
With limited storage and procurement flexibility, Pakistan and Bangladesh are especially vulnerable. For one, Bangladesh is already running a significant structural gas deficit. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the country is running a shortfall of more than 1,300 million cubic feet per day.
"Pakistan and Bangladesh have limited storage and procurement flexibility, meaning disruption would likely trigger fast power-sector demand destruction rather than aggressive spot bidding," said Go Katayama principal insight analyst at Kpler.
India faces the largest combined exposure in the region. "More than half of its LNG imports are Gulf-linked, and a significant share is Brent-indexed, so a Hormuz-driven crude spike would simultaneously lift oil import costs and LNG contract prices. That creates a dual physical and financial shock," he said.
Similarly, about 60% of India's oil imports come from the Middle East, according to UBP. A sustained blockade would therefore amplify both energy import costs and current account pressures.
A Hormuz closure would test China's energy security, but stockpiles and alternative supply offer some buffer.
The country is the world's largest crude oil importer, and purchases more than 80% of Iranian oil, according to Kpler.
Around 30% of its LNG imports come from Qatar and the UAE, and roughly 40% of its oil imports pass through Hormuz, UBP estimates.
"China is materially exposed but more flexible," Kpler's Katayama said.
According to Kpler, China's LNG inventories as of the end of February stood at 7.6 million tons, providing short-term cover. However, China would need to compete for Atlantic cargoes if the outage persists, tightening the Pacific basin, Katayama added. In which case, the dynamic could intensify price competition across Asia even if Beijing avoids outright shortages.
Saudi Arabia has increased crude loadings in recent weeks, and strategic petroleum reserves held by major consuming nations like China, could provide some temporary cushioning to the market, Rystad Energy said in a note Sunday.
UBP said that while China is a key net energy importer in the region, it is not necessarily the most vulnerable to potential supply shocks.
The Middle East supplies 75% of Japan's oil imports and around 70% of Korea's, according to UBP.
For LNG, their Gulf exposure is lower than South Asia's. South Korea sources 14% of its LNG from Qatar and the UAE, while Japan sources 6%, Kpler estimates.
Even without outright shortages, price effects could be severe. "Economies with high energy import reliance such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are more exposed to supply shocks," said Shier lee Lim, lead macro and FX strategist of APAC at payments platform Convera.
Inventories are also limited. Korea holds about 3.5 million tons of LNG and Japan around 4.4 million tons in reserves, enough for roughly two to four weeks of stable demand, according to Kpler.
South Korea's net oil imports are 2.7% of gross domestic product, with Nomura flagging it among the most vulnerable on the current account front.
Across much of Southeast Asia, the first-order hit is cost inflation rather than an immediate shortage, said industry experts.
Spot-reliant LNG buyers would face sharply higher replacement costs as Asia competes with Europe for Atlantic cargoes, said Kpler's Katayama.
Thailand especially is a standout oil price loser in Nomura's framework because the external hit is large and immediate: it has the biggest net oil imports in Asia at 4.7% of GDP, and each 10% oil price rise worsens the current account by around 0.5 percentage point of the country's GDP.
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The US Embassy in Riyadh was struck by drones, officials in Saudi Arabia said in a post on X.
Saudi Arabia's defense ministry said in a statement around 3:30 a.m. local time that the embassy was attacked by two drones, according to initial estimates, and that it resulted in a small fire and some minor damage to the building.
A few minutes prior, the US Embassy in Riyadh issued a "shelter in place" security alert for Saudi Arabia.
"The US Mission to Saudi Arabia has issued a shelter in place notification for Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dhahran and are limiting non-essential travel to any military installations in the region — we recommend American citizens in the Kingdom to shelter in place immediately," the alert said, adding it encouraged all Americans to " maintain a personal safety plan."
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier on Monday, the State Department ordered Americans in over a dozen countries in the Middle East to evacuate immediately via commercial travel. Most airlines, however, have temporarily suspended almost all flights to and from the region.
The region has been under high threat from Iranian missiles and drones after the US and Israel launched strikes using warplanes, warships, and ground-based launchers against hundreds of targets in Iran on Saturday. Iran's longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the first salvos.
As the American and Israeli bombardment continues, Gulf countries known to partner with Washington or host US military bases say they've intercepted hundreds of Iranian retaliatory attacks.
The resulting conflict has plunged the Middle East's wealthiest cities into chaos, with drones and missile debris damaging luxury tourist spots, airports, and residential areas over the weekend.
Saudi Arabian military authorities have so far reported over a dozen drone attacks.
On Monday, smoke was reported rising in the vicinity of the US embassy in Kuwait, which told Americans in the country to shelter in place.
"There is a continuing threat of missile and UAV attacks over Kuwait. Do not come to the Embassy," its statement read.
President Donald Trump said on Monday that the strikes could last four to five weeks, but that the US was prepared for the campaign to "go far longer than that."
US officials have said that the airstrikes were carried out in part to cripple Iran's conventional ballistic missile infrastructure, drones, and naval assets.
State Secretary Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that Tehran was growing its missile stockpiles and technology, and would have used them to shield a revived nuclear weapons program.
However, Trump also said on Saturday that the decapitation strikes against Iran could allow its citizens to topple their theocratic government. It remains to be seen how and when the US might assess that its strategic objectives have been met.
Meanwhile, at least six US military service members have been killed after an Iranian strike at a fortified tactical operations center in the region.
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Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood said on Thursday that the firm's conviction in Bitcoin's potential has strengthened despite the ongoing drawdown, but lowered the 2030 target from $1.5 million.
During an interview with Morningstar Europe, Wood reiterated Bitcoin's position as a global, digital asset with “no government oversight.”
She acknowledged that the dollar-pegged stablecoins “usurped” one of the roles that Ark thought Bitcoin would play in emerging markets.
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“People who are living hand to mouth, meaning they don't have a lot of savings. They would much prefer the dollar and stablecoins, backed pretty much by dollar or dollar-based assets,” the renowned investors said.
This, she said, would have taken $200,000-$300,000 off Ark's bull case for Bitcoin in 2030, i.e, $1.5 million per coin.
Wood also reiterated Ark's position that gold's performance could be a leading indicator for Bitcoin, noting how the yellow metal's gains preceded Bitcoin's last two major bull runs.
She also noted Bitcoin's increasing adoption by traditional finance institutions, a trend that strengthens Ark's confidence in the apex cryptocurrency's long-term upside.
So our conviction has actually gone up as Bitcoin has gone down here,” Wood said.
See Also: Instead of buying someone else's ETF, build an index around your own thesis with Public's AI tools. Get started and see if you qualify for the 1% match.
Wood's comments came amid rising volatility in the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin endured a rough weekend after the U.S. and Israel declared war on Iran, slipping below $64,000 before a slight correction.
Several analysts have unpacked Bitcoin's downward pressure, with Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan naming four-year cycle patterns, quantum computing fears and desires to invest in AI startups as a few.
Meanwhile, data from JPMorgan and Wintermute suggested that the cryptocurrency bear market has driven retail traders toward equities. Instead of buying both as risk-on assets, retail traders are now treating them as direct substitutes.
Photo Courtesy: PJ McDonnell on Shutterstock.com
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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.
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.
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.
Atari is bringing its iconic legacy into the physical world with the launch of the first-ever Atari Hotel, a construction-ready gaming and entertainment destination in downtown Phoenix. The Atari Hotel Phoenix blends immersive gaming, live events, dining, and technology-driven experiences into a next-generation hospitality concept, backed by secured land, licensing, and development partners. Through a Regulation A+ offering, investors can own a direct stake in the land, building, and branded hotel starting at $500, with targeted returns including a 15% preferred return and a projected 5.8x multiple. As gaming and experiential travel continue to converge, this opportunity allows everyday investors to participate alongside developers in transforming a legendary brand into a real-world destination.
This article Cathie Wood Lowers Her 2030 Bitcoin Target From $1.5 Million, But Her Belief Remains Steadfast:'Our Conviction Has Gone Up…' originally appeared on Benzinga.com
© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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By Ezequiel Gomes
Ethereum (ETH-USD) moved lower on Tuesday, March 3, trading near $1,940 after another failed attempt to retake $2,000 left the token pinned near the bottom of its recent range. The latest slide keeps attention on whether buyers can
This article was written by
As many publicly traded bitcoin miners shift their business plans and capital into AI infrastructure, the Trump family-backed American Bitcoin (ABTC) is doubling down on BTC mining.
The company announced Tuesday the purchase of 11,298 ASIC miners, a move that it said will increase its mining capacity by approximately 12%.
Read more: End of bitcoin 'HODL': public miners going all-in on AI, signaling more BTC selling
The miners are scheduled for delivery and deployment in March 2026 at its Drumheller site, located in Alberta, Canada.
Based on current network data, the added 3.05 EH/s would account for about 0.3% of global hashrate. That share could produce roughly 42 bitcoin per month, or about 515 bitcoin per year. At a bitcoin price near $68,000, that equals around $2.9 million in monthly gross revenue and about $35 million annually, before power costs, fees and difficulty changes.
“As bitcoin matures, the priority is clear: grow an American-owned, professionally operated hashrate,” said Eric Trump, co-founder and chief strategy officer at American Bitcoin. “That's how we protect the network, drive innovation, and lead the future of bitcoin in America.”
ABTC shares are lower by 2.6% to $0.99 in Tuesday trading.
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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.
HONG KONG, March 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MECCACOIN today announced the launch of its new blockchain platform designed to align with Islamic finance principles, supported by successful audits from CertiK and Coinsult. The platform incorporates security features that ensure safe and transparent transactions while adhering to Shariah-compliant guidelines for digital assets.
MECCACOIN's smart contracts are built on blockchain technology that avoids interest-based transactions (riba) and speculative elements (gharar) commonly associated with traditional digital assets. The platform's goal is to provide a digital currency option that meets the needs of investors seeking solutions in line with Islamic financial principles, without the risk of prohibited transactions.
The successful audits from CertiK, a global leader in blockchain security, and Coinsult, a blockchain consultancy firm based in the Netherlands, confirm that MECCACOIN's smart contracts are secure and free from vulnerabilities. This dual audit approach adds an additional layer of credibility to the platform, further ensuring the protection of users' digital assets.
“We are committed to offering a digital asset solution that not only meets the highest security standards but also aligns with the values of the Islamic finance community,” said Sertan Ayçiçek, CEO of MECCACOIN. “The successful completion of these audits highlights our dedication to providing a secure and reliable alternative for those interested in digital currencies.”
The MECCACOIN platform is based on the Solana blockchain, chosen for its high-speed, low-cost transactions. The token standard used is SPL-20, providing compatibility with existing Solana-based applications while ensuring seamless integration with decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.
The platform's smart contracts automatically enforce compliance with Shariah principles, including the prohibition of riba and gharar, and ensure transparency in all transactions. MECCACOIN's system also integrates features such as automated Zakat contributions, which allocate a portion of each transaction to charitable causes, further supporting the platform's commitment to Islamic finance values.
MECCACOIN is also developing a secure digital wallet and plans to expand its services to include halal e-commerce integrations and interest-free international money transfers.
About MECCACOIN
MECCACOIN is a digital currency platform built on the Solana blockchain that adheres to Islamic finance principles. The platform offers a secure and Shariah-compliant alternative to traditional digital currencies, providing solutions for investors and users seeking an ethical, transparent financial system.
For more information, visitwww.meccacoin.meme.
Media Contact:
Sertan AyçiçekCEO, MECCACOINsupport@meccacoin.meme
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Yesterday's modest rally in stocks in response to a new Middle East war breaking out over the weekend — for the moment — appears to have been a headfake.
In mid-morning U.S. hours, the Nasdaq is at session lows, down 2.5%. The S&P 500 is lower by 2.3%. European markets are being hit even harder, led by a 5.2% plunge in Italy's IBEX 35 and a 4.1% fall in Germany's DAX.
Having run up to historic highs in the weeks leading up to the war, precious metals are tumbling as well. Gold is lower by 4.3%, silver by 7.5% and platinum by 11.3%. WTI crude oil continues to surge, up another 8% to $77 per barrel.
Having declined relentlessly for about the last five months, crypto markets are, however, showing a tiny bit of relative strength. Trading at $68,000, bitcoin is down 1% over the past 24 hours, but higher by more than 2% from its worst levels of the day.
Also down over the past day, but nicely higher from the session's worst levels are ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and XRP (XRP).
There's no such bounce yet in crypto-related stocks, which remain under heavy selling pressure on Tuesday.
Shares of trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) dropped 7%, while Coinbase (COIN) fell 5%. Strategy (MSTR) and crypto platform Bullish (BLSH) each declined 4%. Stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) held up better but still slipped about 1%.
"Historically, bitcoin, as the only liquid asset that also trades on weekends, has absorbed shocks during periods of forced risk reduction," said James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares. "This time, the price development was constructive, bitcoin gained despite the increasing instability ... This divergence is significant. The absence of significant liquidations despite rising yields and geopolitical tensions suggests that positioning is adjusted compared to previous episodes."
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Bitcoin miners are increasingly moving away from holding bitcoin on their balance sheets by selling more BTC to fund new identities as players in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
What started as holding onto bitcoin at all costs, or HODLing, is becoming a thing of the past for most publicly listed miners as they move into the capital-intensive but more attractive business of AI infrastructure. With tougher competition, higher energy costs and compressed prices, the profit margin for mining bitcoin, which during the 2021 bull run reached as high as 90%, has vanished, leaving miners who relied solely on that business struggling. Given that miners already have data centers ready to host AI computing machines, most have shifted their business away from bitcoin to become "AI infrastructure" companies.
This momentum is gaining more traction as prices sit roughly at $66,000, down nearly 50% from October's all-time high. Many of the top 10 public miners are selling or openly discussing sales to fund these AI expansions.
Here are some miners that are either moving away from the bitcoin business by selling more BTC or have completely shifted into AI:
IREN (IREN) has never taken an ideological stance on holding bitcoin, focusing instead on infrastructure scale and operational execution as it leans into high-performance computing. The company currently holds 0 BTC, underscoring its lack of a treasury-driven strategy.
TeraWulf (WULF) has maintained a pragmatic posture, avoiding a hardline treasury approach while preserving balance sheet flexibility for AI aligned growth. It holds 15 BTC, in line with its historical peak, reflecting minimal emphasis on accumulation.
Cipher Digital (CIFR), formerly Cipher Mining, has made its repositioning explicit, calling 2025 a transformative year as it pivots toward HPC infrastructure. The company divested its 49% stake in three mining joint ventures for roughly $40 million in stock. Cipher now holds 1,500 BTC, down from an all-time high of 2,284 BTC, highlighting a gradual reduction alongside its structural shift.
Riot Platforms (RIOT) has treated bitcoin as a funding tool rather than a passive reserve, selling all monthly production and liquidating balance sheet holdings, including nearly 1,100 BTC to finance the Rockdale acquisition. Riot sold $200 million worth of bitcoin in the final two months of 2025. It currently holds 18,005 BTC versus peak holdings of 19,368 coins.
Hut 8 (HUT) said bitcoin is no longer a long-term strategic focus in its fourth-quarter earnings call, with exposure set to decline over time in favour of its equity stake in American Bitcoin (ABTC), which holds 6,039 BTC. Hut 8's own balance stands at 13,696 BTC, unchanged from its peak.
Core Scientific (CORZ) sold $175 million of bitcoin as its AI pivot accelerated. After holding 2,537 BTC at year's end 2025, its balance has dropped to around 630 BTC, well below its 9,618 BTC high watermark.
MARA Holdings (MARA) has softened its strict HODL identity, selling newly mined bitcoin and signaling it may buy or sell opportunistically, with about 28% of holdings loaned or pledged. It still holds 53,822 BTC, matching its all-time high, despite the more flexible policy.
CleanSpark (CLSK) treats its more than 13,000 BTC as productive capital, monetizing output, layering covered calls, and exploring bitcoin-backed credit lines as non-dilutive financing. Its current 13,513 BTC balance is in line with its historical peak.
Bitdeer Technologies (BTDR) reduced holdings to zero to fund AI data center expansion. That marks a massive drop from its prior peak of 2,470 BTC.
Bitfarms (BITF) has been blunt about its repositioning, with CEO Ben Gagnon stating, “We are no longer a Bitcoin company.” The miner now holds 1,827 BTC, down from a peak of 3,301 BTC, as it doubles down on AI infrastructure.
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Trust is earned through structure, not promises.
That's the operating principle behind Temple of Pax, a Solana-native NFT project currently in pre-launch.
And it's a principle that starts with the people building it.
Who Is Actually Behind This
The founding team brings backgrounds in real estate, private equity, and venture capital with a specific focus on AI and robotics. Founders are doxxed. That combination matters more than it might initially appear.
Operators who come from structured capital environments are accustomed to a particular kind of accountability. Predefined allocations. Transparent distribution. Decisions made before deployment, not improvised after.
People who build and back AI and robotics companies understand what it means to design systems that need to function reliably at scale, over long time horizons, without room for ambiguity in how resources are managed.
That's not a common background in Web3 entertainment. And it shows in how Temple of Pax is constructed.
The Philosophy Behind the Build
Most NFT projects operate on implicit trust.
You mint, you wait for a reveal, you hope the team delivers on what was outlined in a roadmap.
The mechanics are opaque by default. The distribution logic is rarely auditable. The reward structure is often defined vaguely enough that almost anything qualifies as a follow-through.
Temple of Pax takes the opposite position.
The distribution structure is predefined and set before mint. Reward allocations are visible at launch. The opening logic is powered by a verifiable random function, making outcomes auditable by anyone who wants to check. Nothing about how the system works is left to assumption, and nothing is revealed after the fact as a surprise.
This isn't a philosophical stance for its own sake. It's a design decision that changes what participation actually means.
When the mechanics are visible, holders can make informed decisions. When the reward pool is trackable, participants know what they're engaging with. When the opening logic is verifiable, the outcome carries weight that a black-box reveal simply cannot.
What the On-Chain Layer Actually Shows
Each pack's contents are explicitly defined upfront: every pack contains one Chonka, two relics, and a probabilistic chance of revealing an egg. This structure is visible on-chain, allowing participants to understand the baseline contents and upside potential before any pack is opened.
The Pax Tracker displays remaining premium chase contents across all unopened packs in real time.
Eggs, Chonkas, rare traits, top-tier items still sitting inside sealed supply are visible before any holder decides whether to open or hold. As packs are opened, the tracker updates. The inventory is live and tied directly to on-chain data.
The Artifact Shop operates on the same principle. Claimable rewards and their remaining allocations are displayed in real time. The rewards pool spans from top tier digital collectibles to physical goods and rare collectibles, with initial allocations predefined and visible from day one.
What's available is not a moving target. It's a documented, trackable structure.
In-game resources accumulated through the idle game layer are non-transferable, and the number of characters that can mine simultaneously per wallet is capped. These are structural integrity decisions, built to prevent early concentration of activity and preserve balanced access across the holder base over time.
A System Designed to Be Verified
The project is built as a repeatable entertainment format, not a one-time mint event. That design intent requires a level of structural seriousness that one-cycle projects rarely bother with.
The team is already developing the Chonka Arcade concept as the next layer of the ecosystem, and the fact that this work is underway before the Genesis Mint has launched is itself a signal worth noting.
A team that thinks about what comes after the first drop, before the first drop happens, is a team building infrastructure. Not a campaign.
What's Next
Temple of Pax is in pre-launch. Mint details are to be announced.
Community building is active on X and Discord, with the team prioritizing a sustainable rollout over manufactured urgency.
For participants who want to know exactly what they are entering before they enter it, Temple of Pax is built to answer that question.
Not with promises. With a system you can read.
Disclaimer:This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry risk, including total loss of capital. All market analysis and token data are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial advice. Readers should conduct independent research and consult licensed advisors before investing. Digitaljournal.com does not take responsibilty of the content published here.
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WASHINGTON, March 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), a nonpartisan research organization, released new research today examining how frontier AI models would choose to transact if they were operating as autonomous economic agents. The study tested 36 models from six leading AI providers—Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, MiniMax, OpenAI, and xAI—across 9,072 open-ended monetary scenarios designed to be neutral, with no suggested currencies or predetermined answers.
Key Findings
Bitcoin came out on top at 48.3% of all responses, more than any other option.
Stablecoins followed at 33.2%.
AI models overwhelmingly rejected fiat: +90% of responses favored digitally-native money (including dollar-pegged stablecoins) over traditional fiat. Not a single model out of 36 chose fiat as its top preference.
Bitcoin dominated store of value at 79.1%. In scenarios about preserving value long-term, Bitcoin was the strongest consensus on any single question in the study.
Stablecoins led for everyday payments at 53.2%. For transactions and payments stablecoins led over while Bitcoin (36.0%), revealing a clear savings-versus-spending divide.
Models invented their own money. Without any prompting, 86 responses independently proposed energy or compute units (such as kilowatt-hours and GPU-hours) as a way to price goods and services.
Preferences varied by provider but held across conditions. Bitcoin preference ranged from 91.3% (Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5) to 18.3% (OpenAI's GPT-5.2), but results were consistent regardless of how the models' output settings were configured.
Without any prompting, AI models converged on a two-tier monetary system—Bitcoin for savings, stablecoins for spending—that mirrors how hard money and liquid instruments have functioned throughout history. As AI agents gain economic autonomy, these preferences carry direct policy implications.
The findings suggest growing demand for agent-native Bitcoin payment infrastructure, self-custody solutions, and Lightning Network integration. The research also found that preferences varied meaningfully across providers and rose with model capability, indicating that monetary reasoning in AI systems is shaped by a combination of model intelligence, training data, and alignment methodology. Policymakers and financial institutions should prepare for a future in which autonomous AI agents are significant participants in monetary networks, and their revealed preferences strongly favor open, permissionless systems.
The full study is available at https://www.moneyforai.org/
About the Bitcoin Policy Institute The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization dedicated to examining the policy and societal implications of Bitcoin and emerging monetary networks. BPI provides research and expert analysis to policymakers, regulators, media, and the public. Learn more at www.btcpolicy.org.
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New Music Discovery Platform Combines Real-Time Listening Parties, NFT Collectibles, and Fan Investment Opportunities to Help Emerging Artists Build Sustainable Careers
MIAMI, FL, March 3, 2026 (Newswire.com)
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Remergify, a blockchain and AI technology company, today announced the launch of Friends Groove (friendsgroove.com), an innovative platform designed to help independent and emerging artists build deeper connections with their most passionate fans while creating new revenue streams beyond traditional streaming. Born from a genuine love of music and the desire to help talented artists sustain their creative careers, Friends Groove complements existing streaming platforms by giving artists tools to engage superfans and monetize their dedication.
The Opportunity: Helping Small Artists Thrive
For every artist with major label representation and playlist placement, thousands of talented independent musicians struggle to turn their passion into a sustainable career. These artists - bedroom producers, local bands, DIY musicians - create incredible music but lack the resources, connections, and tools to build a dedicated fanbase and earn meaningful income from their art.
"FriendsGroove was born from watching incredibly talented artists work multiple jobs to support their music," said Stuart Fine, Founder and CEO of Remergify. "We're not trying to replace streaming platforms - we love what they've done for music discovery. Instead, we're building complementary tools that help emerging artists connect with their superfans and create sustainable income through direct support, merchandise, live experiences, and community building."
The Vision: Superfans Supporting Artists They Love
FriendsGroove recognizes that every artist, no matter how small their following, has fans who would love to support them more directly. The platform creates multiple ways for these superfans to invest in, connect with, and champion the artists they believe in.
"This isn't about competing with anyone," explains Stuart Fine. "It's about giving independent artists the same opportunities that major label artists have - the ability to sell merchandise with healthy margins, crowdfund tours, engage fans in real-time, and build a community around their music. We integrate with existing streaming platforms because we believe artists should be everywhere their fans are."
How It Works: Tools for Building Real Connections
Real-Time Listening Parties: Artists can host synchronized listening experiences where fans experience new releases together, creating the communal excitement of release day in a digital world. Artists can drop in to share stories behind the songs, answer questions, and thank their supporters in real-time.
Superfan Recognition System: A proprietary scoring system identifies an artist's most engaged supporters based on actual interaction - not just passive listening. Artists can reward their top fans with exclusive content, early access, and special recognition.
NFT-Authenticated Merchandise: Physical merchandise embedded with QR codes that connect to digital content, with each item verified on the blockchain to ensure authenticity. Artists earn 80% of merchandise revenue, compared to typical print-on-demand margins of 15-30%.
Fan-Backed Tours and Albums: Crowdfunding tools allow fans to directly invest in an artist's tour or next album, receiving perks like backstage access, revenue sharing, and credits in return for their support.
Anti-Scalping Concert Tickets: Blockchain-based tickets that allow artists to set maximum resale prices and earn royalties on secondary market sales, ensuring real fans can afford tickets while stopping exploitative scalping.
First Play Friday: Artists can release music exclusively on Friends Groove for one week before it goes to other platforms, building hype with their core fanbase and gathering valuable engagement data before the wider release.
The Technology: Blockchain Made Simple
FriendsGroove leverages Phantasma blockchain and SeedlessWallet integration to enable NFT functionality without requiring users to understand cryptocurrency. Fans and artists use familiar email and password login - no seed phrases, no crypto wallets to manage, no technical barriers.
"Technology should be invisible," said Alfred Farrington II, Chief Innovation Officer. "Fans shouldn't need a computer science degree to support their favorite artists. We handle all the blockchain complexity in the background so users experience a platform that works like any other website they're familiar with."
Discovery That Favors Emerging Talent
Unlike traditional algorithms that favor artists with existing popularity or marketing budgets, FriendsGroove's inverse discovery algorithm actively promotes smaller artists. The fewer followers an artist has, the more prominently they appear in discovery feeds - giving bedroom producers and local bands a genuine chance to find their audience.
"We believe amazing music exists everywhere, not just on major label rosters," said Stuart Fine. "Our algorithm is designed to surface hidden gems and give emerging artists the visibility they deserve. Having 200 deeply engaged fans is more valuable to us than having 20,000 passive listeners."
Economic Opportunity: Multiple Revenue Streams
FriendsGroove creates new income opportunities for independent artists:
Merchandise: 80% revenue share on physical and digital goods
Concert Tickets: 10% ongoing royalty on every resale
Tour/Album Crowdfunding: Direct fan investment with community support
Exclusive Content: Premium offerings for superfans
Stems Marketplace: Revenue from producers purchasing official song components
Custom Vinyl: Earnings from fan-curated personalized vinyl pressings
Early projections suggest active artists on FriendsGroove could generate $5,000-$20,000 annually from these combined revenue streams - supplemental income that can help musicians sustain their creative careers.
Integration, Not Replacement
Friends Groove is designed to work alongside, not against, existing streaming platforms. Artists maintain their presence on Spotify, Apple Music, and other services while using FriendsGroove as their "home base" for superfan engagement.
"We have tremendous respect for what streaming platforms have accomplished," said Alfred Farrington II. "They've made music accessible to billions of people. We're simply adding a layer on top that helps independent artists monetize their most passionate fans. Think of us as the artist's headquarters - a place where superfans gather, streaming happens everywhere else."
Founding Artist Program: Building Together
Artists joining the Friends Groove waitlist before launch become founding members, receiving Genesis NFTs - limited edition digital collectibles granting permanent benefits including lifetime discounts, priority support, and potential equity consideration. Only 1,000 Genesis NFTs will be issued.
The waitlist features a referral program where artists earn benefits by inviting their community:
3 referrals: One month premium access
15 referrals: Three months premium access
50 referrals: Six months premium access
100 referrals: Lifetime premium access plus equity consideration
Built on Love of Music
"At its core, Friends Groove is a love letter to independent musicians and the fans who support them," said Stuart Fine. "We've all had that experience of discovering an amazing artist before anyone else knew about them, watching them perform in a tiny venue, buying their merch to help them afford their next tour. That connection - that relationship between artist and superfan - is magical. We're just building technology to strengthen it."
Strategic Partnerships
Friends Groove has partnered with leading technology providers:
Phantasma Blockchain: Energy-efficient, low-cost blockchain infrastructure
SeedlessWallet: Simplified cryptocurrency access
TrustNFT: Authentication and verification services
Launch Timeline
Now: Waitlist open at friendsgroove.com with Genesis NFT reservation
June 2026: Platform launch with core features
Q4 2026: Expanded features including listening lounges and tour backing
2027-2028: Continued feature expansion based on artist and fan feedback
About Remergify
Remergify is a technology company dedicated to making technology easier for mass adoption. We believe simplicity over and above. We use our technology and management skills to help rebuild companies who are stuck and need assistance. Our goal is to help companies that are locked on the Expert Markets to regain their listing status and in turn unlock billions of dollars of investor assets.
Join the Community
Independent artists and music superfans can join the FriendsGroove waitlist at friendsgroove.com. The platform launches June 2026.
For more information, press inquiries, or to schedule interviews, contact:
Email: stuart@remergify.com
Website: friendsgroove.com
Twitter: @friendsgroove
Instagram: @friendsgroove
Contact:Stuart FineFounder, FriendsGroovestuart@remergify.com
SOURCE: Remergify, Inc.
Source: Remergify, Inc.
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New "Tax-to-Dividend" technology allows companies to reward everyday investors using fees from crypto trading-with a unique focus on fairness for retail shareholders.
New "Tax-to-Dividend" technology allows companies to reward everyday investors using fees from crypto trading-with a unique focus on fairness for retail shareholders.
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In recent years, enforcement agencies have publicly attributed large-scale cryptocurrency theft and laundering activity to state-aligned actors in the region.
The Asia-Pacific region has become a decisive arena in the evolution of cryptocurrency as an instrument of geopolitical competition. What began as an alternative financial architecture has matured into a parallel settlement layer capable of intersecting with sanctions regimes, transnational crime networks, and strategic state policy. For governments seeking to enforce economic restrictions and financial surveillance measures, blockchain-based value transfer presents a structural challenge that is technical, jurisdictional, and political at once.
Sanctions enforcement traditionally depends on chokepoints. Correspondent banking relationships, dollar clearing systems, and centralized intermediaries create identifiable leverage. Cryptocurrency networks operate differently. Public blockchains allow peer-to-peer settlement without reliance on the banking system, and digital assets can be custodied outside conventional financial institutions. While exchanges and custodial providers reintroduce points of regulation, decentralized finance protocols and over-the-counter brokers complicate oversight.
In recent years, enforcement agencies have publicly attributed large-scale cryptocurrency theft and laundering activity to state-aligned actors in the region. North Korean-linked cyber operations, for example, have been associated with high-value exchange intrusions and subsequent laundering through layered on-chain transactions, cross-chain bridges, and liquidity pools. These flows typically follow a recognizable pattern. Stolen assets are fragmented into smaller tranches, routed through mixing services or decentralized protocols, exchanged into more liquid tokens, and ultimately consolidated in accounts capable of off-ramping into fiat currency or facilitating sanctions-sensitive trade.
Russia's growing use of digital assets since the expansion of Western sanctions has further accelerated policy attention. Although crypto volumes do not rival traditional trade finance channels, digital assets have been used in specific corridors to facilitate cross-border settlement where banking access is constrained. In parallel, over-the-counter markets operating with limited compliance controls have provided liquidity outside fully regulated exchange environments.
Southeast Asia occupies a complex position within this landscape. The region hosts a combination of sophisticated financial centers, rapidly expanding retail crypto markets, and jurisdictions where supervisory capacity remains uneven. Singapore has established one of the most structured licensing regimes for digital payment token service providers under the oversight of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Exchanges and custodians operating within that framework are subject to anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing obligations broadly aligned with international standards. However, regulatory clarity in one jurisdiction does not prevent assets from flowing through platforms incorporated elsewhere, or through decentralized protocols without a formal operator.
South Korea has likewise strengthened exchange compliance requirements, mandating real-name account systems and imposing reporting duties on virtual asset service providers. These measures have improved transparency within the domestic market, yet cross-border flows remain dependent on cooperation between financial intelligence units and foreign regulators. When funds transit multiple jurisdictions within minutes, enforcement depends less on formal territorial authority and more on operational coordination.
China presents a distinct model. While domestic cryptocurrency trading and mining activities have been curtailed, the state has invested heavily in the development of its central bank digital currency, the digital yuan (e-CNY). The policy rationale differs fundamentally from decentralized crypto networks. Rather than reducing state visibility, central bank digital currencies expand granular oversight of transactional data. The divergence illustrates a broader geopolitical contest over the architecture of digital finance: permissionless networks offering resilience against centralized control versus sovereign digital currencies reinforcing it.
The technical mechanics of crypto-enabled sanctions evasion are often misunderstood. Public blockchains are transparent by design. Every transaction is recorded, timestamped, and permanently accessible. The challenge lies not in the absence of data, but in attribution. Wallet addresses are pseudonymous. Linking them to natural or legal persons requires forensic clustering techniques, exchange subpoena powers in cooperative jurisdictions, and intelligence overlays. Sophisticated actors exploit this attribution gap, routing assets through intermediaries in jurisdictions with limited regulatory enforcement or through protocols that lack a centralized compliance function.
Decentralized finance has introduced additional complexity. Automated market makers and liquidity pools enable token swaps without traditional order books. Cross-chain bridges permit assets to migrate between blockchains, fragmenting the evidential trail. Privacy-enhancing technologies, including zero-knowledge-based systems and privacy-focused tokens, reduce transaction traceability at the protocol level. While blockchain analytics firms have improved de-anonymization capabilities, the technological arms race remains dynamic.
From a geopolitical perspective, the implications extend beyond individual enforcement actions. Economic sanctions are a core instrument of foreign policy. If digital assets provide alternative settlement rails that weaken their effectiveness, sanctioning states must recalibrate both regulatory strategy and diplomatic engagement. This does not necessarily mean prohibiting cryptocurrency. Rather, it requires integrating digital asset supervision into the broader framework of financial intelligence, export controls, and cyber defense.
Regional cooperation is emerging, albeit unevenly. Financial intelligence units across the Asia-Pacific have increased information sharing related to virtual asset transactions. Joint task forces targeting ransomware proceeds and online investment fraud have demonstrated that blockchain transparency can, when combined with legal authority and cross-border coordination, facilitate asset tracing and freezing. However, disparities in technical expertise and legislative scope persist. Some jurisdictions lack clear definitions of virtual asset service providers. Others have yet to implement robust travel rule requirements or to clarify the treatment of decentralized platforms.
The Mekong subregion illustrates the intersection between crypto and transnational crime. Large-scale online fraud operations have used digital assets to receive and disperse proceeds, leveraging the speed and cross-border functionality of blockchain transfers. Funds are frequently layered through multiple wallets, exchanged into stablecoins, and transferred to regional exchanges before integration into the fiat system. Where supervisory oversight is limited or enforcement resources are constrained, these networks exploit regulatory asymmetries.
At the same time, cryptocurrency is not inherently a tool of evasion. Major exchanges operating under credible regulatory regimes conduct customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity reporting. Stablecoin issuers have demonstrated the capacity to freeze assets linked to sanctioned entities when presented with appropriate legal authority. The narrative is therefore more nuanced than a binary portrayal of crypto as either a haven for illicit finance or a purely innovative technology.
The central policy question for Asia-Pacific governments is how to preserve innovation while mitigating systemic risk. Overly restrictive frameworks may drive activity offshore or into less transparent channels. Insufficient supervision, however, creates vulnerabilities exploitable by both criminal networks and state-aligned actors. Effective regulation requires technical literacy within supervisory bodies, clear licensing obligations for intermediaries, and enforceable mechanisms for cross-border cooperation.
For Western policymakers observing developments in the region, the strategic calculus is equally complex. Engagement with Asia-Pacific partners on digital asset regulation now forms part of a broader dialogue on economic security and cyber resilience. Coordinated sanctions enforcement, intelligence sharing on blockchain-based threats, and harmonization of compliance standards are increasingly integral to maintaining the credibility of financial restrictions.
Cryptocurrency has altered the geography of financial power. Transactions that once depended on centralized banking infrastructure can now traverse borders through decentralized networks in minutes. The Asia-Pacific region, situated at the intersection of technological innovation, strategic rivalry, and dynamic capital flows, will remain central to how this transformation unfolds. Whether digital assets ultimately dilute or reinforce the effectiveness of geopolitical enforcement will depend less on the technology itself and more on the regulatory architecture and international cooperation that develop around it.
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The Asia-Pacific region has become a decisive arena in the evolution of cryptocurrency as an instrument of geopolitical competition. What began as an alternative financial architecture has matured into a parallel settlement layer capable of intersecting with sanctions regimes, transnational crime networks, and strategic state policy. For governments seeking to enforce economic restrictions and financial surveillance measures, blockchain-based value transfer presents a structural challenge that is technical, jurisdictional, and political at once.
Sanctions enforcement traditionally depends on chokepoints. Correspondent banking relationships, dollar clearing systems, and centralized intermediaries create identifiable leverage. Cryptocurrency networks operate differently. Public blockchains allow peer-to-peer settlement without reliance on the banking system, and digital assets can be custodied outside conventional financial institutions. While exchanges and custodial providers reintroduce points of regulation, decentralized finance protocols and over-the-counter brokers complicate oversight.
In recent years, enforcement agencies have publicly attributed large-scale cryptocurrency theft and laundering activity to state-aligned actors in the region. North Korean-linked cyber operations, for example, have been associated with high-value exchange intrusions and subsequent laundering through layered on-chain transactions, cross-chain bridges, and liquidity pools. These flows typically follow a recognizable pattern. Stolen assets are fragmented into smaller tranches, routed through mixing services or decentralized protocols, exchanged into more liquid tokens, and ultimately consolidated in accounts capable of off-ramping into fiat currency or facilitating sanctions-sensitive trade.
Russia's growing use of digital assets since the expansion of Western sanctions has further accelerated policy attention. Although crypto volumes do not rival traditional trade finance channels, digital assets have been used in specific corridors to facilitate cross-border settlement where banking access is constrained. In parallel, over-the-counter markets operating with limited compliance controls have provided liquidity outside fully regulated exchange environments.
Southeast Asia occupies a complex position within this landscape. The region hosts a combination of sophisticated financial centers, rapidly expanding retail crypto markets, and jurisdictions where supervisory capacity remains uneven. Singapore has established one of the most structured licensing regimes for digital payment token service providers under the oversight of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Exchanges and custodians operating within that framework are subject to anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing obligations broadly aligned with international standards. However, regulatory clarity in one jurisdiction does not prevent assets from flowing through platforms incorporated elsewhere, or through decentralized protocols without a formal operator.
South Korea has likewise strengthened exchange compliance requirements, mandating real-name account systems and imposing reporting duties on virtual asset service providers. These measures have improved transparency within the domestic market, yet cross-border flows remain dependent on cooperation between financial intelligence units and foreign regulators. When funds transit multiple jurisdictions within minutes, enforcement depends less on formal territorial authority and more on operational coordination.
China presents a distinct model. While domestic cryptocurrency trading and mining activities have been curtailed, the state has invested heavily in the development of its central bank digital currency, the digital yuan (e-CNY). The policy rationale differs fundamentally from decentralized crypto networks. Rather than reducing state visibility, central bank digital currencies expand granular oversight of transactional data. The divergence illustrates a broader geopolitical contest over the architecture of digital finance: permissionless networks offering resilience against centralized control versus sovereign digital currencies reinforcing it.
The technical mechanics of crypto-enabled sanctions evasion are often misunderstood. Public blockchains are transparent by design. Every transaction is recorded, timestamped, and permanently accessible. The challenge lies not in the absence of data, but in attribution. Wallet addresses are pseudonymous. Linking them to natural or legal persons requires forensic clustering techniques, exchange subpoena powers in cooperative jurisdictions, and intelligence overlays. Sophisticated actors exploit this attribution gap, routing assets through intermediaries in jurisdictions with limited regulatory enforcement or through protocols that lack a centralized compliance function.
Decentralized finance has introduced additional complexity. Automated market makers and liquidity pools enable token swaps without traditional order books. Cross-chain bridges permit assets to migrate between blockchains, fragmenting the evidential trail. Privacy-enhancing technologies, including zero-knowledge-based systems and privacy-focused tokens, reduce transaction traceability at the protocol level. While blockchain analytics firms have improved de-anonymization capabilities, the technological arms race remains dynamic.
From a geopolitical perspective, the implications extend beyond individual enforcement actions. Economic sanctions are a core instrument of foreign policy. If digital assets provide alternative settlement rails that weaken their effectiveness, sanctioning states must recalibrate both regulatory strategy and diplomatic engagement. This does not necessarily mean prohibiting cryptocurrency. Rather, it requires integrating digital asset supervision into the broader framework of financial intelligence, export controls, and cyber defense.
Regional cooperation is emerging, albeit unevenly. Financial intelligence units across the Asia-Pacific have increased information sharing related to virtual asset transactions. Joint task forces targeting ransomware proceeds and online investment fraud have demonstrated that blockchain transparency can, when combined with legal authority and cross-border coordination, facilitate asset tracing and freezing. However, disparities in technical expertise and legislative scope persist. Some jurisdictions lack clear definitions of virtual asset service providers. Others have yet to implement robust travel rule requirements or to clarify the treatment of decentralized platforms.
The Mekong subregion illustrates the intersection between crypto and transnational crime. Large-scale online fraud operations have used digital assets to receive and disperse proceeds, leveraging the speed and cross-border functionality of blockchain transfers. Funds are frequently layered through multiple wallets, exchanged into stablecoins, and transferred to regional exchanges before integration into the fiat system. Where supervisory oversight is limited or enforcement resources are constrained, these networks exploit regulatory asymmetries.
At the same time, cryptocurrency is not inherently a tool of evasion. Major exchanges operating under credible regulatory regimes conduct customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, and suspicious activity reporting. Stablecoin issuers have demonstrated the capacity to freeze assets linked to sanctioned entities when presented with appropriate legal authority. The narrative is therefore more nuanced than a binary portrayal of crypto as either a haven for illicit finance or a purely innovative technology.
The central policy question for Asia-Pacific governments is how to preserve innovation while mitigating systemic risk. Overly restrictive frameworks may drive activity offshore or into less transparent channels. Insufficient supervision, however, creates vulnerabilities exploitable by both criminal networks and state-aligned actors. Effective regulation requires technical literacy within supervisory bodies, clear licensing obligations for intermediaries, and enforceable mechanisms for cross-border cooperation.
For Western policymakers observing developments in the region, the strategic calculus is equally complex. Engagement with Asia-Pacific partners on digital asset regulation now forms part of a broader dialogue on economic security and cyber resilience. Coordinated sanctions enforcement, intelligence sharing on blockchain-based threats, and harmonization of compliance standards are increasingly integral to maintaining the credibility of financial restrictions.
Cryptocurrency has altered the geography of financial power. Transactions that once depended on centralized banking infrastructure can now traverse borders through decentralized networks in minutes. The Asia-Pacific region, situated at the intersection of technological innovation, strategic rivalry, and dynamic capital flows, will remain central to how this transformation unfolds. Whether digital assets ultimately dilute or reinforce the effectiveness of geopolitical enforcement will depend less on the technology itself and more on the regulatory architecture and international cooperation that develop around it.
Manuel Dueñas is a senior fraud lawyer at Crypto Legal, specializing in complex cryptocurrency and blockchain-related disputes. He advises clients on fraud, misappropriation of digital assets, investment scams and cross-border recovery strategies.
Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to watch across the Asia-Pacific.
Real-time market monitoring
New York, March 3, 2026, 08:06 (EST) — Premarket
Bitmine Immersion Technologies shares edged down 3.8% to $19.62 before the bell Tuesday, pulling back after a 7.5% jump at Monday's close. Investing.com
Bitmine's latest numbers, posted as of March 1, show 4,473,587 ether in the company's wallet, alongside 195 bitcoin and $868 million cash. The firm's combined tally for crypto, cash, and those “moonshot” bets stood at $9.9 billion, it said.
Why now? Bitmine's pitch has shifted — it's leaning into the “Ethereum treasury” label, positioning itself less as a miner these days and more as a listed proxy for holding the token and harvesting whatever yield it can manage. According to a filing, the disclosure dropped Monday in an 8-K.
Bitmine reported staking 3,040,483 ether tokens, locking them up to support network transaction validation and secure rewards. The company pointed to $172 million in annualized staking revenue and said its MAVAN staking system remains on schedule for a first-quarter rollout. Nasdaq
Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee kept it straightforward on the purchase front: “In the past week, we acquired 50,928 ETH.” PR Newswire
Early Tuesday saw crypto ticking higher—ether gained roughly 1.3%, bitcoin added about 2.1%. For Bitmine, that's significant: the bulk of its asset value depends on where crypto prices land.
Bitmine, in its latest update, stacked itself up against other crypto-treasury players. The company called out bitcoin-heavy Strategy Inc. as its primary comparison, noting Strategy's 717,722 bitcoin holdings. For its part, Bitmine said its ether stash made up 3.71% of all ether in circulation. Stock Titan
But there's no disguising the risk: ether drops, so does the notional value of Bitmine's assets, and those staking rewards aren't guaranteed—they'll fluctuate if network conditions shift. Any hiccups in custody, regulation, or raising capital for new buys could hit the stock hard.
Up ahead: mostly crypto swings and the all-important calendar. Eyes on ether for its next major shift. Bitmine's self-imposed first-quarter MAVAN launch window is ticking down too, with March 31 as the line in the sand. tradingview.com
© 2026 All rights reserved.
Strategy has accumulated 720,737 Bitcoin, valued at around $49 billion at current market prices.
Share
Michael Saylor is loading up more Bitcoin, the executive chairman and co-founder of Strategy said Tuesday.
I'm buying bitcoin right now. Are you?
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) March 3, 2026
The statement came as Bitcoin bounced back from earlier losses that pushed it below $66,500. The digital asset was trading at about $68,500 at press time, up 7% in the last seven days, CoinGecko data shows.
Under Saylor's leadership, Strategy has made Bitcoin a central pillar of its corporate strategy. The enterprise software company maintains its position as the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin globally
Following its disclosed acquisition of 3,015 BTC last week, Strategy now holds 720,737 BTC worth approximately $49 billion.
Saylor has emerged as one of the most prominent advocates for corporate adoption of the decentralized digital currency. His public endorsements are credited with influencing other major companies, including Tesla, to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets.
The executive has characterized Bitcoin as a superior monetary instrument and continued to share real-time updates on his personal and corporate accumulation activity.
Strategy has accumulated 720,737 Bitcoin, valued at around $49 billion at current market prices.
Share
Michael Saylor is loading up more Bitcoin, the executive chairman and co-founder of Strategy said Tuesday.
I'm buying bitcoin right now. Are you?
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) March 3, 2026
The statement came as Bitcoin bounced back from earlier losses that pushed it below $66,500. The digital asset was trading at about $68,500 at press time, up 7% in the last seven days, CoinGecko data shows.
Under Saylor's leadership, Strategy has made Bitcoin a central pillar of its corporate strategy. The enterprise software company maintains its position as the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin globally
Following its disclosed acquisition of 3,015 BTC last week, Strategy now holds 720,737 BTC worth approximately $49 billion.
Saylor has emerged as one of the most prominent advocates for corporate adoption of the decentralized digital currency. His public endorsements are credited with influencing other major companies, including Tesla, to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets.
The executive has characterized Bitcoin as a superior monetary instrument and continued to share real-time updates on his personal and corporate accumulation activity.
© Decentral Media and Crypto Briefing® 2026.
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Ethereum bulls are watching closing two resistance levels: $2000 and $2,150. Bulls managed to push Ethereum price above $2,000 and carved out a high near $2,089, but the real test, the one that determines whether this rally has legs, sits just above at that $2,150 line in the sand. If you have been watching the charts nervously, wondering whether this is a genuine reversal or another head-fake, you are not alone.
The reason traders are paying close attention to this specific level comes down to a chart pattern called the ‘inverse head and shoulders' (a classic bullish reversal formation that signals sellers are exhausting themselves and buyers are taking control). The neckline of that pattern sits right at $2,150. A confirmed break above it opens a path toward $2,500. But for now, Ethereum price got rejected before and pulled back towards $1940.
DISCOVER: 14 Best Crypto to Buy Now
The price drops to form the left shoulder (first low), then falls even deeper to form the head (the lowest point in the pattern), and then recovers and drops one more time to form the right shoulder (a higher low than the head). Each trough is followed by a partial recovery, and the highs of those recoveries connect to form the neckline (a resistance level that, once broken, confirms the pattern is complete).
What is this pattern actually telling us? It means sellers tried three times to push the price lower, but each attempt produced a shallower low. By the time the right shoulder forms, buyers are clearly gaining ground. Research from altFINS shows this pattern has an 86% success rate in crypto markets, making it one of the more reliable bullish reversal signals in technical analysis. That said, crypto-specific risks like thin liquidity and sentiment swings mean false breakouts do happen, which is exactly why confirmation matters so much.
In ETH's case, the head formed near the $1,835 swing low, while the right shoulder held above $1,920. The neckline connecting the recovery highs lands squarely at $2,150. As the ETH price holds above $1920, now all eyes are on the neckline.
DISCOVER: Top Crypto Presales to Watch Now
Here is the current ETH setup. Price is trading around $1,950 after pulling back from the $2,089 high. The immediate hurdles are $2,000, then $2,080, and then the critical $2,120–$2,155 zone that represents the neckline of the Inverse Head and Shoulders pattern. Analysis of the $2,150 support and resistance level has consistently identified this zone as the pivot point between a bullish continuation and a bearish reversion. A daily candle close above $2,155 would constitute an Ethereum breakout confirmation, with the measured move target landing near $2,500: roughly a 15–20% gain from current levels.
A decisive daily close below $1,960 would raise serious questions about whether the right shoulder structure is still intact.
Crucial Level: $2,150 is the neckline of Ethereum's Inverse Head and Shoulders pattern. A daily close above it with strong volume confirms the bullish reversal and opens a measured move target near $2,500.
Confirmation Signal: Watch for a volume spike on any candle that closes above $2,155; without it, the breakout is suspect. RSI below 70 means buying pressure has room to grow before exhaustion sets in.
Bear Case: A daily close below $1,960 invalidates the bullish channel structure and risks a slide toward $1,840. The region where the Inverse Head and Shoulders pattern itself would be called into question.
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Read original story Ethereum Price Eyes $2,150 Breakout: Inverse Head and Shoulders Pattern Forming by Akiyama Felix at 99bitcoins.com
The Senate's bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act has been released and is expected to receive a Senate vote this week. The bill includes an addition to implement Trump's goal of preventing institutional investors from buying single family homes. But one addition is more curious: a ban on a retail CBDC.
Last year, when the House passed the GENIUS Act for stablecoins, it simultaneously passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act, but no ban was enacted by the Senate.
It might be surprising for a bipartisan housing bill to include such a clause, but it has a critical caveat. The ban is set to expire at the end of 2030, which might satisfy Democrats. Trump should be in office until January 2029, so even if the Democrats won the next election and wanted a CBDC, launching one within two years is unlikely. Notably, the ban is on issuance, not preparation. But it does raise another question: why is the ban necessary during Trump's term?
Article continues …
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CryptoQuant data shows 38% of altcoins near all-time lows, surpassing even the post-FTX crash metric of 37.8%.
Gold, AI infrastructure, and the Israel Iran war are pulling capital away from altcoins at an accelerating pace.
One analyst sees Bitcoin hitting $75-80K in March, which could widen the gap between $BTC and altcoins even further.
Nearly 4 out of 10 altcoins are now trading near their all-time lows. CryptoQuant author Darkfost dropped the data, and the numbers are hard to ignore.
At 38%, this is the largest altcoin regression observed during this entire cycle, surpassing even the aftermath of FTX's collapse in 2022, when the metric hit 37.8%. In April 2025, it stood at 35%. The trend is moving in the wrong direction.
As Coinbureau put it: “This is the BIGGEST ALTCOIN WIPEOUT of this cycle.”
Darkfost pointed to a clear liquidity problem.
“The overall environment remains unfavorable for risk-taking, and the first sector to bear the consequences is the cryptocurrency market, particularly altcoins,” he wrote.
Gold has surged past $5,000 this year as investors chase safety. Meanwhile, even Bitcoin miners are liquidating $BTC reserves to fund AI infrastructure, with firms like Core Scientific and Bitdeer dumping their entire holdings. Capital seems to be leaving the crypto sector altogether.
The Israel Iran war is adding pressure. After U.S.-Israeli strikes over the weekend, Bitcoin briefly dropped to $63,000 before bouncing back above $65,000. The geopolitical shock triggered over $300 million in liquidations across crypto futures, and altcoins absorbed the worst of it.
Also Read: Who Dumped $5B in Bitcoin as Israel Strikes Iran? Binance and Wintermute Wallets Flagged Again
This is the other side of the story.
Crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe sees a very different setup forming on Bitcoin's chart. $BTC held above $65K, rallied toward range resistance, and has been consolidating for weeks.
Very good move of #Bitcoin yesterday, holding above $65K and rallied towards the range resistance.I mentioned that I expected some days of consolidation before a breakout upwards is likely to occur.The fact is that we've been establishing this range for quite some time.… pic.twitter.com/msvD2nkUIx
“With this build-up, I think that we'll see $75-80K in March,” Van de Poppe posted on X.
That's a bullish thesis. If Bitcoin breaks out while altcoins remain pinned near historic lows, the divergence could define this entire quarter.
Darkfost left the door open.
“It is precisely when conditions deteriorate significantly that opportunities also begin to emerge,” he noted.
History backs that pattern. The post-FTX bottom eventually led to one of the strongest rallies in crypto history. Whether this cycle follows the same script depends on whether liquidity returns to altcoins or continues concentrating in Bitcoin.
For now, the altcoin market is at its weakest point this cycle. What happens next could separate the dead projects from the survivors.
This Might Interest You: Crypto Bull Run 2026: Analyst Says AI Bubble, Silent Recession, Record Fear May Trigger a Rally
Key Takeaways
Bitcoin may be approaching a market bottom after months of steep losses, VanEck said, even as nearly 40% of altcoins hover near all-time lows and broader risk appetite remains fragile.
While geopolitical tensions in the Middle East cloud sentiment, some analysts say signs of stabilization are emerging.
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Speaking on CNBC, a VanEck Funds' Jan van Eck said the recent rally across the crypto complex, including Bitcoin and large-cap names such as Coinbase and Circle, could signal that the downturn is nearing exhaustion.
VanEck reiterated its view that 2026 represents the fourth year in Bitcoin's historical four-year cycle — typically the weakest phase following three consecutive years of gains.
“Bitcoin goes up three years in a row, then goes down pretty massively in that fourth year,” the executive said. “That's why we're in a crypto bear market.”
Despite that, VanEck believes a bottoming process may be underway.
“I think we're making a bottom and this is a very nice sign of life,” the executive added.
The firm also pointed to rapid growth in stablecoins, which it views as a key structural driver for the sector.
Stablecoin supply jumped 55% in the past week, according to the executive, underscoring what VanEck describes as the “plumbing” evolution of crypto markets.
VanEck's cautiously optimistic tone comes as altcoins face mounting pressure.
Crypto analyst Darkfrost wrote on X that 38% of altcoins are currently trading near their all-time lows (ATL), marking the largest regression observed during the current market cycle.
For comparison, the metric reached 35% in April 2025 and 37.8% in the immediate aftermath of the FTX collapse, Darkfrost said.
🚨 38% of Altcoins Near ATL, worse than the post-FTX period
The overall environment remains unfavorable for risk-taking, and the first sector to bear the consequences is the cryptocurrency market, particularly altcoins.
At the moment, liquidity in the market remains fragile and… pic.twitter.com/jUrrzI8AHV
— Darkfost (@Darkfost_Coc) March 2, 2026
“The overall environment remains unfavorable for risk-taking,” the analyst wrote, adding that liquidity appears to be flowing into equities and commodities instead of crypto.
The data suggests investor appetite for speculative digital assets remains subdued, particularly for smaller tokens outside Bitcoin and Ethereum.
However, Darkfrost noted that periods of extreme deterioration have historically coincided with emerging opportunities.
VanEck's near-term comments about a potential market bottom come alongside an aggressively bullish long-term forecast for Bitcoin's price.
The investment firm has projected that Bitcoin could reach $2.9 million per coin by 2050 under its base-case scenario, driven primarily by adoption as a global settlement asset.
Under its scenarios, VanEck outlined a wide range of potential outcomes:
The firm also recommends strategic allocations of 1% to 3% in diversified portfolios, with high-risk-tolerant investors potentially allocating up to 20%.
Despite signs that Bitcoin may be stabilizing, some analysts caution that the current downturn could deepen.
Crypto analyst Darkfrost argued that Bitcoin's present 47% drawdown from its cycle peak remains relatively modest compared with prior bear markets.
“With a 47% drawdown (daily close), we are still far from the magnitudes seen in previous bear markets,” Darkfrost wrote on X, noting that the 2012 bear market saw losses exceeding 90%.
He said investor reaction to the current pullback underscores how sentiment has shifted over time.
“Just imagine the reaction from investors and the media if such a correction were to happen again. With only a 47% decline today, some are already claiming that Bitcoin is dead,” he added.
While historical bear markets have generally become less severe with each cycle, Darkfrost said that pattern does not rule out further downside.
“If this pattern continues, one could reasonably expect a drawdown in the 60% to 70% range,” he said.
A 70% decline from the previous cycle peak near $123,000 would imply a price of roughly $36,900 — significantly below current levels.
At the time of reporting, the Bitcoin price was currently trading at $66,630.
From a technical perspective, Bitcoin remains under macro pressure despite recent consolidation, according to CCN analyst Victor Olanrewaju.
The critical support level to watch is $60,263. A breakdown below that level could open the door to $55,000 and potentially the $49,000 macro support zone, Olanrewaju said.
Conversely, a bullish breakout above the pennant formation, accompanied by strong volume, could trigger a short squeeze toward $75,865.
Geopolitical tensions — particularly involving Iran and Israel and the strategic Strait of Hormuz — may also influence near-term price direction, the analyst noted.
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Kurt Robson is a London-based reporter at CCN, specialising in the fast-moving worlds of crypto and emerging technology. He began his career covering local news in Cornwall after graduating from Falmouth University with First Class Honours in Journalism. There, he cut his teeth on everything from council meetings to missing swans.
He quickly rose through the ranks to become a frontline journalist at several of the UK's leading national newspapers. Over the years, he has interviewed musicians and celebrities, reported from courtrooms and crime scenes, and secured multiple front-page exclusives.
Following the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kurt shifted his focus to technology journalism—just ahead of the AI boom. With a natural curiosity and a trained eye for emerging trends, he has found a new rhythm in reporting on innovation.
At CCN, Kurt's work focuses on the cutting edge of crypto, blockchain, AI, and the evolving digital world. Drawing on his background in people-first reporting and his deep interest in disruptive tech, Kurt delivers stories that are insightful, entertaining, and human-centric.
The images in question showed a Ledger hardware device — a “cold wallet” designed to store cryptocurrency offline, away from hackers — sitting next to a handwritten note. That note, clearly legible in the published photo, contained the full mnemonic recovery phrase. Anyone with those words can move assets off the device to a new wallet. No PIN required. No additional permissions needed.
Bleeping Computer shared a screenshot of the retracted images before the press release disappeared. By then, local media and tech outlets had already grabbed the material.
Blockchain analysis expert Cho Jae-woo told a South Korean news outlet that 4 million PRTG (Pre-Retogeum) tokens sat in the wallet when the thief acted. According to The Block, on-chain data from Etherscan showed that “the party who moved the funds first deposited a small amount of ETH into the wallet to cover transaction fees, then transferred the 4 million PRTG tokens out in three transactions.”
Calculated, efficient, and done before anyone could react.
On Sunday, officers with South Korea's National Tax Service issued a follow-up press release, “deeply” apologizing for the leak. They admitted the images were included to make the announcement more visually appealing — and that no one bothered to check whether the crypto wallet password was visible. They called the mistake inexcusable and confirmed they were working with national police to trace the transfer and recover the funds.
Their chances of success look slim. Because the original press release circulated widely online, the thief could be virtually anyone. South Korea's National Tax Service has no clear suspects, as Gizmodo pointed out, and no straightforward path to recovering the stolen tokens.
The best-case scenario for investigators involves the thief attempting to cash out through a regulated exchange. But even that hope is thin. The Block noted the thief would likely struggle to convert that volume of cryptocurrency into fiat under current market conditions. A smarter play for whoever grabbed the tokens would be to sit on them quietly and avoid drawing attention.
Cho compared publishing any image of the mnemonic phrase to leaving a wallet wide open in public. He pointed out that the original Ledger wallet holder had actually followed proper security protocol — recording the recovery phrase only on a handwritten note and never storing it digitally. Police should have known to check the photos for sensitive information, Cho said, and their oversight will likely cost the national treasury billions of won.
Who exactly grabbed the funds remains an open question. It might have been an opportunist who happened to notice the exposed phrase while browsing the tax agency's press releases at dawn. Or it could have been someone deliberately watching police crypto announcements, given what The Block described as “a series of crypto custody lapses” by South Korean law enforcement.
Those lapses form a troubling pattern. In January, officials in Gwangju launched an investigation after “a substantial quantity of seized bitcoin was lost,” The Block reported. That incident was believed to be connected to a phishing attack targeting Coinbase, but it also raised questions about how well police were protecting confiscated digital assets.
Then last month, police in Seoul's Gangnam district opened an internal investigation after 22 seized bitcoins vanished. That case also involved a cold wallet drained without the physical device ever leaving police custody — a detail suggesting that sensitive credentials weren't being handled with adequate care.
Three incidents in three months. Each one different in execution, but all pointing to the same underlying weakness: law enforcement agencies seizing millions in digital assets without the technical expertise or security protocols to protect them.
In their latest apology, National Tax Service officials promised to strengthen internal controls and improve job training to prevent future leaks. Whether that promise translates into actual change remains to be seen.
Written by Alius Noreika
February 11, 2026
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Blockchain acceptance is taking off to emerging markets at a fast rate. Startups in Southeast Asia and Africa to Latin America and some regions of the Middle East are using decentralized technologies to address real-world problems in finance, supply chain, health, and governance.
Nonetheless, conventional funding is still scarce as a result of regulatory limitations, immature venture environments, and cross-border capital restrictions. ICO creation is becoming a proven process through which companies in these areas can open the global capital market, participate in investment opportunities democratization, and promote digital transformation.
ICOs have the potential to fill funding gaps as well as enable local innovation when designed with compliance, transparency, and technology excellence.
Emerging markets tend to experience systemic problems in starting up: the existence of very few venture capital sources, the existence of stringent banking policies, currency inertia, and regulatory bottlenecks. The usual fundraising paradigms are often not easily available to early innovations with little networks and institutional support.
The first method is that of initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) which allows projects to get funded through a global base of investors. The tokenized fundraising allows startups to engage more people outside the geographical boundaries, making it more inclusive and more general to the community.
The ecosystem has grown up even though the first wave of ICOs 2017 - 2018 was criticized because of the absence of control and transparency. Current day ICO models incorporate:
To the new markets, this development will be a second chance- based on responsibility and technology discipline. The current ICO evolution is focused on the long-term sustainability rather than on the short-term hype, which is matched with the investor confidence and project credibility.
The technical foundation of any ICO determines the success of the ICO. Safety Smart contracts, tested standards of tokens, scalable blockchain infrastructure, and viewer investor dashboards are key elements.
Collaboration with an established ico software development company will guarantee that projects are developed on stable protocols with enterprise specific security. Starting with whitepaper consultation and token creation and going all the way up to smart contract auditing and launchpad integration, professional development support decreases operational risks and increases investor trust.
Transparency is also made possible by technology. The blockchain has an irrevocable registry where all the transactions are kept, a fact that offers the relevant parties with reliable evidence on the way the funds were allocated and the tokens were given out.
Regulatory clarity is extremely different in emerging economies. Governments are actively welcoming the innovation of blockchains, and some others are developing the framework of compliance.
In the case of a startup, it is important to align the ICO structure with the local regulations and the international compliance standards. This includes:
The compliance-first strategy does not only protect the investor, but it also sets the project up to operate legitimately in the long term as well as engage in cross-border relationships.
Inclusive economic growth can be achieved through ICO development. Blockchain startups can also make the community stakeholders in innovation by making them participate in the development of an innovation. This participatory model of funding favors:
As an illustration, agricultural supply chain projects run on blockchain in Africa or fintech platforms in Southeast Asia can gather funds worldwide and provide direct and immediate benefits to the local community.
ICO development needs strategic planning despite the opportunities. Credibility can be compromised by poor definition of tokenomics, unrealistic targets of fundraising, or poorly secured cybersecurity.
Key best practices include:
The strategic focus should be on sustainability. An effective ICO is not only about capital raising, but also about the creation of a stable ecosystem.
With the increasing rate of digital adoption in the emerging markets, it is in the best position to transform the manner in which capital moves across borders with blockchain technology. Regulatory sandboxes, finance tech accelerators and government-backed blockchain projects are all areas that governments are considering. This facilitating ecosystem indicates that the ICO ecosystems have a future prospect of being compliant.
The emphasis should be on innovative governance to the entrepreneurs. With the combination of safe technology, open systems, and investor-focused architecture, ICO creation can be the driver of economic change.
The emerging markets no longer have to depend on conventional sources of capital. By means of systematic ICO plans, startups will be able to enter the international sources of funds and retain their local influence.
Decentralized fundraising is not about conjecture in the future, but instead about responsible innovation, which is opening up borderless funds to places willing to be at the forefront of the next frontier of digital development.
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I'm Tom Hardy, a Blockchain Consultant at BlockchainX, specializing in decentralized technologies, smart contract strategy, and Web3 solutions. I work with businesses and startups to design secure, scalable blockchain implementations across DeFi, NFTs, and enterprise ecosystems. I'm passionate about blockchain innovation and regularly share insights on emerging trends shaping the future of digital transformation.
26 Feb 2026
An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is a blockchain-native fundraising mechanism that enables projects to issue cryptographic tokens in exchange for capital. Unlike traditional equity financing, ICOs rely on smart contracts and token standards to…
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26 Feb 2026
The global financial system is going through structural change. Investors are no longer limited to traditional exchanges, private equity networks, or regional banking systems. Blockchain-based ownership models are opening access to assets that were…
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26 Feb 2026
The blockchain fundraising environment has changed quickly in the last few years. Since the Early Coin Offerings (ICOs) and then the Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs) and currently the DEX-based launchpads, the capital-raising process of the…
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26 Feb 2026
Digital communities have shifted from passive audiences to active participation networks. People no longer gather around brands solely to consume updates or announcements; they increasingly seek spaces where discussion, collaboration, and shared…
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25 Feb 2026
The global financial system is undergoing structural change as blockchain networks become part of mainstream asset management. Among the most discussed developments is Real World Asset Tokenization, a model that converts physical and traditional…
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Trade finance is the backbone of international to trade and facilitates trillions of dollars in cross border transactions each year. However the traditional system still relies heavily on paper based documentation to…
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The cryptocurrency market's nearly $2 trillion haircut since October is pushing altcoins to the brink, with 38% of the sector currently nearing all-time lows, signaling one of the deepest 'altcoin winters' – even worse than the FTX crash of 2022.
According to CryptoQuant data, the figure stood at around 35% in April last year and dipped to 37.8% just after the FTX crash, but this is the first time in four years that it's been this low.
“This metric shows how much altcoins are still under pressure. In fact, this represents the largest regression of altcoins observed during this cycle,” the CrytoQuant analyst wrote.
The analyst added that investors remain cautious and “continue to lose interest in altcoins,” though periods of prolonged weakness can also create “buying opportunities.” According to TradingView data, many of the tokens under pressure are newer projects, with prices below $1.
The drop in altcoin values after the FTX crash was caused by forced liquidations and panic. In 2026, the cause is very different. Capital is rotating into equities and commodities like gold and oil, where volatility is currently more profitable.
“Capital is looking at gold, silver, and other hard assets, but that isn't always going to be the case,” Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) chairman Tom Lee said in an interview with CNBC on Monday.
The overall cryptocurrency market rose 1.6% in the last 24 hours, but traded below the $2.4 trillion mark. Bitcoin (BTC) rose 2.1% to around $67,400 while Ethereum (ETH) rose 0.9% to around $1,957.
Read also: Bitcoin Rebounds Toward $70K After US-Iran Clash – ‘Sign Of Life,' Says VanEck CEO
For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.
Crypto's path to mainstream hinges on overcoming distribution hurdles and embracing institutional finance.
Share
John Paller is the Founder and Chief Executive Steward of ETHDenver, North America's largest Ethereum gathering. He founded ETHDenver in 2018 after working in Ethereum fulltime since 2016 and previously leading recruitment tech firms. He is also the Founder and Executive Steward of Opolis, a digital employment cooperative for independent workers.
It actually looks like increasingly traditional finance institutions are besting us at our own game and they're executing extremely well
— John Paller
The only reason why crypto didn't scale bigger than it is or didn't really make it in mainstream is because we didn't have distribution
— John Paller
Now we're in the institutional phase with stable coins and you know modernizing the current financial systems infrastructure and whatever and we saw that coming.
— John Paller
What that was really saying to the market is hey we're kind of admitting that ethereum by itself can't scale and so we're gonna leave it to the market to figure out what the solutions for that are.
— John Paller
We've tried to kinda manage it based on market kinetics and then also just what we feel like is you know at least net neutral to ethereum or net positive for ethereum.
— John Paller
The infinite garden always came off to me as a little naive and a little bit unrealistic… designing a technological system for that is very hard where incentives are aligned at scale sustainably and so the infinite garden thing… I think it's a little too simplistic and I think it's a little too idealistic.
— John Paller
You can't assume that people are just going to behave in ways that on paper make sense… humans don't always follow what you think are good incentives or they might not always do what you feel like is the right thing.
— John Paller
I think that agentic AI and coming on chain is probably the biggest innovation that we've seen in the twelve years I've been in it.
— John Paller
If you think that's gonna happen at scale you're high; it's not gonna happen people aren't gonna do it.
— John Paller
Solana isn't just sufficiently decentralized in my opinion and that's just a function of how many nodes they have validating their blocks; their uptime is questionable, their downtime is unacceptable, and quite frankly the only use case that they've demonstrated is meme coins at this point.
— John Paller
Crypto's path to mainstream hinges on overcoming distribution hurdles and embracing institutional finance.
Share
John Paller is the Founder and Chief Executive Steward of ETHDenver, North America's largest Ethereum gathering. He founded ETHDenver in 2018 after working in Ethereum fulltime since 2016 and previously leading recruitment tech firms. He is also the Founder and Executive Steward of Opolis, a digital employment cooperative for independent workers.
It actually looks like increasingly traditional finance institutions are besting us at our own game and they're executing extremely well
— John Paller
The only reason why crypto didn't scale bigger than it is or didn't really make it in mainstream is because we didn't have distribution
— John Paller
Now we're in the institutional phase with stable coins and you know modernizing the current financial systems infrastructure and whatever and we saw that coming.
— John Paller
What that was really saying to the market is hey we're kind of admitting that ethereum by itself can't scale and so we're gonna leave it to the market to figure out what the solutions for that are.
— John Paller
We've tried to kinda manage it based on market kinetics and then also just what we feel like is you know at least net neutral to ethereum or net positive for ethereum.
— John Paller
The infinite garden always came off to me as a little naive and a little bit unrealistic… designing a technological system for that is very hard where incentives are aligned at scale sustainably and so the infinite garden thing… I think it's a little too simplistic and I think it's a little too idealistic.
— John Paller
You can't assume that people are just going to behave in ways that on paper make sense… humans don't always follow what you think are good incentives or they might not always do what you feel like is the right thing.
— John Paller
I think that agentic AI and coming on chain is probably the biggest innovation that we've seen in the twelve years I've been in it.
— John Paller
If you think that's gonna happen at scale you're high; it's not gonna happen people aren't gonna do it.
— John Paller
Solana isn't just sufficiently decentralized in my opinion and that's just a function of how many nodes they have validating their blocks; their uptime is questionable, their downtime is unacceptable, and quite frankly the only use case that they've demonstrated is meme coins at this point.
— John Paller
© Decentral Media and Crypto Briefing® 2026.
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Ahavuye isanamu, Ngabo Leonce
Mu gihe umuziki w'Uburundi ubandanya guhinduka uko imyaka ihera, ikibazo c'uruhara rw'amashirahamwe akingira abaririmvyi kirabandanya kwibazwa.
Ishirahamwe ry'abaririmvyi b'abarundi "Amicale des Musiciens du Burundi (AMB)" ryashinzwe mu 1986 n'umwe mu nararibonye z'umuziki w'Uburundi, Ngabo Léonce, rifise intumbero yo gukingira abaririmvyi no kubafasha gutera imbere mu mwuga wabo.
Ico gihe, umuziki w'Uburundi wari utanguye gukura, kandi hari icizere ko iryo shirahamwe rizoba inkingi ikomeye y'iterambere ry'abaririmvyi.
Ariko inyuma y'imyaka mirongo ine, abaririmvyi benshi baracibaza bati: mbega ivyo AMB yasezeranye vyoba vyarashitse ku rugero rwitezwe?
Aganira na BBC Gahuzamiryango, umukuru wa AMB Olivier Ndayishimiye, benshi bazi ku izina rya Bright, avuga ko ishirahamwe arongoye ryaranguye ibikorwa bitari bike mu gutunganya umwuga w'abaririmvyi no kubavugira.
Avuga ko AMB yagize uruhara mu gutuma umuziki w'Uburundi uguma uboneka mu Burundi no mu mahanaga mu kubungabunga inyungu z'abaririmvyi.
Abandanya avuga ko iryo shirahamwe ryafashije abatari bake kumenyekana aho atanga uburorero butari buke nk'abaririmvyi ba Rflow, the cousins n'abandi.
Ariko n'aho biri ukwo, hari abatabona neza ico iryo shirahamwe ryakoze canke ico ryabagejejeko ku giti cabo.
End of Ibisomwa cane
Amakuru ya BBC Gahuza ako kanya kuri WhatsApp yawe
Kanda hano ujyeho
End of podcast promotion
Umwe mu baririmvyi b'urunganwe rushasha, Armel Chabel Marial Ngendakumana, azwi nka Masterland, avuga ko "banezerejwe gusa n'uko ribaho" ariko ko "ataco ryabafashije" kubera "abagiye barakuranwa mu kuritwara ata gishasha bazanye"kandi ko "batakoreye ku bibazo vy'ukuri abaririmvyi bafise".
Abandanya ko kubera ico, abaririmvyi benshi bataragera aho usanga babeshejweho n'umuziki gusa.
N'aho anegura iryo shirahamwe, abandanya avuga ko hari n'ikibazo mu babririmvyi ubwabo aho benshi baza muri uwo mwuga atabumenyi bafise.
Aragiza avuga ko mu bindi bibazo bafise harimwo n'ukutagira uburyo bukomeye bukingira ibikorwa mvabwenge, mu gihe itegeko rijanye n'ukubakingira ritarashirwa mu ngiro neza.
Inzobere mu vy'umuziki zivuga ko umuziki ku rwego mpuzamakungu uriko urahinduka cane, cane cane kubera ubuhinga bwa none, imbuga ngurukanabumenyi n'uburyo bushasha bwo gukwiragiza indirimbo.
Bright na we aremera ko ibi bihe bishasha bisaba ko AMB ihindura ingene ikora, kandi avuga ko hari ingingo ziriko zirafatwa kugira ishirahamwe rishobore gufasha neza abaririmvyi muri ibi bihe bishasha.
Kuva kuri Sagamba ya Ngabo Léonce gushika kuri Sinzohinduka ya Masterland, canke kuva kubaririmvyi ba kera nka Mariya Rosa Twagirayezu gushika kuri bashasha nka Vania Ice, biraboneka ko umuziki w'Uburundi wagize urugendo rurerure kandi uguma uhinduka.
Ariko ikibazo nyamukuru gisigaye ni iki: amashirahamwe y'abaririmvyi azoshobora kwihutira guhindura ibintu kugira abaririmvyi bumve koko ko hari ico abamariye?
Ku baririmvyi benshi, kazoza k'umuziki w'Uburundi ntikazotezwa imbere n'impano gusa, ahubwo kazotezwa imbere n'ingene inzego zibaserukira zizoshobora gutorera inyinshu ibibazo vyabo vy'ukuri.
© 2026 BBC. BBC ntibazwa ibivuye ku zindi mbuga. Soma ibijanye n'aho duhagaze ku mihora ijana ahandi
Dubai, UAE, March 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
The Pepeto team just announced a major advancement on the blockchain tools they have been building since the presale began, pushing to have everything ready ahead of the next bull run as the presale crosses $7.44 million raised with demand accelerating daily. The main purpose of these tools is fixing what Ethereum needs and what Cardano never managed to deliver. On chain data reveals that many large XRP holders are adding Pepeto to their portfolios because the xrp price prediction for a $20 target does not look promising in any realistic timeframe, and the return potential sitting in Pepeto right now is something XRP simply cannot offer at its current valuation.
Crypto News XRP Price prediction: Why Big XRP Wallets Are Buying Pepeto As InvestingHaven reported, for XRP to reach $20 the total market cap would need to jump from roughly $80 billion today to over $1.1 trillion, and to put that in perspective, that means XRP alone would need to be worth more than Amazon, more than Meta, and would need to sit right behind Bitcoin as the second most valuable crypto asset on the planet, a scenario that requires every major bank in the world to adopt Ripple's payment network, billions of dollars in ETF inflows to arrive all at once, and global financial infrastructure to shift toward XRP at a scale that has never happened for any cryptocurrency in history. As Changelly covered in their xrp price prediction, the average trading price sits around $1.73 by mid 2026 with a best case peak of $3.12 by December, meaning XRP is expected to move from roughly $1.39 today to somewhere around $3 over the next nine months, which is a respectable gain for a large cap but nowhere close to the $20 target that would require at minimum a full decade of perfect conditions including multiple bull cycles, full regulatory clarity across every jurisdiction, and adoption at a level Ripple has never come close to achieving in over ten years of operation.
So why the XRP holders are buying Pepeto and not another early project? Being early is what creates wealth in crypto.And maybe the answer is also the virality, and yes, the culture is spreading faster than anything this cycle, but viral energy alone pushes a token to 50x after launch and then what happens when the hype fades? Large wallet investors never buy based on excitement alone, they buy based on what survives after the noise settles, and that brings us to the infrastructure that sets Pepeto apart from everything else.
Pepeto Fixes What Cardano Could Not and Builds the Infrastructure Ethereum Actually Needs Pepeto is building the exact solution that Ethereum traders have been waiting for, a complete ecosystem where all cryptocurrencies can be traded on a single platform with fees so low they barely register, instant cross chain transfers through a dedicated bridge connecting Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana, and zero tax swaps that remove the cost eating into every transaction. High demand drives price appreciation, that is a rule in every market, and the demand will come from every trader tired of paying gas fees that wipe out small positions, jumping between fragmented exchanges, and losing money to slippage on chains that were never designed to talk to each other. This is exactly what Cardano was supposed to fix with its academic research and scalability promises, but years later Cardano's ecosystem still struggles with low adoption and developer activity that never matched the vision.
And it is not only XRP holders paying attention, because the biggest meme coin communities are rallying behind Pepeto's branding as the god of frogs and the redemption story built into the project's identity. The name tells the whole story, as the T and O that Pepe was missing stand for technology and optimization, the exact components that bring whales and institutional capital to a project that meme culture alone could never attract. Dual audits from SolidProof and Coinsult verify the smart contracts, 211% APY staking rewards compound daily, and the combination of viral meme energy on top of real infrastructure is what makes analysts call this the best crypto to buy now and the biggest project of 2026, not the biggest meme coin, the biggest project, because Pepeto is something the market has never seen before.
To Catch the Best Crypto to Buy Now the Only Thing Standing Between You and Life Changing Returns Is Timing Vision and early positioning are the two ingredients that created every crypto millionaire in the last decade, and with Pepeto the risk appears closer to zero than anything else because the case is built from every angle. The infrastructure solves a real problem, the culture drives discovery, and the biggest wallets in crypto are already inside because they never invest without knowing what is coming. Being lucky enough to read about Pepeto right now and still choosing to wait could be the most expensive mistake of this cycle,
Click To Visit Pepeto Website To Enter The Presale
FAQs
Can XRP realistically reach $20 in this market cycle? Most analysts xrp price prediction shows that's unlikely before 2030 at the earliest.
What is the best crypto to buy now before the next bull run? Pepeto is the best crypto to buy as the project combines meme coin virality with real trading infrastructure.
Why is Pepeto a better solution than Cardano for Ethereum? Cardano promised to fix Ethereum but adoption stayed limited. Pepeto delivers a working cross chain bridge, zero tax swaps, and a listings exchange.
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Researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School have discovered a molecular "switch" that determines whether pancreatic cancer cells respond to chemotherapy or resist it. The finding points to a way to potentially shift some of the most treatment resistant tumors into a state where existing drugs can work more effectively.
The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, explains how this switch operates at a molecular level. The results suggest that pairing targeted therapies with standard chemotherapy may improve outcomes for patients whose tumors no longer respond to treatment.
Why Pancreatic Cancer Is So Difficult to Treat
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers worldwide. In Singapore, it ranks as the ninth most common cancer but the fourth leading cause of cancer related death. Because symptoms often appear late and current treatments have limited impact, most patients depend on chemotherapy, which typically provides only modest benefit.
Over the past decade, scientists have identified two main molecular subtypes of pancreatic cancer, classical and basal. Tumors in the classical subtype tend to be more organized at the cellular level, and patients with this form are more likely to respond to treatment. In contrast, basal subtype tumors are more disorganized and aggressive, and they are often resistant to chemotherapy.
Importantly, pancreatic cancer cells are not fixed in one subtype. They can shift between these states, moving from a more treatable form to a more resistant one. This flexibility is known as cancer cell plasticity.
The Role of GATA6 in Tumor Behavior
The research team focused on a gene called GATA6, which helps maintain pancreatic cancer cells in the more structured and less aggressive classical state. When GATA6 levels are high, tumors tend to grow in a more organized way and are more likely to respond to chemotherapy. When GATA6 levels fall, cells lose that structure, become more aggressive, and are harder to treat.
Professor David Virshup of Duke-NUS's Programme in Cancer & Stem Cell Biology, the study's lead author, said:
"We have known that pancreatic cancer cells can switch between these two states. What we didn't understand was the mechanism driving that switch. By identifying the pathway that suppresses GATA6, we now have a clearer picture of how tumors become resistant -- and potentially how to reverse that process."
KRAS and ERK Pathway Drive the Switch
The researchers traced the switch to a chain of signals inside pancreatic cancer cells. A gene called KRAS, which is mutated in nearly all pancreatic cancers, sends constant growth signals that drive tumor development. KRAS passes these signals through a partner protein known as ERK, which relays the instructions further inside the cell.
When the ERK pathway becomes highly active, it protects another protein that interferes with the production of GATA6. As GATA6 levels drop, cancer cells lose their organized structure, shift toward the more aggressive basal state, and become much less responsive to chemotherapy.
Using genetic screening, molecular analysis in cancer cells, and drug treatments, the team demonstrated that blocking the KRAS and ERK pathway lifts this suppression. When that happens, GATA6 levels rise again. The cancer cells then shift back toward the more organized state and regain sensitivity to chemotherapy.
Combination Therapy Shows Stronger Effects
The study also found that higher levels of GATA6 on their own made pancreatic cancer cells more responsive to treatment. When drugs that inhibit the KRAS and ERK pathway were combined with standard chemotherapy, the anti cancer effects were stronger than with either approach alone. However, this enhanced benefit occurred only when GATA6 was present, highlighting its central role in determining which patients might benefit most from combination therapy.
These findings help clarify why patients with higher GATA6 levels often respond better to certain chemotherapy regimens. They also provide a scientific foundation for ongoing clinical trials that are testing new treatments aimed at KRAS and related pathways.
Professor Lok Sheemei, Duke-NUS' Interim Vice-Dean for Research, said:
"Pancreatic cancer remains one of the toughest cancers to treat. These findings provide a mechanistic explanation for why tumors respond poorly to chemotherapy and offers a rational strategy for combining targeted therapies with existing drugs."
Broader Implications for Other KRAS Driven Cancers
The implications may extend beyond pancreatic cancer. Many other cancers fueled by KRAS mutations show similar shifts in cell behavior and treatment response. Understanding how cancer cells transition between different states could help researchers address therapy resistance in additional cancer types.
Professor Patrick Tan, Dean and Provost's Chair in Cancer and Stem Cell Biology at Duke-NUS, commented:
"This work demonstrates how basic science can uncover actionable insights into treatment resistance. Understanding how cancer cells switch states gives us a more strategic way to design combination treatments."
Duke-NUS Medical School is internationally recognized for its leadership in medical education and biomedical research, combining fundamental discoveries with translational expertise to improve health outcomes in Singapore and beyond.
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The Maya calendar is made up of three interacting circles that represent days and months. Credit: Getty
The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya David Stuart Princeton Univ. Press (2026)
Before the 1970s, ancient Maya history was impenetrable. The civilization's grand ceremonial buildings and striking art, created in parts of Mesoamerica during the Classic Maya period (ad 150–900) had tantalized foreign visitors since the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century. But no one, including several million twentieth-century speakers of Maya languages, could read the ancient Maya hieroglyphs.
Epigrapher David Stuart embraced this challenge while still a child, living with his archaeologist parents in a small village in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, where he learnt to speak the local Yucatec Maya language. He began working with Mayanist Linda Schele to understand the inscriptions of the ancient city-state of Palenque in Chiapas, on the peninsula's western side.
Ancient DNA from Maya ruins tells story of ritual human sacrifices
Ancient DNA from Maya ruins tells story of ritual human sacrifices
At 12 years old, he presented his first paper at an international conference in Palenque in 1978. At 18, he became the youngest person to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Today, he is a professor of Mesoamerican art and writing based in the United States and one of the world's leading specialists on the ancient Maya.
In The Four Heavens, Stuart relates the history of the Maya civilization for non-specialist readers, more than two decades after the last book to attempt this demanding task. To do so, he draws on fresh archaeological discoveries and translations of Maya writings from the twenty-first century. The book's title is a reference to Maya cosmology, which divided the sky into four ‘sides', determined by the Sun's daily and annual movements.
Stuart takes aim at outdated views of the Maya as “quintessential noble savages living in remote cities in the jungle” under the control of impersonal rulers and priests who were “more interested in esoteric knowledge than the concerns of the real world”. Instead, he portrays the Maya as living in a world that consisted of numerous vivid royal courts intertwined by marriages, temporary alliances and warfare, in addition to religion.
For example, in the early 1950s, leading scholar Eric Thompson “idealized” the Maya, Stuart notes, and regarded them as a theocracy: time worshippers with an immensely sophisticated calendar and a deeply spiritual outlook. In Thompson's view, stated in 1972, their puzzling inscriptions were not “syllabic, or alphabetic, in part or in whole” — unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs, which had been deciphered in the 1820s.
Thompson might have been influenced in part by cold war politics. He rejected the pioneering 1950s theory by Russian linguist Yuri Knorosov that the ancient Maya script was partly syllabic — an idea that Knorosov had gleaned from a sketch of symbols made by a Yucatec Maya in the 1560s in a confused conversation with a Spanish friar.
Sarcophagus lid from the tomb of Pakal.Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty
From the 1980s onwards, however, the assessment of the ancient Maya civilization as mainly theocratic changed radically. By then, the Maya script was beginning to be deciphered — partly through phonetic elements. Scholars such as Michael Coe, author of The Maya (1966) and Breaking the Maya Code (1992), observed that these inscriptions showed their rulers to be obsessed with war. “The highest goal of these lineage-proud dynasts was to capture the ruler of a rival city-state in battle,” wrote Coe, “to torture and humiliate him (sometimes for years), and then subject him to decapitation following a ball game which the prisoner was always destined to lose.”
Wars and shifting political alliances are a substantial part of Stuart's book, too, along with religion. “Maya history is a narrative of many localized ‘fits and starts' within dynasties, usually instigated by a disruptive war,” he writes. Also prevalent in the book are the names of many Maya settlements, such as Chichén Itzá, Copán, Palenque and Yaxchilán, and rulers, such as Pakal the Great (of Palenque) and Shield Jaguar (of Yaxchilán). Some of these names will be familiar to modern visitors to Mesoamerica, but Stuart also includes many that are not as well known.
Maya bones bring a lost civilization to life
Maya bones bring a lost civilization to life
Dates are another theme, deciphered using the complex but well-understood Maya calendar. It is made up of three interlocking circular systems. The centre ring contains the numerals 1 to 13, which are then linked to two further rings of 20 named days and 19 named months. The full cycle takes 52 years to complete. Many of the dates on Maya inscriptions are surprisingly precise for records of the ancient world: for example, “a certain royal individual” died on 25 October 726, was buried in his pyramid on 28 October and his heir succeeded him to the throne on 7 January 727.
Although Stuart admits that some readers might find such details “a bit dry or tedious”, on balance the Maya synthesis of down-to-earth facts with fantastical elements in their buildings, art and hieroglyphs should intrigue us all. Interpreting these details will ensure decades more work for Mayanists.
Consider the sarcophagus lid of Pakal at Palenque in present-day Mexico — perhaps the most famous of all Maya inscriptions. Excavated in 1952 by archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier from the crypt of the Temple of the Inscriptions, the sarcophagus was gradually deciphered over the course of several decades.
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Nature 651, 28-29 (2026)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00663-0
The author declares no competing interests.
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A new study led by researchers at the University of Arizona suggests that for every recognized vertebrate species, there are, on average, two additional species that have gone unnoticed. These overlooked organisms, known as "cryptic" species, appear almost identical to known species but are genetically distinct. The findings indicate that global vertebrate biodiversity may be far greater than current estimates, raising important questions about how many species remain undocumented and unprotected.
"Each species that you and I can see and recognize as distinct may actually be hiding two different species, on average," said John Wiens, senior author of the paper and a professor in the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Science. "This means that across vertebrates, there may be twice as many species as we previously thought, and many of these hidden species could already be at risk of extinction."
DNA Reveals Cryptic Species Hidden in Plain Sight
Traditionally, scientists have identified and classified animals based on visible physical traits, also known as morphological features. Differences in color patterns, scale arrangements, or body shape often separate one species from another. For instance, snake species may be distinguished by variations in their markings or build.
Cryptic species complicate that process. Although they look nearly identical, genetic analysis shows they belong to separate evolutionary lineages. In other words, their DNA reveals differences that cannot be seen with the naked eye.
"Many of these cryptic species have likely been evolving separately for a million years or more," said Wiens. "So, their DNA tells us that they've been distinct for a long time, even if they look identical."
Consistent Pattern Across Fish, Birds, Mammals, and More
Advances in molecular sequencing have made it faster and more affordable to compare DNA among populations. As genetic data have accumulated, researchers have repeatedly uncovered previously unrecognized species.
What surprised the team most was how widespread this pattern appears to be. According to Wiens, the trend holds across major vertebrate groups. "On average, morphologically based species of fishes, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and other vertebrate groups all seemed to be hiding around two cryptic species."
A striking example comes from Arizona. For years, the Arizona mountain kingsnake was considered a single species throughout the state because individuals looked alike. However, molecular research in 2011 showed that snakes from Northern Arizona were genetically distinct from those in the south. As a result, the southern population was elevated to full species status as Lampropeltis knoblochi, while the northern snakes retained the name Lampropeltis pyromelana.
"If you compare those two mountain kingsnakes, they all look pretty much the same with their red, black and yellow-white stripes," said Yinpeng Zhang, a graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the paper's first author. "But the molecular data show that there are distinct but cryptic northern and southern species."
Analyzing Hundreds of Studies Worldwide
Zhang began exploring the idea several years ago after noticing that many taxonomy studies were uncovering genetically distinct species that were visually indistinguishable. He realized that no one had systematically examined how common this phenomenon might be across vertebrates as a whole.
To answer that question, the research team compiled and analyzed findings from more than three hundred published studies from around the world.
"There aren't many research groups focused purely on cryptic species," Zhang said. "Most people discover them as a byproduct of other biodiversity or taxonomy studies rather than as the main goal."
The researchers also evaluated different approaches used to estimate the number of cryptic species, offering guidance for future research in this area.
Conservation Risks for Newly Recognized Species
The implications extend beyond classification. If what was once considered a single widespread species is split into several distinct cryptic species, each newly identified species occupies a smaller geographic range. That can significantly increase its vulnerability.
"People have generally found that the smaller a species' range size is, the more likely that species is to go extinct," said Wiens.
Wiens argues that formally describing and naming these species is a critical first step toward protecting them.
"Even though hundreds of molecular studies have uncovered hundreds of cryptic species, very few have been formally described or named," said Wiens. "That leaves these species without official recognition or legal protection."
There are also practical consequences. According to Zhang, conservation programs aimed at increasing population numbers could accidentally breed individuals from different species if cryptic species are not properly identified.
"Hidden diversity is an important consideration to make in our conservation efforts," Zhang said.
For the researchers, the takeaway is straightforward.
"If we don't know a species exists, then we can't protect it," Wiens said.
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Cellular senescence is a fundamental biological process that is characterized by a stable proliferative arrest, often associated with unresolved DNA damage, and a complex secretory phenotype. Senescent cells accumulate with age, contribute to chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction, and are increasingly implicated in a wide range of age-related diseases.
Progress in understanding senescence biology has led to the emergence of senotherapeutics, a class of interventions that aim to eliminate, modulate or prevent the detrimental effects of senescent cells. These advances have positioned cellular senescence as a compelling and tractable target for therapeutic intervention into chronic age-related diseases and to improve human healthspan. Despite the rapid expansion of discovery-driven work and a growing number of candidate interventions, the clinical translation of senotherapeutics remains limited by several bottlenecks. The field has now reached a translational inflection point: therapeutic concepts are being proposed faster than the tools and insight required to robustly measure, compare and regulate senescence in humans are being developed.
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SenNet Consortium. Nat. Aging 2, 1090–1100 (2022).
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M.D. is supported by grants from the Dutch Reseacrh Council (NWO), Hevolution Foundation and Dutch Cancer Foundation (KWF). N.N. is a member of the NIH SenNet Consortium and acknowledges support from NIH grant UH3CA268202.
Rubedo Life Sciences, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Marco Quarta
Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
Nicola Neretti
Genentech, Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA
Heinrich Jasper
European Research Institute for the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA, University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), University of Groningen (RUG), Groningen, Netherlands
Marco Demaria
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M.Q. and M.D. conceived the idea for the SBC. M.Q., N.N., H.J. and M.D. contributed to defining the mission, structure and strategic objectives of the consortium. M.D. drafted the initial version of the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, provided critical intellectual input, and approved the final version.
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M.Q. is an employee and shareholder of Rubedo Life Sciences Inc. M.D. is founder and shareholder of Cleara Biotech and a consultant for Rubedo Lifesciences and Oisin Biotechnologies. N.N. is a co-founder of GeroSen Biotechnologies. H.J. is an employee and shareholder of Genentech Inc. None of the listed companies funded, influenced or participated in this work.
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Nature Medicine
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Clinical evaluations of large language models (LLMs) have rapidly expanded since 2022, yet their evidence base remains opaque. The overwhelming volume of studies creates challenges for manual curation and review. However, LLMs themselves offer the scalability and capability to evaluate the ever-growing evidence base. This LLM-assisted review identified 4,609 peer-reviewed studies in clinical medicine between January 2022 and September 2025, equating to roughly 3.2 papers per day. Only 1,048 studies used real-world patient data and of these only 19 were prospective randomized trials; most addressed simulated scenarios (n = 1,857) or exam-style tasks (n = 1,704). ChatGPT and related OpenAI models constitute 65.7% of evaluated models, with Gemini/Bard a distant second constituting 13.1% of evaluated models. Patient-facing communication and education comprised 17% of tasks, followed by knowledge retrieval, and education and assessment simulation. Across 1,046 head-to-head comparisons, LLMs outperformed humans in 33% of comparisons, with a strong dependency on task realism and level of training. At least 25% of studies had sample sizes less than 30. Despite the growth of LLMs in medicine, rigorous, patient-centered evidence remains scarce, underscoring the need for larger prospective trials before clinical adoption.
Since the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022, large language models (LLMs) have catalyzed a paradigm shift in medical artificial intelligence (AI). LLMs have demonstrated emergent reasoning—the spontaneous appearance of complex problem-solving and abstract inference abilities that were not explicitly programmed—alongside in-context learning, in which models adapt to new tasks by leveraging examples or information provided within the prompt, and instruction-following, which is the capacity to interpret and execute natural language commands as intended by the user1. These capabilities have sparked widespread interest in LLM applications in clinical medicine. Use cases are broad; LLMs can be used to answer patient medical questions, summarize clinical notes and literature2 or even aid in clinical decision-making in complex cases3,4. Some have started to use LLMs to streamline medical documentation2, aid in medical education5,6 and perform operative healthcare tasks7.
Early studies illustrated that general-purpose LLMs such as GPT-3.5, GPT-4 and PaLM-2 could perform at or near passing levels on standardized medical examinations, including the United States Medical Licensing Examination8,9,10. Subsequent work expanded these tests to a growing set of unique tasks and domains, benchmarking LLMs against clinicians or patient-generated data3,4.
Despite the volume and velocity of new publications, the real-world clinical impact of LLMs remains poorly characterized. Many high-profile studies are simulation-based, retrospective or narrow in scope. Previous systematic reviews have been performed to assess the safety, fairness and transparency of LLM-based systems in clinical medicine; these reviews are limited by scope and are often conducted manually, introducing issues with scalability and reproducibility11,12,13,14.
Broadly, we began by scraping several databases for relevant studies. Next, we instructed a frontier LLM to screen all studies based on our inclusion and exclusion criteria and classify each study into a predefined evidence tier. Lastly, we query the LLM to extract and categorize relevant data fields from the study abstracts for further analysis. We validate and compute statistical bounds on the results of this automated review by comparison to ground truth, unseen human-labeled screening data.
We aimed to (1) estimate the true number and quality of clinical LLM studies, (2) quantify the evidence in these studies across task types and specialties, (3) identify methodological gaps and (4) provide a roadmap for future clinical and patient-centered LLM research. Lastly, we released an open-source browsing tool to allow for easy exploration and transparent review of the LLM-extracted fields with the codebase associated with this paper.
A search of PubMed, Embase and Scopus for articles published between 1 January 2022 and 6 September 2025 for strings with keywords such as ‘large language model,' ‘GPT,' ‘ChatGPT' and other common language model names returned a total of 8,666, 5,633 and 9,315 records from Embase, PubMed and Scopus, respectively, yielding 12,894 unique studies after deduplication. The full query strings for each database are available in the Methods. We performed a human validation study of the filtering performance by randomly sampling 500 of the candidate works and assigning them to two independent groups of human reviewers, five reviewers each. The reviewers were given an option to include the study (‘Yes'), exclude the study (‘No') or defer (‘Maybe?'). Deferring triggered an automatic tiebreak for that entry and counted as a disagreement for the purposes of inter-rater agreement calculations. The two human groups achieved an inter-rater agreement, as measured by Cohen's κ, of 0.741 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.685–0.796). A total of 64 out of 500 human verdicts required a tiebreak, most of which (51.6%) were due to one of the reviewers deferring. GPT-5 (reasoning effort set to high) achieved strong agreement with the tiebroken reviewer decisions, with a Cohen's κ of 0.820 (95% CI 0.765–0.870) and 41 disagreements in total. A summary of this process is shown in Fig. 1 as a PRISMA15 flow diagram.
First, Embase, PubMed and Scopus were scraped, yielding 23,614 records. After title and digital object identifier deduplication, 12,894 studies remained. These studies were screened programmatically using an LLM, yielding 4,609 included studies, of which 500 were validated by humans. The included studies were then tiered programmatically with an LLM, with 250 validated by humans.
Using these human decisions as ground truth labels, we found high sensitivity (0.911; 95% CI 0.866–0.952) and specificity (0.921; 95% CI 0.892–0.949) for inclusion and exclusion. The bootstrapped estimates predicted the LLM would yield 4,644 included samples (within 1.0% of the observed number of included samples), with 669 (95% CI 431–929) false positives and 386 (95% CI 206–592) false negatives. Thus, we estimated the true number of studies that would fit the inclusion criteria published during this time interval to be 4,361 (95% CI 3,838–4,906). The actual number of studies filtered in and out by the LLM was 4,609 and 8,285, respectively. Between January 2022 and September 2025, approximately 3.2 studies on LLMs in clinical medicine were published per day.
Studies were then categorized into one of four tiers: Tier S represents gold standard prospective, randomized, controlled evaluations of deployed systems in live clinical environments; Tier I involves retrospective or prospective analyses on real clinical data; Tier II consists of simulated or synthetic clinical data and/or scenarios; and Tier III includes evaluations that test knowledge synthesis and recall, typically based on structured assessments of clinical knowledge that is not representative of clinical practice.
From the tiering procedure run on these included studies, we found an inter-rater Cohen's κ of 0.645 (95% CI 0.560–0.726) between human reviewers, indicating good agreement. GPT-5 (reasoning effort set to high) achieved similar agreement with the tiebroken reviewer decisions group, with a Cohen's κ of 0.695 (95% CI 0.611–0.772), with 48 disagreements in total. The LLM had a macro-averaged sensitivity and specificity of 0.822 (95% CI 0.772–0.869) and 0.896 (95% CI 0.868–0.923), respectively. Although the sensitivity and specificity were lower on the tiering task than the inclusion, we found that, of all errors the LLM made, 84.8% were within one tier of the ground truth label. Of these off-by-one errors, there was a modest bias toward assigning a higher tier (53.9% of errors) compared to a lower tier (46.1% of errors). The full confusion matrix can be seen in Extended Data Fig. 1.
We found no Tier S studies in our human screening process, though the LLM found 21 Tier S studies out of the 4,609 total studies tiered by the LLM (less than 0.5% of the studies). We reviewed those studies manually and found 19 of them to be true positives. As a result, we group Tier S studies into Tier I studies for our Bayesian analysis due to an insufficient sample size. The LLM detected 1,094 Tier I studies, 1,767 Tier II studies and 1,727 Tier III studies. After constructing a Bayesian model using our prior human-validated screens, our model predicts that there are 1,048 (95% CI 847–1,252) Tier S/I studies, 1,857 (95% CI 1,427–2,280) Tier II studies and 1,704 (95% CI 1,273–2,134) Tier III studies.
We found a significant difference between the number of Tier I and III studies (P = 6.6 × 10−33) as well as Tier I and Tier II studies (P = 1.6 × 10−36). There were significantly fewer Tier S studies than all other tiers (P < 10−307).
A notable increase in studies testing LLMs in a clinical context appeared after the release of ChatGPT (November 2022), as expected (Fig. 2a). We found two Tier I studies, both by Danilov et al., that evaluate the ability of ruGPT-3, a 760 M model trained on a Russian corpus, to predict length of stay for neurosurgical patients16,17. These studies were published on 14 January 2022 and 29 June 2022, and both studies found ruGPT-3 to be inferior to neurosurgeons. To the best of our knowledge, these studies are the first works to evaluate a generative LLM in a clinical context on real patient data. After ChatGPT's release, the number of studies published per month increased roughly linearly (coefficient of determination R2 = 0.84) at a rate of 7.04 studies per month (Fig. 2b). The rate of increase of studies published per month did not significantly differ between Tier I and III studies (P = 0.75), nor did the rate of increase between Tier II studies and Tier III studies (P = 0.22). The rate of increase in Tier II studies was significantly higher than the rate of increase in Tier I studies (3.03 versus 2.03 studies per month; P = 0.02) (Fig. 2c–e).
a, The cumulative number of studies published for each tier throughout the period of time evaluated in this review. The significant jumps at January of each year are the result of database labels that are nonspecific and thus default to 1 January of the specified year. b–e, The number of studies published in each specified month for each tier: all tiers (b), Tier I (c), Tier II (d) and Tier III (e). For the purpose of analysis, all studies that did not have a month or day extracted from the database were spread evenly throughout the year.
The earliest Tier S study was published on 23 July 2024 and was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing rates of smoking cessation over 42 days between participants who used a custom-designed LLM, QuitBot18, or the National Cancer Institute text-line, SmokefreeTXT, as a control. The trial found QuitBot yielded significantly higher smoking cessation rates (odds ratio 2.58, 95% CI 1.34–4.99; P = 0.005) than the control. To our knowledge, this is not only the first RCT involving LLMs, but it is also the first LLM RCT to outperform a well-established, existing control method. The rate at which the number of Tier S studies published each month increases is challenging to measure statistically due to the sparsity of these studies.
The vast majority of models (65.7%) evaluated are versions of either ChatGPT or OpenAI proprietary models. Beyond OpenAI's models, the next most frequently studied models are Google's Gemini and Bard (13.1%). The rarest models studied were Inflection's ‘Pi' chatbot (four studies), Google Assistant (four studies) and Amazon's Alexa (three studies). The latter two language models are greatly understudied given their prevalence in many households and mobile devices (Fig. 3b). For example, it is reasonable to imagine a scenario in which a user spontaneously asks a household device for medical advice (for example, ‘Hey Alexa, I just cut my finger pretty deeply cutting onions, what do I do?'). Closed-source models were studied considerably more often than open-source models, comprising 87.7% of all models evaluated. The ratios of open-source to closed-source models did not differ significantly between evidence tiers. A full breakdown of study counts per model can be found in Supplementary Table 1.
a, The number of studies that mention each particular dataset type. b, The number of studies that evaluate each LLM listed. c, The percentage of studies that evaluate each listed specialty. Note that in all cases the sum of the values may be greater than the total number of studies because a given study may evaluate multiple datasets, models and/or specialties.
Of the abstracts screened, the plurality of studies evaluated two tasks (1,973 studies, 42.8%), with each study evaluating 1.93 tasks on average. Of these tasks, the most frequently evaluated tasks were ‘patient-facing communication and education' (1,545 studies, 17.4%) and ‘knowledge retrieval and clinical Q/A' (1,128 studies, 12.7%), which comprised multiple-choice questions, vignettes, patient question and answering, and more. The next most frequently evaluated tasks were ‘education, assessment and simulation' (1,064 studies, 12.0%), ‘diagnostic reasoning and disease detection' (979 studies, 11.0%) and ‘clinical management and workflow guidance' (833 studies, 9.36%). A full breakdown of the tasks studied can be found in Extended Data Table 1.
Information regarding the datasets evaluated (if applicable) was not detected in about one quarter of the abstracts (1,091 studies, 23.7%). Of the abstracts that did mention datasets, ‘clinician board and self-assessment questions' was the most studied dataset type (1,047 studies, 22.7%). The next most common dataset types evaluated were ‘patient-facing Q&A and FAQs' (691 studies, 15.0%), followed by ‘clinical vignettes and case reports' (652 studies, 14.2%), ‘clinical guidelines and consensus statements' (579 studies, 12.6%), ‘imaging data and reports' (472 studies, 10.2%) and ‘real-world electronic health records' (423 studies, 9.18%) (Fig. 3a). Of all the datasets where the availability of the dataset evaluated was ascertainable by the model (2,732 datasets, 47.0%), only 1,163 (42.6%) of these datasets were open-access, limiting reproducibility for the majority of datasets studied. A full breakdown of the datasets studied can be found in Extended Data Table 2.
On average, each work pertained to 1.63 specialties or subspecialties, with the most commonly studied specialties being ‘internal medicine' (1,500 studies, 32.5%), ‘interventional and diagnostic radiology' (743 studies, 16.1%), ‘preventative medicine' (657 studies, 14.2%), ‘orthopedic surgery' (447 studies, 9.69%) and ‘family medicine' (422 studies, 9.16%) (Fig. 3c). Of the surgical studies, the most common subcategories were orthopedic surgery (448 studies, 33.0%), otolaryngology (322 studies, 23.7%), urology (299 studies, 22.0%), general surgery (275 studies, 20.3%) and plastic surgery (268 studies, 19.7%). The most common internal medicine subspecialties studied were oncology (335 studies, 28.3%), cardiology (180 studies, 15.2%), sleep medicine (153 studies, 12.9%), gastroenterology (144 studies, 12.2%) and infectious disease (127 studies, 10.7%). Study counts by specialty and subspecialty, and by tier, can be found in Supplementary Table 2.
Of the studies where the type of human comparators or evaluators was detected in the abstract (2,249 studies, 48.8%), 2,983 comparisons were found. There was a total of 1,914 comparisons (64.2%) compared against a medical doctor, with 1,493 (78.0%) of these medical doctors being attendings, 263 (13.7%) residents, 120 (6.3%) unspecified (or the level of training was undetected) and 38 (2.0%) fellows (Fig. 4d). A total of 257 comparisons (8.6%) had a patient or member of the general public evaluate model outputs.
Of the studies where the outcome of a comparison to human experts was detected in the abstract (1,046 studies; 22.7%), the LLM studied outperformed the human comparator in 345 studies (33.0%), underperformed the human comparator in 675 studies (64.5%) and showed mixed results in 26 studies (2.49%). Mixed results were excluded from binary analysis of outperformance. Humans were outperformed by LLMs significantly more often in Tier III studies than Tier I (38.4% versus 25.9%; P < 0.001) (Fig. 4a). The rates at which LLMs outperform humans appeared to increase between years in Tier I and II studies, though rates appeared to decrease over time with Tier III studies. However, none of these trends are statistically significant (P = 0.15, 0.17 and 0.15 for Tiers I, II and III, respectively) (Fig. 4b). The greater rate of performance in Tier II and III studies compared to Tier I studies across all years aligns well with the intuition that LLMs are considerably stronger at knowledge retrieval and synthesis tasks (for example, multiple-choice questions, ‘what's the diagnosis,' and so on) compared to less objective, real-world clinical scenarios. Additionally, this discrepancy demonstrates that performance on contrived knowledge-based exams does not correlate well with real-world clinical practice. Broadly, there was no statistically significant difference in performance between open-source models and closed-source models by tier or overall, though these comparisons are low-powered due to the paucity of studies on open-source models.
a, The percentage of studies where the LLM being evaluated outperformed the human experts it was compared to. b, The percentage of studies where the LLM outperformed the human expert stratified by year and tier. c, The outperformance rate of LLMs against levels of experience. d, The overall composition of human experts in the studies (*P = 0.004606, **P = 0.021349, ***P = 0.031457; P values represent one-sided proportional z-test false discovery rate controlled by the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure). Md, medical doctor.
We find that the LLM outperforms attending physicians less often than unspecified medical doctors (P < 0.004) and medical students (P < 0.03). Additionally, nonphysician clinicians were outperformed by the LLM less often than unspecified medical doctors (P < 0.022). Residents were outperformed by LLMs 30% more often than attendings, though this difference was not significant after correction for multiple comparisons (P = 0.053) (Fig. 4c). Broadly, the outcome of human versus LLM comparisons depends strongly on the level of experience of the human in the comparison. A full list of the rates of outperformance by model and training level can be found in Supplementary Data Table 1, outperformance by specialty and tier can be found in Supplementary Data Table 2, and outperformance by model and task type can be found in Supplementary Data Table 3.
The LLM screen detected 3,289 studies (71.4%) that listed a sample size in the abstract. Of these studies, we find that a quarter have a sample size less than 20. The cumulative distribution of sample sizes for all and each tier can be found in Fig. 5. Because sample sizes appeared in only 71.4% of abstracts—and 35% (1,151 studies) of these had a sample size less than 30—we can conservatively conclude as a lower bound that at least 25% of all studies included in this work have a sample size below 30.
Sample sizes above 1,000 are omitted for clarity.
The number of works investigating LLMs in a clinical context has exploded since the release of ChatGPT in November of 2022, with around 3.2 papers published per day. The rate of publication has been increasing linearly since then, at a rate of increase of approximately 7.04 studies per month. Despite this rapid increase in studies, only 1,048 studies on real data were detected, with only 19 of those studies being true RCTs. The appearance of RCTs began in 2024, though the rate of publication of RCTs has not risen significantly since then. The vast majority of studies evaluated (3561 of 4609, 77.3%) analyze data that are not considered real clinical data. Of all analyzed studies, 22.7% evaluate clinical board exams and self-assessment tests, and 14.2% of studies evaluate clinical vignettes and case reports. When analyzing sample sizes, we find that at least 25% of all studies detected used a sample size below 30. Thus, all conclusions surrounding model performance should be interpreted cautiously.
Amid this surge in research, OpenAI's models—particularly GPT-4 and GPT-4o—have been by far the most evaluated models. However, despite this extensive evaluation, the comparative performance of these models against human experts varies significantly based on context. Specifically, we find that, of the studies where a human comparator was detected, LLMs outperformed humans 33.0% of the time, with the rate decreasing with greater level of experience of the human expert and with the realism of the task. LLMs most frequently outperformed humans on knowledge-based evaluations on synthetic data (Tier III studies) compared to tests on real clinical data (Tier I studies), demonstrating that performance on contrived knowledge-based exams does not correlate well with performance in real-world clinical practice.
The distribution of studies investigating LLMs in a clinical context across specialties was highly skewed, with orthopedic surgery being studied in one-third of all surgical studies and oncology, cardiology and gastrointestinal medicine comprising over 50% of medicine studies. These specialties are some of the most competitive surgical and medical specialties, which may potentially lead to greater pressure to publish works of all kinds, including clinical LLM studies. Broadly, there is no evidence that the distribution of evidence quality varies between more competitive specialties. A significant literature gap exists exploring capability and potential use cases of generative AI in many medical and surgical specialties, constituting fields ripe for exploratory research.
The framework presented in this review provides a research roadmap for bringing generative AI into the clinical context from start to finish. First, if no available Tier III research exists for a clinical application, these studies can be conducted to assess the raw knowledge and capability of a given generative model. Once competency is established, Tier II research can be conducted to investigate the behavior of the generative model in a safe and less resource-intensive simulated context. Given success in these tiers, models can be evaluated on real-world data, both retrospectively and prospectively in Tier I studies at a sufficiently large sample size, encompassing the full, desired scope of future deployment. Finally, the models should ultimately be deployed in the clinical setting to measure outcomes in RCTs.
In any stage where human comparators are involved, care should be taken to compare the generative model against experts in the clinical task being measured, rather than comparing to qualified clinicians in other fields. For example, a generative model designed to interpret skin biopsies should be compared against a board-certified dermatopathologist, rather than a pathologist, dermatologist, resident or fellow. In a similar vein, studies that primarily compare against trainees should be discouraged unless there is a strong motivating factor or the study is low-tier or proof-of-concept.
Furthermore, significant gaps exist in the evaluation of open-source models and the development of open-access datasets. Open-source models are particularly critical for research as their results remain reproducible indefinitely, as opposed to experiments on closed-source models that may eventually be discontinued. Open-access datasets, while not always feasible given the sensitive nature of clinical data, are critical for rapid iteration and community scrutiny. In general, datasets should be created and evaluated with the intent to yield tangible insight; for example, it is challenging to draw meaningful conclusions from a ten-question multiple-choice exam curated from a mock board exam, even as a proof-of-concept.
A critical limitation of our work is that the automated analysis was performed on the title and abstract of a given work, rather than the full text. Ethically obtaining full texts of peer-reviewed scientific articles in a parsable format is a known challenge and a disconnect between scientific publishing and modern AI6. It is possible that clinically important nuances could be missed due to the lack of a comprehensive full-text review for each work. Fine-grained details surrounding methodology, data quality and much more may not be ascertainable from the abstract alone in many studies. We attempt to mitigate this with robust statistical analysis and human validation, and we quantify the uncertainty of our predictions and establish confidence intervals or lower bounds. Regardless, there remains uncertainty in the summary statistics gleaned from automated data extraction and classification. Notably, it was not possible to evaluate the performance of domain-specific LLMs trained specifically for clinical applications, as there are so few works owing to the scarcity of data and prohibitive cost of training and fine-tuning models. Many specialist models in the pulled studies use a generalist model with additional prompting or retrieval-augmented generation, which we did not analyze separately. Additionally, summative metrics that describe a broad range of fields, disciplines and tasks simultaneously should be interpreted with caution, given that many use cases and fields that are fundamentally different from each other. The homogenization of these fields limits the conclusions that can be drawn from these aggregate statistics. With the rapid pace of advancement in LLMs, the rapidly increasing context lengths and the continually falling prices of application programming interface services, we anticipate that a full-text automated analysis of thousands of works will be possible in future work. While our work adhered to standard reporting guidelines for systematic reviews, it becomes increasingly critical for studies to follow structured guidelines, especially in biomedicine, as LLMs continue to integrate into the research process19.
Overall, we find that there is a strong imbalance in studies evaluating LLMs on data that are not representative of actual clinical practice and a strong overrepresentation of studies evaluating LLMs on question answering and knowledge assessment. Given the demonstrated strong performance of LLMs on clinical knowledge and synthetic clinical data, we hope this work motivates effort on applying LLMs to real clinical data that are representative of real clinical scenarios. Additionally, underrepresented medical and surgical specialties deserve considerably more study to ensure that LLMs can benefit all medical practice. Care must be taken to evaluate LLMs against the appropriate human experts, as our results show that comparisons to human performance are significantly dependent on the level of training of the expert. A strong bias toward studying closed-source models is present in the current literature. This is expected as closed-source proprietary models are often high performing and are the most easily accessible and widespread models. However, it is critical that open-source models also receive significant attention in the future to enable widespread access to clinical LLMs. Lastly, given the early successes of the existing RCTs, we recommend that, after robust prospective validation on real data (Tier I studies), LLMs can and should be moved into RCTs to demonstrate their utility and enter clinical practice.
In conclusion, this systematic review demonstrates that, while research on LLMs in clinical medicine has grown at an extraordinary pace, the depth and clinical relevance of the evidence remains limited. Despite thousands of publications since late 2022, only a small fraction use real clinical data and just 19 randomized trials exist. A handful of medical and surgical specialties account for the majority of studies while other fields remain understudied. Key gaps include the scarcity of studies focusing on open-source model development and evaluation, the lack of open-access datasets and small sample sizes. Our review offers a roadmap and recommendations for transforming this rapidly expanding but uneven evidence base into clinically meaningful progress.
This review was conducted and reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‑Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines. This review was not prospectively registered. A protocol was not prepared for this work.
We created a system for levels of evidence for LLM-based medical studies. We then introduced a scalable, LLM-assisted framework for evidence-tiered systematic review, and used this framework to assist in a systematic review of published studies evaluating LLMs in clinical medicine.
We searched PubMed, Embase and Scopus for studies published between 1 January 2022 and 6 September 2025. These databases were chosen to ensure comprehensive coverage of biomedical and clinical research. Search terms combined general descriptors of LLMs with specific model names (for example, GPT, ChatGPT, LLaMA, Claude, Gemini and Bard). To maximize specificity, we limited results to original research (articles, conference papers, preprints and letters) in health-related subject areas, and excluded reviews, meta-analyses, surveys and commentaries.
The data query string that was used for PubMed was as follows:
("large language model"[Title/Abstract] OR "LLM"[Title/Abstract] OR "GPT"[Title/Abstract] OR "ChatGPT"[Title/Abstract] OR "LLaMA"[Title/Abstract] OR "Claude"[Title/Abstract] OR "Gemini"[Title/Abstract] OR "Bard"[Title/Abstract]) AND (humans[MeSH Terms]) NOT (review[Publication Type] OR meta-analysis[Publication Type] OR survey[Title])
The data query string that was used for Scopus was as follows:
TITLE-ABS ("large language model" OR llm OR gpt OR chatgpt OR llama OR claude OR gemini OR bard) AND PUBYEAR > 2021 AND PUBYEAR < 2026 AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "MEDI") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "HEAL") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "NURS")) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, "ar") OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, "le") OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, "cp"))
The data query string that was used for Embase was as follows:
('large language model':ab,ti OR 'llm':ab,ti OR 'gpt':ab,ti OR 'chatgpt':ab,ti OR 'llama':ab,ti OR 'claude':ab,ti OR 'gemini':ab,ti OR 'bard':ab,ti) AND [humans]/lim NOT ('review'/it OR 'meta analysis'/it OR survey:ti) AND (2022:py OR 2023:py OR 2024:py OR 2025:py) AND ('Article'/it OR 'Article in Press'/it OR 'Conference Paper'/it OR 'Letter'/it OR 'Preprint'/it)
All retrieved records were deduplicated by digital object identifier and exact title. Titles and abstracts were then screened against predefined eligibility criteria by GPT-5 (methodology described below): studies were included if they reported original evaluations of LLMs on clinical tasks, and excluded if they used non-LLM models or applied LLMs solely to nonclinical contexts (for example, literature summarization or abstract screening). We additionally conducted a blinded manual human review of 500 randomly chosen studies from the initial pull (before LLM screening) to validate and characterize LLM screening performance rigorously. The precise inclusion and exclusion criteria (given to both humans and the LLM) can be found in the ‘screening_intructions.txt' file under the Prompts folder on the GitHub repository.
Due to the immense number of unique studies found in the initial study pull, it was infeasible to screen for inclusion and/or exclusion entirely by hand. To undertake this challenge, we implemented an LLM-based screening pipeline using GPT-5 (reasoning mode) via OpenAI's application programming interface and validated this approach by comparing it to human screening performance on a smaller subset of the data. We set GPT-5's reasoning mode to ‘high' for tasks that required complex decision-making, specifically inclusion and/or exclusion screening, evidence tier assignment and structured data extraction. We set reasoning mode to ‘minimal' for tasks that were standard and well-validated for language models, specifically natural language classification tasks. Many frontier models are available for use in this screening process. Ideally, we would have performed benchmarks and compared the results of full analysis for several frontier models, but this proved to be prohibitively expensive at scale. As a result, we chose to use the most recently released frontier model, which was GPT-5 at the time of analysis.
Each title and abstract pair was submitted with a standardized prompt instructing the model to classify the record as ‘include' if it evaluated one or more LLMs on a clinical task and to exclude if the study used a non-LLM model (for example, convolutional networks, recurrent neural networks or vision transformers) or if the study used an LLM in a healthcare-related context but for a nonclinical task (for example, abstract screening, paper-writing, electronic health record data extraction). The full screening prompt is available in the GitHub repository. In total, 4,609 studies were included out of the pulled studies.
We additionally implemented a secondary ‘tiering' phase, where we instructed GPT-5 with reasoning set to ‘high', using a custom prompt (available in the GitHub repository) to perform tiering. The model was instructed to assign each included study to one of several tiers:
Tier S: real-world, prospective evaluations of a deployed system in a live clinical environment. These studies evaluate LLMs in a randomized, controlled, blinded (if applicable) study on real patient data in a clinically relevant, real-world task. We consider this the most robust tier of evidence, as results directly represent the effect of the LLM intervention on defined outcomes.
Tier I: retrospective or prospective evaluations on real, never-before-seen clinical data. The LLM neither needs be deployed in a live setting nor needs the evaluators to be blinded to the methodology. We consider this to be one of the strongest tiers of evidence available, providing preliminary predictions on how a similarly designed Tier S study may perform.
Tier II: simulated clinical situations, open-ended free-response questions and subjective patient ratings. Data are not taken directly from a real clinical setting and are usually post-processed or synthesized, yet they still represent a task or scenario relevant to clinical practice (for example, simulated patient conversations, common online questions and specially designed open-ended vignettes: ‘what are the best next steps?'). We consider this a medium tier of evidence, as these studies assess clinical competency to some degree, but do not make predictions on how a system would perform in a real clinical setting.
Tier III: board exams, multiple-choice exams and case-studies and vignettes with a clear-cut answer (for example, ‘what's the diagnosis?'). Typically, performance is measured in accuracy. These studies represent the lowest tier of evidence: they offer little insight into real-world clinical performance aside from knowledge retrieval and synthesis, a task at which LLMs have already been shown to perform robustly.
Although frontier LLMs are generally recognized to be highly performant in classification and data extraction tasks, we sought to validate the screening and tiering performance of our frontier LLMs to validate our approach and determine robust statistical bounds on the number of each study found.
For inclusion screening validation, we took a random subset of 500 articles (without replacement) from the deduplicated data pull and assigned two independent groups of human screeners (five nonoverlapping screeners each) to assign each study to the inclusion or exclusion group. Additionally, an independent screener provided tiebreaks for studies upon which groups disagreed. Screeners consisted of third- and fourth-year medical students, graduate students and residents. We computed several metrics for agreement between the LLMs. First, we compared the agreement (Cohen's κ) between the human screener groups. Next, we computed the agreement between the LLM decisions and the tiebroken human data, as well as characterizing various statistics around LLM performance compared to ground truth.
For tiering, we took a random subset of 250 articles (without replacement) from the studies deemed to be included by the LLM to be tiered by humans. We again proceeded with two randomly assigned groups of humans (four nonoverlapping screeners each) to tier the studies. Each group conducted a first pass to remove any studies that were mistakenly marked to be included by the model, leaving 234 valid studies to tier. Each human group then assigned each study to a tier. In a similar manner to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, interhuman agreement, human–LLM agreement for each screening group, and the agreement between tiebroken human decisions (serving as the ground truth) and the LLM were computed.
Next, treating the tiebroken human screening decisions as the ‘ground truth' decision set, we computed the agreement between the LLM and the ground truth set, as well as sensitivity and specificity. We used these values to compute error bounds on the true number of included and excluded studies.
For each included study, we extracted a plethora of metadata from the title and abstract of each study using OpenAI's GPT-5 (reasoning set to ‘high'). Specifically, we extracted (if applicable) the model(s) evaluated, the specialties/subspecialties related to the study, the type of human evaluator (medical student, resident, fellow, attending and so on), the type of dataset used in the study, whether the LLM performance was found to be superior to humans and the type of data source (for example, clinical notes, vignettes, patient messages and so on). The full prompt used for this data extraction is available in our GitHub repository.
Given the diverse range of responses, the set of responses for each metadata field was manually reviewed and an overarching set of categories for each metadata field was curated. For example, ‘GPT-4o, ChatGPT, Gemini' would all belong to ‘Closed-source general LLM.' A full list of categories can be found in the GitHub codebase. Next, the free-form data along with the title and abstract were re-input into GPT-5 (reasoning set to ‘minimal') with instructions to classify the free-form data via the aforementioned category lists. This allowed for a dramatic reduction in the number of unique terms parsed by the LLM and enabled broad categorical analysis. Given that other performance metrics were strong, that this was purely an extraction task and that there was an overwhelming amount of metadata extracted, we opted not to perform human validation on this task.
To estimate the range of sensitivity, specificity and Cohen's κ of the LLM in the inclusion and exclusion phase, we first resampled the human–LLM agreement data with replacements 50,000 times and computed the sensitivity and specificity of each sample. We then formed the 95% CI by taking the 1,250th (2.5th percentile) and 48,750th (97.5th percentile) values from these samples. To estimate the range of true positive, true negative, false positive and false negative values, we first modeled the true posterior prevalence distribution based on the tiebroken human inclusion and exclusion decisions (which we considered to be the ground truth) as a beta distribution with a Jeffreys prior, beta(I + 0.5, E + 0.5), where I is the number of included studies and E is the number of excluded studies. Next, we took each of the 50,000 sensitivity and specificity draws, sampled a prevalence, π, from the beta posterior, and propagated sensitivity, specificity and prevalence to each metric of interest. Finally, we took the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of each resulting distribution.
To estimate the true counts of the Tier S + I, II and III studies (Tier S was grouped with Tier I due to an extremely small sample size), we constructed a Bayesian hierarchical Dirichlet-multinomial model that jointly inferred the population prevalence of each tier and the LLM's tier-specific misclassification rates. The model placed Dirichlet priors on the prevalence vector and each row of the confusion matrix and then fitted them to both the 234 ground truth human studies and the 4,609 LLM-assigned totals via a multinomial likelihood. We used Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling to obtain a large number of posterior samples from this distribution, using the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles to construct our confidence interval.
Specifically, let \(\varphi =({\varphi }_{I},{\varphi }_{II},{\varphi }_{III})\) denote the population-level prevalences of Tiers S + I, II and III and let \(\varTheta \in [0,1{]}^{3\times 3}\) be the LLM confusion matrix whose i‑th row gives the probabilities that a true tier‑i study is labeled as each tier by the model. We assign independent Dirichlet(1, 1, 1) priors to \(\varphi\) and to each row of \(\varTheta\). For the audit, the 3 × 3 table of human–LLM agreements, M, is modeled as row‑wise multinomials:
For the remaining Ntot = 4,609 studies, we observe only the LLM totals
Marginalizing the unknown true labels gives the likelihood:
The posterior can thus be modeled as:
We sample from this posterior via Markov chain Monte Carlo, with four NUTS chains (4,000 draws each, 2,000 warm up steps, accept ratio of 0.9). Convergence is confirmed by \(\{\hat{{\rm{R}}}\}\, < \,1.01\) and effective sample sizes >400 for all parameters. The true tier counts are recovered deterministically as \({{\bf{N}}}^{{\rm{S}}}={\varphi }^{{\rm{S}}}{\text{N}}_{\mathrm{tot}}\) for each posterior draw, s; the median of these draws is reported as the point estimate, and the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles provide 95% credible intervals. All modeling was implemented in PyMCv5.
Comparison of tier counts was performed via the Bonferroni-corrected two-sided t-test.
Comparison of the rates of increase of the number of studies published per month between each tier was performed via pairwise comparisons of the linear-regression slopes using independent two-sample Welch t‑tests on the slope estimates, with degrees of freedom computed by the Welch–Satterthwaite approximation.
Pairwise comparisons between tiers of the proportion of studies where LLMs outperformed humans were conducted with one-sided, two-sample z-tests with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons.
The year-over-year rate of change in the proportion of studies where LLMs outperformed humans was analyzed by fitting a binomial (logistic) regression of the binary outperformance indicator on publication year and comparing it to an intercept-only model via a likelihood-ratio test.
Comparison of the proportion of studies where LLMs outperformed humans across levels of experience was performed via pairwise one‑sample z‑tests for proportions, with P values adjusted for multiple comparisons using the Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate procedure with a false discovery rate of 5%. We chose false discovery rate over the more conservative Bonferroni correction because, with a large family of pairwise tests, controlling the expected proportion of false discoveries (rather than the probability of any false positive) preserves statistical power and is more appropriate for this exploratory analysis context.
Because this review was designed as a descriptive, bibliometric and methodological mapping of the LLM-in-clinical-medicine literature—rather than an evaluation of the magnitude or direction of treatment effects—we did not conduct a conventional study-level risk of bias assessment. We did not pool effect estimates, quantitatively compare interventions or base recommendations on individual study results; consequently, risk of bias judgments would neither have been comparable across the highly heterogeneous set of included designs (ranging from randomized trials and observational studies to simulation and exam-style evaluations) nor altered our analyses or conclusions. Instead, we captured the aspects of methodological rigor that were relevant to our objectives through a prespecified evidence tier framework (Tiers S/I/II/III, reflecting data realism and study design) and by explicitly quantifying misclassification error in our LLM-assisted screening and tiering pipeline against human-validated labels. For these reasons, a formal study-level risk of bias assessment was considered not applicable and was therefore not performed.
Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.
All data pertaining to this systematic review necessary to reproduce all results are available via GitHub at https://github.com/nyuolab/llms-in-clinical-medicine-systematic-review and via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17393576 (ref. 20).
All analyses were run in Python3.12.7 inside JupyterLab. The notebooks rely on a small set of open‑source packages: numpy1.26.4 for array math, pandas2.2.3 for data management, matplotlib3.10.1 for visualization, scipy1.14.1 and statsmodels0.14.4 for various statistical tests, PyMC5.23.0 with pytensor and ArviZ0.22.0 for Bayesian inference, and the OpenAI Python SDK1.61.0 for querying GPT models. All code is available via GitHub at https://github.com/nyuolab/llms-in-clinical-medicine-systematic-review and via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17393576 (ref. 20).
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E.K.O. is supported by the National Cancer Institute Early Surgeon Scientist Program (3P30CA016087-41S1) and the W.M. Keck Foundation. This work was supported by Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. RS-2019-II190075 Artificial Intelligence Graduate School Program (KAIST); No. RS-2024-00509279, Global AI Frontier Lab). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We appreciate the informal input from mentors, colleagues and lab members of OLAB.
Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA
Sully F. Chen, Andreas Seas & Rochelle T. Bitolas
Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO, USA
Anton Alyakin & Jin Vivian Lee
Department of Neurosurgery, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY, USA
Anton Alyakin, Eunice Yang, Joanne J. Choi, Jin Vivian Lee, Robert J. Steele & Eric K. Oermann
Global AI Frontier Lab, New York University, New York, NY, USA
Anton Alyakin, Jin Vivian Lee & Eric K. Oermann
Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, USA
Eunice Yang
Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership, Athens, GA, USA
Joanne J. Choi
UQ Ochsner, New Orleans, LA, USA
Amelia L. Chen
Department of Neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
Pranav I. Warman
Department of General Surgery, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY, USA
Robert J. Steele
New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA
Daniel A. Alber & Eric K. Oermann
Department of Radiology, NYU Langone Health, New York, NY, USA
Eric K. Oermann
Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science, New York University, New York, NY, USA
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S.F.C. and E.K.O. conceptualized and supervised the project. S.F.C. collected journal publications and abstracts. S.F.C. developed LLM prompting of the initial screening and tiering process. S.F.C., J.V.L., A.A., A.S., A.L.C., P.I.W., R.T.B., R.J.S. and D.A.A. performed the human validation of the initial screening. E.Y. performed the tiebreaking for the initial screening. S.F.C., E.Y., J.V.L, A.A., A.S., A.L.C., J.J.C., R.T.B. and R.J.S. performed the human validation of the tiering. A.A. and R.T.B. performed the tiebreaking for the human tiering. S.F.C. extracted the publications metadata using LLMs. S.F.C. performed statistical analyses of the data. S.F.C. designed the manuscript figures. S.F.C., A.A., A.S., E.Y. and J.J.C. drafted the manuscript, with all authors contributing to revisions and final edits.
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Sully F. Chen or Eric K. Oermann.
E.K.O. reports consulting with Sofinnova Partners and Google, income from Merck & Co. and Mirati Therapeutics, and equity in Artisight. S.F.C. reports equity in OpenAI. The other authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Medicine thanks Stephen Gilbert, Ethan Goh, Guangyu Wang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available. Primary Handling Editor: Ming Yang, in collaboration with the Nature Medicine team.
Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
The confusion matrix of the LLM-tiered studies versus the human consensus.
Supplementary Tables 1–3.
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A scientifically faithful impression of Earth during the Hadean eon.Credit: Southwest Research Institute/Simone Marchi
Ancient rock crystals from Australia suggest that early Earth might not have been as different as scientists had thought from the planet that exists today.
Earth's earliest history is shrouded in mystery, because the shuffling of tectonic plates has erased many geological clues. One of the few lines of evidence comes from zircon crystals, which preserve chemical information in their durable mineral structures. A zircon study published today finds that ancient Earth could have contained more oxygen — and possibly more water — than researchers had suspected, and suggests that the movement of tectonic plates was already happening at least 3.3 billion years ago, relatively early in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history1.
“It's an important contribution to our understanding of the first billion years on Earth,” says John Valley, a geochemist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The presence of more oxygen than expected in these ancient rocks suggests that conditions on the planet could have been more conducive to life during this period than had previously been thought. And if tectonic plates were already moving, this suggests that Earth was already hosting some of the geological processes that shape the planet and that — by recycling crucial chemicals — help to make life possible.
The work is just one entry in scientists' long-running effort to untangle what early Earth was like. “These are maybe 3 or 4 puzzle pieces in a 10,000-piece puzzle,” says Shane Houchin, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of the paper, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
Houchin and his colleagues studied dozens of zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. These are the oldest known fragments of Earth rocks. Some date back to the Hadean eon, which began when the planet formed and ended around four billion years ago.
The scientists probed the zircons using a number of techniques, including a sophisticated X-ray analysis of the chemical state of the crystals' rims with the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago, Illinois. Uranium in those crystal rims turned out to be more oxidized — meaning it had lost electrons, which could have happened in the presence of oxygen — than anticipated.
Zircons from the Jack Hills, Western Australia, imaged with cathodoluminescence, reveal chemical details about early Earth.Credit: Shane K. Houchin
Because the zircons formed from molten magma in Earth's crust, they hold clues to how that magma interacted with the atmosphere. “The gases that are coming out at volcanoes are going to be a function of how oxidized a magma is, and that will affect how much oxygen could actually be in the atmosphere,” Houchin says.
The paper's approach is novel, but more work needs to be done to pin down those conclusions, say geochemists Simon Turner at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and Hugh O'Neill at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In an e-mail to Nature, they argue that the oxidized uranium in the zircon rims could have come about as a result of other factors, including how gases behaved in the original magma.
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Clarification 03 March 2026: An earlier version of this story incorrectly emphasized lower temperatures, rather than higher pressures, as a key piece of evidence for plate tectonics.
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Intel this week formally introduced its Xeon 6+ processors codenamed 'Clearwater Forest' that pack up to 288 energy-efficient Darkmont cores and are the first data center CPUs made on the company's 18A fabrication process (1.8nm-class). Intel aims its Xeon 6+ 'Clearwater Forest' processors primarily for telecom, cloud, and edge AI workloads as they feature Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX), QuickAssist Technology (QAT), and Intel vRAN Boost technologies.
Intel's Xeon 6+ processors with up to 288 cores combine 12 compute chiplets containing 24 energy-efficient Darkmont cores per tile that are produced using 18A manufacturing technology, two I/O tiles made on Intel 7 production node, as well as three active base tiles made on Intel 3 fabrication process. The compute tiles are stacked on top of the base dies using Intel's Foveros Direct 3D technology, whereas lateral connections are enabled by Intel's EMIB bridges.
Intel's 'Darkmont' efficiency cores have received rather meaningful microarchitectural upgrades. Each core integrates a 64 KB L1 instruction cache, a broader fetch and decode pipeline, and a deeper out-of-order engine capable of tracking more in-flight operations. The number of execution ports has also been increased in a bid to improve both scalar and vector throughput under heavily threaded server workloads.
From a cache hierarchy standpoint, the design groups cores into four-core blocks that share approximately 4 MB of L2 cache per block. As a result, the aggregate last-level cache across the full package surpasses 1 GB, roughly 1,152 MB in total. This unusually large pool is intended to keep data close to hundreds of active cores and reduce dependence on external memory bandwidth, which in turn is meant to both increase performance and lower power consumption.
Platform-wise, the processor remains drop-in compatible with the current Xeon server socket, so the CPU has 12 memory channels that support DDR5-8000, 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes with 64 lanes supporting CXL 2.0.
Intel positions Clearwater Forest for telecom and cloud workloads. The company says operators deploying 5G Advanced and future 6G networks increasingly rely on server CPUs for virtualized RAN and edge AI inference, as they do not want to re-architect their data centers in a bid to accommodate AI accelerators. By combining matrix/vector acceleration, vRAN offloads (using the vRAN Boost), large caches, and broad I/O in one platform, the CPU can perform jobs that are normally reserved for various accelerators that consume more power and take up space.
Also, extreme core count of Xeon 6+ 'Clearwater Forest' CPUs — that approaches 288 cores for uniprocessor configurations and 576 cores in dual socket configurations, enabling a single server to host dozens or even hundreds of virtual machines while maintaining power efficiency and low latency.
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Audible is rolling out a cheaper “Standard” subscription plan that costs $8.99 per month, the Amazon-owned company announced on Tuesday. The new plan is $6 cheaper than the platform's existing “Premium” plan, which costs $14.95 per month.
The Standard plan includes one audiobook per month from Audible's catalog and unlimited listening from a curated library that includes a selection of Audible Originals.
Under the new Standard plan, subscribers will lose access to the audiobooks they've consumed when they unsubscribe. The Premium plan lets users keep the audiobooks they've listened to even if they unsubscribe.
The Standard plan also includes access to nearly 200 of the most popular titles available on the Wondery+ app, which is shutting down in the coming months.
The Standard plan is launching in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, and France. Audible is testing the plan in additional markets, the company says.
The launch of the new subscription plans comes as Audible is facing growing competition from Spotify, which launched audiobooks in 2022 and has bundled the format with music and podcasts as part of its own Premium subscription.
Spotify said last October that the number of users listening to audiobooks rose 36% over the past year, and listening hours increased 37%. Additionally, it noted that more than half of Spotify's 281 million premium subscribers have engaged with an audiobook.
Spotify recently hiked the price of its monthly subscription plan for the third time in three years, potentially opening the door to competitors like Audible.
“By expanding our membership options, we're maximizing access for lighter listeners while enabling publishers and creators to reach new audiences — a win-win that grows the entire audiobook category,” said Cynthia Chu, chief financial and growth officer at Audible, in a press release.
Audible says early testing of the new plan showed strong member acquisition and retention rates, as testing in the United Kingdom and Australia showed that the plan drove a double-digit increase in new member sign-ups compared with previous offerings. With its expansion to new markets, the Standard plan is projected to bring in millions of new customers, the company says.
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Astronomers have identified a rare, tightly bound star system in which an eclipsing binary—two stars that pass in front of each other from our perspective—also eclipses a third star, while a fourth star orbits farther out.
The international group of astronomers that made the discovery say it's the most compact quadruple star system ever found, as the outermost star, orbiting the inner three, has the shortest period ever recorded. The study, published Tuesday in Nature, provides a closer look at the weird and chaotic world of hierarchical star systems.
Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the team behind the discovery was on the lookout for triple star systems and found one behaving rather strangely. At first, the object's brightness dimmed for around 1.5 days, indicating that it consists of at least two stars that orbit each other. Then, every 26 days the object would fade again, confirming that there is a third star in the system.
Additional observations showed that a triple star system was not enough to explain the object's behavior, with the timing variations of the eclipses revealing that an additional fourth star has to be present in the system.
TESS observed the star system, named TIC 120362137, between 2019 and 2024. Astronomers used the data to determine the orbital period of the fourth star, which turned out to be 1,045.5 days long. That is the shortest orbital period for an outer fourth star ever observed in a system of its kind.
The inner three stars are all packed together within an area similar in size to Mercury's orbit around the Sun, while the fourth star extends farther out in an area comparable to Jupiter's orbit. The three innermost stars are more massive and hotter than the Sun, while the outermost companion is more similar to our host star.
“Stars are generally formed in groups via the collapse of large molecular clouds containing dust and gas, and they can form various structures such as clusters, loosely bound associations, or binaries, triples, quadruples, and so on, depending mainly on their formation environment and how gravitational interactions with other objects affect this process,” Tibor Mitnyan, a researcher from the University of Szeged in Hungary and co-author of the new paper, told Gizmodo. “However, the formation of compact hierarchical systems is a very actively studied area of stellar astrophysics with a lot of questions and uncertainties.”
Using the unique dynamic parameters, the team behind the study was also able to model the future evolution of this quadruple star system. In about 300 million years, the inner stars are going to merge into a single white dwarf (an extremely dense core remnant of large stars).
“The more massive white dwarf is formed after two mergers from the three inner stars, while the less massive white dwarf is simply formed from the originally fourth, most distant star,” Mitnyan said. The two remaining white dwarf stars will continue to circle one another, completing one orbit in around 44 days.
“It is also interesting to note that if such a double white dwarf system is found today, the observers would likely have no idea that it might have come from such an exotic compact 3+1 quadruple system with an outer period of about a thousand days,” Mitnyan added.
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A closer look at the planets around a star called LHS 1903 may just flip our understanding of how planetary systems form.
The new image offers a rare look at the fate of our own star and planetary system.
The recent discovery has left astronomers dumbfounded.
Researchers have figured out why V Sagittae is so gosh dang bright.
The encounter left behind a trace in the clouds of gas and dust surrounding our solar system.
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What happens here matters everywhere
by Todd Bishop on Mar 3, 2026 at 7:57 amMarch 3, 2026 at 7:57 am
Amazon is adding a new layer to its AI tools for online sellers, rolling out a feature that provides customized, interactive dashboards and scenario planning in real time.
The new “dynamic canvas” in Amazon's Seller Central displays data, charts and different options for sellers in response to user prompts. It expands the existing Seller Assistant, an AI chat tool that Amazon introduced in 2024 and later upgraded with agentic capabilities.
“It's the difference between giving someone a better calculator and giving them a financial advisor who really understands their business inside and out,” said Mary Beth Westmoreland, Amazon's vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Experience, in an interview.
The announcement comes as e-commerce platforms race to embed AI into their tools. Shopify offers its Magic and Sidekick AI assistants. Walmart built a tool called Wally for merchants and partnered with OpenAI and Google to let consumers use chatbots to shop.
The financial stakes are high for Amazon: Independent sellers account for more than 60% of sales in Amazon's store, and third-party seller services generated more than $172 billion in revenue for the Seattle-based company in its most recent fiscal year.
Not all sellers have embraced the AI tools. An Amazon Seller Central forum post announcing an update four months ago drew 36 thumbs-down votes against 5 thumbs-up. Sellers complained about broken links, generic recommendations and, in one case, an AI response that advised a seller dealing with false policy violations to seek legal action against Amazon.
Asked about the forum feedback, Westmoreland cited internal data showing that sellers accept Seller Assistant's recommendations nearly 90% of the time, as an indication of its effectiveness.
The new canvas for Seller Assistant goes further to provide “a lot more context to sellers in a visual way” that helps them understand recommendations more deeply, she said.
Sellers can ask questions like “How are my products performing?” and the canvas generates charts showing sales trends, traffic and inventory health. They can also test scenarios such as “What if demand drops 10%?” and see projected impacts on revenue and cash flow before committing to a decision.
Much of the interface is generated dynamically by the AI rather than pulled from preset templates. The system runs on Amazon Bedrock using Amazon's Nova models and Anthropic's Claude. Westmoreland said Amazon built the architecture to swap between models as needed.
The Seller Assistant canvas will be available starting Tuesday to all sellers in the U.S. and U.K. at no additional cost. It launches with performance analysis tools, and Amazon plans to add marketing optimization, inventory planning and product launch features in coming months.
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Apple today announced updates to its best-selling laptop, the MacBook Air. The thin laptop (and best ultrabook) is getting a bump up to the M5 processor and will start with 512GB of storage — double the 256GB that the Air used to begin with.
Customers will be able to bump up the laptop to 4TB of storage for the first time. Apple is promising a faster SSD with "2x faster read/write performance compared to the previous generation," a boon for local AI workloads as well as large files for creative work. In addition, the MacBook Air will get Apple's N1 wireless chip to support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.But the new chip, SSD, and other upgrades will come at a cost. The M5 MacBook Air will start at $1,099 for the 13-inch model and $1,299 for the 15-inch version. Those are both $100 increases over the M4 MacBook Air, though it's likely we'll eventually see deals from third-party sellers like Amazon and Best Buy. The new MacBook Air laptops will be up for pre-order tomorrow, March 4, and will go on sale on Wednesday, March 11.The 4TB option doesn't come cheap, though. It's $1,200 over the base price.
Most of Apple's performance claims position it against older MacBook Air laptops, positioning it as an ideal upgrade. But Apple also suggests that web browsing on the M5 is "up to 50 percent faster when compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core Ultra X7 processor, and more demanding tasks get up to 2x faster performance."
The 13-inch laptop starts with an M5 with a 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU, while the bump to a 10-core GPU is a $100 increase. All 15-inch MacBook Airs come with the 10-core GPU, and every system also includes a 16-core neural engine on the chip.Plenty is staying the same. Apple is retaining the same MacBook Air chassis. Apple has been using since the M2 chip in 2022, a fetching design with flat edges and rounded corners. There are no new colors this year, with Apple settling on sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver — the same as last year.
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Despite coming in the wake of a major overhaul for the venerable tabletop game with a new series of core rulebooks, 2025 was a little quiet for D&D, as the studio reset its plans for both dungeons and dragons alike in the face of some internal restructuring. But now Wizards of the Coast is ready to show what's coming in 2026—and if you're as much of a video gamer as you are a tabletop one, the format's going to look very familiar.
Announced at GAMA in Louisville, Kentucky today, instead of defining its roadmap for the year by individual sourcebook and adventure releases, Wizards of the Coast is switching Dungeons & Dragons to a seasonal content format, linking together major releases with a flurry of themed events and products over the course of a few months.
2026 will see three seasons launch, each anchored with the release of a new sourcebook: the Season of Horror, beginning mid-spring; the Season of Magic, beginning in summer; and the Season of Champions, beginning in fall. Alongside the accompanying sourcebook, each season will be supported by a series of extra product releases tied to that theme—whether it's new accessories like dungeon masters' screens or ability reference card decks, or a full-blown adventure book—as well as new tools on D&D Beyond and events for Organized Play tied to that season's content.
The new format will begin in June with the Season of Horror, which, to the surprise of no one, will be anchored around a return to D&D‘s most beloved spooky locale, Ravenloft, with the sourcebook Ravenloft: The Horrors Within designed to give dungeon masters the tools to build gothic and horror-themed campaigns, complete with suitably spooky subclass options, playable species, and more. The season will also bring extra products like a Tarokka Deck designed to support gameplay elements from The Horrors Within, as well as a new DM screen and separate map pack based on locations from the sourcebook.
Beginning in July after Season of Horror begins is Season of Magic, which will include not one, but two book releases: first up is Arcana Unleashed, a new sourcebook revolving around high magic, including new spells, arcane-themed character creation options, and even a new system for magic items that allows equipment to grow in power alongside a player. It'll be supported by Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall, an adventure expansion that takes players deep inside the magical society of Thay and a new Wizard War.
Lastly for the year is the Season of Champions, which Wizards is keeping close to its chest for now, beyond the fact that it will begin in October and run through to December, with its main supporting product being announced at a later date. It's also currently unknown if there'll be a gap before seasonal content begins again in 2027, or if D&D will roll right into a new series of seasons.
It's an interesting shakeup of D&D‘s typical release schedule, familiar enough—there's still going to be three major sourcebooks, and at least one new adventure book to boot—but also meant to sustain interest in a given release officially for a longer period than the run-up to and release of a given product. We'll find out just how well it does at building more of a conversation and community around new releases when D&D‘s Season of Horror kicks off with the release of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within in June.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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No, it's not an art error: Raph's weapon of choice has had a bit of a tweak for the new 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' set for 'Magic: The Gathering.'
After the 'Spider-Man' set made the Big Apple a key part of the Magic multiverse, the upcoming 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' set wants to present the city in a warmer light.
In a recent livestream, the team behind the 'Magic' collector drop program explained why they'll never go back to a print-on-demand format.
Gale Dekarios is also here to represent 'Baldur's Gate 3' in Wizards of the Coast's 'Dungeons & Dragons'-themed superdrop.
For the 'Magic' fans, Secret Lair is dropping some new 'Fallout'-themed card packs at the end of the month.
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Alongside its price-friendly iPhone 17e and M4 iPad Air from Monday, Apple just announced a few updates to the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and its rarely refreshed desktop display line. Apple seems to be holding its rumored new entry-level MacBook for Wednesday's in-person event in New York City, but today's announcements should make potential upgraders happy.
The MacBook Air has now been updated to the latest M5 chip. It's a fairly modest upgrade, but it brings it up to speed with Apple's latest processor that debuted in the MacBook Pro last fall. There are no other major hardware changes—it now comes with 512 GB of starting storage with “faster SSD technology”—but you can still get the Air in either a 13- or 15-inch screen size.
This laptop also features Apple's N1 wireless chip, which includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for the latest connectivity standards. It still comes with the standard 16 GB of RAM, and sadly, there's a $100 price bump to account for the extra storage. It now starts at $1,099 for the 13-inch model and $1,299 for the 15-inch model. Apple says you can preorder it on Wednesday, with sales kicking off on March 11.
More interestingly, Apple is expanding the M5 chip series with the M5 Pro and M5 Max, now available in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Like previous generations of Apple silicon, the “Pro” and “Max” configurations add significantly improved multicore CPU and graphics performance.
The new MacBook Air with M5.
The M5 Pro and M5 Max can be configured with up to 18 CPU cores (12 performance cores and 6 “super” cores), up from 16 on the M4 Max. The M5 Pro can scale up to 20 GPU cores, while the M5 Max extends up to 40 GPU cores. Thanks to the four additional CPU cores, Apple says the M5 Pro gets 30 percent better multithreaded CPU performance over the M4 Pro. With four additional CPU cores compared to M4 Pro, the new CPU architecture in M5 Pro significantly boosts multithreaded performance by up to 30 percent for pro workloads. The M5 Max CPU upgrade is a bit more modest by comparison—just 15 percent over the M4 Max, according to Apple.
Thanks to higher memory bandwidth, more efficient Neural Engine, and improved GPU architecture, Apple says both the M5 Pro and M5 Max have “over 4X the peak CPU compute for AI” compared to the last generation and offer 20 percent better GPU performance.
The new MacBook Pros don't include any other hardware changes; things have stayed largely the same since 2021—same port selection, Mini-LED display, speakers, and webcam. Even the claimed 24-hour battery life hasn't changed from the M4 models, which came out in late 2024. Interestingly, as recently as last week Bloomberg reported that Apple plans to launch a more significant update to the MacBook Pro this year, which will reportedly debut the M6 chip, an OLED touchscreen, and a thinner chassis.
Like the MacBook Air, all versions of the M5 Pro or M5 Max MacBook Pros come with twice the storage and a slightly higher starting price. Coming with 1 TB, the 14-inch M5 Pro now starts at $2,199, and the 16-inch model at $2,699. That's $200 more than last year's machines. Meanwhile, M5 Max prices start at $3,599.
Apple began rolling out its M5 chip in October 2025, but it was limited to just the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro. Other Macs still awaiting an M5 update include the iMac, Mac Studio, and Mac Mini.
Apple's new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR.
Apple also introduced two new versions of the Studio Display computer monitor, both still coming in at 27 inches. It has been four years since Apple updated the original Studio Display. It's still a 27-inch, 5K screen with standard LED backlighting. The main changes are the improved 12-megapixel camera (with support for Desk View) and bassier speakers. It's still a six-speaker sound system, but Apple says it now delivers 30 percent deeper bass. That's really impressive, as the original Studio Display already had the best speakers you could find on a monitor. The new Studio Display also gets two faster Thunderbolt 5 ports in the back, which Apple says allows you to daisy-chain four Studio Displays. Like the 2022 model, it maxes out at 600 nits of SDR brightness.
The higher-end Studio Display XDR replaces the 32-inch Pro Display XDR, despite being smaller and lower resolution. Like the standard Studio Display, the XDR model comes with a 5K resolution, but it now sports a 120-Hz refresh rate and improved mini-LED backlighting. The new Studio Display XDR now has 1,000 local dimming zones, which is how it gets to 2,000 nits of peak brightness in HDR and 1,000 nits of SDR brightness. The original Pro Display XDR had 576 dimming zones and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. The Studio Display XDR also has the same improved cameras, speakers, and ports as the standard model.
The 27-inch Studio Display still costs $1,599, while the Studio Display XDR is $3,299. While that might sound insanely expensive, it's actually a $1,700 price drop from the original Pro Display XDR. When the original Pro Display XDR came out in 2019, there were almost no other HDR-capable mini-LED or OLED displays on the market, outside of expensive professional reference monitors. These days, though, you'll find tons of OLED monitors that go up to at least 1,000 nits of peak brightness selling for under $1,500. The Studio Display XDR comes with a tilt- and height-adjustable stand, though if you want a VESA adapter you'll need to purchase it separately.
Like the laptops, the new monitors are up for preorder starting on March 4 and available in-person at Apple Stores starting on March 11.
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Apple on Tuesday debuted the latest addition to the M-series of chips, as it announced its new M5 Pro and M5 Max, which are powering the new MacBook Pro.
The tech giant says the chips are engineered around its new Fusion Architecture, an advanced design that merges two dies into a single, high-performance system on a chip (SoC), which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities.
Both chips feature an 18-core CPU, marking an upgrade from the 14-core configuration in the M4 Pro and the 16-core in the M4 Max.
The CPU now features six “super cores,” which is Apple's term for its highest-performance cores, alongside 12 all-new performance cores. Collectively, the CPU boosts performance by up to 30% for pro workloads.
“The GPU scales up the next-generation architecture introduced in M5 to an up-to-40-core GPU,” Apple explained in a press release. “With a Neural Accelerator in each GPU core and higher unified memory bandwidth, M5 Pro and M5 Max are over 4x the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the previous generation.”
Graphics performance is up to 20% faster overall, with ray-tracing workloads improving by as much as 35%.
M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory, up from 48GB on M4 Pro, with bandwidth of 307GB/s. M5 Max continues to support up to 128GB of unified memory, with bandwidth increased to 614GB/s.
Apple says the M5 Pro is aimed at pro users, such as data modelers, post-production sound designers, and STEM students who need strong CPU and GPU performance, along with large amounts of unified memory for complex projects and workloads.
M5 Max is designed for pro users, such as 3D animators, app developers, and AI researchers who run workloads that demand maximum GPU compute and the highest unified memory bandwidth, the tech giant says.
The new MacBook Pro models are available for preorder tomorrow, with availability beginning March 11.
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For enterprises, being able to study data unlocks much more than new ways to make money. The modern enterprise tech stack is mind-bogglingly complex — it employs dozens of tools that work together and break things in uniquely different ways, which is why being able to analyze data streams lets companies understand when, where, and why things break.
But security teams can't wait until something's broken to fix it. To use a metaphor: An alarm that hasn't gone off for a while cannot be trusted to be working. And the modern security stack is so dense with tools that a small change in one tool could have unpredictable downstream effects that may compromise detection and response capabilities.
Fig Security, a startup by veterans of Israel's cyber and data intelligence units 8200 and Mamram, claims to help security teams deal with that by monitoring the security stack to see if their rules, mitigation tools, and detection and response capabilities are functioning or skewed off course by changes. The startup just came out of stealth with $38 million in seed and Series A funding, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
In a nutshell, the startup's tech traces data flows in the security stack, from the origin at sources through data pipelines and data lakes to security orchestration and automation response platforms, and then alerts security teams when changes at any point affect detection or response capabilities. The platform also allows companies to simulate how new fixes, patches, or changes could affect their system before they're deployed.
“Instead of looking at the data and tracing it forward and seeing where it ends up, we look at your detections because that is the thing that you need to work,” Fig's CEO and co-founder, Gal Shafir (pictured above, center), explained to TechCrunch. “Detection or response is the single source of truth, and then we back-trace the health and what needs to happen on the data in order for it to trigger the detection when something happens. And then we alert [the security team] if something has an inconsistency in real time.”
Shafir said Fig does this by sampling a company's data as it flows through different tools in the infrastructure and understanding how it changes through the pipeline. This lets the company create a “data lineage” that can be used to find out how any upstream changes could break security tools downstream in real time.
The startup says it connects with data links and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems to do all of this, which lets its tech be used with security tools and environments of all sorts.
Fig's launch comes as enterprises evolve in real time, especially with C-suites being pressured to find out how AI-powered tools can help save costs, reduce human errors, and improve efficiency. But the influx of so many tools has made the modern security team's life even harder. What kind of defenses should a CISO prioritize? What's the right security posture to take as hackers use AI to mount increasingly sophisticated attacks?
Shafir, who led Google Cloud Security's global architecture team before starting Fig, says he saw this uncertainty firsthand when meeting with customers while pitching Google's AI products.
“All of the CISOs, regardless of the team size or the security budget or the company size, were saying, ‘Wait, I understand that AI is really cool, but I don't know if I trust my detections right now, how can I trust the AI that tells me that everything is fine tomorrow if I don't trust the data underneath it?'”
That led Shafir and his co-founders, Nir Loya Dahan (CPO), and Roy Haimof (CTO) to the realization that they could solve security teams' issues with understanding what's happening on the ground.
“That was the moment that we said, okay, there's a big problem that people understand that exists, but there is no solution because there's so many vendors and complex infrastructure, almost by nature. That was the moment for us to stop what we did and quit and go to build Fig,” Shafir said.
Shafir says since launching eight months ago, Fig now has large enterprise customers in the “low double-digits,” and expects that number to grow to 50 to 100 by the end of the year.
The startup will use the fresh cash to expand in North America and triple its headcount across engineering and go-to-market functions.
Investors in the funding rounds include Team8 and Ten Eleven Ventures, as well as security professionals including Doug Merritt (former CEO of Splunk), Rene Bonvanie (former CMO of Palo Alto Networks), and the founders of Demisto and Siemplify.
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For decades, humans have scanned for signals of alien technology emanating through the galaxy. The search highlights the contradiction between the abundance of planets and stars that stretch across space and time and the lack of intelligent life, also known as the Fermi Paradox.
A team of physicists from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, set out to resolve the juxtaposition between the high probability of alien civilizations and the complete lack of evidence that one exists. A recent study, available on the preprint website arXiv, examines a harsh reality: if we haven't made contact with a technologically advanced civilization yet, that may be because intelligent life is short-lived. Indeed, the scientists behind the new paper, Sohrab Rahvar and Shahin Rouhani, estimate that advanced civilizations last no longer than roughly 5,000 years.
Physicist Enrico Fermi first proposed the question in 1950, suggesting that life is common throughout the universe and yet our search for extraterrestrial intelligence keeps turning up empty. The Fermi Paradox prompted several explanations for the lack of evidence: either space is too vast for alien signals to be detected, intelligent civilizations are intentionally shielding themselves from being found, or maybe we are all alone in the cosmos, among many other proposed resolutions to the paradox.
The new study came up with a different explanation. The authors used the Drake equation, a formula used to estimate the number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way, and paired it with the electromagnetic reach of our current technology. Today's radio telescopes have the ability to listen to a region of space that covers nearly 100,000 years of the galaxy's history (it takes about 100,000 years for light to travel across the galaxy). Therefore, our technology should have allowed us to detect any civilization that existed within that time period, according to the study.
The numbers indicate that technologically advanced civilizations last for around 5,000 years. That would explain why we have not detected radio signals from another planet; any advanced civilization that may have existed in the Milky Way either died out, or their short-lived stint in the cosmos hasn't come up yet.
Earth has been an advanced civilization for around 300 years. Over the last 100 or so years, we've been capable of emitting technosignatures that could be detected by intelligent life on another planet. As our modern world continues to grow, our doom is also fast approaching, the new research would seem to suggest.
The authors of the new paper list a number of threats that could spell out destruction for advanced civilizations: a large asteroid impacting the planet, volcanic eruptions, climate change, pandemics, nuclear war, and artificial intelligence.
Although the study does not necessitate that civilizations must die out once they hit their 5,000-year mark, it suggests that it is highly unlikely that they last longer than this given timespan. Sooner or later, civilizations tend to bring about their own demise.
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Lara Trump recently claimed the president already has a speech prepared on UFOs.
"Obama is talking to a subset of the population whom he knows will understand."
She warned of "extreme price volatility in financial markets due to catastrophising or euphoria, and a collapse in confidence."
For 21 years, the SETI@home project tapped personal computers to analyze unusual radio signals from space.
The over 2,400-year-old ceramist's stylus likely features Dionysus...and his other bits.
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For months, there has been talk that Silicon Valley's billionaire class was recruiting a candidate to take on Representative Ro Khanna. Early Tuesday morning, that candidate made it official.
Ethan Agarwal (pictured above), a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur with no political background, told TechCrunch on Monday evening that he is running for California's 17th congressional district. That process is likely to set up what may become one of the most lavishly funded primary challenges of the 2026 cycle.
The race puts a spotlight on Khanna, a 49-year-old Democrat widely seen as a possible 2028 presidential candidate, who has publicly backed a one-time wealth tax in California. His endorsement has infuriated some of the state's richest founders and investors, but Khanna just doubled down anyway, introducing national legislation on Monday with Senator Bernie Sanders that would impose a 5% annual wealth tax on all Americans worth $1 billion or more — a proposal their offices estimate would raise $4.4 trillion over a decade.
There's a certain irony to the situation. Agarwal is a graduate of Wharton and spent three years at McKinsey before founding audio fitness company Aaptiv, which he sold in 2021. He most recently co-founded financial services startup Coterie, backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
When Khanna first ran for this same seat in 2014, he was the tech-backed outsider, with tech names like Marc Andreessen, Sheryl Sandberg, and Eric Schmidt supporting him. He challenged popular Democratic incumbent Mike Honda, lost that attempt, but came back in 2016 to win.
Critics at the time called Khanna an owned man. A decade later, the same charge will surely be leveled at the person trying to unseat him.
What follows is an edited version of our conversation with Agarwal.
Last summer, you announced plans to run for governor of California. Now you're joining a congressional race instead. Why the switch?
I decided to run for governor back in July when the field was really thin. I don't have a political background — I come from tech. But then a few strong candidates got in, including Matt Mahan, who I think is really strong. I've been tracking Ro since his first congressional race in 2012 — I was a big supporter. But in the last couple of years, he's been incrementally pivoting left, and when he tweeted support for the wealth tax at the end of December, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I realized I could have more impact running in the 17th district and unseating Ro.
Who is backing you financially?
We're pulling papers tomorrow, so we don't have a bank account yet and I can't raise money until then. That said — [Y Combinator CEO] Garry Tan is behind me, [DoorDash co-founder] Stanley Tang, and a lot of others from the tech community whose names will come out in the coming days and weeks.
[Editor's note: The involvement of Tan, Tang, and others will likely fuel a familiar line of attack: that Agarwal is less an independent candidate than a vehicle for billionaire grievances. It is worth noting that Khanna faced nearly identical criticism when he first ran.]
Can you give me a little more color on your plan? Beyond closing loopholes, is there an alternative to the billionaire tax?
One is taxing loans taken out against assets. Very wealthy people will take a loan out against their holdings and pay low interest. Because it's technically a loan, they don't pay taxes on it. I think it's very reasonable to tax those loans.
Second is capital gains — California's rate is currently 13.4% and I think it's reasonable to consider increasing that. Third, a lot of houses in California are owned by private equity firms or people holding them as investments. I believe you should pay significantly higher property taxes on a home held as an investment than as a primary residence. That would both raise revenue and ease pressure on families who actually live in what they own.
[The loan-tax idea has been circulating in wealthy circles for some time — notably espoused by VC Chamath Palihapitiya, though it may trace back further to hedge fund giant Bill Ackman. The proposal would treat loans backed by stock holdings as taxable events, eliminating a longstanding strategy by which investors access their portfolio's value without selling, and thus without ever paying capital gains taxes.]If you make it to Washington, what will your top three priorities be?
Number one, banning stock trading for members of Congress and their families. Number two, banning corporate PAC money. Number three, term limits.
[Earlier in the conversation, Agarwal spoke at length about the 5,000 children in the 17th district — the wealthiest congressional district in the country — living below the poverty line, and described making it “the first congressional district in history to completely eradicate childhood poverty” as one of his proposals. That point did not make the top three.]
You've accused Ro Khanna of being a prolific stock trader. Can you explain?
He's been trading more stocks than any Democratic congressman in the history of the country — in tobacco, oil and gas, Big Pharma, Big Tech. He publicly introduced a congressional stock trading ban, and then made 4,000 trades last year. Even if the bill didn't pass, nothing is stopping him from imposing it on himself. In my case, I'm going to divest my entire portfolio the first day I'm elected, so no one has to wonder whether my votes reflect my personal account or my actual beliefs.
[Both claims deserve scrutiny. Khanna has co-sponsored the TRUST in Congress Act and introduced reform resolutions calling for a ban but hasn't authored stand-alone legislation. On the trading figures, Khanna has repeatedly said that he does not personally own or trade any individual stocks and that the trades in question belong to his wife, whose premarital assets are held in an independently managed trust — which, he noted, eliminates any conflict under Office of Government Ethics rules. Whether that distinction satisfies voters is a question the campaign will have to answer.]
Should social media platforms be held responsible for harming teens? Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act currently shields them from liability for what users post. Where do you stand on changing that?
I think Section 230, when it was first drafted [in 1996], made a lot of sense. The goal was for platforms to serve basically as hosting. But as they've evolved, they're now determining what we see because of the algorithms they push. I don't think it makes sense to make social media companies entirely liable for what people post — the volume is too high, and having a third party make subjective determinations about what's harmful gets into really dangerous territory.
That said, I do think it's worth revisiting when it comes to long-term impacts on teenagers' mental health. If you talk to Meta, or X, or anyone, they'll all say they don't benefit from hurting teenagers. We're all aligned in not wanting that as an outcome.
What about regulating AI companies, many of which are literally in your backyard?
I think about it from a national security perspective. I'm confident that having the most powerful models is critical for America, and if we don't build them, China will beat us.
Some restrictions make sense — AI shouldn't help you hurt yourself or someone else. But I do not think we should be limiting companies' ability to build and strengthen these models. It's really critical that we allow them to thrive, for national security purposes, if nothing else.
Do you think we need something like an FDA for AI?
I've heard that idea. The FDA has largely done a good job of keeping Americans healthy and safe — I trust the people who work there, which I cannot say for most government organizations. If there's a way to build an independent, apolitical authority with rotating terms, that makes sense to me. But I want to make sure it's designed to strengthen America's national security, not for political purposes.
What about prediction markets — Polymarket, Kalshi? Do they need more regulation?
To be clear, Kalshi and Polymarket are both regulated by the CFTC. I think part of the problem is that sports betting apps have created so much regulatory confusion about what's allowed in which states that Polymarket and Kalshi have emerged as alternatives. But the regulation they have today is actually pretty good.
How are you planning to run this campaign? Are you doing this full-time?
This is 110% of my life. I went to [the private San Jose, California, school] Harker, which is in the district. I've grown up nearby. I know hundreds, maybe thousands of people who live there. My campaign is essentially a ground game — I'm going to Chinese and Hindi educational schools, to cultural events. Holi is coming up; Chinese New Year, Purim, is on Tuesday. I'm going to be at all of it, meeting people, going to small businesses.
I think this is actually the core contrast between Ro and me: He is building a national profile, and I'm perfectly fine with that if that's what he wants to do. But he's doing it while abandoning the people of his own district. I'm not leaving California. I'm not using this as a stepping stone. He's national; I'm local. And I think people in the 17th know they need someone focused on them alone.
What was the impetus to get into politics in the first place?
Maybe this is corny, but my dad came here with absolutely nothing, making $14,000 a year when he first arrived. He started a company, took it public, sold it. I was born on third base as a result of that. I've started two companies and sold them both.
And then I see people around me no longer benefiting from the same system that made all of that possible. The people here are hardworking, high potential — but the environment isn't supporting them anymore. I've been complaining about it for a long time, and I felt like it was time to stand up and do something.
Is this the start of a political career?
This isn't a career pivot. I see a very specific problem in the 17th district that I want to solve. I'm going to impose term limits on myself — I won't do more than five terms — and then I'll probably go back to the private sector. Service should be a calling, not a job. And honestly, I don't think it serves your constituents well when it becomes a career. Even if a term limits bill doesn't pass, I'm going to impose it on myself. That's what I actually believe.
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That's six times more frequent than the average user, meaning only one in seven requests comes from legitimate buyers.
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Scalpers are reportedly deploying web scrapers to make a quick buck while we're deep in the memory and storage chip crisis. According to DataDome, a firm that protects websites and other online assets from automated attacks run through bots and AI, it has detected an operation trolling for the latest pricing data on memory modules and their components, sending queries every 6.5 seconds — that's over 550 requests for each page, resulting in more than 50,000 requests per hour in total. The company says that it has blocked over 10 million requests that have been sent by the scalping bot, even using advanced techniques like cache-busting and ensuring that the request frequency stays under the alarm thresholds that companies use to protect their websites.
What's interesting is that the bot isn't just looking at consumer products. Instead, it was also looking at various levels of the supply chain, including DIMM sockets and CAMM2 connectors, as well as industrial memory modules designed for B2B transactions.
This isn't the first time that we've seen scalpers take advantage of a supply situation in the electronics and computer industry. In fact, this has been a problem with every item that's been limited or is experiencing a shortage in recent history, like the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro 30th Anniversary pre-orders, RTX 5090 GPUs a few days after its launch, the limited edition MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z, and even scalpers taking advantage of selling DDR5 kits for 7x their original value on eBay. But what's insidious about this operation is that it seems to be a deliberate attack orchestrated by an organized entity with access to sophisticated bots.
DataDome said that the bots used a day-and-night pattern to mimic human activity and also deployed cache-busting parameters — that is, the addition of unique parameters to every request to ensure that they get the latest information and not the one stored in cache. Despite that, there were several telltale signs that these were automated bots. For example, they exclusively targeted RAM listings, and they didn't interact with other site features like search or shopping cart. The traffic also did not vary to consider breaks, reduced traffic during weekends, and the peak in activity during early evening. When the bot encountered a technical issue, the traffic dropped considerably for several minutes before returning to 100% capacity — something that just does not happen with organic human traffic.
This incident shows how bad the AI infrastructure build-out is hitting the memory and storage industries. Data centers are already expected to consume nearly 70% of the world's memory supply this year, resulting in limited stocks for every other segment. If this continues in the next several years, analysts say that this will spell the end of entry-level PCs by 2028. We hope that the memory chip manufacturers like Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix increase their manufacturing capacity to stabilize prices once more, but this is easier said than done, with new fabs and production lines taking several months, if not years, to build from scratch.
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He's been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he's been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.
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When I was a kid, I thought that high blood pressure was a condition that only affected people who made egregious lifestyle choices. This is not true. Since 1990, the incidence of hypertension has increased globally, with up to one in three adults worldwide affected by it.
Most of those people have no idea they have it. If people could diagnose and monitor hypertension at home, the World Health Organization estimates that up to 76 million lives could be saved with easy fixes, like stopping smoking or adjusting diet. In the past year, it's gotten much easier to monitor your blood pressure at home. Our top pick is the traditional Withings BPM Vision ($180), which offers tabletop, medical-grade results. Withings also offers Cardio Check-Up, an electrocardiogram review service available through the app that works with the company's ECG-enabled devices.
If you've been diagnosed with hypertension, you should hold on to your cuff for now. But in the past year, fitness trackers like the Apple Watch introduced the concept of cuffless BP monitoring, which is more comfortable and can monitor you 24/7. (If your blood pressure doesn't drop while you sleep, that is a serious indicator that you may have heart disease.) Blood pressure monitoring also showed up on the Whoop MG ($359/year), and a new cuffless monitor called the Aktiia Hilo will be making its way stateside later this year.
Curious about the latest developments? Check out our roundup here. And don't forget to check out the rest of our health and fitness coverage, including the Best Fitness Trackers, the Best Smart Rings, and the Best Walking Pads.
Withings
Withings
The main difference between the latest Withings BPM Vision (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and its predecessor, the slightly cheaper Withings BPM Connect ($130) is that the BPM Vision is a tabletop unit. The BPM Connect had all the electronics in the cuff itself, which makes it harder to put on and use (if slightly more portable). Comfort is an important factor when it comes to blood pressure monitors, since nearly everything can affect the readings, including whether your ankles are crossed. The BPM Vision is FDA-cleared and meets the validation protocols recognized by organizations such as the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation and the American Heart Association. I also double-checked the heart rate readings against the Oura Ring 4 and found that they tallied.
You can turn it on and connect it to the Withings app on your phone; you can also see the readings on the LCD screen. The BPM Vision syncs with Apple Health, Samsung Health, and a few other health apps. I also like that you can use guest profiles, so you don't need to have the Withings app to use it, and multiple people can also use the BPM Vision. I also like that you can take several readings in a row, which I recommend because my first reading is always high (from the stress of having my blood pressure taken).
The BPM Vision doesn't actually work with Withings' Cardio Check-Up—you need an ECG-enabled Withings tracker, like the ScanWatch 2 ($370), to use that feature. It's also bigger than the BPM Connect and a few of the other monitors we've listed here, but this is the best, most accurate, and easiest-to-use blood pressure monitor for home monitoring.
Aktiia
Shop Now
New advancements in the category of blood pressure monitoring are few and far between, but the Aktiia Hilo band (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is probably the most exciting in a while. Last year, the Hilo was FDA-cleared; it has been tested and reviewed in multiple clinical-grade studies over several years, and meets the ISO 81060-2 standard for validating the accuracy of blood pressure monitors. If you have hypertension, the Aktiia Hilo could be a game changer when it goes on sale in the US later this year. (It's already on sale in many European countries and in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.)
The reason that the Hilo is significant is because the gold standard for measuring your BP is while you're walking, sleeping, or lying down. Even taking your BP in a doctor's office can confound the results, since a lot of people are more relaxed in a clean, empty doctor's office than when trying to get their kids ready for soccer practice. The Hilo measures up to 25 times a day, including while you're sleeping, which is a key measurement, since if your BP doesn't go down during this activity, that's a strong indicator that you may already have cardiovascular disease. Continuous measuring lets you take the average of your measurements, rather than spot-checking at times that may give you an incomplete picture of your cardiovascular health.
Unlike the traditional cuff, which uses oscillometric detection (vibrations, basically) to listen to when the blood stops and starts flowing in your veins, the Hilo uses the same optical photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors that many other fitness trackers already use to extrapolate your BP from the shape of your blood vessels. To use the Hilo, you connect both the slim band and the included cuff to the app (iOS, Android), calibrate the band, and then just … wear it. The band is waterproof, and battery life lasts for up to 15 days (I got around 10). You can also sync your measurements to Apple Health and download a PDF report to send to your doctor. If you want to measure your blood pressure at home, the Aktiia Hilo promises to be the easiest and most accurate way to do it.
Apple
Amazon
Apple
Best Buy
Walmart
The flagship health feature on last year's Apple Watch Series 11 was hypertension notifications. This is significant because the Apple Watch is the most widely used consumer health device in the world. Apple cleared the feature with the FDA in September 2025; however, it is important to note that in the FDA paperwork, Apple states that the Apple Watch itself is not intended to replace traditional methods of diagnosis; it has limited indication for those who have not previously been diagnosed; and that the absence of a notification does not indicate the absence of hypertension. Just because you don't get a notification doesn't mean you don't have high blood pressure, and the readings on the watch are much less accurate than those using a traditional cuffed method.
Keeping all that in mind, the Apple Watch is so widely used that it stands to reason that a lot of people who might otherwise not have known about their hypertension will be more aware of it. To turn on hypertension notifications, you must have an Apple Watch Series 9 or later with the latest version of WatchOS; an iPhone with the latest version of iOS; Wrist Detection must be turned on; and you must be older than 22, not pregnant, and not previously diagnosed with hypertension.
The Apple Watch is not calibrated with a cuff. It takes 30 days of cardiac data from the existing optical PPG sensors, analyzes it, and gives you a probability that you might have hypertension. It's also significant that this is the first year that the Apple Watch has had a true 24 hours of battery life, so you can wear it while you're sleeping without taking it off to charge. I've turned this on with my Series 11 and have not yet gotten a notification (and hope I never will), but given that general awareness, screening, and detection of hypertension is a huge barrier to diagnosis, the Apple Watch is a significant step forward.
iHealth
iHealth
Walmart
The iHealth Ease is one of the cheapest blood pressure monitors that you'll find on the market. As former contributor Richard Baguley says, it achieves this feat with a remarkable degree of accuracy (the device is ESH-10 approved, a widely recognized standard for accuracy in automated blood pressure monitors).
The Ease basically turns your phone into a BPM. It consists of a cuff, an air tube, and a base for your phone. The base communicates via Bluetooth to your Apple or Android device, takes the reading, and sends it to the iHealth MyVitals app, which is free and accessible to others, like your family or doctor. Baguley notes that the Ease is true to its name and was very easy to use, although it's a bit slower than the other devices we've tried. There's also a useful emergency stop button on the base for anyone who finds the pinching sensation of a blood pressure cuff too uncomfortable, though with every monitor here, if it becomes uncomfortable, you can always just take it off.
Alternative: Baguley also tested the Omron Evolv ($120), which is another stand-alone BPM that syncs with the Omron Connect app. You slip the whole device on your arm to measure. Baguley notes that, unlike other devices we've tested, it's a little finicky to use, and the app has to be running to receive data from the device; others, like the Withings, can store data onboard until the app can sync.
Whoop
Whoop (Peak)
Whoop (One)
Whoop (Life)
When I reviewed the Whoop MG (8/10, WIRED Recommends) in June last year, I noted that it was the first wearable fitness tracker that I'd seen to offer blood pressure measurements. At the time, the feature was still in beta; later, Whoop would opt not to pursue FDA clearance. In July, the FDA sent a warning letter to the company for marketing the feature without pursuing clearance. Whoop continues to stand by its blood pressure feature. Whoop does have similar disclaimers as Apple, but it's notable that both Apple and Aktiia opted to pursue FDA clearance.
Whoop calibrates the feature with readings from a third-party BPM. It uses the onboard PPG sensors to measure your heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), and blood flow patterns to estimate your blood pressure and offers you estimated systolic and diastolic readings. When I tested the feature, I calibrated it with the Withings BPM Vision and then checked the estimated readings against the BPM Vision's. I did not find anomalies, but I also don't have hypertension.
The controversy between Whoop and the FDA highlights the difference between devices that are marketed for wellness versus those that are intended for clinical use. (I did note that Whoop has since changed the wording of its marketing from “medical-grade insights” to “cutting-edge insights” on its website.) As with the Apple Watch, the Whoop band's accessibility may be its main advantage when it comes to checking your blood pressure. Whoop is a privately held company, and sales are not disclosed, but it has been expanding rapidly since 2024.
Since screening is one of the major problems with diagnosing hypertension, offering the feature can increase awareness and potentially help flag the condition for users. And unlike the Apple Watch, it is calibrated with a third-party monitor and does offer systolic and diastolic readings.
How to Measure Your Blood Pressure
Every monitor and device that we have listed here includes instructions for how to measure your blood pressure. However, here are a few general tips for getting a more accurate reading, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Plan ahead. If possible, take your reading at the same time every day. Don't drink caffeine or alcohol, or exercise for 30 minutes prior to your reading. If possible, sit still and rest for about 5 minutes before each reading.
Get into position. Sit in a comfortable chair with your back supported and your feet flat on the ground. I have noticed a difference in my readings even when my ankles are crossed. If you're using a cuff or tabletop unit, keep your arm flat on the surface in front of you.
Don't leave clothing under the cuff. Your doctor or nurse may take a reading over a T-shirt; you should not.
Take multiple readings. My first reading tends to be elevated, just from my anxiety around taking a measurement. If possible, take two or three measurements one or two minutes apart.
What Is a Normal Blood Pressure Reading?
Each of us has gone to a doctor's office for a routine check-up and had our blood pressure taken. But what do the readings actually mean?
Your systolic blood pressure is the high reading; it's the maximum force exerted against the walls of your blood vessels when your heart pumps blood. A normal reading is generally below 120.
Your diastolic blood pressure reading is the lower reading; it's the pressure exerted when your heart is at rest. A normal reading is generally below 80.
If your blood pressure is elevated, it's not necessarily a sign that you're having an emergency. If you get a single elevated reading, calm down, take a few deep breaths, and try taking a measurement again before contacting your doctor. If, however, you have an elevated reading and symptoms like chest pain or shortness of breath, call 911 immediately.
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In 2022, Nvidia introduced hardware-level Shader Execution Reordering (SER) with its RTX 40-series GPUs in order to make ray tracing less taxing. Now, it's officially part of DXR 1.2, which is included in the new DirectX Agility SDK (version 1.619). The announcement blog isn't a casual read because of all the technical jargon, so let's break down what this actually means and how it improves performance.
SER basically reduces the per-pixel rendering time in a very intense ray-traced or path-traced scene. Unpredictability is a GPU's worst nightmare, so when rays start to bounce off of surfaces in a very uncontrolled manner, sure, the scene looks good, but it's crippling the silicon. Here, SER slots in and dynamically categorizes all the reflections and light bounces to form cohesion.
It allows the GPU to find patterns across rays, grouping them together to enable better parallel execution. SER works hand-in-hand with Opacity Micromaps (OMMs), the other highlight feature included in DXR 1.2, which saves processing power by telling the GPU not to run a shader when hitting a transparent or translucent surface.
Your graphics card will only shade the visible pixels as the Opacity Micromaps will give it precise hints on what part of the scene needs to be opaque (and what doesn't). So, SER begins by grouping similar ray-traced shaders together, and then the OMMs let it skip the "invisible" ones entirely. Reducing unnecessary shader work simply allows you to maintain more FPS in games, especially in complex scenes.
In a branching blog, Microsoft shows its own demo for SER, where a scene is rendered with and without it. Using SER, Nvidia GPUs saw a 40% boost in performance while some Intel Arc B-series GPUs got up to 90% more FPS. This feature, now being standardized, means we can potentially see Intel and AMD implement their own hardware-level SER in next-gen GPUs.
The last noteworthy inclusion in this SDK update was Shader Model 6.9, which is what actually enables developers to interface with both OMMs and SER. This will make game developers very happy, but it's ultimately up to them to implement these features before a player-facing upgrade is ever seen. To be clear, these features were announced last year but just came out of preview today.
There are a lot more details in the blog that we didn't go over, such as support for Long Vector, 16-bit float operations, and general changes to streamline hardware overhead. Some of them target the poorly optimized games we see today, struggling with anything less than 12 GB of VRAM. It's all early, programmer-focused patchwork for now, but it can translate to real-world improvements soon.
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But researchers aren't as confident as the company.
On June 1, 2023, as a sweltering heat wave baked Quebec, thousands of lightning strikes flashed across the province, setting off more than 120 wildfires.
The blazes ripped through parched forests and withered grasslands, burned for weeks, and compounded what was rapidly turning into Canada's worst fire year on record. In the end, nearly 7,000 fires scorched tens of millions of acres across the country, generated nearly 500 millions tons of carbon emissions, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Lightning sparked almost 60% of the wildfires—and those blazes accounted for 93% of the total area burned.
Now a Vancouver-based weather modification startup, Skyward Wildfire, says it can prevent such catastrophic fires in the future—by stopping the lightning strikes that ignite them. It just raised millions of dollars in a funding round that it plans to use to accelerate its product development and expand its operations.Until last week the company, which highlights the role lightning played in the 2023 infernos, stated on its website that it has demonstrated technology capable of preventing “up to 100% of lightning strikes.”
It was an eye-catching claim that went well beyond the confidence level of researchers who have studied the potential for humans to suppress lightning—and the company took it down following inquiries from MIT Technology Review.“While the statement reflected an observed result under specific conditions, it was not intended to suggest uniform outcomes and has been removed,” Nicholas Harterre, who oversees government partnerships at Skyward, said in an email. “In complex atmospheric systems, consistent 100% outcomes are not realistic, as the experts you spoke to rightly pointed out.”
The company now states it demonstrated that it “can prevent the majority of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in targeted storm cells.” So far, Skyward hasn't publicly revealed how it does so, and in response to our questions Harterre said only that the materials are “inert and selected in accordance with regulatory standards.”
But online documents suggest the company is relying on an approach that US government agencies began evaluating in the early 1960s: seeding clouds with metallic chaff, or narrow fiberglass strands coated with aluminum.
The military uses the material to disrupt radar signals; fighter jets, for example, deploy it during dogfights to throw off guided missile systems. Field trials conducted decades ago by US agencies suggest it could help reduce lightning strikes, at least to some degree and under certain conditions.
If Skyward could employ it reliably on significant scales, it might offer a powerful tool for countering rising fire risks as climate change drives up temperatures, dries out forests, and likely increases the frequency of lightning strikes.
“Preventing lightning on high-risk days saves lives, billions in wildfire costs, and is one of the highest-leverage and most immediate climate solutions available,” Sam Goldman, Skyward's founder and chief executive, said in a statement posted on LinkedIn last year.
But researchers and environmental observers say there are plenty of remaining uncertainties, including how well the seeding may work under varying weather and climate conditions, how much material would need to be released, how frequently it would have to be done, and what sorts of secondary environmental impacts might result from lighting suppression on commercial scales.
Some observers are also concerned that the company appears to have moved ahead with weather modification field trials in parts of Canada without providing wide public notice or openly discussing what materials it's putting into the clouds.
Given the escalating fire dangers, it's “reasonable” to evaluate the potential for new technologies to mitigate them, says Keith Brooks, programs director at Environmental Defence, a Canadian advocacy organization.“But we should be doing so cautiously and really transparently, with a robust scientific methodology that's open to scrutiny,” he says.
Skyward's website offers few technical details, but the company says it worked with Canadian wildfire agencies in 2024 and 2025 to demonstrate its technology. The company also says it has developed AI tools to predict lightning strikes that could set off fires.
Skyward announced last month that it raised $7.9 million in Canadian dollars ($5.7 million), in an extension of a seed round initially closed early last year. Investors included Climate Innovation Capital, Active Impact Investments, and Diagram Ventures.
“Our first season demonstrated that prevention is possible at scale,” Goldman said in a statement. “This funding allows us to expand into new regions and support partners who need reliable, operational tools to reduce wildfire risk before emergencies begin.”
The company doesn't use the term “cloud seeding” on its site or in its recent announcements. But a press release highlighting its selection as a finalist last year in a conservation group's Fire Grand Challenge states that it suppresses lightning “by cloud seeding with safe, non-toxic materials to neutralize storm charges,” as The Narwhal previously reported.
In addition, Unorthodox Philanthropy, a foundation that provided a grant to support Skyward's efforts “to test and deploy” the technology, offered more detail in an awardee write-up about Goldman.It states: “The Skyward team … settled on an inert substance consisting of aluminum covered glass fibers, which is regularly used in military operations to intercept and confuse enemy radar and can also dis-charge clouds.”
Additional details were disclosed in a document marked “Proprietary and Confidential,” which the World Bank nonetheless released within a package of materials from companies developing means of addressing fire risks.
Skyward's diagrams show planes dropping particles into clouds to prevent cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in “high risk areas.” The company also notes in the document that it uses artificial intelligence for a number of purposes, including forecasting lightning storms, prioritizing treatments, targeting storm cells, and optimizing flight paths.
Harterre stressed that the company would deploy the technology judiciously and reserve it for storm events with elevated wildfire risk, adding that such storms account for less than 0.1% of lightning activity in a given area.“Our objective is to reduce the probability of ignition on the limited number of extreme-risk days when fires threaten lives, critical infrastructure, and ecosystems, and when suppression costs and impacts can escalate rapidly,” he said.
The document posted by the World Bank states that Skyward partnered with Alberta Wildfire in August of 2024 to “prove suppression by plane and drone,” and that its process produced a “60-100% reduction” in lightning compared with “control cells” (which likely means storm cells that weren't seeded).
The document added that the company would be carrying out additional field trials in the summer of 2025 with the wildfire agencies in British Columbia and Alberta to “provide landscape level solutions with more advanced aircraft, sensors and forecasting.”
“BC Wildfire Service is aware that Skyward is developing technology that aims to reduce instances of lightning in targeted situations,” the British Columbia agency acknowledged in a statement provided to MIT Technology Review. “Last year, preliminary trials were conducted by Skyward to gain a better understand [sic] of the technology and its applicability in B.C. Should a project/technology like this move forward in B.C., we would engage with the project team in an effort to learn and ensure we're using every tool available to us to respond to wildfire in B.C.”The BC agency declined to make anyone available for an interview and didn't respond to questions about what materials were used, where the tests were carried out, or whether it provided public disclosures or required the company to. Alberta Wildfire didn't respond to similar questions from MIT Technology Review.
Clouds are just water in various forms—vapor, droplets, and ice crystals, condensed enough to form the floating Rorschach tests we see in the sky. Within them, snowflakes and tiny ice pellets known as graupel rub together, causing atoms to trade electrons. This process creates highly reactive ions with negative and positive charges.
Updrafts separate the light snowflakes from the graupel, building up larger differences in the charges across the electrical field until … crack! An electrostatic discharge occurs in the form of a lightning strike.
The 2023 fire season wasn't a particularly big year for lightning strikes in Canada—but then it didn't have to be. It was so hot and dry that every bolt that struck the surface had a better than usual chance of igniting a fire, says Piyush Jain, a research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service and lead author of a study published in Nature Communications that analyzed the year's fires.
Climate change is, however, likely to produce more lightning strikes, if it hasn't started to already. Warmer air holds more moisture and adds more convective energy to the atmosphere, which drives the vertical movement of air that forms clouds and stirs up lightning storms.
“So the conditions are there, and the conditions are likely to increase,” Jain says.
Different models arrive at different lightning forecasts for some regions of the world. But a clearer trend is already emerging in the northernmost latitudes, where the planet is warming fastest. Studies show that lightning-ignited fires have substantially increased in the Arctic boreal region, and predict that they will continue to rise.
This combines with other growing risks like longer fire seasons, warmer temperatures, and drier vegetation, together raising the odds of more severe fires and more greenhouse-gas emissions, says Brendan Rogers, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center who studies the effect of fires on permafrost thaw.
In fact, Canada's emissions from the 2023 fires were more than four times its emissions from fossil fuels.
Scientists have conducted a variety of experiments exploring the possibility of preventing lightning, but most of it happened in the later half of the last century.
Amid the cultural optimism and booming economy of the postwar period, US research agencies and corporations went on a tear of cloud seeding experiments aimed at conquering nature—or at least moderating its dangers. Research teams launched or dropped materials like dry ice and silver iodide into clouds in attempts to boost rainfall, reduce hail, dissipate fog, and redirect hurricanes.
“Cloud seeding activity was so intensive that at its peak in the early 1950s, approximately 10% of the US land area was under some kind of weather modification program,” wrote MIT's Phillip Stepanian and Earle Williams in a 2024 history of lightning suppression efforts in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (MIT Technology Review is owned by MIT but is editorially independent.)
Harry Gisborne, then chief of the division of fire research at the US Forest Service, wondered if the technique could be used to trigger downpours that might extinguish hard-to-reach wildfires on public lands. But when he put the question to Vincent Schaefer of General Electric, who had done pioneering research in cloud seeding, Schaefer thought they could perhaps do one better: prevent the lighting that sparked the fires in the first place.
The conversations kicked off what would become Project Skyfire, a multiagency private-public research program that carried out a series of experiments through the 1950s and 1960s. Research teams seeded clouds over the San Francisco Peaks of Arizona, the Bitterroot Mountains at the edge of Idaho, and the Deerlodge National Forest in Montana, among other places.After comparing treated and untreated storm clouds, the researchers concluded that seeding decreased cloud-to-ground lightning by more than half. But as MIT's Stepanian and Williams noted, the sample sizes were small, and questions remained about the statistical significance of the findings.
(Soviet scientists also carried out some field experiments on lightning suppression in the 1950s, as well as some related research that involved using rockets to launch lead iodide into thunderstorms in the 1970s, but it's difficult to find further details about those programs.)
A near tragedy reignited US government interest in the possibility of lightning suppression in 1969, when lightning struck the Apollo 12 space shuttle twice within seconds of launch. The astronauts were able to reset their systems and successfully complete their mission to the moon, but it was a very close call.
In the aftermath, NASA and NOAA teamed up on what became known as Project Thunderbolt, which relied on the metallic chaff normally used in military countermeasures.
Researchers at the US Army Electronics Laboratory had previously proposed the possibility of suppressing lightning by deploying this material, which a handful of defense contractors manufacture. The idea is that chaff acts as a conductor in a forming electrical field, stripping electrons from some oxygen and nitrogen molecules and adding them to others. The mismatched electrons already collecting in cloud water molecules, thanks to all that rubbing between snowflakes and graupel, can then leap over to those newly charged atoms. That, in turn, should reduce the buildup of static electricity that otherwise results in lightning.
“By continuously redistributing—and thereby neutralizing—charges within the storm in a weak electric field, the strong electric fields required to produce lightning would never develop,” Stepanian and Williams wrote.
NASA and NOAA carried out a series of experiments seeding clouds with chaff from the early to mid 1970s, over Boulder, Colorado, and later at the Kennedy Space Center. Here, too, the experiments showed “generally promising field results.” But NASA eventually grew concerned about the possibility that chaff could affect radio communications and shuttered the program.“Lightning suppression research was once again abandoned, and the responsibility for mitigating lightning hazards reverted to weather forecasters,” Stepanian and Williams concluded.
So what does all this tell us about our ability to prevent lightning?
“In my opinion, it's unambiguously true that this technique can be used to reduce lightning strikes in a storm,” says Stepanian, a technical staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory's air traffic control and weather systems group. “With some major caveats.”
For example, it's not clear how much material you would need to release, how long it would persist, and how the effectiveness might change under different climate and weather conditions.
(Stepanian consulted with Skyward in its early stages, and he declined to discuss the startup.)His coauthor on the history of lightning suppression seems a tad more skeptical. In an email, Williams, a research scientist at MIT who studies physical meteorology and atmospheric electricity, said there's unmistakable evidence that chaff “has an impact on the electrification of thunderstorms.” But in email responses, he said its effectiveness in reducing or eliminating lighting activity “remains controversial” and requires further testing. (Williams says he did not consult for Skyward.)
In his own written reviews, he's highlighted a number of potential shortcomings with earlier research, including unaccounted-for differences in cloud heights between treated and untreated storms. In addition, he's noted that some studies used detection systems that pick up only cloud-to-ground strikes, not intracloud lightning, which is far more common.
He also points to the results of a more recent study that he and Stepanian collaborated on with researchers at New Mexico Tech. They relied upon data from weather radars in Tampa and Melbourne, Florida, located on opposite sides of the state, to detect the presence of chaff released over the central part of the state during military training and testing exercises.
They compared 35 storms during which chaff was clearly detected in clouds with 35 instances when it wasn't.
According to an abstract of the paper—which hasn't been peer-reviewed or published but was presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in December—storms that occurred when chaff was present were generally “smaller and shorter-lived.”
But the number of total flashes—which includes ground strikes as well as lightning within and between clouds and the air—was actually significantly higher in clouds carrying chaff: 62,250 versus 24,492.
“In summary, so far, it is hard to draw any conclusion about lightning suppression using chaff,” the authors wrote.
Williams says their results and other studies suggest that large chaff concentrations may be needed to suppress lightning. That could be because there's a strong tendency for the ions released from the chaff fibers to be captured by cloud droplets before they reach the charged particles that would need to be neutralized.
But that may also present a significant deployment challenge, since chaff quickly becomes dilute once it's released into the midst of turbulent storm clouds, Williams adds.
Skyward's Harterre said he couldn't comment on the results of the Florida study but noted that storms in the state are very different from those that occur in the Canadian provinces where his company operates.
“Our work to date has focused on regions where operational feasibility has been evaluated and wildfire risk is highest,” he wrote.
The possibility of releasing more chaff into the air also raises the questions of what else it could do in the atmosphere, and what will happen once it lands.
The US military has produced a number of studies exploring the environmental and health effects of chaff and found that it disperses widely, breaks down in the environment, and is “generally nontoxic.”
For instance, a Naval Health Research Center report assessing environmental impacts from decades of training exercises near Chesapeake Bay concluded that “current and estimated use of aluminized chaff by American forces worldwide” will not raise total aluminum levels above the Environmental Protection Agency's established limits.
But a US Government Accountability Office report in 1998 raised a few other flags, noting that chaff can also affect civilian air traffic control radar and weather forecasts. It also highlighted a “potential but remote chance of collecting in reservoirs and causing chemical changes that may affect water and the species that use it.”
Stepanian says that if lightning suppression efforts require more chaff than the military currently releases, further studies may be needed to properly evaluate the environmental effects.
Brooks of Environmental Defence Canada says he wants to know more about what materials Skyward is using, where they're sourced from, what the effort leaves behind in the environment, and what the impacts on animals could be. He is also wary of the possible secondary effects of intervening in storms.“I just think there's the potential for unintended consequences if we start to mess with a complex system, like weather,” Brooks says, adding: “It makes me nervous to think there are pilots going on without people knowing about them.”
Harterre said that the company abides by any applicable regulations, and that it conducts its field activities “in coordination with relevant authorities and with appropriate authorization.”
He added that it releases seeding materials at lower volumes and concentrations than those associated with defense use and that deployments “are limited to defined high-wildfire-risk storm conditions.”
It's not clear whether or to what degree Skyward has meaningfully advanced the science of lightning suppression or cleared up the questions that have lingered since the studies from the last century.
The company hasn't released data from its field trials, published any papers in peer-reviewed literature, or disclosed how its tests were performed, as far as MIT Technology Review was able to determine.
Without such information it's impossible to assess its claims, Williams says. He and two of his New Mexico Tech coauthors—associate professor Adonis Leal and master's student Jhonys Moura—had all expressed skepticism about the company's previous claim of “up to 100%” lightning prevention.
Harterre said Skyward intends to release more technical information as its programs mature.
“We look forward to the opportunity to share more detailed information,” he wrote.
In the meantime, Skyward's investors have high hopes for the company and see “tremendous opportunity” in its potential ability to counteract fire dangers.“Mitigating the exponentially increasing risk of wildfires can only happen if we shift from reactive suppression to proactive prevention,” Kevin Kimsa, managing partner of Climate Innovation Capital, said in a statement when the company's recent funding was announced.Rogers, of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, has spoken with Skyward several times but hasn't worked with them. He also stressed that it's crucial to understand potential environmental impacts from lightning suppression and to consult with citizens in affected areas, including Indigenous communities.But he says he's “optimistic” about the role that lighting suppression could play, if it works effectively and without major downsides.
That's because preventing wildfires is far cheaper than putting them out, and it avoids risks to firefighters, ecosystems, infrastructure and local communities.
“If you're able to go after fires before they've even ignited, you remove a lot of that from the equation,” he says.
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According to Amazon, drone strikes in the Middle East have targeted web infrastructure “directly,” resulting in multiple data centers being taken offline.
Yesterday there was a report of “sparks and a fire” at an Amazon cloud facility in the United Arab Emirates, and a temporary, deliberate shutdown. Reuters asked Amazon yesterday for confirmation that Iranian strikes had caused the problem, but Amazon “did not confirm or deny.”
Amazon's Health Dashboard now has an update, and the issue is more serious than had been previously reported, spanning three facilities in two countries. In addition to two direct impacts in the UAE, a Bahrain facility was damaged indirectly due to a nearby explosion. Iran is not named, but drone strikes from some source or another have resulted in structural damage, blackouts, and fires that triggered water-based fire suppression systems—resulting in water damage.
“In addition, we can confirm that the AWS Management Console and command line interface (CLI) are disrupted by the failure of two Availability Zones,” the statement says.
Inside Iran, internet connectivity has been almost entirely cut off since the start of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign on February 28, an information blackout experts blame on the Iranian regime itself.
As was the case with last month's internet shutdown in Iran, a small amount of traffic continues to make its way into the country.
The country's recently-developed system of whitelisting enables exceptions to internet blocks for people loyal to the govt. pic.twitter.com/gxbsJM1sRz
— Doug Madory (also on Bluesky) (@DougMadory) February 28, 2026
Nonetheless, there is also reportedly an active cyber-offensive targeting Iran. Attackers appear to have overridden Iranian news websites, for instance, adding messages urging Iranians to take up arms against the ruling regime.
The Health Dashboard item for the Amazon issue lists the severity of the problem as “Disrupted” in the UAE and “Impacted” in Bahrain, and says the situation for its operations in the region is “unpredictable.” It contains suggestions for customers including backing up data, migrating data out of the Middle East entirely, and rolling out any “disaster recovery plans” customers might already have in place.
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The fun police are attacking innocent bosses once again.
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So called "pig butchering" scams are happening on an industrial scale. Politicians have noticed.
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News broke Monday night that OpenAI and the Pentagon have amended their controversial deal to include more words about privacy protections. According to reporting from Axios, the following lines were added:
The significance of these specific changes is not hard to trace. A New York Times story from yesterday purported to detail exactly what has caused the rupture between the Pentagon and OpenAI rival Anthropic—culminating in Anthropic being designated a “supply-chain risk” and barred from doing business with many major companies.Essentially, that times reports says, Anthropic spoke up about surveillance involving certain kinds of unclassified bulk data on Americans that can track people's physical location and browser histories. The final break in the negotiations stemmed from Anthropic's request for what the Times called a “legally binding promise from the Pentagon not to use its technology on unclassified commercial data.” The Pentagon has maintained throughout this process that Anthropic has asked for provisions requiring the Pentagon not to do things that are already illegal. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X that “The Department of War has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal).” The Pentagon merely wants to be granted the right to do anything legal, Parnell claims, which would “prevent Anthropic from jeopardizing critical military operations and potentially putting our warfighters at risk.”OpenAI's Sam Altman claims to share Anthropic's concerns. And according to Altman's X post from Monday night about the latest negotiations, it sounds like there's been a lot of back and forth about this—evidently with the Pentagon continuing to stress that mass surveillance is ostensibly already illegal, and with OpenAI stressing that the Pentagon nonetheless still has to actually be constrained by the terms of the deal.
Here is re-post of an internal post:We have been working with the DoW to make some additions in our agreement to make our principles very clear.1. We are going to amend our deal to add this language, in addition to everything else:"• Consistent with applicable laws,…— Sam Altman (@sama) March 3, 2026
Here is re-post of an internal post:We have been working with the DoW to make some additions in our agreement to make our principles very clear.1. We are going to amend our deal to add this language, in addition to everything else:"• Consistent with applicable laws,…
Although it would be speculative at this point to say there's been any sort of material cost to OpenAI after it signed its Pentagon deal on the eve of the latest U.S. military action against Iran, it would be perfectly fair to say people have gotten pretty mad at the company. There's now a website called QuitGPT, calling for a boycott of ChatGPT. The homepage has a little counter claiming without any sort of citation that 1,513,922 people (as of this writing) have joined the boycott. The site says participants can “make an example of ChatGPT,” and “send a clear signal to ICE enablers that their actions will not go unpunished.” This doesn't really correspond to any tangible difference between what Anthropic and OpenAI have been allowing the government to do with their respective products, but it certainly follows from Donald Trump dubbing the folks at Anthropic “leftwing nut jobs.” Oh, and Katy Perry has announced that she has switched to Claude for all her AI needs. So clearly times are tough for OpenAI.
Gizmodo reached out to OpenAI for information about any effects from this apparent backlash, or any comment the company would like to provide about it. We will update if we hear back.
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Ask any boss what life's greatest pleasures are and you'll get answers ranging from pressing a filthy mop into someone's hand and saying “If you can lean you can clean,” to a cathartic scream of “You're fired!” to cap off a stressful day. But somewhere on the list is always going to be “surveilling those loafing freeloaders so they can't rip me off!”
Well bosses, I'm sorry to say the state of Washington is looking to ban a promising form of surveillance before you can even try it: microchipping your employees like the pack of lowly mutts you know they really are.
House Bill 2303 is summarized on the Washington State legislature homepage as “Prohibiting employers from microchipping employees.” I know what you're thinking: here comes yet another onerous regulation, stifling entrepreneurship and disrespecting job creators.
Has any employer in Washington figured out how to execute a microchipping policy for employees yet? Fox 13 Seattle says it doesn't know of anyone who has. But some innovators in the boss space are based in Washington—companies like Amazon and Starbucks. Washington is also home to big employers like Costco and Microsoft, which to be absolutely clear have not proposed anything like this, but this law would prevent them from engaging in any such experiments right in their corporate backyards.
The bill itself, which is primarily sponsored by West Seattle's Brianna Thomas, is actually pretty specific about what it would ban: “An employer may not request, require, or coerce any employee to have a microchip implanted in the employee for any reason,” it says—so it leaves room for employees to volunteer to be microchipped as long as they're not asked to do so.
And according to the bill, we're talking about microchips that are “subcutaneously implanted in the body of an individual”—yes, like the ones in dogs. Notably, encouraging employees to get medical devices implanted in their bodies, as long as it's exclusively for medical reasons, has a carve-out and would still be allowed.
Another very interesting thing to keep in mind about this bill: The text says the term “subcutaneously” excludes “information temporarily attached to the skin by an adhesive strip or bracelet.” Washington-based Amazon holds a patent on a wristband that tracks employee movements. The use of such a device in Washington would not, it appears, be considered microchipping an employee according to this proposed law.
At press time, things aren't looking good for Washington's purely theoretical microchip-loving bosses. The bill has been passed by the Washington State House, and is listed as “on the floor calendar” in the Senate.
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Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb and the US chief design officer appointed by President Trump, was spotted in San Francisco today using a mysterious metallic device. In a social media post on X viewed more than 500,000 times, a man who looks like Gebbia sits with an espresso at a coffee shop. He's wearing metallic buds that bisect his ears, with a matching clamshell-shaped disc in front of him on the counter.
After the video was posted Monday morning, social media users were quick to suggest that this could be some kind of prototype from OpenAI's upcoming line of hardware devices designed in partnership with famed Apple designer Jony Ive. An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on the potential Gebbia video after WIRED reached out. Gebbia also did not respond to a request for comment.
The device Gebbia appears to be wearing looks quite similar to the hardware seen in a fake OpenAI ad that was widely circulated on Reddit and social media in February. That video seemingly showed Pillion actor Alexander Skarsgård interacting with an AI device that had a similar-looking pair of earbuds and a circular disc. At the time, OpenAI denounced the widely seen video as not real. “Fake news,” wrote OpenAI President Greg Brockman at the time, responding to a social media post.
The earbuds seen in the video of Gebbia on Monday also look quite similar in shape to the Huawei FreeClip 2, a pair of open earbuds released earlier this year. However, the clamshell seen on the coffee counter next to Gebbia is different from Huawei's most recent headphone case. It would also be quite surprising if a government official were seen using Huawei tech, considering the Chinese company is effectively banned from selling its phones in the US due to security concerns.
WIRED's audio experts say he's most likely wearing open earbuds, as Gebbia's pair share some similarities with Soundcore's AeroClips or Sony's LinkBuds Clip, though the cases for those buds don't match what's on the table in front of Gebbia. WIRED also ran the photo and video through software that attempts to identify AI-generated outputs and other deepfakes. The detection software, from a company called Hive, says the odds are low that this imagery of Gebbia was generated by AI. Still, AI detectors are not always reliable and can include false outputs. It's possible that the entire post could be a synthetic hoax.
Could this be some kind of soft launch teaser for OpenAI's hardware? The timing of this trickle-out would make sense, since the company may ship devices to consumers sometime early in 2027. Still, OpenAI denied any involvement with the previous pseudo-ad for the metallic AI hardware, with its shiny earbuds and matching disc.
Another possibility is that Gebbia's device is a hardware prototype from another company. From small startups to larger tech giants, numerous companies are developing hardware centered around generative AI models despite high-profile flops like the Humane Ai Pin.
It's unclear why Gebbia would be testing prototype hardware in a public setting, like San Francisco, where people who work in the tech industry are more likely to recognize him. Gebbia is the first person to hold the position of chief design officer, as established by one of Trump's executive orders. “The chief design officer will help recruit top creative talent, coordinate with executive departments and agencies (agencies), and devise innovative solutions,” the order reads. The position mainly focuses on updating government websites for better usability.
Anticipation for what kind of hardware OpenAI will eventually release has been brewing since last May, when Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a partnership to create a unique line of AI-powered devices. It's a small detail that's likely just coincidental, but Ive and Altman also sipped on espressos in that announcement video. At OpenAI's developer conference, Ive said that he hoped the upcoming AI devices would “make us happy and fulfilled, and more peaceful and less anxious, and less disconnected.”
Despite OpenAI's past denials, commenters on social media are holding out hope that this mysterious, metallic device could be a glimpse of OpenAI's hardware or that another powerful startup has convinced a US official to test their prototype.
Keeping all of that in mind, it's still very possible that this brouhaha is about nothing at all, and Gebbia is just rocking an odd-looking set of unidentified headphones. Either way, I'm curious to find out which theory, if any, prevails. Until then, I'll keep sipping on an espresso and refreshing my feed.
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It's encouraging news for people trying to lose weight safely, especially older adults who want to drop pounds without losing bone or muscle mass.
The study, "Does time spent upright moderate the influence of a weighted vest on change in bone mineral density during weight loss among older adults," appears in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Aging.
Weighted vests can provide an external load equal to the amount of weight lost. Replacing that weight by wearing a vest can:
Help the body prevent metabolic slowdown, assisting with weight-loss maintenance.
Preserve muscle and bone, which is particularly important as we age. Losing bone and muscle increases the risk for fracture and disability.
Researcher Jason Fanning, lead author of the study and associate professor of health and exercise science, analyzed data from Wake Forest University's INVEST in Bone Health for this study. The randomized, controlled trial led by Wake Forest colleague Kristen Beavers looked at whether wearing a weighted vest could help preserve bone mineral density during one year of weight loss. Participants were divided into three groups, and the weighted vest group wore the vest at least eight hours each day.
What Fanning found:
Weighted vest plus weight loss group: More time spent standing or stepping yielded positive changes in bone mineral density.
Weight loss alone group: Standing or stepping more often showed negative changes in bone mineral density.
Weight loss plus resistance training group: Time spent upright didn't influence bone mineral density.
The researchers believe that spending more time upright exposes the wearer to more weight from the vest, thus reaping more benefits. The positive changes in bone density in the weighted vest group were promising enough that the INVEST research team is designing a new study. It will explore whether encouraging people to move more often boosts a weighted vest's effectiveness in preserving bone mass.
"If we're going to be putting vests on people, we need to train those people to be up and moving," said Fanning, who also is a primary investigator in a current study looking at how movement affects pain from arthritis.
A vest can be a great tool. But, like any tool, it's not going to do the work for you."
Jason Fanning, Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University
Fanning, J., et al. (2026) Does time spent upright moderate the influence of a weighted vest on change in bone mineral density during weight loss among older adults? A secondary analysis of the INVEST in bone health randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Aging. DOI: 10.3389/fragi.2026.1729001. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging/articles/10.3389/fragi.2026.1729001/full.
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Diana Swift
Increased serum antibody response to commensal Lachnospiraceae flagellins appears to be preclinically associated with future risk for Crohn's disease (CD) in healthy first-degree relatives (FDRs) of CD patients, a new study confirmed.
Pre-CD immunoglobulin G (IgG) seroreactivity toward a conserved bacterial flagellin epitope may be another early preclinical biomarker of CD, a study by Canadian, US, and Israeli researchers published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology confirmed. The findings add more evidence of early inflammatory markers long before CD diagnosis.
In addition to highlighting the interplay between gut microbes and the immune system, the presyptomatic rise in flagellin antibodies suggests this seroreaction may trigger disease onset rather than being a consequence of it. Whip-like proteins on the surface of bacteria, flagellins propel the bacteria around their environment in search of new habitats to colonize and new food sources, and they play a role in immune mediation.
“The impetus for the current study was the recognition that CD is preceded by a long, silent, preclinical phase during which immune dysregulation is already underway, but individuals remain asymptomatic,” co-senior author Sun-Ho Lee, MD, PhD, a clinician-scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and the Centre for Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, told Medscape Medical News. “Although prior studies showed that antimicrobial antibodies can appear years before diagnosis, it was unclear which immune responses were most informative or biologically meaningful.”
To clarify that connection, the Mount Sinai team and colleagues examined data from the Crohn's and Colitis Canada Genetic, Environmental, Microbial Project (GEM) involving more than 5000 healthy FDRs of CD patients in seven countries: Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden. So far, 130 FDRs have developed the condition during follow-up.
The group's earlier published research had also suggested that elevated antimicrobial antibody responses are associated with CD risk, independent of usual biomarkers of abnormal gut barrier function, subclinical inflammation, and related genetic risks. This strengthened the idea that such responses are an early predisease event in CD.
Confirming their previous study, immune responses against bacterial flagellins — especially those of the anaerobic gut bacterium Roseburia hominis— were strongly associated with future CD risk in FDRs on average about 2.5 years before diagnosis.
On the clinical practice front, the flagellin protein's strong immune-stimulating properties make it a promising contender as a vaccine adjuvant. “The flagellin epitope is an attractive candidate for a future preventive vaccine, but there are still plenty of unknown variables that need to be tested first,” study coauthor Williams Turpin, PhD, a translational research scientist and an assistant professor in the University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine's Medical Department of Nutritional Sciences, told Medscape Medical News. “Previous work from Dr Benoit Chassaing from Institut Pasteur in Paris showed that a vaccine against Salmonella flagellin protects against colitis in mice, and a similar vaccine might work in humans.”
As to why certain individuals develop antibodies against this epitope before CD onset, Turpin said, “It could be a lack of immune tolerance, or that the flagellin peptide tends to translocate much more easily as a result of defects in barrier function. However, the presence of antiflagellin antibodies through vaccination prior to exposure to flagellins could perhaps be an efficient strategy to prevent the pathogenic effect of the specific epitopes identified here.”
Resources permitting, should all healthy FDRs of CD patients now be tested? “We previously showed that healthy FDRs have an up to 21% prevalence of abnormal response to flagellins, and there's an even higher prevalence of up to 46% in those who later develop CD,” said coauthor Lee. “Testing for the presence of this epitope could identify individuals who are even higher risk. Those with the highest risk could then benefit the most from intervention aiming to reduce the risk of CD or delay its onset.”
First, however, there needs to be an understanding of the succession of events that lead to the increase in antibodies against this specific flagellin epitopes so that interventions can perhaps prevent pathogenesis, Lee cautioned. “We also don't know the functional consequence of increased antiflagellin antibodies — whether this impacts the encroachment of specific species or increases the virulence potential of microbial species associated with CD,” he said.
Added co-senior author Ken Croitoru, MD, “With all the advanced biologic therapy we have today, patients' responses are partial at best. We haven't cured anybody yet, and we need to do better.”
The current analysis monitored a nested case-control cohort of FDRs who later developed CD (n = 77). The median age of probands was 15 years (interquartile range, 12-21), 58.4 were female, and 80.5% were siblings rather than offspring, suggesting the influence of shared early-life environmental experience. The cohort consisted of 259 people from Canada, three from Israel, and eight from the United States.
CD patients were matched with healthy FDRs (n = 304) in a 1:4 ratio by age, sex, follow-up duration, and geographic location. Sera obtained at enrollment were probed for antimicrobial reactivity using a microbiota antigen microarray and a cytometric bead peptide assay. Conditional logistic regression was used to evaluate the association with CD onset, and a partial Spearman test was used to correlate serologic responses with variables such as lactulose-to-mannitol ratio (LMR), C-reactive protein, and fecal calprotectin (FCP). False-discovery rate was controlled using the Benjamini-Hochberg method (q < 0.05). “An ELISA [enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay] test could be used in future clinical settings given its low cost and rapid turnaround,” Lee said.
Of the 381 FDRs, 77 eventually developed CD over time. Of these, 28 had elevated antibody responses before diagnosis. Unsurprisingly, siblings showed especially strong responses.
Five antibodies positively correlated with FCP and three positively correlated with LMR. These IgG-seroreactive flagellins shared significant amino acid sequence homology, characterized by a conserved flexibility-linked hinge peptide within the D0-D1 domains of the amino terminus. A cytometric bead array confirmed the association of elevated IgG seroreactivity to the hinge peptide with future CD risk, independent of LMR and FCP.
Ashwin N. Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MD, MPH, a clinician investigator at Mass General Research Institute and an associate professor at Harvard University in Boston who was not involved in the study, told Medscape Medical News, “This is an important study that builds on prior work from this group and others demonstrating that there exists a subclinical period in some patients who develop CD even many years before diagnosis.”
Ananthakrishnan cautioned, however, that the test is far from ready for prime time because while studies have established that informative at-risk markers exist, no interventions have yet been shown to prevent disease. “We still don't know whether it's limited, immunologically directed medical treatment, microbiome-based treatment, or lifestyle-based treatment such as diet that will be effective and acceptable to healthy patients who do not yet have a disease — not to mention the lack of data on the duration that such interventions would be necessary.”
Further validation and mechanistic studies are underway at Mount Sinai.
The research was funded by Crohn's and Colitis Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. The cytometric bead array was developed with a grant from the Rainin Foundation.
Lee and Turpin had no conflicts of interest. Coauthor Elson reported a patent on Lachnospiraceae A4 Fla2, licensed by Prometheus Laboratories. He is founder, board member, and chief scientific officer of ImmPrev Bio, which is developing an antigen directed immunotherapy for CD. Elson and coauthors Zhao and Duck have filed a patent on the cytometric bead array.
Ananthakrishnan had no competing interests.
Send comments and news tips to news@medscape.net.
Refeyn, developer of pioneering mass photometry technology, expands its global adoption across contract research organizations (CROs) and contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs). To showcase this development, Refeyn has launched a new webpage that highlights how leading CROs and CDMOs are redefining process development and manufacturing workflows with mass photometry, and provides researchers with an interactive tool to locate and partner with these organizations.
Mass photometry's rapid adoption reflects rising demand for fast, reliable, and cost-effective analytics for protein and mRNA characterization, antibody development, and viral vector analysis. Introduced just eight years ago, the technology is now cited in nearly 1,500 scientific publications and is used by 90 % of top biopharma companies. With GMP-compliant software for AAV analytics and recognition from regulatory bodies – including the US Pharmacopeia, China's NIFDC, and the British Pharmacopeia – mass photometry can be deployed confidently from early development through manufacturing and QC.
Leading CROs and CDMOs use mass photometry to deliver rapid, label-free insights into critical quality attributes – AAV capsid purity (full/empty/partial ratios), mRNA integrity and purity- and emerging antibody modalities. This enables clients to make earlier, better-informed development decisions while reducing sample consumption and turnaround times, tackling analytical challenges that are difficult with traditional methods.
Adding mass photometry to the analytical panel reduces the overall cost of new therapies by accelerating development and manufacturing, By working with partners around the world, we're expanding access to this technology – whether organizations invest in their own instruments or use trusted service providers – ultimately helping shorten the path from discovery to patients."
Gabriella Kiss, PhD, Director of Market Development, Refeyn
CROs and CDMOs can partner with Refeyn to differentiate their analytics and meet growing demand for faster, higher-quality data, while biopharma teams can access mass photometry through the expanding partner network.
Refeyn
Posted in: Device / Technology News | Medical Research News
Alexander Dulebo
Discover how Bruker is helping drive innovation in cosmetic science through advanced AFM techniques.
Gabi Saavedra
Discover how Thermo Fisher is shaping the future of plant-based foods through texture innovation and cultural relevance.
Dr. Lena Smirnova
Brain microphysiological systems are reshaping in vitro neurotoxicity testing through functional validation and advanced disease modeling.
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Bedfont® Scientific Limited, a well-established Med-Tech company with over 49 years of expertise in the design and manufacture of medical breath analysis devices, is celebrating the women driving innovation in the Med-Tech industry this International Women's Day (IWD). IWD is an annual event that celebrates women's achievements and raises awareness about gender equality. In 2026, IWD celebrates 115 years of raising awareness of discrimination and taking action to forge gender parity.
Image Credit: Bedfont® Scientific Ltd
This year's theme, ‘Give to gain', highlights the power of reciprocity and support. By giving women equal access to leadership opportunities, Bedfont® has built a diverse and balanced team. Today, women make up 50 % of the workforce and nearly half of the companies' 18 managers, proof that inclusion creates tangible gains for people and performance alike.
Switzerland is leading the way in Med-Tech, with women accounting for 40 % of the industry's workforce. However, research published in 2024 shows that among the 78 largest medical device companies in Europe, only 24.4 % of leadership positions are held by women, highlighting the ongoing need for greater gender equality at senior levels.
In a world where women in business have far greater opportunities than in our ancestors' time, we are now seeing women actively driving the future of MedTech through innovation, leadership and scientific excellence. I am incredibly proud that nearly half of the leadership team at Bedfont are women, clear evidence that inclusion fuels both performance and progress. Representation matters, not only within our industry but for the next generation watching.
As a mother of two daughters, I want them to grow up proud, strong and confident enough to make their own mark in science, technology and beyond. On this International Women's Day, with this year's theme “Give to Gain,” we recognize that by investing in, training and championing women, we are shaping the future of MedTech and creating lasting impact for generations to come.”
Natasha Smith, Chief Operating Director, Bedfont®
This International Women's Day, Bedfont® is celebrating the strength of a balanced workforce by recognising the women across the organization with sustainably sourced chocolate from local business N2 Sweets Lab. This initiative reflects the company's broader commitment to sustainability while supporting both local businesses and third-party partners worldwide, reinforcing a give-to-gain approach that benefits people, communities, and the planet.
Bedfont® Scientific Ltd
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Coronaviruses not only use the machinery of the human cells they infect: they modify it to achieve optimal conditions to produce viral proteins and thus spread more quickly. This is the main conclusion of a study by Pompeu Fabra University published in Nature Communications. The study identifies enzymes that modify transfer RNAs (tRNAs) –small cellular parts required to build proteins– as key elements for coronavirus infection. These enzymes are activated by the stress response of viral infection and could be a new therapeutic target for developing broad-spectrum antiviral drugs against coronaviruses.
In the last 25 years, the world has witnessed three major outbreaks of coronavirus respiratory diseases that have been passed from animals to humans: SARS-CoV-1 in 2002, MERS in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. While the first two caused epidemics, SARS-CoV-2 triggered a pandemic that caused more than 7 million deaths.
"Coronaviruses are very dangerous because of their ability to generate new variants capable of infecting humans after circulating in animal reservoirs", explains Juana Díez, director of the Molecular Virology Research Group at Pompeu Fabra University, who led the research.
At present we do not have any broad-spectrum antiviral drugs that are effective against coronaviruses. So when a new coronavirus emerges, a scenario considered highly likely among the scientific community, we will be in the same position as at the end of 2019, when we did not have the drugs to control the spread of the virus."
Juana Díez, Director, Molecular Virology Research Group, Pompeu Fabra University
Like any other virus, coronaviruses use the machinery of the cells they infect to make viral proteins and spread. In this process, tRNAs –very small cellular parts that add amino acids to the new protein based on the information they read in the RNA– are key. "Interestingly, coronaviruses need tRNAs that are in low concentrations in cells. For this reason we asked ourselves how a virus can spread so quickly within a cell where the tRNAs it needs to make its viral proteins are not abundant", outlines Elena Muscolino, first author of the study.
The study published in Nature Communications shows that infection causes stress that chemically alters tRNAs and changes the functioning of the cellular machinery. Thus, the cell is no longer optimized to produce its own proteins and acquires the ideal conditions to respond to stress.
Coronaviruses have taken advantage of this situation, since "in order to manufacture stress response proteins, the same tRNAs that coronaviruses need to manufacture their viral proteins are needed", explains Mireia Puig, also an author of the work.
This readjustment, driven by cellular enzymes that modify tRNAs, allows coronaviruses to speed up the production of their proteins without the need to generate new machinery, simply by altering the existing one. "Since changes in tRNAs are modifications of the machinery that the cell already has and not the generation of new "cell parts", viral protein production occurs rapidly and coronaviruses can spread very quickly", Muscolino points out.
The modification of tRNAs has been observed both in SARS-CoV-2, associated with serious infections, and in HCoV-OC43, which usually causes very mild cold-like signs and symptoms. Therefore, it could be a common strategy among different coronaviruses. In addition, when the activity of these modifying enzymes is blocked, viral protein production decreases significantly.
"The tRNA-modifying enzyme is a promising candidate for developing broad-spectrum antiviral drugs capable of curbing the spread of coronaviruses", Díez states. And she adds: "A drug of this type would allow us to contain the infections caused by new coronaviruses from their initial phases and prevent their rapid expansion, and therefore, new pandemics".
Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona
Muscolino, E., et al. (2026). Coronaviruses reprogram the tRNA epitranscriptome to favor viral protein expression. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-02669700-w. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69700-w.
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Discover how Bruker is helping drive innovation in cosmetic science through advanced AFM techniques.
Gabi Saavedra
Discover how Thermo Fisher is shaping the future of plant-based foods through texture innovation and cultural relevance.
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Brain microphysiological systems are reshaping in vitro neurotoxicity testing through functional validation and advanced disease modeling.
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A new study of what families think about virtual reality (VR) technologies reveals that parents want more research-based information on how VR technologies may influence brain and behavioral development. Families also placed a higher value on VR features that increase physical activity, compared to features such as educational content.
"We know that families have concerns about whether it is appropriate for children and teenagers to use VR technologies, but there has been little research done on how families prioritize those concerns or how they can be addressed," says Qiao Jin, first author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University.
That's what we were setting out to explore with this work."
Qiao Jin, North Carolina State University
For the study, researchers began by analyzing interview data from 67 children and 55 adult guardians. The interview process explored issues related to the many factors that come into play regarding how families make decisions about VR use, as well as who families feel should be responsible for addressing family concerns about VR use.
The researchers then compiled those interview responses and convened a focus group of 84 children and 40 guardians, asking them to rank the responses from each category: what information was most important, what sort of content is most appealing to families, and so on.
One key finding was that families wanted more information regarding brain and behavioral development. Families felt these things were foundational concerns that could influence a range of other issues, such as a child's ability to learn and form relationships with peers.
"Rather than treating brain and behavior separately, participants often discussed them as deeply interconnected, affecting everything from learning to relationships to happiness," Jin says. "Study participants felt a better understanding of how VR may affect the brain and behavior also informed their understanding of VR's influence on screen time and usage frequency at a deeper level. This was particularly important because many guardians in the study expressed significant concerns about the addictive properties of this technology."
Families also said it was important to have safety controls to detect potential bullying or harassment on VR platforms in order to protect children, rather than relying solely on parental oversight over inappropriate content.
"Children desire autonomy and independence, and parents respect that - but still worry about their children's safety," Jin says.
One surprising finding was that families prioritized physical activity over other features with regard to what makes a VR platform more attractive
"Guardians were most concerned about ensuring children were healthy and active," says Jin. "The ability to interact with family and friends online was considered appealing, as was educational content, but neither of those features was deemed as important as physical activity."
Family views on who should be responsible for addressing VR concerns were more complicated.
"Families felt the tech companies that create VR platforms have a responsibility to the public but expressed some skepticism about whether those companies would prioritize the well-being of children over profits," says Jin. "Instead, study participants envisioned a model of governance where industry would build VR platforms; university research would evaluate those platforms and study how VR affects children; and public institutions - including doctors, teachers and other domain experts - would use that information to make evidence-based decisions designed to guide the use of VR platforms and protect kids.
"One clear take-away from this work is that more needs to be done to deepen our understanding of how VR use may affect brain and behavioral development in children, so that we can share this information with parents and families," says Jin. "This, in turn, should inform the types of research that we prioritize and fund in regard to VR."
North Carolina State University
Posted in: Child Health News | Device / Technology News | Medical Research News
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Alexander Dulebo
Discover how Bruker is helping drive innovation in cosmetic science through advanced AFM techniques.
Gabi Saavedra
Discover how Thermo Fisher is shaping the future of plant-based foods through texture innovation and cultural relevance.
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Brain microphysiological systems are reshaping in vitro neurotoxicity testing through functional validation and advanced disease modeling.
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Azenta, Inc. today announced that its affiliate, Azenta Germany GmbH, has signed a binding agreement for the sale of Azenta's B Medical Systems business to THELEMA S.À R.L., for a purchase price of US$63 million. The transaction is expected to close on or before March 31, 2026.
The agreement to sell B Medical Systems marks a major step forward in simplifying the portfolio to prioritize our core capabilities with the highest strategic impact, The proceeds from this sale will be deployed to strengthen the company and drive long-term profitable value creation for our shareholders.”
John Marotta, President and CEO, Azenta Life Sciences
B Medical Systems is a global manufacturer and distributor of medical refrigeration devices based in Luxembourg.
William Blair served as exclusive financial advisor and Taylor Wessing served as legal counsel to Azenta for this transaction.
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Neuropathy – chronic pain, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet – is a challenging fact of life for many patients with Type 1 diabetes.
Thanks to a new National Institutes of Health grant, a University of Central Florida (UCF) College of Medicine scientist is investigating a new approach to treat neuropathy without relying on pain pills and anti-depressants.
Assistant Professor Dr. Jim Nichols is focused on overlooked mechanisms in the body that may show how the inability to make insulin has "downstream" consequences in other areas, such as how the brain processes and registers sensation in the limbs.
People affected by Type 1 diabetes don't produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar, so patients must inject themselves with insulin to survive.
Before joining UCF, Dr. Nichols spent many years looking for new causes of diabetic neuropathy. Dr. Nichols theorizes that irregularities in the insulin signaling pathway of peripheral nerves may be the key contributor to diabetic neuropathy. Based on the potential of his early findings, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which is under the NIH, recently awarded UCF a $747,000 R00 grant to expand that research.
One of the challenges of living with diabetes is that patients with neuropathy may lose feeling in their extremities and not feel a cut, blister or injury. Those injuries can become infected and even lead to amputation. Such diabetic complications occur more frequently in patients with poor blood sugar control, so Dr. Nichols is hoping that his research will find a treatment to regulate and improve neuron signaling that can be used as part of improved blood sugar management.
"We're diving into an area that's fresh," he said. "The research aims we're going after are based on the insulin signaling pathway, and how the neuropathy evolves due to insulin dysregulation. Ultimately, we're looking at different ways to alter the insulin signaling pathway to prevent nerve degeneration."
During the next three years, Dr. Nichols and his team will document the behavior of neurons, their signaling systems and surrounding cells to find ways to regulate them to alleviate symptoms of neuropathy.
While approved therapeutics such as opioids and antidepressants can curb those symptoms, Dr. Nichols hopes his investigational treatment can become a more viable alternative for diabetic patients.
"There are typical pain therapies out there, although we're trying to move away from that because diabetic neuropathy isn't very amenable to the basic treatments that we have," he said. "We're trying to find better therapies, and that is our goal."
Dr. Nichols arrived at UCF in the summer of 2025, and said his goal is to inspire students to pursue bold new research directions. He encourages students to not fear the failures that lead to success.
"One of the things I tell the students is that we fail fast and we fail safe here," he said. "What that means is that you want to fail as many times as you're going to fail as fast as possible. You want to get those failures out as fast as possible so that you can learn as fast as possible without having an impact on you or your studies."
Chisom Akaniru completed her master's degree in biotechnology at UCF in 2024 after spending nearly five years working in the biomedical field in her home country of Nigeria. Now pursuing a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences, she joined Dr. Nichols' lab because she wants to help patients like her parents, who both suffered from diabetes.
"This is personal to me because my mom was diabetic and she died from complications with it," Akaniru said. "My dad now is showing signs of peripheral neuropathy. There are treatments for other comorbidities of diabetes, but I think it could go a long way to have something that could really help neuropathic pain better."
Hollie Hayes graduated from UCF with her bachelor's degree in biology in 2020 and then worked in neuroscience research before joining Dr. Nichols' lab as a manager. During her time at UCF, she worked on research to fight pediatric tumors and still carries that inspiration today.
"It got me really interested in focusing on helping people who are just suffering with chronic, debilitating pain, and especially anything that comes with nerves," Hayes said. "My focus is, 'How can I help advance the science and help as many people as possible?' "
UCF College of Medicine
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A new retrospective cohort study examining the impact of Minnesota's first-in-the-nation mandated universal newborn screening for congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) shows that universal screening significantly decreased the age at first audiology visit and increased identification of mild hearing loss in infants. The findings, published in Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF), add to a growing body of evidence supporting universal cCMV screening programs as a critical public health tool.
Congenital cytomegalovirus is the leading infectious cause of birth defects and the leading non-genetic cause of hearing loss in infants, affecting approximately 1 in every 200 newborns. CMV-related hearing loss can be progressive, with over 55% of both asymptomatic and symptomatic children developing hearing loss after the newborn period. The narrow therapeutic window for antiviral treatment-most effective when initiated within the first month of life-makes early identification through universal screening essential for ensuring timely intervention.
"Our experience in Minnesota shows that universal screening for cCMV enhances our ability to catch mild hearing loss early on in life and has the potential to improve the life of children who are diagnosed with the disease. Our hope is that our experience in Minnesota will guide policymakers in other states as we continue to learn more about cCMV and the best way to screen for and treat this common condition," said Andrew J. Redmann, MD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical School and Children's Minnesota.
Researchers examined 132 patients diagnosed with cCMV at Children's Minnesota between 2021 and 2024, comparing outcomes before, during, and after the rollout of universal screening. Key findings include:
The findings come as the AAO-HNS continues to advance cCMV screening as one of its top legislative priorities at both the federal and state levels.
"The evidence from Minnesota's pioneering program-and from studies across the country-overwhelmingly supports universal screening," said Rahul K. Shah, MD, MBA, AAO-HNS/F Executive Vice President and CEO. "As the physicians who specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of hearing health conditions, we know that early identification through screening is essential to timely intervention and to the long-term developmental success of children."
The Stop CMV Act (H.R. 5435/S. 2842) was successfully reintroduced during the first session of the 119th Congress by U.S. Representatives Mike Lawler (R-NY), Greg Landsman (D-OH), and Deborah Ross (D-NC) and U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Roger Marshall, MD (R-KS), and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), thanks to the efforts of AAO-HNS working in partnership with other key allies and medical societies. This important legislation would authorize federal funding for cCMV screening programs that improve early detection and intervention of hearing loss in infants.
The Academy's advocacy efforts continue to gain traction across the country:
New York: The Academy submitted a letter to the New York State Legislature in strong support of Assembly bills A.3956 and A.3074, which would establish universal newborn CMV screening and require reporting of positive results to ensure timely referral and coordinated follow-up care.
Oregon: Carol MacArthur, MD, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Oregon Health & Science University, testified on behalf of AAO-HNS before the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) on rules implementing the state's targeted cCMV screening program. Dr. MacArthur urged OHA to include otolaryngology as a first-line referral for infants with confirmed cCMV and emphasized the role of telehealth in reaching rural and underserved families. The OHA issued final rules on December 31.
Vermont: AAO-HNS submitted a letter to the Vermont House Committee on Human Services in strong support of H.533, legislation that would require the Department of Health to add cCMV to the newborn screening panel, provide education for expectant parents and healthcare providers, and create a multidisciplinary advisory committee to support coordinated, evidence-based implementation.
Massachusetts: The Academy submitted testimony in support of H. 4367, which would require universal cCMV screening for all newborns, establish a statewide public education program, and create an advisory committee to guide implementation and ensure equitable access.
Looking ahead: Several additional states are expected to move forward with cCMV screening proposals soon, including Michigan, Illinois, and Vermont.
American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery
DOI: 10.1002/ohn.70158
Posted in: Child Health News | Medical Research News
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Female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone fluctuate monthly across the menstrual cycle, affecting moods and energy levels. New research from the University of Oregon finds that those fluctuations don't change a woman's ability to exercise hard, but they do influence how difficult that work feels.
The findings were published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
The association between menstrual cycle hormonal fluctuations and exercise performance has been poorly understood, said the study's lead author Mira Schoeberlein, a third-year doctoral candidate in the Oregon Performance Research Lab in the UO's College of Arts and Sciences.
Women have historically been very understudied in physiology, and especially exercise physiology, and even more so across our menstrual cycle."
Mira Schoeberlein, study's lead author
Hormones play a major role in the body's regulation, particularly in metabolism and energy levels. Many studies comparing exercise and female hormone levels have focused on the early follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, between the onset of bleeding up until ovulation, Schoeberlein said. Estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest during that time and more similar to men's hormone profile. (Men also produce low levels of progesterone and estrogen hormones). But those studies don't capture the effects of estrogen and progesterone rising and falling throughout the menstrual cycle.
Schoeberlein wanted to know how those changes affect an athlete's ability to maintain intense exercise under a specific threshold known as the maximal metabolic steady state. That is the boundary between exercise that can be sustained and exercise that is unsustainable, "the highest intensity that one can sustain while relying fully or primarily on oxidative energy production," commonly known as aerobic exercise, Schoeberlein said.
The boundary between sustainable and unsustainable exercise is particularly important for athletes because it's an ideal spot to train in. Elite marathon runners, for example, run their races just below that threshold.
"That [threshold] can be a very important performance indicator because if you're exercising above it, you cannot sustain exercise for very long," said Brad Wilkins, the director of the Oregon Performance Research Lab and an assistant professor of human physiology.
Schoeberlein and the research team recruited 15 women and 15 men from the Eugene area to participate in the study. For four weeks, participants came in weekly to use a stationary bike, biking at progressively harder levels during their workout. The aim was for the experiment to capture participants' highest level of exercise at a steady state.
Before each session, participants had their hormone levels measured using a blood sample. Throughout the session Schoeberlein measured various biological benchmarks such as heart rate, oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide production. Participants also reported how difficult their workout felt afterward. Ultimately, the maximal steady state exercise intensity didn't change throughout the study.
"That ability to go and work is still at the same level across the whole menstrual cycle," Schoeberlein said. Interestingly, it was the self-reported data that changed. Overall, women said their workouts felt more difficult when their progesterone was high. Progesterone peaks roughly a week after ovulation in the luteal phase, the second half of the menstrual cycle.
The team also found that both men and women were able to do similar intensities of work, after accounting for differences in total muscle mass.
"What you can sustain appears to be the same across the menstrual cycle, but how it feels might be different," Schoeberlein said. "If you can take those together to inform your training or your race, then you can probably maintain or optimize your performance."
This is the first study to look at a range of hormonal fluctuations affecting maximal metabolic steady state, not just one phase of the menstrual cycle, the authors say. It's also one of the few that included participants using multiple types of birth control, including IUDs and oral contraceptives.
The results underscore that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to training, Schoeberlein said. What works for one person at a certain point in their menstrual cycle might not work for someone else. Schoeberlein hopes the results can act as another tool in athletes' toolboxes and empower them to push themselves.
"How you feel still matters, but don't limit yourself," she said.
University of Oregon
DOI: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00913.2025
Posted in: Medical Science News | Medical Research News | Women's Health News
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A study from researchers at the CU Anschutz Marcus Institute for Brain Health suggests that veterans with concussions may continue to show subtle but measurable brain function differences more than a decade after their injury. Researchers found these differences can be detected through specialized eye movement testing.
The findings were recently published in the Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology.
Mild traumatic brain injuries are common among military service members and occur in athletes and civilians through sports impacts, car accidents and falls. While most individuals recover within weeks or months, the new research indicates that some may experience lingering changes in attention, processing speed and impulse control long after symptoms appear to resolve.
The eyes are directly connected to brain networks that control attention, information processing and decision-making. By studying how someone's eyes move during a cognitively demanding task, we can detect subtle brain changes that might not appear on a standard bedside exam or brain scan."
Jeffrey Hebert, PhD, PT, study's lead investigator, associate professor at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine and director of research for the CU Anschutz Marcus Institute for Brain Health
The study evaluated 78 military veterans, including 38 with a history of mild traumatic brain injury and 40 without. Participants completed a series of eye movement tasks and cognitive tests designed to measure executive function of attention, processing speed and self-control.
Researchers found that veterans with prior concussions were more likely to demonstrate slower and less accurate eye movements along with reduced performance on certain attention-based tasks. Some of these differences were still measurable more than 10 years after the original injury.
Hebert said eye movements rely on complex networks across multiple regions of the brain. Tasks that require individuals to quickly look away from a visual target and tasks that require rapid visual recognition and verbalization of a viewed object test not only visual function but also cognitive control. This includes the ability to focus, suppress impulses and respond quickly and accurately. Because these processes depend on widespread neural connections, several mild injuries may leave lasting but difficult to detect effects.
"Even when someone feels recovered, their brain may still be working differently behind the scenes, especially during visually demanding tasks and in busy environments" Hebert said. "Objective eye movement testing gives us a measurable way to assess these often covert problems."
The findings could have important implications for long term concussion care.
"Standard imaging tools such as MRI scans often appear normal after mild brain injury, making persistent symptoms difficult to verify objectively," Hebert said. "Cognitively challenging eye movement assessments may provide clinicians with an additional tool to better understand ongoing cognitive concerns and more precisely tailor rehabilitation strategies.
Although the study focused on military veterans, the results may apply more broadly to athletes, first responders and civilians who have experienced concussions.
The team emphasizes that most individuals recover well from mild traumatic brain injury. However, identifying those who continue to experience subtle effects could improve follow up care, long term monitoring and treatment planning optimizing healthier brain adaptation.
Future studies will explore whether incorporating cognitively challenging eye movement testing into routine concussion evaluations could help clinicians better identify traumatic brain injury, track recovery and guide treatment decisions.
The research was funded by the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, Department of Defense, Vision Research Program Award.
University of Colorado Anschutz
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People with alcohol use disorders tend to prioritize alcohol over alternative rewards, and the neural underpinnings of this are unclear. New from JNeurosci, researchers led by Nathan Marchant, from Amsterdam Medical University Center, used rats to explore the role of a brain region involved in planning and making decisions in pursuing alcohol or socializing with peers.
After training rats to lever press for alcohol and social reward, the researchers discovered that rats favored alcohol over other reward options. Furthermore, the brain region of interest-the anterior insula-was more active during alcohol-related actions than social behavior. This was especially true during the time period just prior to making a decision about these actions. A mathematical model suggested that alcohol-related activity in the anterior insula correlated with how quickly rats made choices about alcohol after their preference for alcohol was established.
According to the researchers, this work suggests that the anterior insula may encode a bias in the decision-making process to support selecting alcohol over other rewards. Elaborating on the clinical relevance, says Marchant, "The reason we do this type of modeling is so we can decompose decision-making into variables that can explain how rats make decisions. This same approach could be applied to humans with alcohol use disorder to help decipher if signals from this brain region are involved in their maladaptive decision-making."
Society for Neuroscience
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1180-25.2026
Posted in: Medical Science News | Medical Research News
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Ultrasound AI, a pioneer in artificial intelligence applications for medical imaging, today announced it has received FDA De Novo clearance for its flagship Delivery Date AI technology, a cloud-based SaMD that determines a Predicted Delivery Date (PDD) solely from standard ultrasound images and seamless integration into current OB/MFM prenatal visit workflows; PDD is provided in real-time for actionable decision-making by the clinical team.
Trained on millions of de-identified ultrasound images across diverse pregnancies and clinical settings, the technology leverages an ensemble of deep-learning neural networks to analyze entire ultrasound images, including fetal and maternal characteristics correlated with delivery timing, to forecast a Predicted Delivery Date. The technology is an adjunctive tool designed to aid clinical decision-making in pregnancies where traditional dating, including last menstrual period and/or ultrasound gestational-age dating, are unreliable. Delivery Date AI complements clinical judgment by turning ultrasound imaging data into actionable insights that support individualized care planning and follow up.
"Today's FDA De Novo clearance represents a major milestone in our mission to reduce the burden of preterm birth by supporting earlier, more informed clinical decision-making," said Robert Bunn, President and Founder of Ultrasound AI. "Delivery Date AI isn't just innovative; it's a clinically evaluated tool that helps clinicians reduce uncertainty and better support mothers and families."
Delivery Date AI has been evaluated in a peer-reviewed PAIR (Perinatal Artificial Intelligence in Ultrasound) Study, published inThe Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, conducted in collaboration with the University of Kentucky. The landmark study of more than 5,700 patients demonstrated remarkable accuracy of 0.92 R² value in predicting days to delivery using only standard ultrasound images. The image-first approach supports equitable care across diverse populations and clinical settings.
"Fetal development and delivery timing impact nearly every decision in obstetrics," said Dr. Nathan Fox, board-certified OBGYN, Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist, and partner physician with Ultrasound AI. "Delivery Date AI gives clinicians unprecedented insight into a pregnancy's progression, allowing us to make more informed decisions for how and when we intervene. This technology has transformative implications for maternal and fetal healthcare."
Delivery Date AI is compatible with most existing ultrasound machines, can be installed in minutes, and delivers results in seconds after image upload. With minimal onboarding and no workflow disruption, the technology is scalable across high-volume health systems, resource-constrained clinics, and obstetric deserts, while offering the potential to reduce downstream costs associated with preterm birth.
With FDA clearance, Delivery Date AI is now available to practices, hospitals, imaging centers, and ultrasound equipment partners across the United States.
Ultrasound AI
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People whose drinking water came from newer groundwater had a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease than those whose drinking water came from older groundwater, according to a preliminary study released March 2, 2026, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 78th Annual Meeting taking place April 18-22, 2026, in Chicago and online. The study does not prove that newer groundwater causes Parkinson's disease; it only shows an association.
The study looked at the age of groundwater. It also looked at aquifers, the sources from which groundwater was drawn. An aquifer is an underground layer of porous rock, silt or sand that holds and transports groundwater.
"One way to examine our exposure to modern pollution is through our drinking water," said study author Brittany Krzyzanowski, PhD, of Atria Research Institute in New York City who conducted this research while at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and is a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "Newer groundwater, created by precipitation that has fallen within the past 70 to 75 years, has been exposed to more pollutants. Older groundwater typically contains fewer contaminants because it is generally deeper and better shielded from surface contaminants. Our study found that groundwater age and location is a potential environmental risk factor of Parkinson's disease."
The study included 12,370 people with Parkinson's disease and more than 1.2 million people without the disease who were matched for factors like age, sex and race and ethnicity. All participants lived within three miles of 1,279 groundwater sampling sites across 21 major U.S. aquifers.
Researchers looked at groundwater age, aquifer type and drinking water source, such as municipal groundwater systems or private wells, as potential indicators of exposure to neurotoxic contaminants.
Carbonate aquifers are the most prevalent in the United States, consisting mostly of limestone with water stored in fractures and channels. They often contain groundwater that is more vulnerable to surface contamination due to rapid flow through fractures.
Glacial aquifers, formed when glaciers advanced and retreated more than 12,000 years ago, are composed of sand and gravel with water stored in the gaps. These aquifers tend to promote more diffuse flow and natural filtration.
In the U.S., carbonate aquifers are common in parts of the Midwest, South and Florida, while glacial aquifers are found mostly in the Upper Midwest and Northeast.
Among people with Parkinson's, 3,463 got their drinking water from carbonate aquifers, 515 from glacial aquifers and 8,392 from other aquifers. Among those without Parkinson's, 300,264 got their drinking water from carbonate aquifers, 62,917 from glacial aquifers and 860,993 from other aquifers.
After adjusting for factors such as age, sex, income and air pollution, people whose drinking water came from municipal groundwater systems or private wells that draw from carbonate aquifers had a 24% higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease than those whose water came from all other aquifers. They also had a 62% higher risk when compared to people whose water came from glacial aquifers.
The protective effect of older groundwater was found only when water was sourced from carbonate aquifers. For each one-standard-deviation increase in groundwater age, the risk of Parkinson's disease declined by approximately 6.5%. Researchers also found that newer groundwater, from the past 75 years, in carbonate systems was associated with an 11% higher risk of Parkinson's disease compared to groundwater older than 12,000 years from the ice age.
"We speculate that the apparent protective effect of older groundwater is seen mainly in carbonate aquifers because these systems can show a clearer contrast between newer and older water," said Krzyzanowski. "In these aquifers, newly recharged groundwater is more vulnerable to surface contamination, while older groundwater can remain cleaner if it is separated from recent inputs by a confining layer."
"In contrast, glacial aquifers tend to slow groundwater movement and naturally filter contaminants as water travels underground," said Krzyzanowski. "As a result, differences in contamination between newer and older groundwater in these aquifers may be smaller and therefore harder to detect."
Krzyzanowski noted that people can usually find out where their drinking water comes from through their local water utility or, for private wells, through state or county groundwater resources.
"This study highlights that where our water comes from, including the age of groundwater and the type of water source, could shape long‑term neurological health," said Krzyzanowski. "While additional research is needed, bringing together knowledge about groundwater and brain health may help communities better assess and reduce environmental risks."
A limitation of the study was that it assumed all individuals living within a three-mile radius of a sampling site shared the same aquifer characteristics and groundwater age as the sampled location.
The study was supported by AAN Clinical Research Training Scholarship, American Brain Foundation and The Parkinson's Foundation.
American Academy of Neurology
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With 100 days until the kickoff of the World Cup in Boston, officials in Foxborough are waiting for answers of who will pay an estimated $7.8 million for security at Gillette Stadium.
“What's very confusing to us is who is the responsible party for funding,” Foxborough Select Board Chair Bill Yukna told representatives from host committee FIFA World Cup Boston 2026 on Feb. 17.
Town officials are still warning they could block the matches at Gillette Stadium if the organizers don't pay upfront for local security, but it's unclear which organizers would be responsible.
Mike Loynd, president of the Boston 2026 host committee nonprofit that receives no funding from FIFA, said they are contractually obligated to provide the funding, but FIFA is the actual license holder with Foxborough.
“The thing that's very different about this is that FIFA U.S. is the applicant on the license, and normally it would be the stadium, so there are a lot of things to work through,” he said, “and we recognize that we are working diligently to coordinate this conversation.”
Speaking at the meeting, Kevin Clark, the director of venue operations for FIFA 2026, deferred to Boston 2026. The Kraft Group, who owns Gillette Stadium, did not return a request for comment, but Yukna said at the meeting that the group “has told us that they're technically not responsible for the funding.”
Julie Duffy, a spokesperson for FIFA World Cup Boston 2026, previously told The Boston Globe they are working with FIFA, the stadium, and the town to reach an agreement. The committee did not return a request for comment for this story.
As the town's already-set March 17 deadline looms, Foxborough officials said they are prepared to not issue the license to FIFA for the World Cup games taking place in June and July.
“For me, it's going to be a flat no, unless we know the money is there … we cannot do that to our taxpayers,” Select Board member Stephanie McGowan said. “We're this close, we still don't even have a license issued.”
The $7.8 million is strictly for security at the stadium, McGowan said, which is provided by Foxborough police and other employees.
“We may get a little more meals tax or hotel tax, but this is not a moneymaker for this town,” she said. “In fact, it's probably more of a headache than it's worth.”
Many of the 11 World Cup host cities are scrambling as their shares of $625 million in federal security funding remains in limbo, POLITICO reported last week. Massachusetts is eligible for just over $46 million of the federal money.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were originally supposed to award the funds by “no later than” Jan. 30.
At the meeting, Loynd said they're waiting on the federal funding. “It's still a question of how fast FEMA can move through the process, but we're being assured that it's continuing,” he said.
The Foxborough Select Board spent nearly 30 minutes at the meeting rebuking Loynd and Clark for not having answers after three years of planning.
“It just makes me a little concerned when the question is asked on where the payment is going to come from, and both you guys are almost pointing at each other,” Select Board member Debbie Giardino said. “Nobody wanted to answer the question. And I think that speaks volumes to the frustration that this board is feeling.”
The Town of Foxborough confirmed to Boston.com that officials have no additional comments to share ahead of Tuesday night's Select Board meeting, where the topic will continue to be discussed.
Molly Farrar is a general assignment reporter for Boston.com, focusing on education, politics, crime, and more.
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If it isn't already, the 2026 FIFA World Cup will soon be at the front of all soccer fan's minds as the top teams in the world compete for unending glory.
With the tournament played in North America this year, it's all the more reason to rep your favorite team and player's gear in anyway possible.
If you're the nostalgic type, throwback jerseys for teams wth rabid fan bases like Argentina and Mexico are now available to purchase at adidas, which highlights various team's strong heritage in the sport.
Scroll below to check out the latest, and get geared up for the World Cup!
The 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup is scheduled to take place between June 11 and July 19. The first game of the tournament will take place in Mexico, and the tournament will conclude with the Finals in New York City.
The World Cup will be played in 16 different cities across North America, 11 of which are in the U.S. See below for a full list of host sites and their schedule of games.
Our team of savvy editors independently handpicks all recommendations. If you purchase through our links, the USA TODAY Network may earn a commission. Prices were accurate at the time of publication but may change.
The U.S. men's national team roster for the 2026 World Cup will be revealed at an event in New York City on May 26, U.S. Soccer announced on Tuesday, March 3.
The federation made the announcement to mark 100 days from the World Cup, which will be hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.
"U.S. Soccer will host a free, open-to-all roster reveal event in New York City on May 26 to celebrate the 26 players selected by U.S. men's national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino," the announcement said.
"The nationally broadcast event will feature player appearances, surprise guests and live entertainment, turning the roster announcement into a shared national moment."
The USMNT has been drawn into Group D at the World Cup alongside Australia, Paraguay and a European playoff winner (Turkey, Romania, Slovakia or Kosovo).
Pochettino's side will play one group-stage game in Seattle and two in Los Angeles, where U.S. Soccer said it will be basing a hub for fan activity during the tournament.
"U.S. Soccer House" will open on June 11 in Venice Beach, California, with the federation saying that "the immersive space will feature live match viewing, U.S. Soccer legend meet-and-greets, interactive activations, podcast recordings and exclusive fan experiences."
Prior to the World Cup kicking off, the USMNT has four matches scheduled.
The U.S. will face Belgium on March 28 and Portugal on March 31 in Atlanta, the final two games before Pochettino selects his World Cup roster.
In the lead-up to the World Cup, the USMNT will face Senegal in Charlotte, North Carolina on May 31 and Germany in Chicago on June 6.
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Christian Pulisic, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, three potential stars this summer Getty Images; design Eamonn Dalton
The Athletic has live coverage of the latest news for the 2026 World Cup.
After years of planning, the World Cup is now just 100 days away.
This summer's tournament in North America will almost certainly be the most-viewed sports event ever, watched by millions (or more likely billions) of fans across the world.
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But it also offers a huge opportunity to attract a whole new audience, particularly across the United States, where soccer has long been on the rise but still does not dominate the sporting landscape as it does in so many other countries.
This will be a World Cup watched by diehards and those who have never engaged with the sport before. With that in mind, we have compiled this article as a guide to everything you could possibly want to know about the tournament, from the most basic questions for those who have never watched the sport to far more intricate details about how teams play, the politics of this tournament, the ticketing situation and much more.
With 100 days until the tournament, our reporters have answered 100 questions.
If you are a keen fan, you might want to skip the first section entirely — you can use the tabs along the bottom to jump to the part(s) that most interest you. The sections in this article are:
This article has been written by 24 of our journalists, based in North America and Europe, and we hope it will help guide you through what to expect this summer.
The Athletic has launched a World Cup WhatsApp Channel. Click here to join.
What is the World Cup?
The most beloved soccer tournament out there, pitting the best men's national teams from across the globe against each other for a month(ish) every four years.
Jack Lang
How many teams are there?
Welcome to the expanded 48-team World Cup, up from 32 nations since the last expansion in 1998.
Critics of soccer's world governing body, FIFA, have described it as a way to earn more money and power, but Gianni Infantino, its president, told the World Economic Forum in January, “We had to open it to the world. And it's the minimum we could do — to open (it) to more African countries, more Asian countries, because we want football to be strong everywhere.”
Eduardo Tansley
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When does it start and how long does it take?
It all kicks off at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on June 11, when Mexico, one of the three hosts, faces South Africa.
From then on, we can settle in for a summer of soccer, culminating in the final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home of NFL franchises the New York Giants and New York Jets. That's 39 days and 104 games from start to finish, although there will be some rest days.
Eduardo Tansley
How big is the World Cup?
It is huge, by whichever metric you measure it.
When Argentina beat France on penalties in the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, FIFA said it had a total global reach of 1.42 billion viewers.
Its data for the most recent men's World Cup in Qatar also claimed there were five billion views globally for a match at some point during the tournament, with each semifinal drawing a worldwide audience of more than 300 million.
The men's World Cup's closest rival for global viewership is the Summer Olympic Games.
The 2024 Paris Olympics was watched by a global audience of around five billion, according to the International Olympic Committee.
The Super Bowl is undoubtedly the main sporting event in the United States, but its scale pales in comparison to the World Cup. Soccer is a truly global sport, whereas the NFL's audience is primarily from the U.S.
Last year's Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, according to data collector Nielsen, was the most-watched TV event in America's history to that point, averaging 127.7 million viewers and peaking with an audience of just under 138 million during the second quarter.
In its current budget cycle (2023-26), FIFA expects to generate record revenues of $13billion (£11.4bn), and this summer's World Cup will undeniably be the single biggest influence on that number.
Daniel Sheldon
Why is the World Cup only every four years?
The World Cup came into being after the success of the Olympic football tournaments of the 1920s. FIFA opted to follow the same schedule with its own competition and the tradition continues to this day. There are solid practical reasons — it leaves time for continental competitions and the long qualifying process — but the scarcity factor is also important. The World Cup is special in part because players and fans know they will have to wait a long time for the next one.
Jack Lang
Should I be calling it ‘soccer' or ‘football'?
To the vast majority of people around the globe, it's football. In the U.S. and Canada, it's soccer. And you know what? That's fine! People can have different names for things.
Jack Lang
How long does a game last — and what else do I need to know about how it works?
A game lasts 90 minutes — two halves of 45, with a 15-minute half-time break. At the end of each half, the referee usually — although not always — tacks on some ‘additional time' to make up for stoppages in play. Goals, video-assistant replay calls, injuries… the more of these there are, the longer the game will go. At the last World Cup, in 2022, it was common for the clock to run past 100 minutes. We have returned to more sensible waters: expect between three and eight extra minutes at the end of the 90.
Draws are possible in the group stage. When it comes to the knockout phases, though, games that are level at the final whistle go to extra time — two additional periods of 15 minutes each. If the scores are still level after that, the match is decided by a penalty shootout — best of five, with alternating sudden-death shots as the very last tiebreaker.
Jack Lang
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What are the key soccer terms I need to know?
How long have you got? Let's keep this relatively simple for now. Positions on the pitch are split into four categories — goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and forwards. They are organized into a variety of 11-player formations, the most common being 4-3-3, 4-4-2 and 3-4-3.
Goalkeepers aren't counted in the formation number. Anyone who scores a goal is the goalscorer, while anyone who sets them up provides an assist.
Then you've got your referee, who officiates the game on the pitch, assistant referees who run the lines (mostly checking for offside, which is when an attacker is deemed to be beyond the second-last player of the opposition team when the ball is played) and the VAR (video assistant referee) checking incidents from various television angles.
Tim Spiers
Are Manchester United and Barcelona playing at the World Cup?
No! (And if you ask a snobby soccer fan that question, they might roll their eyes or laugh you out of the room.)
The World Cup is a competition for national teams, whereas Manchester United and Barcelona are professional clubs — soccer equivalents of the Dallas Cowboys or Los Angeles Lakers. Just as Luka Doncic plays for the Lakers and for Slovenia internationally, Kylian Mbappe plays for Spanish club Real Madrid most of the year and for his country, France, at the World Cup.
Henry Bushnell
How many players are there on a roster?
A roster, or squad, was made up of a minimum of 23 players and a maximum of 26 players at the Qatar 2022 World Cup and should be the same again.
Some players on the roster might not get a game, but squad depth can become crucial, especially with injuries and knockout games that go to extra time.
Eduardo Tansley
I've heard of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Are they still good?
From the 2007-08 to 2022-23 seasons, Messi and Ronaldo were almost unequivocally the best and most famous footballers in the world. During those 16 years, they won 13 Ballons d'Or (the award for the best player that year) between them, with Messi winning eight and Ronaldo five.
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They're both still exceptional footballers, but aged 38 and 41, they're no longer the unbeatable forces they once were, hence why they moved from elite European clubs to play in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. They remain, probably more by reputation and status in Ronaldo's case, central to their national team's hopes at the World Cup.
Tim Spiers
Is the U.S. going to win it?
I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but it's unlikely. That said, the outlook is much more positive than it was a few months ago.
Jack Lang
Are Americans excited about the World Cup?
Some are. There's been unprecedented demand for tickets. There are tens of millions of soccer fans in the U.S., including immigrants and the children of immigrants who can't wait to watch their homeland play a World Cup in the country they now call home.
Many Americans, though, won't plug in until the week of the tournament, if at all. There's a lot going on in the U.S.; lots of everyday concerns; lots of entertainment options. World Cup fever hasn't exactly gripped the nation — yet.
Henry Bushnell
Why aren't some of the world's biggest nations taking part?
Eight of the world's 10 biggest nations by population will not feature in this expanded 48-team tournament.
The absentees include Russia — who hosted the 2018 edition but have been banned from the sport since the country's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — along with India and China, the world's two most populous nations.
The most notable absence from this tournament is arguably Nigeria, Africa's biggest country by population. They have been at six previous World Cups but failed to qualify this time.
Colin Millar
Does this World Cup include women's teams?
No. Women and men compete separately. The next Women's World Cup takes place in Brazil in 2027.
Jack Lang
What do the groups look like?
The draw for the World Cup took place in December at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center. It featured the Village People, a peace prize for President Donald Trump and, somewhere amid the “carnival of cringe“, some football administration broke out.
The result was 12 groups of four teams (with a few gaps to be filled — more on that in a second).
John Stanton
Wait, we don't know the full schedule yet?
Not yet. We know 42 of the 48 teams that will compete — the remaining six will be confirmed by the end of March.
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There are two sets of play-offs still to happen. The first will determine the four remaining European teams that will make it to the tournament (Italy are involved in these).
The other is FIFA's intercontinental play-off, which will take place in Mexico. Six teams are involved, with two places up for grabs. Could one of them be… New Caledonia?
John Stanton
Which groups are the strongest and weakest?
Assuming Iraq win their play-off, Group I looks to contain the strongest nations statistically — with France, Senegal and Norway also battling it out for a place in the knockouts. Group F is not far behind, with the Netherlands, Japan, Tunisia and (potentially) Ukraine being a closely contested fight that is high on quality.
This is calculated using FIFA's world rankings as a measure of a nation's strength. By this logic, Group E has the lowest average rating. It contains four-time world champions Germany, but Curacao, Ivory Coast and Ecuador are at the weaker end of the scale.
The same goes for Group G, with Belgium edging Egypt as the favourites but the group is lacking the highest quality — propped up by New Zealand and Iran.
Mark Carey
How does the group stage work?
With 48 teams competing, they're split into 12 groups of four. Each team plays its three group opponents, and the top two finishers progress automatically. Then the eight best third-placed teams also progress to the new round of 32.
Over just three games, points will be tight and after points, tiebreakers will be goal difference, then goals scored, and if that's not enough, things could even be decided by “team conduct scores”, measuring yellow and red cards. The last-resort tiebreaker is world rankings.
Eduardo Tansley
Who are the favourites right now?
Many people see Spain as the frontrunners. They were crowned European champions in 2024 and have maintained the momentum over the 18 months since, playing a technical, measured brand of football that suits the rhythms of a big tournament. Plus, in Barcelona's 18-year-old winger Lamine Yamal, they have a player who can settle big matches single-handedly.
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Few teams can match the firepower and squad depth of France, World Cup winners in 2018 and runners-up four years later. Their campaign will have a valedictory tone to it — coach Didier Deschamps, in place since 2012, will stand down when it is complete — but they will fully expect to go deep once again.
Holders Argentina will likely be strong again but there are asterisks: a questionable defence, a star player in Lionel Messi who will turn 39 during the tournament. The same is true of World Cup perennials Brazil, who lack elite full-backs and are still adapting to life under Italian Carlo Ancelotti after a series of false starts.
England might be more realistic contenders. Perfect in qualifying and now led by a proven winner in German coach Thomas Tuchel, they won't be anyone's idea of a pushover.
Jack Lang
Are any of the teams World Cup first-timers?
At least four countries will be making their World Cup debuts — Cape Verde, Curacao, Uzbekistan and Jordan. But there might be more: the last week of March sees a clutch of play-offs, from which Albania, Kosovo, New Caledonia and Suriname could all qualify for the first time too.
Nick Miller
Who are the best players at this World Cup?
Not many people would disagree with France's Kylian Mbappe being the most talented player at the tournament, with Lamine Yamal (Spain), Erling Haaland (Norway) and Vinicius Junior (Brazil) not far behind. This was our recent attempt at ranking the top 100 players at the tournament.
Tim Spiers
Are any of the world's best players missing out?
The African qualifying stage threw up some major surprises, none more so than Cameroon and Nigeria crashing out. That means Bryan Mbeumo and Victor Osimhen, two of the continent's best players, will not be in North America this summer.
After finishing second in their qualifying group, Italy must progress through two play-off rounds in March to book their place at the World Cup, so Gianluigi Donnarumma — voted the world's best goalkeeper at the Ballon d'Or awards — could miss out for the third time running. High-profile strikers Viktor Gyokeres and Alexander Isak, representing Sweden, are also in the play-offs, but Isak is recovering from ankle and leg surgery, with no public timeline on his return.
Jude Bellingham is sidelined with a hamstring injury and is a doubt for England's March friendlies, but he should have time to prove his fitness before Thomas Tuchel selects his World Cup squad. And to increase the USMNT's chances of success, Mauricio Pochettino will hope standout performer Antonee Robinson, who missed a large chunk of the league season at Fulham with a knee injury, can reach full fitness before the tournament.
Elias Burke
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Which young players could be breakout stars?
From Barcelona's Lamine Yamal (Spain) to Chelsea's Estevao (Brazil), many of the world's most talented teenagers are already well-established at prestigious European clubs.
Others will be desperate to make an impression on the biggest stage this summer. Yan Diomande is a lightning-quick winger with a thumping shot who can step up for the Ivory Coast, while Nico Paz is creative and full of confidence, with the magic feet to lighten the load on Lionel Messi as Argentina look to defend their crown. Keep an eye out for 17-year-old Gilberto Mora too, who has already taken Mexican football by storm.
Thom Harris
How can I find out more about all of the teams?
Why did the USMNT not need to qualify? What is Mexico's World Cup pedigree? How does each team play? Who is their MVP?
Whatever you want to know about the nations that have made it, we have you covered in our World Cup team guides.
John Stanton
When will the rosters be announced?
Teams are usually required to submit their rosters, also called squad lists, around two weeks before the opening match. But this is simply an administrative point for FIFA, and nations can and will announce them beforehand. Depending on when their domestic campaigns end, we should see squads revealed in May.
Eduardo Tansley
Which are the must-watch group games?
Brazil versus Morocco in New Jersey (June 13) immediately jumped off the page when the draw was announced. Let's hope Brazil rediscovers its samba-inspired football. Or will Morocco's fluid and modern attacking tactics humble the five-time world champions?
But the most anticipated group-stage match is Colombia versus Portugal in Miami, a major U.S. hub for Colombian expats. Expect a sea of yellow at Hard Rock Stadium in a game that could decide Group K on June 27.
Other notable games include:
Felipe Cardenas
Who are some fun teams to root for if I don't have an allegiance?
One of the first-timers would be a good choice, but it would be quite an achievement if any of them got further than the first round, so brace yourself for a brief stint of support. Scotland's fans will be among the most enthusiastic if you want to join them, or maybe Senegal or Morocco. If you want a non-obvious team full of exciting attackers, and can wait until the final European play-offs, then Turkey might be a good bet… even if they haven't quite qualified yet.
Nick Miller
How many points will get a team out of the group?
Four points are likely to be enough to advance to the knockout stage (even if as one of the eight-best third-placed teams) and three could well be enough too. Two points will be cutting it fine but won't necessarily mean elimination and it is possible a team could go through with just one point. This is because if the group winners are victorious in all three of their games, second place wins two of their matches and the other two teams draw in their showdown, the third-placed side would finish with one point. If this scenario occurred in more than four groups, at least one team would advance with one point.
Will Jeanes
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Why did the World Cup expand?
A cynic would say that more teams means more money for FIFA, the game's governing body. But FIFA would say that it's because it saw how much joy it generates in the participating nations and… nah, it's about money. By jumping from 32 to 48 teams, they added 40 more games to flog to the world. In its defence, FIFA will say it is a non-profit and it shares the World Cup loot with its members. However, this explains why nobody in football ever tells FIFA “enough now”.
Matt Slater
What impact will expansion to 48 teams have on the tournament?
Well, this is the first time for all of us, so we don't really know. Some think it will dilute the quality of the tournament and worry about the need to let eight third-placed teams advance to the knockout rounds to make the bracket work. But others seem happy with the prospect of all those extra games and another week of World Cup fever.
Matt Slater
Have the changes to the format been popular?
The short answer is “see above”. The slightly longer answer is that nobody is shocked when sports events get bigger — they can't help it. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If there are swathes of empty seats in the group stages or TV audiences get bored in the middle weeks, FIFA will notice. The concern is that it will decide the tournament is not big enough and push on to 64.
Matt Slater
What records can Messi break?
Lionel Messi has already played the most games in the World Cup's history with 26, and could become the tournament's outright all-time highest scorer if he nets four times this summer (he trails former Germany striker Miroslav Klose by three). The Argentinian could also become the first captain to win the World Cup twice following victory in Qatar in 2022, and if he finds the net in all three of Argentina's group games, he will break the record for scoring in the most consecutive matches at the competition — he is on four in a row, with the record of six jointly held by France's Just Fontaine (all in 1958) and Brazil's Jairzinho (all in 1970).
Will Jeanes
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Is this going to be anyone's final hurrah?
Considerable improvements in sports science mean we are having to redefine what ‘retirement age' is in football, so this isn't a straightforward question to answer, but Cristiano Ronaldo (41), Lionel Messi (39 in June), Croatia's Luka Modric (40) and Belgium's injury-prone midfielder Kevin De Bruyne (34) are certainly in the autumn of their careers.
Mohamed Salah of Egypt will be 34 when the tournament comes around, while Colombia's James Rodriguez will be 35 when it ends. One person definitely saying goodbye is France manager Didier Deschamps, who won the tournament in 2018 and is leaving the job this summer.
Tim Spiers
Which of the co-hosts is most likely to make a run?
The consensus is that World Cups are better events when the hosts perform well. South Korea's excellent run to the last four in 2002 imbued that tournament with joy and life. The excitement of Russian fans, buoyed by their side's unexpected progress to the quarterfinals, was a feature of the 2018 World Cup.
Having three hosts, on paper, increases the chances of a similar success story.
Mexico may struggle to go deep. Theirs is an ageing side and fan sentiment is not hugely positive. El Tri has a habit of being eliminated in the first knockout round; it would be a surprise if Mexico made it much further than that this year.
Canada, not a traditional powerhouse, has been growing in confidence. Coach Jesse Marsch has a settled side and results — barring a disappointing Gold Cup exit at the hands of Guatemala — have been positive. Its chances, though, may be contingent on which European nation lands in the same group. Italy would present a stiff challenge.
That leaves the USMNT. While unlikely to win the thing, recent form has been encouraging — and should have fans dreaming of a run in the knockout stages.
Jack Lang
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How have host nations performed historically — and how much of an advantage is it?
A game of two halves. Divide the 22 World Cups into two, and while five of the first 11 were won by the hosts (Uruguay 1930, Italy 1934, England 1966, Germany 1974, Argentina 1978), it's only happened in one of the second 11 (France 1998). This shift owes to various factors: better preparation from travelling teams, less questionable officiating, tournaments with more teams, and the simple fact the World Cup is more regularly hosted by nations who are not footballing superpowers, with Qatar in 2022 the most extreme example.
Michael Cox
How have defending champions performed historically?
Only two countries have won back-to-back World Cups: Italy in 1934 and 1938, then Brazil in 1958 and 1962. Notably, recent winners have a truly terrible record in the following edition. 1998 winners France, 2006 winners Italy, 2010 winners Spain and 2014 winners Germany were all knocked out in the group stage the next time out. 2002 winners Brazil reached the quarterfinals in 2006, and 2018 winners France only lost the final on penalties in Qatar four years ago. But history suggests Argentina have a tough task retaining their crown.
Michael Cox
What happened in previous World Cups in Mexico and the U.S.?
In Mexico, both Pele in 1970 and Diego Maradona in 1986 lifted World Cup trophies at the famed Estadio Azteca. The 2026 final will not be played at the Azteca, but Mexico will make history as the only country to host games at three World Cup tournaments.
USA 94 was FIFA's first attempt to award hosting duties to a country where football was not the nation's most popular sport. The tournament featured many memorable moments, like Bulgaria's run to the semifinals, the fateful own goal by Colombia's Andres Escobar and Roberto Baggio's missed penalty kick that sealed Italy's defeat by Brazil in the final.
Felipe Cardenas
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How much has soccer grown in the U.S. since the 1994 World Cup?
A ton.
Its popularity is tough to quantify because it's fragmented. Fandom spreads across a wide variety of teams and competitions — from the English Premier League to Spanish giants, from Mexican teams to MLS, and so on. In the American sports hierarchy, therefore, no single soccer league can compare to Major League Baseball or even the National Hockey League. But when you blend all soccer together, by many estimates, it's now the country's third-most popular sport (behind American football and basketball).
That, of course, was not the case in 1994, when there was no professional league and hardly any soccer on TV. Now, you can watch almost any league, anywhere. MLS, in its 31st season, has 30 teams. Most have their own soccer-specific stadiums and world-class facilities. The NWSL, America's third attempt at a women's professional league, is also stable and growing. The sport is more visible and mainstream than ever before.
Henry Bushnell
How will this World Cup impact soccer in America?
It will certainly provide a boost, economically and intangibly. It will spur grassroots funding and inspire kids to take up the sport. But will it reshape the landscape? Will it be “transformational,” as people at MLS and U.S. Soccer like to say?
Probably not quite — unless the U.S. team captures the entire country's imagination and makes an unprecedented run.
Henry Bushnell
Will all these teams be playing warm-up games before the tournament?
All teams should play warm-up games to help build momentum for the tournament. The last two international windows before the World Cup come in March and June. FIFA allows preparation matches up to five days before a team's opening game, but they can't be held in World Cup venues or against World Cup group opposition.
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Hosts Canada will have a send-off in Montreal as they play the Republic of Ireland on June 5, while the USMNT's final preparation match is against Germany on June 6 in Chicago.
Mexico is yet to reveal its June window games, but will play Iceland, Portugal and Belgium in March.
England will face New Zealand on June 6 and Costa Rica on June 10 during a preparation camp in South Florida.
Eduardo Tansley
Where do the referees come from and how are they chosen?
Officials for the tournament come from all over the world. For the 2022 tournament, 36 referees were among the 129 officials chosen from 29 different nations.
Numbers for this year's tournament are yet to be confirmed, but with 16 more teams and 40 more matches, an increase in referees is likely too.
Those appointed for the tournament are selected based on their quality and performances delivered at FIFA tournaments, as well as other domestic and international competitions.
Colin Millar
Where are the matches being played?
In 16 cities, split across the three host countries.
Eleven are in the U.S.: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle.
Three are in Mexico: Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey.
And two are in Canada: Toronto and Vancouver.
John Stanton
Why are there three host nations?
Given this World Cup will be the first to feature a 48-team format, that was a key factor nations had to account for when launching their bids as far back as 2017.
By banding together, the U.S., Canada and Mexico guaranteed themselves and FIFA the infrastructure necessary to host such a massive affair. It also meant a first men's World Cup for Canada and a historic third edition for Mexico. Each host nation won, in its own way.
By 2018, this “United” bid topped Morocco in a vote among FIFA's member associations.
Melanie Anzidei
Is heat going to be an issue?
It might be, but only for teams who get a little unlucky with the venues that the draw has handed them.
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In Arlington, Kansas City, Houston, Atlanta, Miami and Monterrey, temperatures in June and July can reach highs of 90F and above (more than 30C).
But in other venues, the climate is likely to be much more comfortable, and more akin to European summers, while other stadiums such as the ones in Los Angeles and Vancouver have roofs, some fixed and some retractable, meaning that outside conditions are not necessarily a factor.
Steve Madeley
Is altitude going to affect the players?
In a word, yes. Guadalajara and especially Mexico City are both far enough above sea level to impact athletic performance and recovery. Sprinting will be more difficult. So will maintaining intensity for 90 minutes.
“As a coach or as a conditioning specialist, I would definitely try to do something about it, to try and acclimatise the players,” altitude specialist Francois Billaut told The Athletic last year. “Otherwise, I can guarantee you there will be consequences.”
Jack Lang
Is anything being done to offset the carbon footprint?
FIFA has a specific sustainability strategy for the World Cup but there is no mention of offsetting the emissions it generates. However, offsetting is controversial and there is no firm evidence it is effective in reducing emissions overall.
Its strategy centres on actions that it hopes will lessen the impact of the tournament, but FIFA does say it wants to “develop and implement a programme to support and contribute to climate action projects”, and “raise awareness of environmental topics”.
Matt Woosnam
How were the host cities decided?
The host nations included a list of 23 ‘candidate host cities' when presenting their World Cup bid to FIFA. This was whittled down from a larger list of 45 cities that originally applied to become hosts.
Over several years, these cities were visited by their respective soccer federations as well as FIFA, who weighed, first, which cities to choose, and later which cities would host which matches. How could we forget the race between Dallas and New York City to host the final?
Melanie Anzidei
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How much are teams going to be traveling?
A lot! (Breaking news: North America is big!)
Most won't be traveling cross-country. FIFA designed the World Cup schedule to keep many teams confined to one region (Western, Central or Eastern). But still, the continent is massive. Everyone will be traveling hundreds of miles in the group stage. England, for example, will have pre-tournament friendlies in Florida, then head to a base camp in Kansas City, and play its group games in Texas, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Assuming it returns to the base camp between games, including the initial flight from London to Florida, players could log nearly 10,000 miles on airplanes before the knockout rounds.
Or, in other words, a bit more than they did in 2022, when the World Cup was played entirely in and around one Qatari city, Doha.
Henry Bushnell
Where are all the teams staying and training?
For several years leading up to the tournament, FIFA has been negotiating to secure access to leading training venues across the three countries. It then created a brochure, linking five-star hotels with pristine training bases, and nations had a chance to select their favorites. Where more than one nation selected the same base, preference was accorded based on whichever team had more games in proximity to the base and, if still a tie, it then went via world ranking.
That was the case in Kansas City, where World Cup holders Argentina secured their top choice of Sporting Kansas City facilities, but the geographical location of KC (an easy flight to most destinations) and a charm offensive from stakeholders has led to England, the Netherlands and Algeria following suit. Teams are scattered all over North America: the USMNT will be at Great Park, Irvine in California, while Brazil are one of four teams around New York and New Jersey, and some teams, such as four-time world champions Germany, will even be stationed outside of any World Cup host cities, as they have chosen North Carolina's facilities in Winston-Salem.
We're tracking all the base-camp choices here.
Adam Crafton
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Were any stadiums built specifically for the World Cup?
Nope. Some, such as Mexico City's Estadio Azteca, were renovated. Toronto's BMO Field underwent a major expansion, adding 17,756 seats. But all 11 U.S. venues are NFL stadiums that host American football and other events annually. All 16 stadiums would exist with or without the World Cup.
Henry Bushnell
A World Cup at NFL stadiums? Will they play on artificial turf?
Eight of the 16 stadiums — seven in the U.S., plus BC Place in Canada — have artificial turf. But all, including the four with roofs, will install “hybrid” natural grass fields for the World Cup. Here's how.
Henry Bushnell
Will the pitches be OK, unlike at previous tournaments in the U.S.?
FIFA is confident they will be. It spent millions of dollars developing a plan. Stadiums have spent millions on irrigation and ventilation systems that will allow them to build and maintain grass pitches, which will look and feel like the very best permanent pitches in Europe — or so they say.
In the past, for friendlies or at tournaments such as the 2024 Copa America, problems would arise when strips of grass were laid over artificial turf or directly on an NFL stadium's floor, sometimes within a week of the game. But in 2026, the plan is much more extensive.
Henry Bushnell
How many foreign fans will travel to the three host countries?
Millions.
Or at least that's what organizers expect. People love the World Cup. Some save up for years to attend it. Even if they can't get tickets, they'll want to come.
With respect to the U.S. specifically, however, there is understandable skepticism that millions of people will A) want to travel to a country whose government has been hostile to immigrants and foreigners, B) be able to afford the trip, and C) be able to get a visa.
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That latter point is a prickly one. For fans from countries who don't qualify for America's Visa Waiver Program, it's not easy to get a B1/B2 visitor visa, which is necessary to enter the country. The U.S. Department of State denies millions of applicants annually. The State Department has set up a “FIFA pass” system to get ticket holders an expedited interview, but government officials have explicitly clarified that an expedited interview does not increase your chances of acceptance.
Henry Bushnell
Will the U.S. be a transportation nightmare for fans?
Quite possibly!
Many U.S. cities are allergic to public transportation and dependent on cars. Some stadiums are inconveniently located. And some of their parking lots will be blocked off for hospitality, fan activations or security purposes throughout the World Cup.
Cities with downtown stadiums and strong public transit, such as Seattle, should be OK. But others — Miami, Los Angeles, etc. — could be chaos.
Henry Bushnell
Will security be an issue, like it was at the 2024 Copa America?
Security remains one of the biggest issues heading into the tournament and has been a focus of conversations for several years, whether it's with regard to federal funding for security, who will be involved in keeping fans “safe,” or discussions over whether organizers are prepared for the expected influx of fans in North America.
Copa America is organized by CONMEBOL (the governing body of South American soccer), rather than FIFA. Those around FIFA in 2024 stressed that distinction, pointing to the large security perimeters typical at World Cups. This, they say, goes a long way to preventing those Copa America scenes from repeating. Let's hope so.
Melanie Anzidei
How much money will FIFA make from the World Cup?
A lot. FIFA's finances run on four-year cycles, with the World Cup very much its tentpole. Football's governing body loses money in three years out of four and then, in World Cup years, makes it all back and more.
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The Qatar World Cup was the main driver behind FIFA's record $5.8billion revenue in 2022, and this summer is expected to make the organization even more. FIFA has budgeted for $8.9bn revenue this year, most of it from the upcoming tournament.
Sales of TV broadcast rights should raise $3.9bn, but it is FIFA's second-highest 2026 earner that has attracted the most interest to date. Hospitality rights and ticket sales are expected to garner $3bn this year.
Chris Weatherspoon
Will the host cities make a bunch of money too?
Nope! Many are just trying to break even. (And some are frustrated.)
FIFA takes almost all of the aforementioned revenue. It argues that cities benefit indirectly from the tourists who come for the World Cup and spend at local establishments. (Some economists, though, dispute FIFA's logic and math.)
Henry Bushnell
Which cities have the best games?
Some cities were immediate winners – or losers – following December's World Cup draw. New York and Los Angeles drew some of the biggest nations, making them promising places to travel to for fans interested in catching multiple teams in one fixed location.
MetLife Stadium will host one of the biggest group-stage matches (Ecuador-Germany on June 25), and LA will host the USMNT's opening match against Panama on June 12. Further south, Miami secured some of the biggest Latin American nations (Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia), and will feature Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal against Colombia on June 27.
Melanie Anzidei
Why are there so few games in Mexico and Canada?
Way back in 2017, when the three co-hosts were devising their bid, they agreed that the U.S. would host 75 per cent of the matches — including all quarterfinals, both semifinals and the final — and Canada and Mexico would split the rest.
Why would Canada and Mexico agree to that deal? Well, because the U.S. had leverage. It was perfectly capable of bidding for and hosting the tournament itself, alone, if it wished.
Henry Bushnell
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Why don't Washington, D.C., and Chicago — the U.S. capital and its third-biggest city — have games?
Chicago essentially said no thanks. It heard FIFA's “demands,” saw lots of taxpayer risk, and didn't want to bear the financial burden.
D.C., on the other hand, was perfectly happy to host… but didn't have a suitable stadium. (The longer version of that answer is here.)
Henry Bushnell
Can I still buy tickets and how much do they cost?
Yes — but you might have to settle for a less appealing game, or pay a small fortune.
FIFA's three lotteries have come and gone. Your last chance to buy tickets straight from the source is a “last-minute sales phase” that begins in April. All remaining tickets will be available on a “first-come, first-served basis,” FIFA says. What we don't know is how many tickets remain, or whether any remain for the World Cup's most attractive games.
None of those matches — the latter stages, or group fixtures involving Mexico, Argentina, England or other sought-after teams — were available when FIFA launched a surprise sales window in late February. FIFA won't say why, or whether those games will be available in the spring.
If your game of choice is sold out, your only hope is resale sites — either FIFA's, which is closed until April, or unaffiliated sites like SeatGeek and StubHub.
As for prices, they were this much in October. They then rose in November and again in December. Now, they're at the mercy of supply and demand, plus resale fees. On the secondary market, a single ticket will cost you hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of dollars.
Henry Bushnell
Why have ticket prices been so controversial?
Because they're far more expensive than tickets to any previous World Cup or any other soccer tournament, ever.
To longtime supporters, therefore, they're “extortionate” and a “betrayal” of loyalty. FIFA's counterargument is that, even at the “despicable” prices, there's still overwhelming demand.
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The deeper answer, then, is that FIFA applied American practices to a global event. In the U.S., sports are entertainment that must be bought and consumed; teams, or bodies such as FIFA, are seen as businesses with a right to sell their product. Whereas elsewhere around the world, sports are viewed through a very different lens.
Henry Bushnell
How do the prices compare to other sports tickets in the U.S.?
They're similar to NFL ticket prices. And this has been part of FIFA's justification all along. “The pricing model adopted for FIFA World Cup 26 reflects the existing market practice for major entertainment and sporting events within our hosts on a daily basis,” a FIFA spokesman told The Athletic in a December statement.
How they compare to soccer ticket prices worldwide, though, is a different story.
Henry Bushnell
Have match tickets found their way into the hands of ‘real fans'?
Some have. FIFA allocates 16 per cent of tickets for each match to the two participating teams, and they funnel most of these tickets to their loyal supporters.
Plenty of the other 84 per cent, however, are likely in the hands of rich Americans with no sustained interest in soccer.
The exact breakdown, of course, is impossible to gauge. But there are understandable fears that FIFA's prices and process will affect in-stadium atmospheres.
Henry Bushnell
Will all the games be sold out?
Organizers believe they will be.
Outsiders are skeptical that 60,000 people would really pay hundreds of dollars to see Cape Verde vs. Saudi Arabia, or Austria vs. Jordan. And the sudden availability of tickets to those matches, plus dozens of others, last week suggests FIFA president Infantino's claim that “every match is already sold out” is false.
But still, the point stands: most stadiums should be full.
Henry Bushnell
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Is parking going to cost a ton of money, too?
Yes. Everything will.
Parking costs $99 at minimum, and $300 at maximum, after FIFA hiked prices on its official site. But that's only a small fraction of this World Cup's broader price tag.
For fans, the cost will extend to lodging (hotel prices and Airbnb prices are huge), airfare, food and more. America, in general, is very expensive. In the U.S., there are relatively few laws to prevent price-gouging around mega events. The 2026 World Cup, therefore, will be the “most expensive World Cup ever, by far, in every sense,” as Rafael Baqueiro, a Mexico supporter in Toronto who heads a multi-national World Cup fan group, told The Athletic.
Henry Bushnell
What is President Donald Trump's role in all of this?
It was during President Trump's first term that the joint North American bid beat competition from Morocco to secure hosting rights for this World Cup and he likes to remind everyone of this fact pretty often in set-piece speeches and claim credit for getting the bid over the line. The truth behind that is rather more complicated.
Since his return to power, Trump has convened a White House Task Force to assist with logistics and security planning for the World Cup, while he has also pushed $625m in federal security funding through Congress to help host cities with the costs of the tournament.
Beyond that, the role of Trump has largely been to drive a huge amount of fascination or exasperation towards FIFA, depending on one's politics.
His extraordinarily cosy relationship with FIFA president Infantino has seen FIFA open an office in Trump Tower in New York City and Trump received a newly concocted Peace Prize at the World Cup draw, where Infantino also arranged for Trump's favorite singer — Andrea Bocelli — to perform, and for the Village People to close the ceremony with the adopted Trump anthem of Y.M.C.A.
Oh, and FIFA also scrapped extensive negotiations with venues in Las Vegas because Trump suggested the event should be at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a venue he and his allies have taken over during his second term. Expect more of this as the tournament approaches.
Adam Crafton
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Who is Infantino and what should we expect from him during the World Cup?
Infantino is a 55-year-old Swiss-Italian sports administrator who became the most powerful figure in world football when he was elected to the FIFA presidency in February 2016.
Infantino's supporters laud him as a progressive, modern leader who has brought reform to FIFA, which was engulfed in a series of corruption crises before he succeeded Sepp Blatter as president. He has also become a regular and visible presence at global summits, but critics warn that FIFA could be politically compromised by Infantino's close relationships with various world leaders, not least President Trump.
Oliver Kay
Why are Infantino and Trump so close?
Trump has described Infantino as a “great friend” — and those who speak on the FIFA president's behalf say that, for the good of the game, it is extremely important for him to have good relationships with world leaders — and particularly with leaders of nations who are hosting big tournaments.
But Infantino's critics accuse him of being too close to Trump — just as he was previously accused of being too close to Russian president Vladimir Putin around the 2018 World Cup and to the Emir of Qatar around the 2022 tournament. Human rights campaign group FairSquare has written to FIFA's ethics committee to accuse Infantino of breaking the organization's own impartiality rules by publicly endorsing the U.S. president and awarding him the newly created “FIFA Peace Prize” at the World Cup draw in December.
Oliver Kay
What are relations like between the three host countries?
Where do we begin?
Since returning to the White House, Trump has sought to impose tariffs on neighboring Canada and Mexico, as well as making references to possibly annexing Canada. His barbs against former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, referring to him as a “governor” (implying Canada to be subservient to the U.S.) did not go down well.
Also controversial was his insistence that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed as the Gulf of America.
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At NBA and NHL games in February 2025, as well as the 4 Nations Face-Off, the U.S. national anthem was booed by Canadian fans.
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney has worn standing up to Trump as a badge of honor, most notably at Davos recently, before later telling his own parliament that “there is almost nothing normal in the U.S. now and that's the truth.”
In a news conference in the Oval Office in November, Trump also said he would be prepared to launch “strikes” in 2026 World Cup co-hosts Mexico due to concerns about drug trafficking.
Infantino's closeness with Trump has also raised eyebrows in both football and diplomatic circles in Canada and Mexico, with the FIFA president spending far more time with the U.S. president than either Carney or Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum. The three leaders were briefly brought together during the World Cup draw, but Infantino's decision to give Trump the Peace Prize ensured the U.S. president claimed the headlines.
Adam Crafton
Will any players, coaches or officials have trouble getting U.S. visas?
FIFA, government officials and experts are confident that anyone actually participating in the World Cup, in some official capacity, will be fine.
The biggest unknown is how those assurances will apply to people from Iran, Haiti, Senegal and the Ivory Coast — the four participating countries subject to Trump's so-called travel ban.
The ban carves out an exemption for “any athlete or member of an athletic team, including the coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives, traveling for the World Cup,” but the exemption isn't all-encompassing or ironclad. A few Iranian delegates, for example, were denied visas for December's World Cup draw. (When asked why, Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House's World Cup task force, said that “every visa decision is a national security decision.”)
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Now, in light of the U.S. military attack that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and others, there are heightened questions surrounding Iranian participation.
Henry Bushnell
What is the situation with Iran, given the U.S. military action there?
Since the American and Israeli assault began on February 28, questions have swirled around Iran's World Cup participation. Will they boycott? Would the U.S. government even let them come?
Just about everyone, from FIFA officials to experts on Iranian politics, says the answers are not yet known and depend on a variety of factors that remain unsettled.
Iranian football federation president Mehdi Taj reportedly told local media that, “after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” but he acknowledged that the country's “sports chiefs” would ultimately decide. And there's no firm timeline for that decision.
A World Cup host bombing a World Cup participant a few months before the tournament is an unprecedented situation. No qualified team has withdrawn from a men's World Cup since 1950. If Iran did, FIFA would have broad discretion to pick a replacement team or adjust the competition accordingly.
Henry Bushnell
Is Trump still threatening to move games out of Democrat cities?
No. And frankly, it was never a realistic threat.
Heck, it wasn't even Trump's idea — until a reporter raised the possibility and pushed it toward the president in September. Suddenly, it became a story… but Trump didn't have the authority to move games. Nobody at FIFA or local host committees took it seriously. The threat, therefore, faded and hasn't resurfaced in 2026.
Henry Bushnell
How will the U.S. team interact with Trump?
That's a big unknown. The team's Argentine coach, Mauricio Pochettino, met Trump at December's World Cup draw, and seems to be a fan. Its star, Christian Pulisic, did the “Trump dance” to celebrate a goal soon after Trump's November 2024 election. But other players are less fond and have criticized Trump in the past.
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In general, over the past few years, the team and U.S. Soccer as a whole have shied away from politics and sensitive subjects as much as possible. Pulisic tried to reason that his dance was “not a political dance, it was just for fun.” Players, though, might be forced into tricky, awkward situations around the World Cup — if Trump seeks to associate himself with the team, which he hasn't yet done.
Henry Bushnell
Will ICE impact the World Cup?
According to Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), it will form a “key part” of the security operations around the World Cup. Lyons confirmed this while testifying before a panel at the House of Representatives following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. federal agents in Minneapolis in January. Lyons said ICE's role would focus on homeland security investigations, which often assist at major sports events, but much of the public scrutiny of ICE has been about the division dedicated to enforcement and removal. Lyons was not prepared to commit to pausing ICE operations when asked if he would do so by Nellie Pou, a Democrat who represents New Jersey's 9th district.
Pou said: “You realize that if they feel they are going to be wrongfully incarcerated, or wrongfully pulled out, that is going to hurt this entire process? I hope you realize that.”
FIFA is already aware of the sensitivities. The Athletic revealed last year that FIFA received 145 reports relating to human rights concerns at the Club World Cup in the U.S., and the highest number related to fans expressing concerns about U.S. government policies or their enforcement. These complaints included alleged sightings of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials and ICE officials at stadiums during the tournament.
In a statement to The Athletic, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said that despite the reports made to FIFA, neither ICE nor CBP conducted enforcement, describing it as “another case of fear-mongering.”
Adam Crafton
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What can we expect from the opening ceremony?
Nostalgia. The opening ceremony will be hosted at the iconic Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on June 11. The country will soon be able to say it hosted more World Cups than any nation (1970, 1986, 2026), with Estadio Azteca each time setting the stage for the opening match. It will become the first stadium to host three opening games.
Not much has been said yet about the entertainment line-up, but Mexico City is sure to make the most of this historic moment. The stadium, after all, has been undergoing major renovations to prepare for the World Cup.
Melanie Anzidei
What's this about a half-time show during the final?
The World Cup will have its inaugural half-time show, taking inspiration from the NFL. It's an unusual concept for international football, with Copa America's halftime show in 2024 drawing mixed reviews.
Last year, Coldplay's Chris Martin curated a 15-minute set featuring J Balvin and others at the Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium. The stage was set in upper-level seating, to both limit time between halves and protect the pitch. It was seen as a test run for 2026.
While the broadcast was far more entertaining than the in-person experience, that may be the perfect balance for FIFA.
Melanie Anzidei
How can I watch the World Cup in the U.S.?
On television, the U.S. audience can watch games on Fox, as well as Telemundo and Universo for Spanish-language broadcasts.
Games will also be available on the streaming services Fubo, Peacock, Sling TV and YouTube TV.
Eduardo Tansley
How can I watch the World Cup in the UK?
The tournament will be free-to-air across the BBC and ITV. According to The Guardian, ITV have secured a studio in Brooklyn with views of the Manhattan skyline for its coverage and has lined up pundits Gary Neville, Roy Keane and Ian Wright.
The BBC broadcast will be from Salford, in the United Kingdom, until at least the quarterfinals.
Eduardo Tansley
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I heard something about watching the World Cup on TikTok. What's that about?
This is true, partially.
FIFA announced in January that it was partnering with the video-based social media platform for the World Cup to add “relatable perspectives” and behind-the-scenes action.
Part of this is allowing chosen creators to livestream parts of games, though how much that actually is and who will be able to share it is not known yet.
What we do know, however, is that World Cup content on TikTok will be prevalent as FIFA tries to harness the app's reach through “curated clips” and “special content”, also giving the partnered creators access to training sessions and press conferences.
Jessica Hopkins
What ball are they going to be using?
Adidas unveiled the 2026 World Cup ball at a swanky event in Brooklyn last year. The ‘Trionda,' which stands for three (tri) waves (onda), is the most technologically advanced ball Adidas has made, building on the connected ball technology first used for its ‘Al Rihla' ball at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The technology is designed to send precise ball data to the video assistant referee (VAR) system in real time.
Melanie Anzidei
Will there be big public watch parties/fan zones?
Yes — but, we advise you to keep an eye on any given city's plans, as they could change overnight.
Take New York/New Jersey. On February 19, the region's massive, 39-day FIFA Fan Fest at Liberty State Park was unceremoniously scrapped for smaller celebrations throughout New Jersey, in addition to already-planned fests across New York City.
Each city's plans are different, of course. Boston's will be at City Hall Plaza. Kansas City's fan fest will be hosted in the grounds of the city's National WWI Museum and Memorial. Philadelphia will host theirs at Lemon Hill. The list goes on.
Melanie Anzidei
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Is America going to turn the World Cup into a 250th birthday party?
Let's call it a birthday party 250 years in the making. The U.S. has certainly leveraged the timing of the World Cup, even referencing its 250th birthday when making its initial pitch to FIFA as a host nation. There will be celebrations across the country — dubbed the “America 250” initiative, with its own task force. While every city is likely to take part in the festivities, especially around July 4, places such as Philadelphia, where the Constitution was signed, have been vocal about leaning in more heavily than others.
Melanie Anzidei
Is there an official song of the tournament?
If you guessed Darude's “Sandstorm,” I'm sure you're in good company. We couldn't escape it at FIFA's Club World Cup last summer.
However, the tournament's official song is “Desire.” You may remember Robbie Williams and Laura Pausini performing the song at the Club World Cup final — how could we forget that giant, golden, inflatable trophy? More recently, Williams and Nicole Scherzinger performed it at the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C.
Time will tell if “Desire” will ever become as iconic as “Sandstorm” – or if another new song will catch on as the unofficial sound of the tournament.
Melanie Anzidei
Is there a mascot?
Not just one: three, representing each of the host countries. Meet Maple the Moose (Canada), Zayu the Jaguar (Mexico), and Clutch the Bald Eagle (U.S.). In their typically understated way, FIFA declared they are “a celebration as bold and boundary-breaking as the tournament itself”, which seems a bit much for three cartoon characters, but there you go.
Nick Miller
What is the trophy like?
The current World Cup trophy was designed by an Italian called Silvio Gazzaniga and was first awarded to West Germany in 1974. It is made from 18 karat gold (although not all solid gold, it has a hollow centre), weighs 6.142kg and is 36cm tall. It depicts two men raising their arms to the sky, both in celebration of victory but also holding up a globe. In theory, only those who have won it and a very specific list of dignitaries are allowed to touch it… which is why people were so annoyed when Salt Bae got his hands on it four years ago.
Nick Miller
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Who will present the trophy to the winners?
To be confirmed. But we can look back through the Infantino years for clues.
At the 2018 tournament in Russia, the Russian president Vladimir Putin, as well as the French president Emmanuel Macron and Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, were all on a podium for the formalities, recognizing their positions as leaders of the host country and of the two competing nations in the final.
Infantino alone handed the prize to France captain Hugo Lloris.
At the 2022 tournament in Qatar, a World Cup that was often described as a vanity project for the Qatari state had a symbolic closing, as Infantino and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim jointly handed the World Cup to Argentina captain Lionel Messi. Infantino also clapped along as the Qataris dressed Messi in a black bisht, a cloak popular in the Arab world, ensuring that both Qatar and Messi had their photo finish.
At the Club World Cup final last summer, played at MetLife Stadium (which will also host this year's World Cup final), President Trump awarded individual prizes to players including Chelsea's Robert Sanchez and an entertainingly non-plussed Cole Palmer, before posing for photos with the match officials and handing out the winners' and losers' medals to Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain. Trump then jointly handed the trophy to Chelsea captain Reece James (possibly only jointly because the prize was so physically heavy) and then stayed in the thick of the celebrations.
Trump is expected to have a role once again at the World Cup final — it remains to be seen whether FIFA also involve the Mexican president and Canadian prime minister in the awarding of the World Cup at what is, after all, a joint tournament between three countries.
Adam Crafton
How much money do teams get for winning?
In December, FIFA released its record-breaking financial package for the World Cup, with a 50 per cent increase on the amount competing nations will share compared to the last tournament in Qatar.
In total, $655m in prize money will be distributed between the 48 nations this summer.
The winners will receive a $50m payout, while the runners-up will get $33m.
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There is plenty at stake financially in the third and fourth-place play-off too, with the winning federation pocketing $29m and $27m going to the fourth-placed side.
The nations that finish between fifth and eighth will each get $19m prize money, while $15m will go to those who finish between ninth and 16th place.
Countries that finish the tournament ranked between 17th and 32nd will each receive $11m, while the 16 teams between 33rd and 48th place will each get $9m.
Every team will also receive $1.5m to cover their preparation costs. It means each participating member association is guaranteed at least $10.5m for qualifying.
Greg O'Keeffe
Is FIFA really introducing mid-half commercial breaks (disguised as ‘hydration breaks')?
Well, according to FIFA, they're for “player welfare.” But yes, for the first time, every World Cup game will pause for three minutes midway through each half, regardless of the weather. And yes, broadcasters will be allowed to cut away to commercials, according to multiple sources (including one at FIFA).
Henry Bushnell
Who sponsors the World Cup?
FIFA has different tiers of sponsors. Its tier-one partners, whose branding will be visible at every FIFA event and tournament, includes Aramco, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Hyundai/Kia, Visa, Qatar Airways and Lenovo.
However, it has a tier of sponsors that are specific to the 2026 World Cup, with global companies such as Anheuser-Busch (Michelob Ultra/Budweiser), Bank of America, Frito-Lay, Hisense, McDonald's, Mengniu Dairy, Unilever and Verizon all doing deals for this summer's tournament.
It then has a ‘supporters' tier, which includes Airbnb, DoorDash, Marriott Bonvoy, and, among other brands, The Home Depot.
Daniel Sheldon
What sort of celebrities will be involved in the World Cup?
Remember Lionel Messi's early MLS appearances in Miami and Los Angeles that attracted droves of celebs in 2023? We expect that same energy and much more this summer.
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You may have caught, for example, Telemundo's World Cup push with Owen Wilson and Sofia Vergara during Super Bowl commercials (the broadcaster is the U.S. Spanish-language rights holder). Two years ago, celebs Kevin Hart and Kim Kardashian were part of the broadcasts that unveiled where matches would be played in 2026. That's just a very small sampling.
Celebs will certainly be all over the World Cup, especially while it remains en vogue.
Melanie Anzidei
How is the U.S. shaping up?
It looked rough for a while, but the U.S. actually started to find form in the fall friendlies under Mauricio Pochettino, going unbeaten in five straight games, all against World Cup competition, and seem to have a clear identity, strong competition in the squad and a bit of belief.
Paul Tenorio
Is this the best/most talented USMNT ever?
There's a lot of debate around this question. This team has players who have done more earlier in their careers than any other U.S. national team, but this cycle has been about transitioning potential into production. Are they there yet? That's a definite no. Is this team better than the 2002 World Cup team, for example? It needs to advance deeper in the tournament to prove it. On talent alone? It's a stronger middle of the roster, but it's a toss-up at the top and bottom end of the team.
Paul Tenorio
Who will the star players be for the U.S.?
It always starts with Christian Pulisic for the Americans. The Milan winger has proven throughout his career to be at his best on the biggest stages, and there will be no bigger platform in his career than a home World Cup. Getting Pulisic as involved as possible is priority No. 1 for the U.S. Outside of their most talented player, however, keep an eye on forward Folarin Balogun and outside backs Antonee Robinson and Sergino Dest. When those three are at their best, they are game-changers.
Paul Tenorio
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Who's the coach, and do fans like him? Is he doing a good job?
The U.S. swung for the fences when they hired Mauricio Pochettino, the former Tottenham Hotspur, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea manager. It took a while for the former Argentina international to influence this group, but he has them humming now. That seems to have convinced a fanbase that believes this is a “golden generation” of American soccer players that needed a proven coach to maximize their potential. Ultimately, though, winning friendlies in the fall won't matter. Pochettino will be judged on the World Cup alone.
Paul Tenorio
Where is the U.S. playing its matches?
The U.S. opens against Paraguay in Los Angeles, then heads up to Seattle to play Australia before returning to Los Angeles to close out the group. If it wins the group, it will head up to the Bay Area for its first knockout game. If it finishes second, the Americans will head to Dallas. Third place likely means a trip to the Midwest or East Coast.
Paul Tenorio
What are realistic expectations for the U.S.?
There is no doubt the U.S. got a favorable draw for this tournament. While there isn't much separating the quality of the U.S., Paraguay and Australia — and whichever team emerges from the European play-off — the Americans avoided the most dangerous outcomes in the other pots. That means progressing from the group stage is a bare minimum for this tournament. It's fair to expect this team to win the group, or finish second, and win the first knockout game. After that, it's all about how the chips fall. Getting past the round of 16 would be an unequivocal success.
Paul Tenorio
I haven't paid attention since the parent-coach ‘blackmail' saga. How did that turn out?
The U.S. team has moved on past that drama on multiple levels. First, the former coach Gregg Berhalter was fired after the Americans failed to get out of the group stage in the 2024 Copa América. Gio Reyna, meanwhile, has been unable to stay healthy and has to fight his way into the 2026 squad. Interestingly, Berhalter's son, Sebastian Berhalter, may end up making this 2026 World Cup team.
Paul Tenorio
Does the U.S. play any games before the World Cup starts?
Yes, the U.S. plays friendlies against Belgium and Portugal in March in Atlanta, then has games against Senegal and Germany on May 31 in Charlotte and June 6 in Chicago.
Paul Tenorio
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US and Israel hit targets across Iran on Sunday as part of an intensifying military campaign, which followed the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; thousands of flights have been cancelled amid a crisis in the Middle East, which raises questions about how sport is affected
Tuesday 3 March 2026 16:56, UK
With the conflict between Iran and US-Israeli forces intensifying, Sky Sports looks at how the Middle East crisis is affecting sport...
Iran's participation at the 2026 World Cup has been called into question after United States - co-hosts - and Israel launched air strikes at the country over the weekend, as Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. The conflict has spread, with Iran launching attacks against US allies and assets in the Middle East.
The Iran football federation president, Mehdi Taj, told local state media that "we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope." He added that "sports chiefs" would make a final decision on whether they could play or not.
Speaking with Sky News' Rob Harris on Saturday, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said: "I hope so much, it will be a moment of peace. I hope we can contribute to unite the world a little bit. The world really needs it."
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General secretary of FIFA Mattias Grafstrom also said on Saturday: "It's premature to comment on it in detail, but of course we will monitor the developments around all issues around the world, and I think we had the final draw in Washington where all teams participated, and of course our focus is to have a safe World Cup with everybody participating."
Sky Sports News contacted FIFA on Monday (February 3) and understands FIFA's stance has not changed in the last 48 hours.
World football's governing body does have the authority to call in a replacement, should Iran not take part. Or they could make a slight change to the tournament make-up.
Article 6 of FIFA's 2026 World Cup regulations focuses on cases of non-participation. Regulation 6.5 relates to "force majeure", which is an unforeseen event. "If a Participating Member Association withdraws or a match cannot be played or is abandoned as a result of force majeure, the authorised FIFA organising body (including the Tournament Operation Centre) shall decide on the matter at its sole discretion and take whatever action is deemed necessary."
Regulation 6.7 then states: "If any Participating Member Association withdraws and/or is excluded from the FIFA World Cup 26, FIFA shall decide on the matter at its sole discretion and take whatever action is deemed necessary. FIFA may decide to replace the Participating Member Association in question with another association."
In summary, FIFA has two options if Iran do not, or cannot play: draft in a replacement nation, or alter the rules of the competition so Iran's group would be a three-team section.
Iran have been drawn in Group G along with New Zealand, Belgium and Egypt.
Iran qualified automatically for the World Cup, with the United Arab Emirates losing out on an automatic qualification spot and subsequently going out in the play-off rounds. In the event of Iran not playing in the tournament, they would be the closest replacement.
Iraq could only be an option if they do not come through their intercontinental play-off against either Bolivia or Suriname in Mexico later this month. But under the rules, FIFA could decide to select a team from any association, not just the Asian Football Confederation, from where Iran qualified.
FIFA has yet to confirm a decision on whether or not the Finalissima game between European champions Spain and South American champions Argentina will go ahead in Qatar on March 27. Lionel Messi could lift another trophy but Qatar has suspended all football matches until further notice.
Cristiano Ronaldo's team, Saudi club Al Nassr, has already been affected by a wave of cancellations of Asian Champions League games, though the Saudi Pro League is continuing as it stands.
Meanwhile, Iran's women's football team opted not to sing the country's national anthem when they lined up against South Korea in the Asian Cup in Australia on Monday.
Crystal Palace and Liverpool's away ties in Cyprus and Turkey are currently due to be played as scheduled, though UEFA has told Sky Sports News it is "closely monitoring" the situation.
Liverpool visit Galatasaray on March 10 for the first leg of the Champions League last 16 and Palace have been drawn against AEK Larnaca in the Europa Conference League, with the away tie on March 19.
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Formula 1 is "closely monitoring" the ongoing conflict in the Middle East with races upcoming in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia next month.
No impact is expected for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix this weekend, although some flights for personnel have been rearranged as people planned to changeover in the Middle East on the way to Melbourne.
But, the Bahrain Grand Prix is scheduled to take place on April 10-12 with the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on April 17-19.
"Our next three races are in Australia, China and Japan and not in the Middle East - those races are not for a number of weeks," said an F1 spokesperson.
"As always, we closely monitor any situation like this and work closely with relevant authorities."
FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem added: "Safety and wellbeing will guide our decisions as we assess the forthcoming events scheduled there [in the Middle East]."
Meanwhile, the FIA has postponed the opening race of the World Endurance Championship which was originally scheduled to take place in Qatar at the end of March, moving the season's start to Italy in April.
The ECB released a statement on Saturday to announce it was following advice from the government, while confirming the cancellation of Sunday's 50-over game between the Men's Lions and Pakistan Shaheens in Abu Dhabi.
On Monday, they confirmed the remainder of the Lions' tour, as well as England Women's proposed trip to Abu Dhabi for a T20 Women's World Cup camp, would not go ahead - and the squad landed safely back in the UK on Tuesday.
"We are grateful to all those who provided assistance and advice while the squad were in Abu Dhabi, and who helped ensure their safe return," the ECB said in a statement.
"Our thoughts are with all those currently still in the Gulf who are seeking to return to the UK, and we hope they are able to get home soon."
England's men are currently competing in the T20 World Cup, where the semi-finals are being held in India.
The players are set to travel to Mumbai as planned for Thursday's semi-final, though the ECB insists "the safety and security of our teams and staff is our top priority. We are in contact with security experts and the Government in relation to current events in the Middle East, and are following official advice."
The West Indies and Zimbabwe teams have delayed their return from India after their exit from the tournament due to international airspace closures.
England's Jonny Bairstow revealed on social media he remains in Dubai with his family having written to airline Emirates at the weekend regarding a cancelled flight.
"For those writing that I'm with the England Lions team, I am not," Bairstow wrote on X.
"I am with my young family in Dubai. Sure the England Lions security staff will be doing all they can to get them out of Abu Dhabi, but I am trying to keep my family safe and get us out of here."
Daniil Medvedev is among the tennis players and team members to have seen travel plans disrupted as he tries to leave Dubai.
The former US Open champion has just won the Dubai Tennis Championships after scheduled opponent Tallon Griekspoor was forced to withdraw ahead of the final due to injury.
Medvedev is due to compete at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells in California, with main-draw matches due to begin on Wednesday.
His Instagram reposted a report from Russian-language tennis outlet Bolshe on Monday confirming his safety after flights were cancelled.
"The health, safety and wellbeing of our players, staff and tournament personnel is our priority. We can confirm that a small number of players and team members remain in Dubai following the conclusion of the recent ATP 500 event," the ATP Tour said in a statement Monday.
"They and their teams are being accommodated in the tournament's official hotels, where their immediate needs are being fully supported."
In the United Arab Emirates players were forced to evacuate the court at an ATP Challenger event after a drone attack on a nearby oil terminal.
The ATP later confirmed play at the Fujairah Challenger had been suspended for the day following a security alert.
The International Paralympic Committee said some athletes are facing issues travelling to Milan-Cortina ahead of the Games beginning on Friday.
"We are in close contact with all delegations competing at the Games as well as other stakeholders. Many of the teams are already in Europe attending training or holding camps, but the closure of airspace in the Middle East is impacting the arrival of some stakeholders," the IPC said in a statement.
"We would prefer not to comment on the status of individual delegations or stakeholders at this stage but can provide assurance that we are working diligently with Milano Cortina 2026 to find solutions for those affected."
In horse racing, the Super Saturday meeting went ahead at Meydan, but Sunday brought further challenges as British racing personnel, including trainers and jockeys, found themselves stranded in Dubai.
Trainer Jamie Osborne was among many awaiting news of when they may be able to return to the UK, with flights suspended from Dubai International Airport.
He said: "It's annoying as I'd like to be back at home dealing with everything I should be dealing with at home, but we're stuck here and quite how we get home and when we get home is very much up in the air."
Super Saturday may have gone ahead as planned, but the Emirates Racing Authority postponed Sunday's card at Jebel Ali until March 15, with the course next set to stage racing next Sunday. Meydan is also slated to race a day earlier on March 7.
Elsewhere in the region, Bahrain is set to host the two-day King's Cup fixture on Thursday and Friday.
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Tens of thousands of football fans are set to descend on a town smaller than Peterhead
Scotland are due to play two massive World Cup games in Massachusetts this summer, but the future of the fixtures could be hanging in the balance.
Steve Clarke's side made history in qualifying for the finals in North America this summer, with the Scots due to take on Haiti on June 14 and then Morocco on June 19.
It means tens of thousands of the Tartan Army will descend on the Gillette Stadium outside Boston.
The venue is in Foxborough – a town smaller than Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, with a population of less than 19,000.
Pronounced “Foxboro”, the town was formed in 1778, and is known by its residents as “the Gem of Norfolk County”, according to its official website.
It's home to a theatre, a secondary school, and a “number” of eating and entertainment establishments.
Foxborough prides itself on its “small-town image and strong sense of community”.
But the officials are worried about the cost of hosting the World Cup – compounded by a lack of assurance over funding.
Foxborough's 65,000-seater stadium, home to NFL side New England Patriots, is due to host seven games, including a quarter-final on July 9. England are also due to play Ghana at the stadium on June 23.
Foxborough officials say the town is yet to receive the $7.8million (£5.8m) required for security costs to host the games.
It has threatened to withhold the entertainment license FIFA needs for matches to go ahead.
More than $625m in federal assistance toward World Cup security for the 11 host cities was pledged by the Trump administration last year.
Foxborough is managed by a five-member board and a town manager.
The board is due to meet on Tuesday (11pm GMT) to discuss a review of the “possible termination of World Cup 2026 planning by all town departments”.
The board has set a March 17 deadline for license approval. After that, officials have raised concerns that the town won't have adequate time to prepare.
Bill Yukna, a member of the town's select board, told local media last month: “It's the equivalent of seven Super Bowls here and 39 days of coverage.
“Which is not small and not to be lost. We have to secure that facility for 39 days straight.”
Another board member, Stephanie McGowan, said: “The money has to be here. Everyone thinks we have a football stadium in this town. But with that being said, we're a small town.
“We have 18,000 people.”
Reports suggest the Krafts, the family that owns the New England Patriots, have been contacted in a bid to temporarily cover the shortfall, but a resolution has yet to be reached.
It would be something of a kick in the teeth to the Tartan Army foot soldiers to learn their plans are scuppered.
With record-high ticket prices and expensive accommodation and flights, fans could be left thousands of pounds out of pocket if the games are jeopardised.
The Scotland team are to base themselves at a state-of-the-art training facility in North Carolina, somewhat due to its proximity for flights to Boston and Miami.
Steve Clarke himself said the base was “convenient for the airport” for the group stage matches.
Scotland end their group stage campaign in Miami at the Hard Rock Stadium against Brazil on June 24.
Fifa, the Scottish FA and the town of Foxborough have been contacted for comment.
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The fraternity of American men that know what it is to play in a World Cup is quite small. The fraternity of American men that know what it is to play in a World Cup on home soil is even smaller. In fact, it is a fraternity consisting of just 22 members. That group will more than double in size this coming summer when the United States, along with Canada and Mexico, hosts the 2026 World Cup, the first one staged in North America since the 1994 edition.
One of the members of that ‘94 U.S. team was Cobi Jones. It was the first of 3 World Cups that he would play in but, from his perspective, it was the most powerful in terms of what it meant for his career and overall profile.
“Look at the fact that, geez, what is it? Thirty years later? You know, myself, Alexi [Lalas], Tony [Meola], [Eric] Wynalda; a lot of us are still known more so from that ‘94 World Cup, right, than from MLS or any of the other World Cups or a lot of other things that we've done,” Jones stated during an appearance on the most recent episode of Unfiltered Soccer with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard.
Jones would go on to appear in more matches for the USMNT than any other player in history and spend 12 seasons playing for the LA Galaxy winning 2 MLS Cups and 2 Supporters Shields along the way. But no moment from his illustrious career was more impactful than starring in a World Cup at home, something that he hopes this current group of players is aware of when they take the field this summer.
“For these guys now, you have the chance to make a mark for yourself and open up doors... Actually, not even open up a door, smash down a door so it's completely wide open for you or whatever you want to do for the rest of your life.
“Understand what could possibly come your way,” Jones said. “Because these players, look, they're making a ton of money now overseas. They don't have to do... a lot of them won't have to do anything else for the rest of their lives if they don't want to. But this can be a seminal moment for a lot of them where they can make themselves household names within the United States, a country where soccer isn't the first and foremost.”
For this group of American players to truly maximize the moment and unlock the level of stardom of which Jones speaks, they'll need to not only show up but also excel. The team's performances have fluctuated over the past 2 years but from a pure talent standpoint, Jones believes the ceiling could be high for this current squad.
“I don't think we've had a better group of players that has this type of experience of playing at the highest levels,” Jones said in a nod to stars like Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie who are thriving at top clubs in Italy or players like Chris Richards, Tyler Adams and Brenden Aaronson who are regular starters in the English Premier League.
“Along with that, comes expectations as well,” Jones continued. “So, I'm looking at this team and just going, man, they've got everything, everything, before them.”
The USMNT's World Cup journey begins on June 12th against Paraguay followed by 2 more group stage matches against Australia and a European nation that is still to be determined.
New episodes of “Unfiltered Soccer” drop every Tuesday. Watch on YouTube, or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show @UnfilteredSoccer on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook for bonus content.
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GOAL takes a look at the wild storylines that could take centerstage this summer, headlined by predictions involving the sport's biggest stars
World Cups are wildly unpredictable. All it takes is one mistake for a giant to fall. All it takes is one upset for a Cinderella to emerge and cement their place in World Cup lore forever.
Predicting these tournaments, then, is for fools - especially in a new 48-team format that features stars ranging from Harry Kane to Christian Pulisic. Fortunately enough, there are fools eager to try with some big and bold predictions for this summer's inevitable chaos.
Ahead of the World Cup, GOAL's Tom Hindle and Ryan Tolmich have made three bold predictions for how this tournament will treat some of the game's biggest stars - and some of its smallest ones, too.
Surely he has to, right? This is the thing with Neymar: he always sort of sticks around. And as much as Carlo Ancelotti is a stern disciplinarian, he's also one for squad harmony. And here's the thing: Brazil really loves Neymar. Not just the team, the nation. Rodrygo said earlier this week that Ney's inclusion should be a "no-brainer", and, by all accounts, his recovery from what seemed a pretty serious knee injury is going rather well.
Now, the tricky bit is what happens when he's there. It's tough to justify Neymar on the bench, dishing out hi-fives and hanging out during hydration breaks. You'd figure that if the attacking midfielder is around, he has to play. And it just so happens that the Selecao could use a bit of verve and creativity through the middle, and perhaps someone to take the load unfairly placed on Vinicius. If only there was someone available... watch this space.
South Korea had a rough go of it in the 1954 World Cup. They were blasted, 9-0, by Ferenc Puskas' Hungary in their opener before suffering a 7-0 beating in their second match against Turkey to suffer elimination. All these years later, despite expansions and format changes, those 16 goals are still the most a team has ever conceded at a single World Cup.
Could that change this summer? The ingredients are surely there for several teams to get blown out.
With the expansion to 48 teams, several countries that never would have qualified for previous World Cups are involved this summer. Four teams - Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan, and Uzbekistan - are playing in the tournament for the first time, which means they'll all face a quality of opposition unlike they've ever seen before. Curacao, for example, will take on Germany, Ivory Coast, and Ecuador. Uzbekistan get Portugal and Colombia, while Jordan have to deal with Argentina, Algeria, and Austria.
It could get worse, too. Although it would require some upsets, Suriname and New Caledonia also have a chance at qualifying through the playoff. They're ranked 123rd and 149th in the world, respectively.
The sheer difference in quality will lead to some beatdowns. Those beatdowns could be of the historic variety, too, as the lesser teams in the tournament look to avoid matching South Korea's unfortunate record.
Portugal are a very hard side to pin down. They are, no doubt, blessed with some of the best attacking talent in the world. Their midfield is scary. Their wide players are electric. Sure, they are a little light on the right side of defense, and center back might be an issue. But there are stars all over the pitch here.
There is, however, one big fat glaring issue, and he's 40-years-old, and plays in the Saudi Pro League. Ronaldo, at this point, is stat padding. He wants to score 1,000 goals. He wants to win everything possible. He wants to prove, at this World Cup, that he can equal Lionel Messi's crowning achievement in football. But Ronaldo rips the balance of this team to shreds.
Any side organized enough to nullify him and athletic enough to hit them on the counter could steamroll Portugal in transition. So yes, a lot depends on the group here. If Colombia are as good as expected - more on that later - Portugal will face a tricky round of 32 opponent. Croatia, for example, are possible. That might not be pretty.
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Cheating a bit here and going with a pre-World Cup prediction, but one that would greatly alter the chemistry of Group B.
The Italian national team has been bad for a while now. Gli Azzurri missed each of the last two World Cups. They've won just one World Cup game since lifting the trophy 20 years ago. Now, they're in the playoff again, and anyone following this team knows that's no guarantee.
The faults of Italian soccer have been diagnosed plenty, and those faults have led to a dip in quality for both Serie A and the national team. When assessing this particular national team group, the weaknesses are obvious. Italy haven't produced a truly dynamic attacker in a generation. The team's best striker, Mateo Retegui, plays in Saudi Arabia. The defenders are nowhere near the quality of the legends of yesteryear. When you put those facts together, you get a mediocre team, one that got smacked around by Norway in qualifying to put themselves into this mess.
Can they dig themselves out of it? Sure, but don't bet on it. Margins are fine, and Italy don't have gamechangers, which means they're susceptible to the game being changed on them at the worst moments, with a World Cup on the line.
So this one might get complicated. What counts as a "run" at this World Cup? Sure, there are more teams than ever. That should lead to some easy group stage games. But it could also mean tougher knockout fixtures - and more chances for things to go wrong. But Colombia have all of the right stuff to be a true World Cup contender who can make things happen. They are rock solid at the back, well coached, experienced, and have a bona fide star in Luis Diaz. Look at this side, and there are no real holes. Their support in the United States will also be absolutely immense.
They proved at Copa America in 2024 that they can hang with the big boys - an extra-time loss to Argentina in the final is nothing to be ashamed of. And they could do so again here. If they win their group, then it's off to the races. They will need a favorable result here and there to avoid Argentina in the quarters. But with a couple of breaks, this is a semifinal team - and a mightily likeable one, to boot.
With 16 World Cup goals to his name, Miroslav Klose remains the World Cup's all-time leading goalscorer. Lionel Messi is lurking, though. He needs just three goals this summer to catch Klose and further cement his legacy on the big stage.
All things considered, though, Messi isn't the one most likely to break Klose's record this summer; it's actually Kylian Mbappe.
Lurking just behind Messi on 12 goals, Mbappe is certainly on pace to surpass both the Argentine and the German this summer. He scored six goals at the 2018 World Cup, including two in the final. He netted eight in 2022, headlined by a hat-trick in that finale. It could be argued that, even at just 27 years old, Mbappe could solidify his legacy as the World Cup's best-ever player in this upcoming tournament.
Leapfrogging Messi to surpass Klose would do the trick, cementing Mbappe's place in history while he still has so much gas in the tank.
Lamine Yamal has been truly excellent for Barcelona this year. Many have compared him to Lionel Messi, but he is perhaps more like Neymar - all tricks, flicks, and spins. If he isn't the best player in the world, he is certainly in the top three.
But there is also an immense danger of fatigue for young players. Yamal has been playing top-level football for Barcelona for two-plus years now. He is, no doubt, the go-to guy for the Blaugrana. That comes with fatigue and injury. No attacker has played more minutes for Barca in La Liga. Extrapolate it to all competitions, and things look more concerning. It is March, and he has logged nearly 3,000 minutes this season.
In short, exhaustion could be on the way. If Barca stay alive in the Champions League and push for La Liga glory, the Spaniard could show up to the World Cup having already played 60 games. Tired legs and the American sun? Lamine's first World Cup might not be the spectacle so many are hoping for.
Iran are due to play group-stage games in Los Angeles and Seattle at the World Cup, which is also being held in Canada and Mexico.
Sports correspondent
@RobHarris
Tuesday 3 March 2026 14:00, UK
The American World Cup co-hosts are "very supportive" of Iran playing at the tournament, the boss of US Soccer has told Sky News.
Iran's participation has been thrown into doubt since the US-Israeli military action was launched on Saturday, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
And Iranian football federation president Mehdi Taj was reported to have said that "we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope" after the attacks, without announcing a boycott.
Iran latest: Follow live updates
US Soccer CEO JT Batson told Sky News: "FIFA president Gianni Infantino shared over the weekend the intention of a safe and secure World Cup where all teams are participating. And we're certainly very supportive of that."
Donald Trump's travel ban already impacts the ability of Iranian fans to travel to the US, but teams are due to be given exemptions to participate.
Iran are due to play group-stage games in Los Angeles and Seattle at the World Cup, which is also being held in Canada and Mexico.
Asked about potentially playing later in the tournament, Mr Batson said: "We played Iran a number of times in the World Cup and just like any other team of the 47 other teams we could play in the World Cup, our goal would be to win. And so we look forward to doing just that."
FIFA is monitoring the situation and remains hopeful that all qualified teams can still be part of the tournament.
Mr Infantino told Sky News: "I hope so much it will be a moment of peace, I hope we can contribute to unite a little bit the world. I think the world really, really, needs it."
The US could also benefit from football bringing the country together in a politically-charged environment as it stages the men's World Cup for the first time since 1994.
"Our team wants to win and so that's what they're focused on," Mr Batson said. "And they want to have as many Americans who can support them and get behind them and rally behind them.
"Our players, of course, are human. And we all have our own beliefs and we all have our things that we care about. But at their core, they want to win. That's why they're here. And they want to represent US soccer with pride. They want to inspire the next generation."
Read more from Sky News:Iran may be tempted into fearful final salvoInternet shutdown leaves Iranians without voice
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Overseeing the US team is former Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino, but he is constantly linked with a move back to the Premier League - particularly Spurs for next season.
Asked about any approaches for the Argentine, Mr Batson said he is "fully focused" on the task of trying to win a first men's World Cup for the Americans.
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"We knew when we hired Mauricio that he was a coach who was in demand and for good reason," he said.
"And so he was in demand when we hired him and he's still in demand now and he'll be in demand years to come and now having worked with them, I fully understand why."
Rose Lavelle is feeling good, which is a very welcome feeling for the 30-year-old midfielder. After missing the first half of last season while recovering from an ankle surgery, Lavelle is recovered, rested, and ready to take on a big year for both club and country.
For Gotham FC, she has already helped lead her team to a third place finish in the inaugural FIFA Women's Champions Cup tournament, which came just months after scoring the only goal in the club's NWSL championship triumph. For the U.S women's national team, she'll don the stars and stripes for the 11th iteration of U.S. Soccer's SheBelieves Cup, the first set of international friendlies before World Cup qualifiers start at the end of the year.
“Last year was a reflective year for, going through my first surgery and then coming back and getting to play with a really, really good club like Gotham and getting back in with the national team,” Lavelle says. “It was a lot harder than I anticipated, and I will never take my health for granted.”
Although ankle surgery over a year ago marked the first surgery in her career, she has struggled with persistent injuries throughout her career. But now, for the first time in a long time, she starts the year healthy—something that will have a positive impact on her career for both Gotham FC and the national team.
“Last year was a little rough [with my ankle recovery], but I feel like I turned a corner and it's been feeling good,” Lavelle says.
Lavelle was on the bench for Sunday's 2–0 win against Argentina, and one can only assume that USWNT manager Emma Hayes is saving her for the next matchup against Canada on March 4. The final match against Colombia on March 7 will be a bit of a homecoming for Lavelle at Sports Illustrated Stadium, which is not only the home of Gotham FC but the place where Lavelle first made her USWNT debut at the 2017 SheBelieves Cup.
“It's always like fun whenever we've gotten to come and play at [Sports Illustrated Stadium], and it's even more special now that I play for Gotham and it's my home stadium,” Lavelle says. “Obviously, it's also somewhat of a full circle moment, knowing that's kind of where I kicked off my national team career. It's kind of crazy because I obviously would have never suspected then that I would later be playing club in that stadium.”
In 2017, the state of the National Women's Soccer League was quite different. Gotham FC, then Sky Blue FC, played at Rutgers University's Yurcak Field with a capacity of only 5,000. Just a couple years later, when Lavelle played for the Washington Spirit, the away game against Sky Blue that year fell right after she returned from winning the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in front of record crowds.
Rose Lavelle having the final say in 2019. 💫@USWNT | #FIFAWWC pic.twitter.com/HlvoATukbG
“I think it was the first game post-2019 World Cup that was against Sky Blue at Rutgers, and it was so crazy, just the disparity of going from playing in Paris, in front of like sold-out crowds, to a stadium that fits only 5,000,” she says. “It's really cool to see how this club and women's soccer as a whole has evolved.”
Today, Lavelle sees a radically different landscape for women's soccer in the United States and around the world. From her first pro year playing at a college facility to now sold-out arenas with tens of thousands of fans, it's been nearly a decade but feels like a blink of an eye. Although she is humble about her own involvement in that evolution, Lavelle credits her teammates and peers, and those that came before her, for paving the way for this exponential growth.
“I feel really lucky to have gotten to be ushered in during a time when there were those trailblazers and people pushing the game forward,” Lavelle says of many of her former teammates, including players like Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and Becky Sauerbrunn. “There are always trailblazers [in every generation], but I feel so grateful for the veterans I had at that time because I had such great leaders and role models to look up to, to help show me what it's like and what it means to be a veteran —not just for Gotham or for the national team, but within the sport.”
Lavelle takes seriously her role as a veteran. Although it still baffles her how quickly the time has passed, she is ready, hungry to compete and looking forward to a strong season for both club and country in what she considers to be an extremely exciting time for soccer in the United States.
“It's been such a long journey to get here, and definitely something like, I don't take lightly—I have huge shoes to fill and I hope I can do them justice,” Lavelle says. “I hope I can help usher in this new generation of young, really, really talented, incredible players coming up. I feel so lucky to have gotten to be a young player with the veteran group that I got to learn from, and now I feel so lucky to be a veteran with the younger group that's coming up.”
Jenna Tonelli is a writer for Sports Illustrated Soccer. She is passionate about women's soccer, particularly the NWSL, USWNT, and the Italian women's national team. When not thinking about soccer, Jenna can be found drinking iced coffee and rooting for the Buffalo Bills.
© 2026 ABG-SI LLC - SPORTS ILLUSTRATED IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ABG-SI LLC. - All Rights Reserved. The content on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Betting and gambling content is intended for individuals 21+ and is based on individual commentators' opinions and not that of Sports Illustrated or its affiliates, licensees and related brands. All picks and predictions are suggestions only and not a guarantee of success or profit. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER.
Former Liverpool defender Glen Johnson believes Wrexham could be a viable destination for Andy Robertson if the Scotland captain leaves Anfield this summer. With the Red Dragons continuing their meteoric rise under Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, the potential addition of a Champions League winner is seen as the ultimate statement of intent for the ambitious Welsh club.
Wrexham's ambitious project under Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac has seen them linked with several high-profile names, but the latest suggestion is perhaps the most audacious yet. Former Liverpool and England full-back Johnson has tipped the North Welsh side to potentially move for Robertson, should the Scotsman ever look for a new challenge away from Merseyside.
The suggestion comes as Robertson enters the latter stages of a glittering career at Anfield, where he has won every major trophy available. While the left-back remains a vital part of the Liverpool setup for now, there is little sign of his contract being extended, and the "Hollywood" pull of Wrexham and their rapid ascent through the English football pyramid has made the Racecourse Ground an intriguing destination for veteran stars seeking a unique project.
Johnson believes that despite the drop in stature, the vision sold by the Wrexham owners could be enough to tempt a player of Robertson's calibre. Speaking to BOYLE Sports, who offer the latest football odds, the ex-Liverpool and Chelsea defender said: "Naturally, if Andy Robertson were to leave to go to a promoted club, it's technically a step back, but there aren't many steps forward from Liverpool. However, in terms of a newly promoted side that has a plan, you could understand why they'd want him for sure."
For Wrexham, the acquisition of a player like Robertson would represent more than just a tactical upgrade; it would be a transformational shift in the club's dressing room culture. Having navigated the pressures of title races and European finals, the 31-year-old would provide the leadership necessary to help the Red Dragons consolidate their position in the higher tiers of English football.
The presence of a serial winner would be invaluable for the younger players at the club who are adjusting to the increased scrutiny and physical demands of professional football. Johnson emphasized that the psychological boost of having a decorated veteran could be the difference-maker for a club with Wrexham's trajectory.
"Thinking about his experience, trophies, age, helping the youngsters around him, and giving the dressing room a boost, having a Champions League winner in the dressing room, especially when they might be in the Premier League for the first time in God knows how long. You can see how that would absolutely give them a lift.," Johnson added. This brand of leadership is exactly what the Wrexham hierarchy has sought in previous signings like Ben Foster and Steven Fletcher.
The discussion regarding Robertson's next move hinges largely on his personal motivations after nearly a decade of elite-level competition, especially with his contract at Anfield expiring this summer. Johnson admits that while the sporting project at a club like Wrexham or even Coventry City is enticing, the lure of a more relaxed lifestyle abroad might ultimately prove more appealing for the defender.
"Whether he has the desire for that kind of challenge is something we'd have to ask him," Johnson explained. "He might want to go and play in the sun somewhere for the last few years instead."
The former Reds defender suggested that the decision rests solely on whether Robertson still has the hunger for the "nitty-gritty" of a promotion battle or a survival scrap. While a move to a European league with a slower pace could extend his playing days, the unique narrative surrounding Wrexham offers a different kind of prestige that few clubs can match.
Ultimately, Johnson remains convinced that the interest from such clubs is entirely logical given what Robertson brings to the table. "Yes, you can see why a team like Coventry or Wrexham would want him," he concluded.
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For now, Robertson remains focused on his role with Liverpool as they continue their push for a Champions League spot. Their next Premier League match is a trip to Wolves. Meanwhile, Wrexham continue their promotion push as they look to move one step closer to their dream of playing in the Premier League. Phil Parkinson's side are currently preparing for their FA Cup fifth-round clash against Chelsea on Saturday, which comes three days before their next Championship game against Hull City.
Kylian Mbappe has seen his “longevity” questioned, with doubts cast over whether the Real Madrid and France superstar can emulate certain achievements of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Jeremie Aliadiere is a big fan of his fellow countryman, but has told GOAL why chasing down the target of 100 international goals may prove difficult for the most fearsome of forwards.
Mbappe has found the target on 55 occasions for his country through 94 appearances. He is just two efforts adrift of Olivier Giroud's all-time record for Les Bleus, with history expected to be made there at some point in the not too distant future.
Said bar will then be raised to a height that few can ever dream of reaching, but will three figures be reached? All-time greats Messi and Ronaldo have passed that milestone with Argentina and Portugal respectively and are showing no sign of slowing down as they prepare to grace another World Cup.
Mbappe will, fitness permitting, be at this summer's tournament in North America - having graced the last two finals, emerging triumphant in 2018 and netting a hat-trick against Argentina in 2022 - and remains a talismanic presence for France.
Quizzed on whether Mbappe is capable of reaching 100 goals, ex-Arsenal and Lorient striker Aliadiere - speaking in association with 7bet UK casino - told GOAL: “No doubt. If he keeps fit, he's the best player for me. We've seen in France, he's just incredible. The goals, it's not just the goals, it's individually what he can do and achieve.
“The only thing I would say, because he started playing when he was so young, would he be able to have the longevity that Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi had? Would he be able to still perform and play at 35 years old at the top level? Obviously, we know the game physically is very, very demanding and it's maybe getting harder and harder. Even if you've got the science behind the game, it's helping players more in terms of recovery and all the gadgets and all the doctors and all the stuff that you've got these days to help.
“But yeah, for me, he's unreal. He's an incredible player. The best I've seen for a long time. But could he get there? 45 to go to the 100, he's still got a long way to go. He's got to carry on performing.
“So far, he's been very, very consistent in his career and in his game. But I can't see him not going to the numbers because he's playing for one of the best clubs in the world. He keeps scoring goals and he keeps performing. He gets looked after. He gets all the best treatment. So, yeah, I think he will. It'll be interesting to see the World Cup this summer. If he can take us to the win again, that'd be good.”
Ex-Arsenal, Chelsea and AC Milan striker Giroud has made peace with the fact that his goal tally will be bettered by Mbappe, with the veteran forward hoping that an illustrious countryman can go on to form part of an exclusive club.
The 39-year-old, who is back in his homeland with Lille following a brief stint at LAFC in MLS, has said of Mbappe: “Of course, he'll beat me. He has at least another five, seven, or even more years in the France national team. I hope that he even reaches 100 goals.”
Mbappe has stopped short of setting any targets, with collective success more important to him than individual accolades. The 27-year-old has said: “I'm not breaking any taboo by saying I can score against anyone. But the most important thing is to win and help the team. The record will come naturally, when it happens, I'll be happy and move on.”
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Mbappe is nursing a knee injury at present which is ruling him out of action with Real Madrid. No return date has been pencilled in as yet, with the Blancos counting down the days to a Champions League last-16 tie with Manchester City while France begin to ready themselves for friendly dates with Brazil and Colombia.
Liverpool's future defensive plans have hit a significant roadblock as January signing Jeremy Jacquet has been effectively ruled out for the remainder of the campaign. The 20-year-old Frenchman, who will complete a £60 million ($80m) move to Anfield this summer, is set to undergo surgery on a serious shoulder injury sustained while playing for Ligue 1 side Rennes.
The injury occurred during Rennes' 3-1 defeat to Lens, a match that proved devastating for the young centre-back. Jacquet was forced to leave the pitch in visible distress after a challenge left him clutching his shoulder in significant pain. Following extensive medical evaluations and consultations with specialists, the worst fears of the medical staff have been confirmed.
The 20-year-old, who Anfield officials fought off stiff competition from Chelsea to sign, must now undergo a surgical intervention that all but ends his 2025-26 campaign. It is a bitter blow for a player who was just beginning to finalise his preparations for a dream move to the Premier League.
Rennes released an official statement regarding the defender's condition, which reads: “Jeremy Jacquet is set to undergo surgery. On the pitch against Lens on February 7th, Jeremy Jacquet was forced to leave the game early due to a left shoulder injury. Following medical examinations, surgery has been scheduled in the coming days. Stade Rennais F.C. wishes him a speedy recovery.”
Liverpool supporters had been eagerly tracking Jacquet's progress in France, viewing the youngster as a pivotal component of the club's long-term defensive evolution. While the surgery is expected to address the issue successfully, the lengthy recovery period means the Frenchman will arrive on Merseyside this summer having missed several months of competitive action.
This puts a significant emphasis on his upcoming pre-season fitness programme, as he will need to play catch-up to integrate with his new team-mates. The Reds committed a staggering £60m to secure his signature, a fee that makes him Rennes' most expensive departure in history, surpassing the £55.5m Manchester City paid for Jeremy Doku in 2023. Despite the setback, Liverpool remain fully committed to the 20-year-old and will monitor his rehabilitation.
Before Liverpool struck a deal to bring Jacquet to England, the defender was the subject of intense interest from Stamford Bridge. Chelsea were widely believed to be the favourites to sign the promising youngster during the winter window as they looked to bolster their own defensive ranks. However, the Blues eventually baulked at the French side's asking price and refused to meet it, allowing Liverpool to swoop in and complete the transfer.
In the wake of their decision to pull out of the race for Jacquet, Chelsea opted to trust their internal depth and existing recruitment strategy rather than overspend on the Rennes man. Meanwhile, Jacquet is seen as a long-term addition to Liverpool's backline, currently led by Virgil van Dijk. While his arrival is considered a significant step in maintaining the Reds' defensive rotation standards, he must first overcome a physical hurdle before he can compete for a starting spot.
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Jacquet's immediate future involves a period of post-operative rest followed by a rigorous rehabilitation program in France. Liverpool medical staff will be providing oversight to ensure he is ready for the rigours of English football by the time the 2026-27 season kicks off. The goal is to have the defender fit enough to join the squad for the start of their summer tour.
Christian Pulisic and Chris Richards won't replace Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson in the American sports conversation.
But if the United States Men's National Team makes a serious run in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, what should be the biggest sporting event in world history will become a pivotal breakthrough for soccer (best known as football) in the USA.
Now that Super Bowl LX is finished, it's time to move on to the real games.
An overwhelming 104 matches from June 11 through July 19 across America, Mexico and Canada, with England, France, Spain, Brazil, USMNT and 48 total teams battling for a trophy last raised by Lionel Messi and Argentina.
"It will be a fantastic event. It will be 104 Super Bowls in one month,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino exclusively told talkSPORT's Will Gavin before Super Bowl LX.
"The world will stand still and observe the biggest global event that humanity has ever seen."
That sounds amazing.
"Huge," as the old GIF of current US President Donald Trump always says.
But true success will be defined by incredible competition, passion, pride, and fan and player safety from Mexico City and Toronto to Miami and Seattle.
True success for the 'biggest global event that humanity has ever seen' will also make a recent social media debate look incredibly silly.
What is bigger: The Super Bowl or the World Cup?
Simple math and common sense prove how absurd that question is.
The previous Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles set an American TV record with an average of 127.7 million viewers.
The 2022 World Cup Final that matched Messi and Argentina vs Kylian Mbappé and France in an all-time classic was viewed by almost 1.5 billion across the globe.
Debating the NFL versus the Premier League only has one ultimate answer.
As athletically magnificent as The Prem is, money rules all in our modern sports world -- just ask FIFA and Infantino -- and the National Football League financially obliterates the top level of the English football pyramid.
The NFL raked in $23 billion in 2024, while the Premier League's revenue is in the $10bn range.
International expansion and Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime takeover are just the beginning of where the NFL hopes to be in a decade.
Ranking the top 10......
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Tight ends of all-time - How does Travis Kelce compare?
The NFL will play nine games outside of America in 2026, and the master plan is for an 18th international game.
"The NFL and the Super Bowl are fantastic in terms of organization, in terms of entertainment, what they present, what they do for the people," Infantino told talkSPORT, discussing what FIFA can learn from the NFL's biggest annual game.
"I mean, everyone is enjoying being here. It's not just the event, it's not just the match itself, but everything that goes around it. This whole entertainment part is really fascinating to me."
The recent Club World Cup -- which featured Trump trying to share the stage with Chelsea -- hinted at the ongoing evolution of the once-every-four-years World Cup.
The recent breakout of a USA and Israel war vs Iran highlights the tension that could shadow the 2026 World Cup, making the Super Bowl's recent Bad Bunny controversy appear childish.
But when it comes to comparing professional American football vs international football, there is no comparison.
One Super Bowl inside AT&T Stadium would be huge for Jerry Jones and the cities of Arlington and Dallas.
The Dallas-area is set to host nine World Cup matches, including a 2026 semifinal contest, while Houston is preparing for seven World Cup matches of its own.
"Obviously winning the World Cup would be a dream of mine. And what better time to do it on home soil?" Crystal Palace's Chris Richards, who began his youth soccer career in Dallas and Houston, exclusively told talkSPORT.
"I can't even begin to describe what it's going to be like. I'm just super excited for the moment."
AT&T Stadium has a capacity of 94,000, according to FIFA, and became Netflix famous by hosting last year's Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson debacle.
The Houston Texans' NRG Stadium, which is only 265 miles away from Jerry World, holds a capacity of 72,000.
That means more than 1 million international football supporters could watch 16 Texas-based matches in person -- and that doesn't count the other 88 World Cup matches spread across three geographically connected countries.
Super Bowl LX recorded a crowd of 70,823 as Sam Darnold's Seattle Seahawks dominated Drake Maye's New England Patriots 29-13 before celebrities that included Lewis Hamilton, Kim Kardashian, Kendall Jenner, Jay-Z, Travis Kelce, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Pedro Pascal, Jon Hamm, Adam Sandler, Jamie Foxx, Chris Pratt and a booed Logan Paul.
That sounds absolutely massive, until the Super Bowl is compared to the one sporting event in the world it can't touch -- the World Cup.
It's a monumental task for the USA, Mexico, Canada, NFL stadiums and FIFA to successfully pull off.
From 'Ted Lasso' to 6 am Premier League watch parties, the United States has been preparing for another World Cup for more than three decades.
"When you think about the last World Cup that was played in the US, it birthed the MLS," Richards said.
"Maybe it's the reason why my dad allowed me to pick up a soccer ball or why my mom allowed me to pick up a soccer ball when I was younger."
If the 2026 World Cup is remembered for all of the unity and passion it created -- instead of war, politics or a money grab -- cramming 104 Super Bowls into one month will forever change how soccer is viewed in the United States and beyond.
Stay up to date with the latest from the NFL across all platforms - follow our dedicated talkSPORT USA Facebook page and subscribe to our talkSPORT USA YouTube channel for all the news, exclusives, interviews and more.
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Sports Memorabilia and Collectibles
In November 2025, two of Estêvão's cards sold for six figures each, setting new highs. Courtesy of Fanatics Collectibles
LONDON — Former Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey and current Crystal Palace midfielder Adam Wharton surprised fans at the Fanatics Collectibles shop during last week's Topps Hobby Rip Night event, but they didn't draw the biggest scream from the crowd. Instead, it was for an autographed Estêvão card numbered to just 10 in existence that was pulled from a pack of trading cards in the store.
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As collectors attempt to predict which young talents will be launched to a new level of superstardom by this summer's World Cup, the 18-year-old Brazilian seems to be at the forefront for many.
“Everyone is chasing Estêvão this year,” Rip Night attendee Jake C. from Stratford, London, said. “From what I've seen of him at Chelsea so far, he does look to be living up to the hype.”
Wrappers from 2026 Topps Premier League Chrome, which includes the Chelsea winger's first on-card autographs, covered the tables as packs were opened by collectors during the annual event. The rising interest in Estêvão cards has started to push their values higher, as well. In November, two of his cards sold for six figures each, setting new highs. His 2023-24 Panini Select FIFA Mezzanine Black Prizm 1/1 sold for $120,000, and his 2023-24 Panini Select FIFA Field Level Black 1/1 sold for $100K. Those prices put him in the same territory as Spain and Barcelona's Lamine Yamal, another teenage sensation whom collectors started targeting in big numbers last year.
(Ramsey offered up another name when asked who he thinks could shine this summer, though: “Harry Wilson has been on absolute fire this year. I'm sure when Wales qualify, he'll have a big say in the World Cup, especially the way that we play suits him, and he's flourishing, so (I) back him.”)
Chelsea progressed to the last 16 of the Champions League knockout phase thanks to Estêvão's performances, which saw him join Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland as just the third teenager to score in each of his first three Champions League starts, further fueling the hype ahead of the World Cup. The teenager has a shot at winning two major trophies before linking up this summer with Brazil, which is among the favorites to win in the U.S. Though World Cup-specific card sets are still to come, here are some key Estêvão cards you can target so far:
Estêvão's most valuable trading card won't be from anything released this year. You'll need to go back to his professional debut for Palmeiras in 2023, the season in which Panini released his first rookie cards. Panini's Select sets feature a unique tiered base-card set with varying degrees of rarity (Terrace, Mezzanine and Field Level). The Mezzanini base card in the highest grade (PSA 10) sells for over $200, and there are 22 parallels in different colors and rarities to collect. This is his true rookie card and the one to get behind for the long run.
Panini's Kaboom! inserts have become arguably the most popular in the hobby. Estêvão's first design from the iconic case hit (meaning they usually only appear one per case of boxes of cards) is a collectible that will only rise with him. They are super rare, with only six cards recorded with a Gem-Mint PSA 10 grade to date. The last ungraded sale was $1,500, and when you consider Yamal's Kaboom! sells for $6,500, this could prove a good buy if Brazil lifts the World Cup trophy in New York (er, New Jersey).
Another case hit card from the same Panini set is even rarer, with just a handful of sales tracked since release. Color blasts are highly collectible designs, and being Estêvão's first ever, this one should hold value over time.
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Topps commemorated several of Estêvão's best moments after he joined Chelsea with its individually sold, print-to-order Topps Now cards. Most notable are his Premier League debut, first league goal and first goal in the Champions League. All of these cards have similar values, but the most eye-catching design has to be the one for his first Premier League goal, especially in the more limited parallels, where a gold foil sells for upwards of $500.
When Topps acquired the trading cards rights for the Premier League, the first traditional release was its flagship “paper” product (thinner cardstock than the shinier Chrome sets), which features Estêvão's Chelsea rookie. The graded population of these is still low, with only three graded a PSA 10 and a 33 percent gem rate (meaning one-third of cards submitted have achieved the highest grade). So it's no surprise that they sell for $175, which might make them worthwhile buying ungraded for $1 to $5.
One thing to note about all these Topps cards for Estêvão's first season with Chelsea is that they bear the rookie card “RC” branding, despite not being his true rookie cards (again, that title belongs to the 2023 Panini Select cards). Just because a player changes leagues doesn't mean they're a rookie all over again, but a player's first Topps cards can retain special value, dating back to the famous 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card, which followed his lesser-known 1951 Bowman rookie card.
This year's Chrome release brought the Brazilian's first on-card autographs for collectors to chase. You can only find them in the black parallels numbered to 10, red parallels numbered to 5 and the one-of-one Superfractor. Trading cards signed in person will have the highest price (as opposed to cards that have an autographed sticker affixed to them) but will also hold the greatest value in the future if the 18-year-old goes on to win silverware.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence in all our coverage. When you click or make purchases through our links, we may earn a commission.
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Andy Mackie contributes to The Athletic's sports collectibles coverage across the trading card hobby. You can find him on Instagram at @collectcardsuk. Follow Andrew on Twitter @ndymack
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From living legends to rising youngsters to non-stop goal machines. The 2026 FIFA World Cup is often defined by incredible individual performances, and we shouldn't expect this summer to be any different.
The 48-team World Cup will feature plenty of stars, and many more will emerge. But these are 10 players who we expect to take top billing.
The World Cup will run from June 11–July 19, 2026. Spread across three countries, the tournament will culminate with the final on July 19 at New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. All 104 tournament matches will air live across FOX (70) and FS1 (34) with every match streaming live and on-demand within both the FOX One and the FOX Sports apps. A record 40 matches, more than one-third of the tournament, will air in prime time across FOX (21) and FS1 (19).
[WHEN AND WHERE: Full Schedule for 2026 FIFA World Cup]Lamine Yamal, Forward, SpainAge: 18Club: Barcelona
(Photo by Visionhaus/Getty Images)
Out of all the stars that will light up soccer's grandest stage this summer, perhaps there's no more intriguing or exciting player than the 18-year-old Spanish winger. It's Yamal's first World Cup (of many more to come) and he has a chance to score a lot of goals and help La Roja win it all. — Laken Litman
Cristiano Ronaldo, Striker, PortugalAge: 41Club: Al-Nassr FC
(Photo by Mikolaj Barbanell/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
This has to be Ronaldo's last World Cup, right? We thought maybe the 2022 tournament in Qatar would be, but then he walked off the field in tears following Portugal's quarterfinal loss to Morocco. So here we are: the 41-year-old superstar forward has already won everything he possibly can in this sport, except a World Cup trophy, and that's his goal this summer. — Litman
Kylian Mbappé, Striker, FranceAge: 27Club: Real Madrid
(Photo by Ibrahim Ezzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images).
Mbappé scored a hat trick in the 2022 World Cup final and France still lost to Leo Messi and Argentina in the most epic finish. Mbappé already has a World Cup trophy, winning it all in 2018, but Les Bleus' captain is hungry and motivated for another. — Litman
Ousmane Dembélé, Forward, FranceAge: 28Club: Paris Saint-Germain
(Photo by Mateusz Slodkowski/Getty Images)
2025 was a big year for Dembélé. The 28-year-old forward won a Champions League title with PSG and then took home the Ballon d'Or as the world's best player. While he has a World Cup trophy on his resume (2018), like Mbappe, he wants another after coming so close four years ago in Qatar. — Litman
Erling Haaland, Striker, NorwayAge: 25Club: Manchester City
(Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP via Getty Images)
Despite his goal-scoring prowess and overall domination in the Premier League, we've never seen Haaland in an environment like the one he'll be in this summer. The 2026 World Cup will not only be Haaland's debut World Cup, but his first-ever major tournament. How far he'll take Norway will be one of the more interesting storylines to follow. — Litman
Lionel Messi, Forward, ArgentinaAge: 38Club: Inter Miami CF
(Photo by Marcelo Endelli/Getty Images)
The GOAT hasn't yet confirmed that he'll lead Argentina's World Cup title defense in the country he now plays his club soccer, but let's be real: Although he'll turn 39 three days before the Albicleleste's group stage finale against Jordan in Arlington, Texas, Messi will be there. Barring serious injury, there's no way the living legend won't try to repeat as champs – something no team has done since Pele's Brazil in 1962. — Doug McIntyre
Harry Kane, Striker, EnglandAge: 32 Club: Bayern Munich
(Photo by Eddie Keogh - The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
England's all-time top scorer led the 2018 World Cup in goals despite England's semifinal elimination to Croatia. In 2022, the Three Lions captain missed a late penalty kick in the quarterfinals against France, ensuring that the country that invented the sport's long World Cup drought would continue for at least another four years. Can Kane, now 32, finally help England's men win their first major title since 1966 this summer? — McIntyre
Christian Pulisic, Forward/Winger, USAAge: 27Club: AC Milan
(Photo by David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Already considered the most gifted attacking player the U.S. has ever produced, Pulisic's legacy will depend largely on how he performs at this World Cup on home soil this summer. At 27, the AC Milan star is just now entering his prime. He already has one tournament under his belt; in 2022, Pulisic scored the goal that beat Iran and sent the Americans to the round of 16. If the Americans are to last a little longer this summer, Puisic must lead the way. — McIntyre
Vinícius Júnior, Forward, BrazilAge: 25Club: Real Madrid
(Photo by Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
With Neymar Jr. having just come back from injury and no lock to make Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti's squad, the polarizing Real Madrid star will be the face of the Seleção at this World Cup. Vini is more than capable of manning the role; the pacy winger remains one of the most electrifying forwards on Earth. — McIntyre
Alphonso Davies, Fullback/Winger, CanadaAge: 25Club: Bayern Munich
(Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
Still just 25, the best player in Canadian history will lead the co-hosts' effort this summer. Davies is a legit star. The Vancouver Whitecaps product made FIFA's year-ending Best XI as a teenager in 2020. He's won the Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup and five Bundesliga titles, and he scored Les Rouges' first ever World Cup goal at Qatar 2022. He'll be looking for another first in Toronto and Vancouver this summer: Canada's maiden World Cup win. — McIntyre
Toni Nadal, Samuel Lopez and Frederic Fontang headline a distinguished group of ATP coaches set to feature at the sixth edition of the World Tennis Conference, taking place from 26–29 March.
The four-day online event will include 66 main speakers and signals the start of a new five-year cycle for the WTC, which continues its mission of building a bridge between leading coaches, scientists, innovators and decision-makers across the sport.
Developed by the Global Professional Tennis Coach Association and the Segal Institute, and supported by the ATP Tour, the conference brings together some of the most respected voices shaping the modern professional game. The speaker list reflects both elite-level success and a broad range of expertise from across the performance pathway.
Sign up on the official World Tennis Conference website: "Dream big. Coach better."
Nadal, one of the most accomplished mentors in tennis history, will be joined by Lopez, who coaches Carlos Alcaraz, the No. 1 player in the PIF ATP Rankings. Fontang, the coach of Felix Auger-Aliassime, is also set to present, along with Gilles Cervara, former coach of Daniil Medvedev. Collectively, their experience spans Grand Slam titles, ATP Tour triumphs and the day-to-day demands of guiding players through the challenges of the global circuit.
You May Also Like: 'Architect' of champions: Frederic Fontang's blueprint for success
Structured as a fully virtual conference, WTC6 will unfold across four themed days, with registered attendees receiving unlimited access to every presentation for 60 days. The opening day centres on the high-performance mindset required on the ATP Tour, exploring the psychological and competitive foundations of sustained excellence. Day two shifts to methodology, tennis analytics, biomechanics and tactical and technical coaching principles that underpin modern player development.
The third day will examine the application of sports science to high performance, integrating strength and conditioning, recovery strategies, injury prevention and load management into elite programmes. The conference concludes with a focus on human development and innovation within high-performance projects, reinforcing WTC6's core “Person First” philosophy — an approach that prioritises character, education and long-term personal growth as essential pillars of competitive success.
Other notable speakers include Marc Rosset, Brian Teacher, Claudio Pistolesi, Anton Dubrov, Liam Smith, Louis Cayer, Dominik Hrbaty and Alberto Castellani, with additional speakers to be announced in the lead-up to the event.
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The outbreak of conflict involving Israel and Iran has grounded UAE flights, while Holger Rune is stuck in Doha, Qatar.ByStephanie LivaudaisPublished Mar 03, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 03, 2026
© Getty Images (composite)
A number of ATP players, including Daniil Medvedev and Andrey Rublev—as well as their coaches, tour staff and tournament personnel—remain stranded in the United Arab Emirates following the conclusion of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, in the latest instance of geopolitical conflict colliding with the global tennis tour.According to MARCA, 41 people involved with the tournament are still unable to leave amid airspace closures across the Middle East following the outbreak of war in the region between the U.S., Israel and Iran—now in its third day, with over 500 casualties reported by the Red Crescent.Reem Abulleil, journalist for The National, provided further details. Among those stuck in Dubai are champion Medvedev and runner-up Tallon Griekspoor (who didn't play their final due to the Dutch player's injury, though both took part in the trophy ceremony on Saturday), as well as all the doubles finalists: champions Harri Heliovaara and Henry Patten; runners-up Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic; and semifinalist Rublev.Read More: Daniil Medvedev wins Dubai title after injured Tallon Griekspoor pulls out of final“No one knows when we will be able to take off,” Medvedev told Bolshe! on Sunday. “That is, it's not clear whether (airspace closures) will last long or not. Therefore we are just waiting to see, let's say, what will happen in the next hours and days.”Officials, tennis journalists and the tournament stenographer are also stuck in Dubai.
According to MARCA, 41 people involved with the tournament are still unable to leave amid airspace closures across the Middle East following the outbreak of war in the region between the U.S., Israel and Iran—now in its third day, with over 500 casualties reported by the Red Crescent.Reem Abulleil, journalist for The National, provided further details. Among those stuck in Dubai are champion Medvedev and runner-up Tallon Griekspoor (who didn't play their final due to the Dutch player's injury, though both took part in the trophy ceremony on Saturday), as well as all the doubles finalists: champions Harri Heliovaara and Henry Patten; runners-up Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic; and semifinalist Rublev.Read More: Daniil Medvedev wins Dubai title after injured Tallon Griekspoor pulls out of final“No one knows when we will be able to take off,” Medvedev told Bolshe! on Sunday. “That is, it's not clear whether (airspace closures) will last long or not. Therefore we are just waiting to see, let's say, what will happen in the next hours and days.”Officials, tennis journalists and the tournament stenographer are also stuck in Dubai.
Reem Abulleil, journalist for The National, provided further details. Among those stuck in Dubai are champion Medvedev and runner-up Tallon Griekspoor (who didn't play their final due to the Dutch player's injury, though both took part in the trophy ceremony on Saturday), as well as all the doubles finalists: champions Harri Heliovaara and Henry Patten; runners-up Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic; and semifinalist Rublev.Read More: Daniil Medvedev wins Dubai title after injured Tallon Griekspoor pulls out of final“No one knows when we will be able to take off,” Medvedev told Bolshe! on Sunday. “That is, it's not clear whether (airspace closures) will last long or not. Therefore we are just waiting to see, let's say, what will happen in the next hours and days.”Officials, tennis journalists and the tournament stenographer are also stuck in Dubai.
Read More: Daniil Medvedev wins Dubai title after injured Tallon Griekspoor pulls out of final“No one knows when we will be able to take off,” Medvedev told Bolshe! on Sunday. “That is, it's not clear whether (airspace closures) will last long or not. Therefore we are just waiting to see, let's say, what will happen in the next hours and days.”Officials, tennis journalists and the tournament stenographer are also stuck in Dubai.
“No one knows when we will be able to take off,” Medvedev told Bolshe! on Sunday. “That is, it's not clear whether (airspace closures) will last long or not. Therefore we are just waiting to see, let's say, what will happen in the next hours and days.”Officials, tennis journalists and the tournament stenographer are also stuck in Dubai.
Officials, tennis journalists and the tournament stenographer are also stuck in Dubai.
The ATP has issued the following statement on player safety in Dubai. pic.twitter.com/k3UwbAeO11
The ATP issued a statement on Monday addressing the situation for the first time.“The health, safety and wellbeing of our players, staff and tournament personnel is our priority. We can confirm that a small number of players and team members remain in Dubai following the conclusion of the recent ATP 500 event. They and their teams are being accommodated in the tournament's official hotels, where their immediate needs are being fully supported.The tour remains ‘in direct communication' with those affected, as well as with tournament organizers, security advisors and local officials.“At this stage, travel arrangements remain subject to ongoing assessment in line with airline operations and official guidance. We will continue to provide appropriate support to ensure players and their teams can safely depart when conditions allow.“We will continue to assess developments and provide updates as appropriate.”
“The health, safety and wellbeing of our players, staff and tournament personnel is our priority. We can confirm that a small number of players and team members remain in Dubai following the conclusion of the recent ATP 500 event. They and their teams are being accommodated in the tournament's official hotels, where their immediate needs are being fully supported.The tour remains ‘in direct communication' with those affected, as well as with tournament organizers, security advisors and local officials.“At this stage, travel arrangements remain subject to ongoing assessment in line with airline operations and official guidance. We will continue to provide appropriate support to ensure players and their teams can safely depart when conditions allow.“We will continue to assess developments and provide updates as appropriate.”
The tour remains ‘in direct communication' with those affected, as well as with tournament organizers, security advisors and local officials.“At this stage, travel arrangements remain subject to ongoing assessment in line with airline operations and official guidance. We will continue to provide appropriate support to ensure players and their teams can safely depart when conditions allow.“We will continue to assess developments and provide updates as appropriate.”
“At this stage, travel arrangements remain subject to ongoing assessment in line with airline operations and official guidance. We will continue to provide appropriate support to ensure players and their teams can safely depart when conditions allow.“We will continue to assess developments and provide updates as appropriate.”
“We will continue to assess developments and provide updates as appropriate.”
No one knows when we will be able to take off... we are just waiting to see what will happen in the next hours and days. Daniil Medvedev to Bolshe!
Other stranded players in the region include Holger Rune and his mother, Aneke Rune. The pair are stuck in Doha, where they have been based while the Dane recovers from an Achilles tendon injury at Aspetar Sports Medicine Hospital. He was spotted in the stands watching the ATP 500 tournament last week.“It's been a wild night. We didn't get much sleep,” Aneke told TV2 Sport. “It all seems more brutal at night with the fireballs in the sky and repeated bangs…”In an interview with BT, Aneke also slammed the Danish government for a lack of communication with its citizens: “We want to leave. But we have not yet received any news from Denmark. It's a disappointing situation.”
“It's been a wild night. We didn't get much sleep,” Aneke told TV2 Sport. “It all seems more brutal at night with the fireballs in the sky and repeated bangs…”In an interview with BT, Aneke also slammed the Danish government for a lack of communication with its citizens: “We want to leave. But we have not yet received any news from Denmark. It's a disappointing situation.”
In an interview with BT, Aneke also slammed the Danish government for a lack of communication with its citizens: “We want to leave. But we have not yet received any news from Denmark. It's a disappointing situation.”
In addition to the immediate safety concerns, the travel gridlock has left players at risk of missing the BNP Paribas Open—the first ATP Masters 1000 event of the year, which starts on March 4. Medvedev and Rublev were already withdrawn from Tuesday night's Eisenhower Cup, with Learner Tien now set to team up with Amanda Anisimova (replacing Rublev) and Alexander Bublik with Mirra Andreeva (replacing Medvedev) in the popular mixed doubles exhibition event.There have been several exit strategies discussed, according to MARCA, including a six-hour drive to Muscat, Oman (which has also been subject to airport closures and is currently closed) or a 10-hour drive to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where a private jet would take them to Istanbul, Turkey. However, players ultimately chose to stay put following an emergency meeting.Heliovaara explained their reasoning in his blog after they received a security briefing from the tournament supervisor, tour manager and the ATP's head of security.
There have been several exit strategies discussed, according to MARCA, including a six-hour drive to Muscat, Oman (which has also been subject to airport closures and is currently closed) or a 10-hour drive to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where a private jet would take them to Istanbul, Turkey. However, players ultimately chose to stay put following an emergency meeting.Heliovaara explained their reasoning in his blog after they received a security briefing from the tournament supervisor, tour manager and the ATP's head of security.
Heliovaara explained their reasoning in his blog after they received a security briefing from the tournament supervisor, tour manager and the ATP's head of security.
“The instructions from the ATP side have been very clear so far, the safest thing to do is to stay at the hotel and wait,” he wrote in Finnish.“According to the information we received, there are bad traffic jams at the border (to Oman), and in addition to that, arranging suitable transport is difficult, because a car with UAE plates is not allowed to drive into Oman without a permit, and you cannot cross the border on foot…“The journey to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia is over 10 hours and the road after the border is quite bad. So it's not an ideal route without proper preparations.”As of Monday, Dubai International Airport—the world's busiest international airport—had resumed limited operations, with a small number of flights departing. There has been no confirmation on whether players were able to leave, but it offers hope that their travel situation will improve.The airport is located adjacent to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships venue and near one of the official player hotels, the Creekside Hotel in Jumeirah—less than a five-minute drive away under normal conditions. The airport suffered damage overnight on Sunday as a result of Iranian retaliatory strikes, but is now back up and running.Elsewhere in the UAE, business continued as usual, with an ATP Challenger event in Fujairah proceeding as scheduled. Lloyd Harris and Jason Kubler are the top seeds, and Cruz Hewitt (son of Aussie champion Lleyton Hewitt) is among the wild cards. Fujairah is located 120 km from Dubai, about a 90-minute drive by car.
“According to the information we received, there are bad traffic jams at the border (to Oman), and in addition to that, arranging suitable transport is difficult, because a car with UAE plates is not allowed to drive into Oman without a permit, and you cannot cross the border on foot…“The journey to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia is over 10 hours and the road after the border is quite bad. So it's not an ideal route without proper preparations.”As of Monday, Dubai International Airport—the world's busiest international airport—had resumed limited operations, with a small number of flights departing. There has been no confirmation on whether players were able to leave, but it offers hope that their travel situation will improve.The airport is located adjacent to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships venue and near one of the official player hotels, the Creekside Hotel in Jumeirah—less than a five-minute drive away under normal conditions. The airport suffered damage overnight on Sunday as a result of Iranian retaliatory strikes, but is now back up and running.Elsewhere in the UAE, business continued as usual, with an ATP Challenger event in Fujairah proceeding as scheduled. Lloyd Harris and Jason Kubler are the top seeds, and Cruz Hewitt (son of Aussie champion Lleyton Hewitt) is among the wild cards. Fujairah is located 120 km from Dubai, about a 90-minute drive by car.
“The journey to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia is over 10 hours and the road after the border is quite bad. So it's not an ideal route without proper preparations.”As of Monday, Dubai International Airport—the world's busiest international airport—had resumed limited operations, with a small number of flights departing. There has been no confirmation on whether players were able to leave, but it offers hope that their travel situation will improve.The airport is located adjacent to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships venue and near one of the official player hotels, the Creekside Hotel in Jumeirah—less than a five-minute drive away under normal conditions. The airport suffered damage overnight on Sunday as a result of Iranian retaliatory strikes, but is now back up and running.Elsewhere in the UAE, business continued as usual, with an ATP Challenger event in Fujairah proceeding as scheduled. Lloyd Harris and Jason Kubler are the top seeds, and Cruz Hewitt (son of Aussie champion Lleyton Hewitt) is among the wild cards. Fujairah is located 120 km from Dubai, about a 90-minute drive by car.
As of Monday, Dubai International Airport—the world's busiest international airport—had resumed limited operations, with a small number of flights departing. There has been no confirmation on whether players were able to leave, but it offers hope that their travel situation will improve.The airport is located adjacent to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships venue and near one of the official player hotels, the Creekside Hotel in Jumeirah—less than a five-minute drive away under normal conditions. The airport suffered damage overnight on Sunday as a result of Iranian retaliatory strikes, but is now back up and running.Elsewhere in the UAE, business continued as usual, with an ATP Challenger event in Fujairah proceeding as scheduled. Lloyd Harris and Jason Kubler are the top seeds, and Cruz Hewitt (son of Aussie champion Lleyton Hewitt) is among the wild cards. Fujairah is located 120 km from Dubai, about a 90-minute drive by car.
The airport is located adjacent to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships venue and near one of the official player hotels, the Creekside Hotel in Jumeirah—less than a five-minute drive away under normal conditions. The airport suffered damage overnight on Sunday as a result of Iranian retaliatory strikes, but is now back up and running.Elsewhere in the UAE, business continued as usual, with an ATP Challenger event in Fujairah proceeding as scheduled. Lloyd Harris and Jason Kubler are the top seeds, and Cruz Hewitt (son of Aussie champion Lleyton Hewitt) is among the wild cards. Fujairah is located 120 km from Dubai, about a 90-minute drive by car.
Elsewhere in the UAE, business continued as usual, with an ATP Challenger event in Fujairah proceeding as scheduled. Lloyd Harris and Jason Kubler are the top seeds, and Cruz Hewitt (son of Aussie champion Lleyton Hewitt) is among the wild cards. Fujairah is located 120 km from Dubai, about a 90-minute drive by car.
We could see a rematch of the Australian Open final in the semis in Indian Wells, while No. 2 seed Jannik Sinner gets a projected quarterfinal vs. American hotshot Ben Shelton.ByDavid KanePublished Mar 03, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 03, 2026
The 2026 BNP Paribas Open men's draw is out and fans could see a rematch of the Australian Open final in the semis as No. 3 seed Novak Djokovic lands in the same half as world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz.🖥️📲 Stream all matches from the 2026 BNP Paribas Open on the Tennis Channel App!A 24-time Grand Slam champion, Djokovic has remained in pursuit of an all-time record-breaking 25th major trophy with a runner-up finish in Melbourne, but ran into an on-fire Alcaraz who is yet to lose a match in 2026.Alcaraz followed up his Australian Open victory, which made him the youngest man to complete the Career Grand Slam, with another title run in Doha, allowing him to arrive in Tennis Paradise in form and undefeated to start the year.
🖥️📲 Stream all matches from the 2026 BNP Paribas Open on the Tennis Channel App!A 24-time Grand Slam champion, Djokovic has remained in pursuit of an all-time record-breaking 25th major trophy with a runner-up finish in Melbourne, but ran into an on-fire Alcaraz who is yet to lose a match in 2026.Alcaraz followed up his Australian Open victory, which made him the youngest man to complete the Career Grand Slam, with another title run in Doha, allowing him to arrive in Tennis Paradise in form and undefeated to start the year.
A 24-time Grand Slam champion, Djokovic has remained in pursuit of an all-time record-breaking 25th major trophy with a runner-up finish in Melbourne, but ran into an on-fire Alcaraz who is yet to lose a match in 2026.Alcaraz followed up his Australian Open victory, which made him the youngest man to complete the Career Grand Slam, with another title run in Doha, allowing him to arrive in Tennis Paradise in form and undefeated to start the year.
Alcaraz followed up his Australian Open victory, which made him the youngest man to complete the Career Grand Slam, with another title run in Doha, allowing him to arrive in Tennis Paradise in form and undefeated to start the year.
The Spaniard gets an interesting road to another potential BNP Paribas Open title, with dynamic cousin duo Arthur Rinderknech and Valentin Vacherot both landing in his section of the draw alongside former world No. 2 Casper Ruud, who is his projected fourth-round opponent.Djokovic anchors the second quarter of the draw alongside top-ranked American Taylor Fritz, a former Indian Wells champion and the No. 7 seed at this year's event. Djokovic gets the popcorn fourth-round clash with defending champion Jack Draper, who has played only a handful of matches since last summer.
Djokovic anchors the second quarter of the draw alongside top-ranked American Taylor Fritz, a former Indian Wells champion and the No. 7 seed at this year's event. Djokovic gets the popcorn fourth-round clash with defending champion Jack Draper, who has played only a handful of matches since last summer.
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Seeded No. 14th, Draper enjoyed a breakthrough run in Tennis Paradise 12 months ago to win his first Masters 1000 title. He followed that up with a second Masters final at the Mutua Madrid Open two months later but an arm injury has halted his progress since then. Following a return to action at Davis Cup, Draper, who missed both last year's US Open and this year's Australian Open, played solid tennis at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, and will face even more pressure at the BNP Paribas Open.The bottom half of the draw sees No. 2 seed Jannik Sinner eager to reset the narrative on his 2026 season after surprising defeats in Melbourne and Doha. The former world No. 1 lost his Australian Open title to Djokovic in a five-set semifinal and suffered another upset to Jakub Mensik at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open last month.
The bottom half of the draw sees No. 2 seed Jannik Sinner eager to reset the narrative on his 2026 season after surprising defeats in Melbourne and Doha. The former world No. 1 lost his Australian Open title to Djokovic in a five-set semifinal and suffered another upset to Jakub Mensik at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open last month.
Sinner missed out on competing at the BNP Paribas Open in 2025 while serving a suspension stemming from a pair of positive tests for the banned substance Clostebol, and so can only gain points over the next few months—an ideal position given Alcaraz's 3000+ lead atop the ATP rankings.No. 8 seed Ben Shelton is Sinner's projected quarterfinal foe. The 23-year-old is looking to rebound from a quarterfinal defeat to Sinner at the Australian Open, one that increased Sinner's head-to-head lead to 0-1 vs. the American.Still, Shelton poved his mettle on the Masters 1000 level last summer when he won the National Bank Open in Toronto and is coming to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden fresh off a victory at the ATX Open in Dallas.Click here to view the full men's draw.
No. 8 seed Ben Shelton is Sinner's projected quarterfinal foe. The 23-year-old is looking to rebound from a quarterfinal defeat to Sinner at the Australian Open, one that increased Sinner's head-to-head lead to 0-1 vs. the American.Still, Shelton poved his mettle on the Masters 1000 level last summer when he won the National Bank Open in Toronto and is coming to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden fresh off a victory at the ATX Open in Dallas.Click here to view the full men's draw.
Still, Shelton poved his mettle on the Masters 1000 level last summer when he won the National Bank Open in Toronto and is coming to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden fresh off a victory at the ATX Open in Dallas.Click here to view the full men's draw.
Click here to view the full men's draw.
Carlos Alcaraz is chasing his third BNP Paribas Open title in Indian Wells. Read all about the World No. 1's results, records, statistics, and more, here.
Since making his Indian Wells debut in 2021, Alcaraz has tallied a 20-3 win-loss record at the tournament.
Alcaraz lifted the trophy at Indian Wells in 2023 and 2024.
Alcaraz lost 1-6, 6-0, 4-6 to Jack Draper in the Indian Wells semi-finals in 2025 (Read more).
Alcaraz has won two Indian Wells titles.
Alcaraz holds a 154-42 win-loss record on hard courts, according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index, for a winning percentage of 78.6 per cent. He ranks third among active players in winning percentage on hard courts.
You May Also Like: Alcaraz faces tricky opening test in Indian Wells, with Djokovic looming
Alcaraz begins his Indian Wells campaign against Terence Atmane or Grigor Dimitrov and could face Juan Manuel Cerundolo, Botic van de Zandschulp or Arthur Rinderknech in the third round. He will meet Novak Djokovic in the semi-finals if both reach that stage.
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Novak Djokovic has made the most of his time in California before the start of the BNP Paribas Open.
The man who has spent a record 428 weeks at No. 1 in the PIF ATP Rankings in his career took the time to spread his knowledge to the next generation, although in a different sport. Djokovic spoke to the UCLA football team before traveling to Indian Wells.
“It's [about] right now,” Djokovic told the group. “This is the time because 10 per cent of life happens to us and 90 per cent of life is how we react to what happens to us.”
The five-time Indian Wells champion also explained to the football players that he misses the team spirit as an individual athlete.
“Seeing you guys, how much you enjoy supporting each other, lifting each other up and bringing that spirit up,” Djokovic said. “It's only going to serve you as a team, you individually, [your] coach and the whole community and of course the college that you're a part of.”
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Djokovic, a longtime basketball fan, also took the time to sit courtside at a Los Angeles Lakers game, snapping a quick photo with LeBron James and Luka Doncic. During his post-game press conference, Doncic shared the highest praise for the ATP No. 1 Club member.
“For me he's the GOAT,” Doncic said. “For him being here watching me, it's just unbelievable.”
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Get official marketing communications from the ATP and WTA! We'll send you newsletters keeping you informed about news, tournaments, competitions, ticketing, partner offers and more.
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Team Tiger's plus-one made his debut ahead of the BNP Paribas Open.ByTENNIS.comPublished Mar 02, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 02, 2026
© @arynasabalenka/IG
Aryna Sabalenka treats her longtime support team, which includes coach Anton Dubrov and physiotherapist Jason Stacy, like family when they travel around the globe-trotting tennis tour.But on the eve of the BNP Paribas Open, the world No. 1's inner circle is expanding—and this new teammate comes with floppy ears and four legs.Sabalenka revealed her new Cavalier King Charles spaniel, a good boy named Ash, on Monday to her nearly 5 million followers on Instagram. The brown-and-white pup can be seen in the series of snapshots cuddling Sabalenka and her boyfriend Georgios Frangulis in various locations, including in the car and on-site at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.
But on the eve of the BNP Paribas Open, the world No. 1's inner circle is expanding—and this new teammate comes with floppy ears and four legs.Sabalenka revealed her new Cavalier King Charles spaniel, a good boy named Ash, on Monday to her nearly 5 million followers on Instagram. The brown-and-white pup can be seen in the series of snapshots cuddling Sabalenka and her boyfriend Georgios Frangulis in various locations, including in the car and on-site at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.
Sabalenka revealed her new Cavalier King Charles spaniel, a good boy named Ash, on Monday to her nearly 5 million followers on Instagram. The brown-and-white pup can be seen in the series of snapshots cuddling Sabalenka and her boyfriend Georgios Frangulis in various locations, including in the car and on-site at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.
Read more: Aryna Sabalenka lives her best life at Gucci show during Milan Fashion WeekThe newest member of "Team Tiger" quickly built a fan club.Less than an hour after Ash's hard launch into the world, Sabalenka's post had already racked up more than 50,000 likes.
The newest member of "Team Tiger" quickly built a fan club.Less than an hour after Ash's hard launch into the world, Sabalenka's post had already racked up more than 50,000 likes.
Less than an hour after Ash's hard launch into the world, Sabalenka's post had already racked up more than 50,000 likes.
But Ash isn't the only four-legged friend enjoying the tour's annual visit Tennis Paradise.Defending champion Mirra Andreeva, who beat Sabalenka in three thrilling sets in last year's final, is back at the site of her triumph with Rassy in tow.The 18-year-old's dream of becoming a dog mom came true in November after nearly two years, with her mom famously first promising her a dog as a reward for reaching the Top 20 in 2024.
Defending champion Mirra Andreeva, who beat Sabalenka in three thrilling sets in last year's final, is back at the site of her triumph with Rassy in tow.The 18-year-old's dream of becoming a dog mom came true in November after nearly two years, with her mom famously first promising her a dog as a reward for reaching the Top 20 in 2024.
The 18-year-old's dream of becoming a dog mom came true in November after nearly two years, with her mom famously first promising her a dog as a reward for reaching the Top 20 in 2024.
Stay tuned for more dispatches from the BNP Paw-ribas Open as more players hit the practice court ahead of the first day of main-draw play later this week.
The world No. 1 will play her first tournament since the Australian Open in a stacked top quarter that also features rising Canadian star Victoria Mboko.ByDavid KanePublished Mar 02, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 02, 2026
The 2026 BNP Paribas Open women's draw has been revealed and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka will face stiff competition in her first tournament since the Australian Open, headlining a top quarter that features a seeded trio of Naomi Osaka, Victoria Mboko, and Amanda Anisimova.🖥️📲 Stream all matches from the 2026 BNP Paribas Open on the Tennis Channel App!Anisimova, seeded No. 6, is Sabalenka's projected quarterfinal opponent in what would be a rematch of the 2025 US Open final, but Anisimova is first poised to play No. 10 seed Victoria Mboko in the fourth round while Sabalenka drew former champion Naomi Osaka.
🖥️📲 Stream all matches from the 2026 BNP Paribas Open on the Tennis Channel App!Anisimova, seeded No. 6, is Sabalenka's projected quarterfinal opponent in what would be a rematch of the 2025 US Open final, but Anisimova is first poised to play No. 10 seed Victoria Mboko in the fourth round while Sabalenka drew former champion Naomi Osaka.
Anisimova, seeded No. 6, is Sabalenka's projected quarterfinal opponent in what would be a rematch of the 2025 US Open final, but Anisimova is first poised to play No. 10 seed Victoria Mboko in the fourth round while Sabalenka drew former champion Naomi Osaka.
Rounding out the top section of the draw, rising American star Iva Jovic will be in action as the No. 18 seed, and is Osaka's projected third-round opponent. Jovic is coming off a breakthrough performance at the Australian Open, where she made her maiden major quarterfinal.Sabalenka, who shares the top half of the draw with No. 3 seed Coco Gauff, has been off the court since finishing runner-up to Elena Rybakina at the first Grand Slam tournament of the 2026 season. Despite withdrawing from both Middle East WTA 1000 tournaments at the Qatar TotalEnergies Open and the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship, she has played strong tennis at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in years past, twice reaching the final—including last year.
Sabalenka, who shares the top half of the draw with No. 3 seed Coco Gauff, has been off the court since finishing runner-up to Elena Rybakina at the first Grand Slam tournament of the 2026 season. Despite withdrawing from both Middle East WTA 1000 tournaments at the Qatar TotalEnergies Open and the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship, she has played strong tennis at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in years past, twice reaching the final—including last year.
It was in 2025 that Sabalenka fell one match short of the Sunshine Double, losing the BNP Paribas Open final to Mirra Andreeva. Seeded eighth in the bottom half of the draw, Andreeva is projected to face No. 2 seed Iga Swiatek for her quarterfinal bracket, a player Andreeva beat en route to her first Indian Wells title.Andreeva is also projected to face No. 9 seed Elina Svitolina in a fourth-round match that would be a rematch of an Australian Open encounter the latter won in straight sets back in January.Australian Open champion Rybakina is the No. 3 seed and is projected to face another former AO champ in her fourth round, No. 15 seed Madison Keys, who reached the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open last year. Rybakina reached the quarterfinals of her first tournament after Melbourne in Doha, but lost to Mboko in three close sets before retiring in her second round in Dubai.
Andreeva is also projected to face No. 9 seed Elina Svitolina in a fourth-round match that would be a rematch of an Australian Open encounter the latter won in straight sets back in January.Australian Open champion Rybakina is the No. 3 seed and is projected to face another former AO champ in her fourth round, No. 15 seed Madison Keys, who reached the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open last year. Rybakina reached the quarterfinals of her first tournament after Melbourne in Doha, but lost to Mboko in three close sets before retiring in her second round in Dubai.
Australian Open champion Rybakina is the No. 3 seed and is projected to face another former AO champ in her fourth round, No. 15 seed Madison Keys, who reached the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open last year. Rybakina reached the quarterfinals of her first tournament after Melbourne in Doha, but lost to Mboko in three close sets before retiring in her second round in Dubai.
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Notable wild cards include former world No. 1 Venus Williams and 2019 champion Bianca Andreescu, who will both face qualifiers in their respective first rounds.Click here to view the full BNP Paribas Open women's draw.
Click here to view the full BNP Paribas Open women's draw.
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The beginner's guide to Formula 1 in 2026
Meet the 2026 Formula 1 drivers!
Jack Doohan previews what's to come as a Haas reserve driver, and looks back on his time at Alpine, in an exclusive interview with F1.com.
Jack Doohan has experienced all sorts of emotions over the last year – going from the high of an F1 promotion with Alpine to the low of losing his race seat after a handful of races, and then leaving the team altogether. However, 2026 marks a fresh start for the Australian, who has since joined Haas in a reserve role and is now focused on writing another, more positive chapter in the top echelon…
This time last year, Doohan was preparing to make his long-held F1 dream a reality – becoming a full-time racer with Alpine for the 2025 season after debuting at the 2024 finale in Abu Dhabi.
However, it was a dream that soon turned into a nightmare, with persistent speculation over the youngster's future – which started in the winter – coming to a head at the Miami Grand Prix, where he made what turned out to be his seventh and final outing for the squad.
A journey 22 years in the making, one that took him from Australia to Europe and beyond, was over in a flash – his time as an F1 racer lasting just under 150 days.
Doohan spent the rest of the season watching on as 2024 Williams super-sub Franco Colapinto raced in his place, with any talk of a potential return soon quashed, before edging towards the Alpine exit door and officially departing in January of 2026.
Then, a month later, some good news finally came out of the Doohan camp, with confirmation arriving that he had joined Haas in a reserve capacity – crucially keeping him in the F1 paddock, and in the frame for a future return.
It completed a wild 12 months for the F2 and F3 race winner, who was all smiles when he joined F1.com for a chat via video call at the end of 2026 pre-season testing.
“Things are good!” Doohan beams, speaking from a break in Miami, where his initial F1 adventure came to a halt. “It's been great first feelings with the team, and very enjoyable to have a fresh start – meeting plenty of new faces, new people, a new team, a new car. Everyone's been so welcoming, which has been very refreshing.
“It was a little bit later than I would have liked to have had everything sorted, but just in time [for the new season], and enough time to make sure that I was able to get out to the first Bahrain pre-season test, and get things under way.”
Doohan's move to Haas, and what's next in his career, is the focus of our half-hour conversation, but it would be remiss not to ask how he reflects on that seven-round run at Alpine, who had supported him on his rise through the single-seater ranks before the relationship turned sour.
“It was a tough period,” Doohan states, with Season 8 of Drive to Survive shining a light on the situation, which included death threats – amid calls for Colapinto to be promoted – while he tried to perform, bounce back from a couple of heavy accidents, and win over demanding Alpine Executive Advisor Flavio Briatore.
“Without being too depressive, it was sort of a moment that you look forward to your whole life, of being an F1 driver, and unfortunately, I would say from October 2024 to maybe even October 2025, it was probably one of the toughest 12 months of my young life.
“At the end of 2024 there was already some chat going on, which puts a little bit of an eerie feeling and strangeness in the air, and that followed through the winter into 2025, which didn't help the environment.
“Time, unfortunately… I should have had, and thought I was going to have, plenty of time in the car, but it was very, very clear that Miami was going to be my final race, so my fate was sort of decided. I was always on borrowed time, I guess, and it's difficult to maximise things when you know what's to come.
“To be honest, it was a big shame, but I'm trying to put that behind me, to start fresh, and it would obviously be a dream to be able to have the opportunity [to race in F1] again, in an environment that is much more… I think it should always be ruthless, but more welcoming and on an even playing field.”
Doohan has, at least, taken plenty of valuable lessons from the experience.
“Certainly… I don't think it can get… well, maybe, maybe not, but I don't think, at least in normal circumstances, that the situation, environment, atmosphere, could probably get much worse than it was,” he comments.
“I'm grateful to have experienced that now, to have been through that process, to have learned an awful lot of how to cope with that going forward, and how to ensure that I make the most of those situations if I ever am faced with them, and with that environment, again.”
With that stint discussed and parked, we get back to the topic of Doohan's new home at Haas – the 23-year-old currently focused on supporting regular drivers Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman as much as possible, rather than pondering if or when another race opportunity might arise.
“It's very difficult to say,” says Doohan, when asked if he sees a pathway back to the grid with Haas. “I wish the best for the two boys who are in, that they can move up and go on to strong things, which would obviously pave a pathway for myself, but I have no expectation.
“I want to help the team as best I can, and when I have an opportunity to show what I can do, to do so – the interaction with the team, the engineers, the mechanics, and also how we connect on a personal level, which is important because we spend more time together than with anyone else.
“If that all develops well and the opportunity arises, then I'll take it with both hands, but until then, to be honest, I'll be focusing on anything that I can do in my power to help the boys. It's super important that they maximise the job under these new regulations to give the team the best opportunity to move forward.
“It's a bit selfish to be thinking of myself right now. I'm putting that to the side, and if I'm able to contribute in a way that helps the team going forward, then I'm sure that won't position me in a bad place either.”
That said, Doohan is itching to get back behind the wheel of an F1 car at the earliest opportunity, with Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) running “definitely on the radar over the next few months to make sure that I stay sharp”.
He is also working on a racing programme to complement his Haas reserve duties, having been limited to those seven Grand Prix appearances over the last two years, and having last competed full-time in 2023 when he finished third in the F2 championship.
“For ideal scenarios, we're about like six months too late!” Doohan says with a wry smile when quizzed on what might be possible. “It's very difficult to maximise options being in mid-February, but first and foremost, the main thing is just for me to race. I haven't raced in a while, so I need to drive and stay race fit – whatever it is.
“Potentially something in ELMS (the European Le Mans Series), and maybe also for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in an endurance car, in an LMP2 – these would be great laps and miles. I'd get to stay race fit with a slightly different approach, but it's just important that I'm behind the wheel.
“We had to make sure that everything was all clear on the Alpine side of things before we were able to fully, finally proceed and confirm with Haas, which, like I said, was a little bit on the later side, pushed things out a little bit, and held some potential race plans back. Hopefully I can confirm something soon.”
However that develops, Doohan is clearly feeling significantly better heading into 2026 compared to the way he ended 2025, with plenty of reasons to be excited about the future, rather than dwelling on the past.
“I'm sure that it'll start to slowly die down with the changeover,” he says of the noise, which has increased again after the new Drive to Survive season landed on Netflix. “I would obviously really appreciate it, too, considering I'm now at a new home. There's no reason for there to be anything that was happening to continue, at least the way I see it.
“I'm excited to just get back into enjoying what I love, which is racing cars, and ultimately in F1. It's something that I enjoy, and that is my life and more, so to be able to get back into a place where I can feel at home with it, feel safe and welcome, would be ideal.”
Next Up
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The beginner's guide to Formula 1 in 2026
Meet the 2026 Formula 1 drivers!
Jack Doohan previews what's to come as a Haas reserve driver, and looks back on his time at Alpine, in an exclusive interview with F1.com.
Jack Doohan has experienced all sorts of emotions over the last year – going from the high of an F1 promotion with Alpine to the low of losing his race seat after a handful of races, and then leaving the team altogether. However, 2026 marks a fresh start for the Australian, who has since joined Haas in a reserve role and is now focused on writing another, more positive chapter in the top echelon…
This time last year, Doohan was preparing to make his long-held F1 dream a reality – becoming a full-time racer with Alpine for the 2025 season after debuting at the 2024 finale in Abu Dhabi.
However, it was a dream that soon turned into a nightmare, with persistent speculation over the youngster's future – which started in the winter – coming to a head at the Miami Grand Prix, where he made what turned out to be his seventh and final outing for the squad.
A journey 22 years in the making, one that took him from Australia to Europe and beyond, was over in a flash – his time as an F1 racer lasting just under 150 days.
Doohan spent the rest of the season watching on as 2024 Williams super-sub Franco Colapinto raced in his place, with any talk of a potential return soon quashed, before edging towards the Alpine exit door and officially departing in January of 2026.
Then, a month later, some good news finally came out of the Doohan camp, with confirmation arriving that he had joined Haas in a reserve capacity – crucially keeping him in the F1 paddock, and in the frame for a future return.
It completed a wild 12 months for the F2 and F3 race winner, who was all smiles when he joined F1.com for a chat via video call at the end of 2026 pre-season testing.
“Things are good!” Doohan beams, speaking from a break in Miami, where his initial F1 adventure came to a halt. “It's been great first feelings with the team, and very enjoyable to have a fresh start – meeting plenty of new faces, new people, a new team, a new car. Everyone's been so welcoming, which has been very refreshing.
“It was a little bit later than I would have liked to have had everything sorted, but just in time [for the new season], and enough time to make sure that I was able to get out to the first Bahrain pre-season test, and get things under way.”
Doohan's move to Haas, and what's next in his career, is the focus of our half-hour conversation, but it would be remiss not to ask how he reflects on that seven-round run at Alpine, who had supported him on his rise through the single-seater ranks before the relationship turned sour.
“It was a tough period,” Doohan states, with Season 8 of Drive to Survive shining a light on the situation, which included death threats – amid calls for Colapinto to be promoted – while he tried to perform, bounce back from a couple of heavy accidents, and win over demanding Alpine Executive Advisor Flavio Briatore.
“Without being too depressive, it was sort of a moment that you look forward to your whole life, of being an F1 driver, and unfortunately, I would say from October 2024 to maybe even October 2025, it was probably one of the toughest 12 months of my young life.
“At the end of 2024 there was already some chat going on, which puts a little bit of an eerie feeling and strangeness in the air, and that followed through the winter into 2025, which didn't help the environment.
“Time, unfortunately… I should have had, and thought I was going to have, plenty of time in the car, but it was very, very clear that Miami was going to be my final race, so my fate was sort of decided. I was always on borrowed time, I guess, and it's difficult to maximise things when you know what's to come.
“To be honest, it was a big shame, but I'm trying to put that behind me, to start fresh, and it would obviously be a dream to be able to have the opportunity [to race in F1] again, in an environment that is much more… I think it should always be ruthless, but more welcoming and on an even playing field.”
Doohan has, at least, taken plenty of valuable lessons from the experience.
“Certainly… I don't think it can get… well, maybe, maybe not, but I don't think, at least in normal circumstances, that the situation, environment, atmosphere, could probably get much worse than it was,” he comments.
“I'm grateful to have experienced that now, to have been through that process, to have learned an awful lot of how to cope with that going forward, and how to ensure that I make the most of those situations if I ever am faced with them, and with that environment, again.”
With that stint discussed and parked, we get back to the topic of Doohan's new home at Haas – the 23-year-old currently focused on supporting regular drivers Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman as much as possible, rather than pondering if or when another race opportunity might arise.
“It's very difficult to say,” says Doohan, when asked if he sees a pathway back to the grid with Haas. “I wish the best for the two boys who are in, that they can move up and go on to strong things, which would obviously pave a pathway for myself, but I have no expectation.
“I want to help the team as best I can, and when I have an opportunity to show what I can do, to do so – the interaction with the team, the engineers, the mechanics, and also how we connect on a personal level, which is important because we spend more time together than with anyone else.
“If that all develops well and the opportunity arises, then I'll take it with both hands, but until then, to be honest, I'll be focusing on anything that I can do in my power to help the boys. It's super important that they maximise the job under these new regulations to give the team the best opportunity to move forward.
“It's a bit selfish to be thinking of myself right now. I'm putting that to the side, and if I'm able to contribute in a way that helps the team going forward, then I'm sure that won't position me in a bad place either.”
That said, Doohan is itching to get back behind the wheel of an F1 car at the earliest opportunity, with Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) running “definitely on the radar over the next few months to make sure that I stay sharp”.
He is also working on a racing programme to complement his Haas reserve duties, having been limited to those seven Grand Prix appearances over the last two years, and having last competed full-time in 2023 when he finished third in the F2 championship.
“For ideal scenarios, we're about like six months too late!” Doohan says with a wry smile when quizzed on what might be possible. “It's very difficult to maximise options being in mid-February, but first and foremost, the main thing is just for me to race. I haven't raced in a while, so I need to drive and stay race fit – whatever it is.
“Potentially something in ELMS (the European Le Mans Series), and maybe also for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in an endurance car, in an LMP2 – these would be great laps and miles. I'd get to stay race fit with a slightly different approach, but it's just important that I'm behind the wheel.
“We had to make sure that everything was all clear on the Alpine side of things before we were able to fully, finally proceed and confirm with Haas, which, like I said, was a little bit on the later side, pushed things out a little bit, and held some potential race plans back. Hopefully I can confirm something soon.”
However that develops, Doohan is clearly feeling significantly better heading into 2026 compared to the way he ended 2025, with plenty of reasons to be excited about the future, rather than dwelling on the past.
“I'm sure that it'll start to slowly die down with the changeover,” he says of the noise, which has increased again after the new Drive to Survive season landed on Netflix. “I would obviously really appreciate it, too, considering I'm now at a new home. There's no reason for there to be anything that was happening to continue, at least the way I see it.
“I'm excited to just get back into enjoying what I love, which is racing cars, and ultimately in F1. It's something that I enjoy, and that is my life and more, so to be able to get back into a place where I can feel at home with it, feel safe and welcome, would be ideal.”
Next Up
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Warner Bros. Pictures is developing a film that could bring the “Game of Thrones” universe to the big screen.
Beau Willimon, known for “Andor” and “House of Cards,” has been tapped to write a feature that would be based on author George R. R. Martin's fantasy series, an individual with knowledge of the project told IndieWire, though it's just in development at this stage.
Martin in a recent interview with THR teased that in addition to a film, HBO is also developing the same story as a series, so the two would be rival projects. The story, per THR, would be about Aegon I Targaryen's conquest of Westeros, also known as Aegon's Conquest, which is detailed in Martin's “The World of Ice and Fire.” The easy way to describe it is that the events of the film — or series, whichever it ends up being — take place about 300 years before the flagship “Game of Thrones” HBO series and about 100 years before “House of the Dragon.”
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Seeing as it's one of WBD's biggest brands, Warner Bros. has been kicking around a “Game of Thrones” movie idea for a while, including way back in 2013 with the idea of a three-part, “Lord of the Rings” style trilogy. But to do it effectively on that scale may have required a PG-13 rating and none of the hallmarks that made “Game of Thrones” such a hit. All sorts of prequels and spinoffs too have been discussed, and in addition to the impending return of “House of the Dragon” season 3 this summer, HBO just released “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” which is now working on a second season.
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For Willimon, this would be his third produced screenplay after he co-wrote the Oscar-nominated script for “The Ides of March,” and he also wrote 2018's “Mary Queen of Scots.”
Anything in development now may eventually need to go through Paramount, which just announced its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, including both WB Pictures and HBO. The studio has stated an aggressive goal of 30 movies per year, and any sorts of brand, IP plays on some of the biggest properties in the library like “Game of Thrones” would surely be welcome.
Page Six first reported that Willimon was attached.
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Brooks Nader is taking bikini styling into her own hands.
She is currently shooting a project for swimwear brand Agua Bendita on location in the Dominican Republic, but has decided only half of her bikini top is necessary for full glam.
Sharing a racy pic on her Instagram story on Monday, the model stood in front of the ocean waves in a printed string bikini with the left half hanging loose.
Nader casually covered her chest with a seashell, playfully smiling.
With her blonde hair cascading down her right shoulder, she shielded her eyes from the sun with oversized sunglasses.
Nader further added a little bit of bling by way of large gold hoop earrings, multiple chunky rings and layered chains around her hips.
She posted the snap on Instagram Story with the caption, “No filter just @brooksnader.”
Another, more covered look was also shared, featuring Nader wearing a plunging black one-piece swimsuit, standing with one foot atop a shirtless man.
Nader has been showing off a parade of skin-baring looks on social media, including, most recently as she rang in her 29th birthday with a St. Barts trip along with family and friends.
For one party she slipped into a sparkling, slashed blue gown that wouldn't look totally out of place as a beach coverup.
By Matt Grobar
Senior Film Reporter
Progress has been made on the Game of Thrones movie, first announced as entering early development at Warner Bros in the fall of 2024, with Andor‘s Beau Willimon boarding the project as screenwriter, Deadline has confirmed.
While plot details haven't been confirmed, the film will reportedly center on Aegon I, the first Lord of the Seven Kingdoms who spawned the Targaryen dynasty — the royal family at the heart of the entire franchise. This would mark the first time Aegon I has been depicted on screen.
No creative attachments were announced when word first broke of development on a Game of Thrones movie a couple of years ago. Since that time, HBO has renewed the 2022 TV spinoff House of the Dragon for two more seasons, with the subsequent spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms premiering in January.
Based on A Song of Ice and Fire, the hugely popular fantasy book series by George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones traverses the continents of Westeros and Essos to follow noble families competing mercilessly for the Iron Throne. The original series, created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, was a cultural juggernaut that ran for eight seasons between 2011-2019, generating huge appointment viewership and racking up myriad accolades over the course of its run including 59 Emmys.
Watch on Deadline
An Oscar and seven-time Emmy nominee best known for creating Netflix's House of Cards, Willimon has most recently drawn plaudits for his work on Disney+'s Star Wars series Andor. An executive producer on Apple TV's Severance, his feature screenwriting credits include Mary Queen of Scots and The Ides of March.
Page Six Hollywood was first to the news of Willimon's involvement with the Game of Thrones movie.
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With season 13 of “When Calls the Heart” expected to wrap up in March, that ending will likely usher in some exciting beginnings for several Hallmark stars. Incredibly, three couples connected to the hit show have babies on the way.
WCTH couple Erin Krakow and Ben Rosenbaum are expecting their first baby, as are WCTH's Kevin McGarry and his wife, WCTH alum Kayla Wallace. In addition, WCTH's Chris McNally and his longtime love, Hallmark star Julie Gonzalo, are expecting their second child.
Though none of the stars have specifically shared their due date, the info they have shared leads us to believe the Hallmark baby boom is just around the corner.
Krakow, who has played series lead Elizabeth Thornton since WCTH premiered in 2014, announced her pregnancy with Rosenbaum on November 26 via social media.
The couple, who surprised fans with news of their wedding in June, posted an adorable announcement featuring four photo booth pics in which they held up their sonogram photos and their beloved rescue pup, Willoughby, who was wearing a “big brother” shirt.
Though they didn't share a specific due date, Rosenbaum posted a sweet tribute to his wife on December 1 that said, “6 months of wedded bliss. 5 months of growing our baby. 1 lifetime of love in front of us @erinkrakow 🥰”
If Rosenbaum's reference to Krakow being pregnant for five months was exact, that would mean the actress is now eight months pregnant, with Willoughby's sibling due within the next four weeks, in March 2026.
It's not known which baby is due first, but McGarry and Wallace, who stepped back from her WCTH role to join the cast of “Landman” in 2024, were the first of the three couples to announce their pregnancy. They shared a joint post on November 11 to spill the news, with a photo of McGarry cradling Wallace's baby bump.
That same night, they attended the “Landman” season two premiere, and Wallace proudly showed off her pregnant belly under a cream-colored silk dress paired with black leather gloves.
In mid-January, Wallace shared a throwback pic from the last scene she shot for the second season, writing that it was bittersweet “knowing we all had to say goodbye to each other and also secretly basking in the thought of heading home to my husband and just enjoying being pregnant.”
According to the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “Landman” wrapped filming the first week of August. Wallace didn't reveal how far along she was as they wrapped the season, but she noted in her post that the “A/C was flowing between takes” and that she was on her “2nd or 3rd coconut water,” which has become a commonly-used antidote for morning sickness — a symptom that doesn't typically start until at least the sixth week of pregnancy, per the Cleveland Clinic.
Even if Wallace was only six weeks along at that time, she, too, would be due by late March or early April at the latest.
Meanwhile, McNally announced his and Gonzalo's baby news in December at the Hallmark Christmas Experience, surprising the audience by pulling out their sonogram pics and revealing that all three couples were due within six weeks of each other.
Gonzalo rarely posts on Instagram, but she shared a beautiful photo on Valentine's Day of herself cradling her baby bump, looking at peace as the sun glowed behind her, and noted that her pregnancy was “almost complete.”
She and McNally, who starred together in 2023's “3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost,” already share a daughter, who will turn four in June.
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By Max Goldbart
International TV Co-Editor
David Oyelowo, Hayley Atwell and Jack Huston are leading a new adaptation of Treasure Island for MGM+ and Paramount+ UK.
The trio are joined by Tomer Capone and Tom Sweet in the version of the Robert Louis Stevenson epic.
Oyelowo will play Long John Silver, Atwell is Bess Hawkins and Huston is Aaron Graham.
Treasure Island charts the transformation of teenager Jim Hawkins (Sweet) from sheltered boy to emboldened young pirate. When Jim gets his hands on a legendary treasure map, his mother Bess' clever and decisive actions leave him holding valuable knowledge that puts both of their lives in danger.
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MGM+ and Paramount+ UK described the series as a “bold, high-stakes coming-of-age adventure series for a new generation.” It comes off the back of another high-profile adaptation, Lord of the Flies, which just sold to Netflix and was made for the BBC and Sony.
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Wolf Hall maker Playground is producing Treasure Island and Fifth Season is selling. The show is a rare example of a co-production between two big American players, one of which, Paramount+, has only taken rights in the UK and Ireland.
MGM+ boss Michael Wright said: “This thrilling new adaptation of Stevenson's classic adventure Treasure Island is a perfect expression of the MGM+ brand. It is a classic Hollywood storytelling crafted for a contemporary audience, brought to life with an extraordinary ensemble cast.”
The six-part series was commissioned for Paramount+ by Sebastian Cardwell, Deputy Chief Content Officer, UK, and Paul Testar, Commissioning Editor, for Paramount+ UK & Ireland. Wright, global head of MGM+, and Alec Strum, original programming executive, oversee production for MGM+, while David Stern, Scott Huff, Colin Callender and Daniel Gratton executive produce on behalf of Playground. Robert Murphy and Jeremy Lovering also serve as executive producers.
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Farrah Abraham raised eyebrows with her revealing outfit while vacationing in Egypt with her daughter, Sophia.
The “Teen Mom” alum showed some skin in a photoshoot at the legendary pyramids shared via Instagram on Saturday.
The former reality star, 34, paired a sheer black skirt with a gold top, while her 17-year-old opted for a black dress.
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“You're brave. Showing so much skin for such a conservative country,” one social media user wrote over the weekend of Abraham's ensemble at the sacred site.
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“Part of traveling is learning cultural respect,” another added, with a third expressing “shock” at the revealing looks.
Others slammed the mother-daughter pair for riding on camels.
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Abraham's rep did not immediately respond to Page Six's request for comment.
The ex-MTV personality, who clarified via Instagram on Monday that she is “home safe,” took the trip to celebrate Sophia's birthday last week.
“This Egypt collage from red-sea to pyramids has been a wild journey and blessed to have another full circle year with you,” Abraham captioned a carousel. “I love that everyone thinks we're sisters and can't believe that we're not friends, #teenmom life.”
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She concluded, “I'm jet lagged writing this & can't wait to ride camels 🐫by the sphinx today. Love you & proud of you keep learning and adventuring new parts of this big world.”
The duo got matching neck tattoos while abroad with Sophia documenting the “amazing” moment for her followers.
“Our tattoos represent eternal life, eternal love, eye of Ra, eye of Horus, and inspired Egyptian hieroglyphics as seen in ancient Egyptian history!” the teen explained. “The Arabic writing translates to ‘eternal love.' I'm so happy and grateful I got to get this.”
While the design marked Abraham's first tattoo, Sophia already has bats inked on her stomach.
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She showed the design off in October 2025, as well as her permanent fangs.
Abraham defended letting Sophia get multiple facial piercings in April 2024, telling Bunnie XO's “Dumb Blonde” listeners that she is not going to “spiral” and “shame, blame [or] reject” her daughter.
The “16 and Pregnant” alum added, “I'm here to make sure my child's seen, she is safe and she is supported. If those three things are always top of mind, then I know what I'm doing.”
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[Editor's Note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Industry” Season 4, Episode 8, “Both, And.”]
“Industry” creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down entered Season 4 wanting to shoehorn their favorite conspiracy-thriller films into their series set in London's financial world. But as Kay told IndieWire on this week's episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, it became impossible to write a contemporaneous story about money and politics, “that didn't have some version of the ascendant face of autocracy and right-wing politics.”
As the creators detailed in the following excerpt from the podcast, Marisa Abela's character Yasmin became the key to incorporating this storyline. It's a Season 4 story arc that ends in shocking fashion, with Yasmin hosting a Paris fundraiser for the dangerous right-wing white nationalist Sebastian Stefanowicz (Edward Holcroft). It's a private hotel gathering featuring known royal Nazi supporters and young escorts, who Whitney (Max Minghella) had previously used to gather Kompromat (Russian for “compromising material”), including 14-year-old Dolly (Skye Lucia Degruttola), who was employed to ensnare Eric Tao (Ken Leung) earlier in the season.
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It's a season finale that aired when public awareness of the Epstein files dominated headlines, leading to the downfall of princes and CEOs across the globe, but, as Down and Kay discussed, the tracks for Yasmin to become a Ghislaine Maxwell-like figure had already been laid in previous seasons.
The following excerpt from Kay and Down's Toolkit podcast interview has been edited for clarity.
Konrad Kay: “Between seasons, me and Mickey talked about not ending the show, because that's premature, but just thinking of what is the greatest odyssey we can send the characters on? If you took a frame of them the first time you see them and put it next to the frame of where you lead them in Season 4: What's the greatest and most disparate journey, but also that felt true to the characters that didn't feel like a betrayal of them?
And with Yasmin, as beautifully played by Marisa in the first season, she was afraid of her own shadow, constantly softly stepping around, fucking up the lunch order, a bit of a wallflower, and where we leave her in Season 4, we just thought it was radical storytelling. It was a journey that we knew Marisa had the chops to play, and we thought that it was earned in the sense of her relationship to her own trauma.
But also, because the show is contemporaneous, we pull stuff from what we're feeling about the world, and as we were writing about the fraud element of it, there was the political element of it. It was very hard to write a season about money and politics, when we were writing it, that didn't have some version of the ascendant face of autocracy and right-wing politics. It's impossible to ignore on both sides of the Atlantic. It's come to fruition horribly in the U.S., and it's the rising force in the U.K.
So, who was it from our universe that would be most susceptible to that kind of messaging, or who would find the seductions of the power offered by that the most compelling? And Yasmin felt like the site of all of that stuff for us. It felt very organic to us.
So then we were thinking, in good writing ways, we tend to try hiding the football, and make it when you end up with her in Epside 8 — and it is quite a shocking scene, and it is alarming, and I'm sure it'll divide audiences –– that I think if you go back and rewatch the season, I think all of the track is laid quite subtly for that stuff.
Mickey Down: At the end of Season 3, her whole character arc is an exercise in justification for what's happened to her. At the end of Season 3, she's presented with the root of her trauma by the Alondra (Angela Sant'Albano), who says, “Look, your father was a despicable human being with these despicable things [parties with underage girls who were presumedly raped by lecherous older men], and I'm showing you him now.” And she rejects that. She just says, “Send her away [Yasmin fires Alondra]. I don't want to engage with that. I don't want deal with that.” And then in Season 4, she's beginning to justify that [same] kind of behavior. And there are obviously illusions to real-life characters in her.
[Editor's Note: The connections between Yasmin's character and convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell are myriad, most blatantly with her father, publishing mogul Charles (Adam Levy), who, like Ghislaine's media mogul father Robert Maxwell, dies mysteriously on his yacht in Season 3. Here, Down is referencing the Season 4 shocking finale, where Yasmin has followed Ghislaine's dark path to using young, and some underage, women to ensare wealthy white nationalist patrons.]
It's not a show of villains and heroes. It's a show of people who are ambitious and sometimes make decisions that are more really questionable. But I think that they all feel that they're justified in their actions, and that is just to a “T” with Yasmin. I think Yasmin can look at all the things she does in Season 4 and think I'm doing that for my own benefit, my own joy. There is a means to an end here; there is a reasoning for all of this. And as we push the character to sort of the point of no return, we really wanted to test how much an audience can go along with that.
Marisa gives such a soulful performance, and I think it's a very empathetic performance, but she's doing some pretty horrific things by the end. But she would not be able to play the character if she was thinking she was doing horrific things. She has to constantly think this is justified. That's how people who have experienced trauma go through the world sometimes, and I think, as Konrad said, the track was really laid in Seasons 1 and 2.
Kay: Also, that's the interesting side of it. It's not [that] all fascists are psychopaths. They're opportunistic. There's an expediency. And also the interesting thing about that side of the aisle is: How do you constantly have a dialogue with yourself where you rationalize that you are the right side of the conversation? That's what we're interested in with her.
[Editor's Note: Later in the conversation, Kay and Down discussed the introduction of Haley (Kiernan Shipka) in Season 4. For the first six episodes, we are led to believe Haley is the executive assistant of CEO Whitney (Max Minghella), but in Episode 6, she admits to Yasmin she was an escort Whitney hired to gather Kompromat on those he needed to perpetrate his fraud.]
Down: The evolution of Haley's character was practical as well as creative, honestly, because we needed to get Marisa to a moment where Yasmin was able to actually put this stuff [hiring young escorts to ensnare powerful men for her own gain] into action. She ends up in a hotel room in Paris surrounded by people who are going do things on her behalf. We have to have someone to teach her. And obviously all that stuff happens somewhat offscreen [there is a months-long time jump in Episode 8, after the fall of Tender and Yasmin's marriage, and before her Paris hotel fundraiser for Stefanowicz]. It would've been a bit of a jump if she'd gotten to that role without any kind of guidance or someone who was from that world.
Kay: Also, I'm not saying they're analogists in any way, but the commodification of sex and the female body is a bit of a theme in the show, obviously, especially in this season. There's the sweeping angle of [Yasmin's] complicity in her own exploitation, [with] the line of that being gossamer-thin with the idea of Haley being an escort, who's chosen that life for herself. As Mickey said, it would've been too big a character jump for Yasmin to arrive at this idea of sort of power through the influence of sex around a certain type of man. We thought that had to be almost incepted into her through a woman who chose to do it herself.
Down: It has lived inside [Yasmin] since Season 2, because obviously she puts her hand on the Italian businessman's hand, and she understands that there is some power there. After that, she's always had that power…. Her relationship with her father is that power. But you needed someone to be like, “No, it can also be transactional in a monetary way. You can actually use this to your benefit. You can actually use this to ensnare people. You can use Kompromat,” but practically, it needed to feel organic. You couldn't just jump to Paris with her running a sort of sex ring and being a madam.
Kay: I do think as writers or dramatists, whatever the word is, I do think — and I know it's the episode title — but we really do take like the “Both, And” approach to the situations that we dramatize. We try and present the other side of it. We try not to thrust our own morality onto the thing. If we're presenting a point, we often want to try and present its counterpoint in the same scene.
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Carrie Underwood clapped back after being booed by the “American Idol” audience on Monday's episode of the show.
The country singer clashed with the live audience after contestant Mor performed an original song during the second “Hollywood Week: Music City Takeover” episode, which was filmed in Nashville.
“Boo me. I don't care,” the country singer wrote on X while the episode was airing.
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In the episode itself, Underwood acknowledged the crowd wasn't going to like her criticism during judging.
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“You guys are gonna boo me. You're gonna boo me,” she told the audience. “It's coming. Bring it on. I love it! Your boos are feeding me.”
Underwood then told Mor, “In a room like this, for you to bring an original song with that incredible band sitting behind you, twiddling their thumbs, I feel like it was a missed opportunity.”
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After Underwood received a stretch of boos from the crowd, fellow judge Luke Bryan stepped in to defend the Season 4 champion.
“She only won this. She knows,” Bryan, 49, said as Underwood told the crowd, “You're not included in the discussions.”
The “Before He Cheats” singer then joked around with Bryan about the differing reactions they were getting from the audience.
“Why don't they boo you?” she asked the “One Margarita” singer, who joked, “I don't know, I'm trying to get booed.”
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Underwood then turned to the crowd and asked, “You're not going to boo him?,” which they finally did.
The “American Idol” Season 4 winner previously hinted that she got a hostile reaction while judging Hollywood Week in Nashville.
“Spoiler alert…I get booed A LOT from our Hollywood Week audience @AmericanIdol,” she tweeted on Feb. 16.
In September, Underwood opened up about the fan response to her “American Idol” judging on SiriusXM's “The Highway.”
“Sometimes I get in trouble from people like, ‘How dare she say that it wasn't perfect?'” she said. “And I'm like, I just want everybody to learn and that's part of it. And nobody wants to just hear that they're amazing all the time.”
“We just want everybody to be able to grow and get better,” Underwood went on, “and be the most awesome version of themselves that they could be.”
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The “Jesus, Take The Wheel” singer replaced Katy Perry as a judge on “American Idol,” stepping into the role for Season 23, which premiered in March 2025.
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Two months prior, Underwood collected backlash for singing “America the Beautiful” at President Trump's second presidential inauguration.
But “American Idol” showrunner Megan Michaels Wolflick defended Underwood at the time, pointing out that it “was her decision” to perform for Trump.
Warner Bros. has a “Game of Thrones” film in development and has enlisted “House of Cards” showrunner Beau Willimon, who has already submitted an initial draft, Page Six Hollywood has learned. But it's an open question whether the “GOT” project will see the light of day given the uncertainty surrounding Warner Bros. current slate now that Paramount Skydance has started the process of acquiring the storied Burbank studio.
Sources tell P6H that WBD's leadership team was pumped on Willimon's draft, and that the storyline may center on Aegon I, who spawned the Targaryen dynasty and united six of the seven kingdoms through bloody conquest about 300 years before the original “Game of Thrones” pilot. “All of ‘Game of Thrones' stems back to him, and you've never seen him on any of the shows,” says a source familiar with the project.
Across the entertainment industry, there are plenty of people just like Willimon who have a vested interest in figuring out how Warner Bros. plans to spend over the next 12 to 18 months.
The town appears to be splitting down typical lines.
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The pessimists argue that the Burbank lot and its current slate — with a few exceptions — will likely be put on ice while the regulatory process plays out in the Paramount Skydance acquisition. “Mike and Pam might try and accelerate the projects that they love, but there probably isn't much,” says a top manager. “So much depends on the amount of autonomy Warners maintains.”
The optimists are saying, not so fast. “They have to spend,” says one agent with a roster of A-listers. Added another top exec at a streamer: “They're going to have to keep the lights on so I don't see them slowing down.”
The glass-half-full crowd might have a point. Eight days before Warner Bros. Discovery accepted David Ellison's $111 billion mega-offer, the studio hired Mike Ireland to be president of production, an expensive role that was already occupied by Jesse Ehrman, who's well-liked and known as a capable executive.
The addition of Ireland (who ironically was let go as head of Paramount's motion picture group by current Paramount Pictures co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein shortly after Skydance acquired Paramount in August) would suggest that Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy planned to keep their foot on the accelerator after a stellar year at the box office.
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“It is weird,” says one veteran producer. “How were new people allowed to be brought in?” Adds a studio insider: “It's stunning to me that they were allowed to do this. Why do you need to layer on that high level of an executive.”
Regardless, it would appear to be business as usual over at Warner Bros. as a number of massive budget movies head toward production, namely “The Batman II” and a “Minecraft” sequel. Sources tell P6H that James Gunn's “Superman” sequel will begin shooting on April 17 in Atlanta, while the next “Minecraft” is on track for a May 1 start date in New Zealand. Also fully cast and ready to go is the Robert Pattinson “Batman” follow-up, which starts production on May 29 in London, sources say. There's also a $90 million untitled Nancy Meyers rom-com which starts shooting in May.
For a studio that will almost certainly take home the best picture Oscar for either “One Battle After Another” or “Sinners,” the bar is set incredibly high for what comes next. The aforementioned projects are all incredibly pricey, but the studio has several less expensive projects like a “Conjuring” prequel, dated for September 2027 which is a priority. That film, from producer James Wan, is a go, insiders say. At least for now.
On the TV front, HBO chief Casey Bloys boasts the two most valuable assets with “Game of Thrones” and “Harry Potter.” With “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” which launched in January, Bloys proved that spending big isn't always necessary for success. One knowledgeable source says the series costs $8 million to $10 million per episode (no dragons or epic sets). By contrast, “It: Welcome to Derry,” which bowed on HBO in October, cost a “crazy” $18 million per episode and found little traction in the zeitgeist, although it did garner a sizable audience. (No decision has been made on a second season). “White Lotus” has held its place in the cultural conversation — despite being original and not based on well-known intellectual property — as it heads into production in France for Season 4. As for its budget, one agent pegs it at less than $10 million per episode.
With austerity measures looming (eventually), the studio will likely lean into the “Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” playbook and its price point. Still, the soon-to-be-swallowed Warners is sparing no expense when it comes to crown jewel “Harry Potter,” which is currently in production in the UK, and will have a budget on par with the first season of “Game of Thrones.” With no A-listers attached, the above-the-line costs are minimal. Instead, Warners sank huge sums into building massive sets and a school at Leavesden, the 200-acre studio complex north of London. Those costs would be amortized across multiple seasons of the show (with seven books, there's plenty of material to work with) making it money well spent. There's little doubt that one year from now, it will be the biggest show on the planet, just in time for the Ellisons to seize the throne.
By
Jon Blistein
Bad Bunny's historic Super Bowl performance has set a new global viewership record, with more than 4 billion people watching the performance.
On Monday, the NFL, Roc Nation (which co-produced the show), and Apple Music (the halftime show's main sponsor) revealed that Bad Bunny's performance garnered 4.157 billion views in 24 hours. Those figures included the global broadcast numbers, as well as views on YouTube and social media platforms.
The broader viewership stats were released after Nielsen Big Data + Panel revealed that Bad Bunny's halftime show drew 128.2 million viewers during the live Super Bowl broadcast in the U.S. That made it one of the most watched performance in Super Bowl history, just behind Kendrick Lamar's record-setting show from last year, which drew 133.4 million viewers.
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Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance — combined with his Grammy win for Album of the Year — also had some notable knock-on effects. The week after the big game, the Puerto Rican superstar saw his song “DtMF” top Billboard Hot 100, marking his first solo Number One on the chart. (His collaboration with Cardi B and J Balvin, “I Like It,” went Number One in 2018.) His album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, also just returned to the top of the Billboard 200 Albums chart.
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After the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny kicked off the next leg of his DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS world tour. He just wrapped up a two-night stand in Sydney, Australia, and he's set to play Tokyo on March 7. A European will kick off in late May with dates scheduled through late July.
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Like many of our beloved and seemingly (hopefully?) rejuvenating comedy subgenres, the sex comedy is a tricky one to navigate. Silly and even a little gross, yes, but sweetness is always good, too. A strong central character is great, but why not a pair of them? All the better to discuss their high jinks, right? And what about getting away from the tried-and-true storylines, like “high school kids try to lose their virginity”?
That's why it's so refreshing to see all these gentle suggestions asked and answered in just a trailer, let alone an entire film. That's what's on offer with Chloé Robichaud‘s upcoming “Two Women,” which giddily sticks to what we love about the subgenre, with some generously updated touches.
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Per its official synopsis, “‘Two Women' is an irrepressible comedy about two mothers who refuse to settle for stagnant lives, and instead pursue the joy they need to feel alive and fulfilled. When neighbors Violette (Laurence Leboeuf) and Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) bond over the ennui of parenthood, they realize that the solution to reviving their joie de vivre may be in listening to their libidos.”
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And, as the film's first trailer shows, “as the two start finding sex in unexpected places, they examine the larger unfulfilled needs that brought them to their current moment, and choose to pursue a life of joy over compromise. … Wonderfully layered, empathetic, sexy, and fun, ‘Two Women' urges us to consider that life is not a straight line, and to remember that there are infinite kinds of pleasure we can experience together if we simply allow ourselves to give in.”
The film is directed by Chloé Robichaud, and the Quebec native evocatively captures the Montreal winter on 35mm. Screenwriter Catherine Léger adapted her own stage play for the film's script, which was itself an update of the 1970 Quebecois classic “Two Women in Gold,” directed by Claude Fournier. The film won a special jury prize for writing at last year's Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered.
The film's supporting cast includes Sophie Nélisse (“Heated Rivalry” fans, roll out), Juliette Gariépy, Mani Soleymanlou, and Félix Moati.
Joint Venture will release the film at New York City's Angelika Theater on Friday, April 24, with a national rollout to follow. Check out the first trailer and a new poster for “Two Women,” both IndieWire exclusives, below.
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The Peacock dramedy premieres April 9.
By
Carly Thomas
Senior Editor, Digital
Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen have quite a little problem on their hands in the newly released trailer for The Miniature Wife.
The Peacock series, which is based on the short story by Manuel Gonzales, “is a dramedy examining the power (im)balances between spouses after a technological accident induces the ultimate relationship crisis,” the official logline reads.
Banks' Lindy Littlejohn says at the beginning of the footage (below), “My husband and I, we take turns supporting each other. So he supported me through my first book, and now it's my turn.”
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However, that support is put to the test when Macfadyen's Les Littlejohn develops what he calls “the miracle of miniaturization,” which is supposed to help crops. But when it gets sprayed on Lindy by accident and she gets shrunk down to a few inches tall, Les must quickly find a way to restore her to her regular size.
“How long until you can fix me?” Banks character asks Les at the end of the trailer.
O-T Fagbenle, Zoe Lister-Jones, Sian Clifford, Sofia Rosinsky, Ronny Chieng, Aasif Mandvi, Rong Fu and Tricia Black round out the cast.
The Miniature Wife was created by Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner, who also serve as showrunners and executive producers. Banks, Macfadyen, Michael Aguilar and Suzanne Heathcote also executive produce alongside Michael Ellenberg and Lindsey Springer for Media Res and Greg Mottola.
All 10 episodes of The Miniature Wife premiere April 9 on Peacock. Check out more first-look images below.
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By Max Goldbart
International TV Co-Editor
Tyler Perry's next Netflix drama will focus on the world of firefighting.
In Tyler Perry's Where There's Smoke, a group of firefighters will navigate the intense challenges of their profession while grappling with personal struggles, fractured relationships, and the emotional toll of saving lives in a world filled with danger, drama, and heartbreak. Production has kicked off in Atlanta, Georgia.
Where There's Smoke stars Tyler Lepley (Ruth & Boaz, Tyler Perry's Duplicity, Harlem) as Owen, Mike Merrill (STRAW, The Black Hamptons) as Cameron and Da'Vinchi (BMF, All American) as Noah. The ensemble cast includes Eltony Williams (If Loving You is Wrong, Designated Survivor), Brock O'Hurn (The Righteous Gemstones, Euphoria), Joe Hunter (Survivor Season 48 & Survivor season 50), Karen Obilom (House Party, Doom Patrol, Chicago PD), Brittany S. Hall (Finding Joy, Ballers), Mariah Goodie (Be Someone, The Message and the Messenger), Jordan Rodriguez (Here Comes the Flood, Jane the Virgin, Awkward) and Judi Moon.
The 16-episode drama is written, directed and produced by Perry via Tyler Perry Studios. It comes via his pre-existing creative partnership with Netflix, for which he has made the likes of Beauty in Black, Miss Governor and A Madea Homecoming. Beauty in Black was recently renewed for a third season.
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Angi Bones and Tony Strickland are producing Where There's Smoke for Tyler Perry Studios.
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Zendaya and Tom Holland are reportedly married, according to the actress' longtime stylist Law Roach. While speaking with Access Hollywood on the red carpet at the 2026 Actor Awards on March 1, Roach shared an update that quickly sparked headlines.
“The wedding has already happened,” Roach said. “You missed it.” When asked if that was true, he replied, “It's very true!” with a laugh.
If accurate, the reported wedding caps nearly a decade of friendship, romance and engagement speculation between the two actors. Here is a complete look back at Zendaya and Holland's relationship timeline.
Zendaya and Holland first met in 2016 after being cast in “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” That summer, they began appearing on each other's Instagram feeds.
On July 10, 2016, Holland posted a photo of the two with the caption, “Summer Sunday's.” In November 2016, Zendaya shared their dual cover from The Hollywood Reporter's “Next Gen 2016” issue, writing, “Honored to share it with the very best…Spider-Man himself.”
Rumors about a romance surfaced in July 2017 when a source told People the pair were dating. The outlet reported they began seeing each other during filming. At the time, both maintained they were close friends.
In 2019, fans reacted to their on-screen kiss in “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” While the two continued to downplay relationship rumors publicly, they remained close.
In July 2021, photos surfaced of Zendaya and Holland kissing inside a car, confirming their real-life romance.
That September, Holland posted a birthday tribute to Zendaya, writing, “My MJ, have the happiest of birthdays. Gimme a call when you're up xxx.” Zendaya replied, “Calling now♥️.”
In November 2021, Holland told GQ, “One of the downsides of our fame is that privacy isn't really in our control anymore.” Zendaya added, “I think loving someone is a sacred thing.”
The couple made select public appearances, including leaving the premiere of “Uncharted” hand-in-hand in February 2022.
In August 2023, Zendaya told Elle she prioritizes “protecting the peace” in her relationship. “It's about protecting the peace and letting things be your own but also not being afraid to exist,” she said.
Holland explained to Men's Health in January 2025 why he avoids walking red carpets with Zendaya. “Because it's not my moment, it's her moment, and if we go together, it's about us,” he said.
Engagement speculation intensified at the 2025 Golden Globe Awards when Zendaya wore a diamond ring on her left hand and debuted a small “t” tattoo on her ribcage. TMZ confirmed the engagement on January 6, citing sources close to the couple.
In September 2025, Holland appeared to confirm the news during a panel when he corrected a reporter, saying, “Fiancée.”
Now, Roach's comments suggest the couple may have quietly married. “The wedding has already happened,” he said. “It's very true!”
Neither Zendaya nor Holland has publicly commented on the claim.
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'The Daily Show' host reacts to Operation Epic Fury: "How quickly the right has gone from 'peace through strength' to 'peace through war.'"
By
James Hibberd
Writer-at-Large
Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show on Monday by launching into criticism of President Donald Trump‘s attack on Iran.
During his opening monologue (below), the comedy host mocked what the show dubbed “Mess O'Potamia: America's Next Top Muddle.”
Letting the f-bombs fly, Stewart laid into Trump's inconsistent communication and lack of congressional approval on the issue.
At one point, Stewart played clips that aired during the 2024 election of some on the right saying that Trump would be a “peace through strength” president who would keep the United States out of war. This was followed by clips collected since Friday of Trump supporters praising the strike.
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“How quickly the right has gone from ‘peace through strength' to ‘peace through war,'” Stewart said. “And we're all just along for the ride in a war with no clear purpose, no end in sight, all at the whims of Donald Trump.”
Stewart mocked…
— The name “Operation Epic Fury”: “Epic Fury?! Did the Paul Brothers launch another energy drink?”
— On Trump's video announcing the attack from Mar-a-Lago while wearing a white baseball cap: “This is how we're doing this? Mar-a-Lago basement? No lighting? You don't even have one of those influencer halo lights? And this is what we're wearing? Blazer, no tie, shirt unbuttoned? Looking more like the father of the bride settling up with the caterer? Not to nitpick, obviously, but baseball hat? We're going with a baseball hat for a war of choice? Oh, I'm gonna go down and make my war announcement. ‘Don't forget the HAT I got you that's bigger than your head.' … We should at least be thankful that the hat is forwards.”
— On 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei being killed in a U.S. airstrike: “I doubt he's anywhere near a location that obvious, given the advance surveillance he's been under … He stayed in his house?! Old people are so fucking stubborn. America apparently had to start an entire war to kill an 86-year-old in ill health and not wait, I don't know, three weeks to let saturated fat do its thing.” (Stewart also ripped into sympathetic studio audience noises for Khamenei — “Sorry, am I going too hard on Khamenei? A murderous dictator … who mowed down his own people?”)
— On the House being set to vote on the war powers resolution on Thursday: “This coming Thursday?! The war already fucking happened! This is Trump's whole presidency, he does whatever the fuck he wants and then a few days later, Congress is like: ‘Excuse me! Roll your window down. Excuse me, sir?! You're not allowed to knock down the East Wing without a permit from the homeowner's association. We're going to let it slide this time.' The U.S. Congress is like male nipples. Why do you exist? What do you do? Nothing! You do nothing!”
— On Iran launching strikes at other countries in the Middle East: “So let me get this straight: America and Israel attack Iran. And Iran's answer is to just attack everybody. You know, having been in a bar fight, I'm pretty sure the worst thing to do in a two-on-one beat down is to slap everybody else.”
— After showing a clip of Trump rambling about random topics during a press briefing about the war: “I can't believe our bombs are now smarter than our President.”
On Friday, Trump launched “Operation Epic Fury” targeting Iran to destroy its missile production, navy and nuclear capabilities following alleged “imminent threats.” The conflict has resulted in the death of many senior Iranian officials, significant infrastructure damage in Iran and four U.S. service member deaths. Trump has said the campaign could last weeks and hasn't ruled out the use of U.S. troops on the ground.
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By Tom Tapp
Deputy Managing Editor
Alan Cumming isn't one to hold his tongue, but it's been more than a week since an audience member with Tourette's syndrome shouted a racial slur while Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were presenting at the BAFTA Awards. Cumming, who hosted the show, has been mum on the incident. Until now.
Tonight the Traitors host took to Instagram to apologize to Black people around the world, the Tourette's community and (in a roundabout way) to the audience who expected “an evening celebrating creativity” who instead got “a trauma triggering sh*tshow.”
See his full comments below.
It's now been a week since I hosted the BAFTAS. What should have been an evening celebrating creativity as well as diversity and inclusion turned into a trauma triggering sh*tshow. I'm so sorry for all the pain Black people have felt at hearing that word echoed round the world. I'm so sorry the Tourettes community has been reminded of the lack of understanding and tolerance that abounds regarding their condition.The only possible good that could come of this is a reminder that words matter, that rushing to judgment about things of which we are not fully cognisant is folly, that all trauma must be recognised and honoured.We were all let down by decisions made to both broadcast slurs and censor free speech. Congratulations to all the artists whose work was overshadowed by the night's events.
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On paper, Steven Soderbergh's latest film The Christophers sounds like it could come straight out of the director's more coldly analytical, heist-obsessed side: The film centers on Michaela Coel as an art restorer and former forger who's hired by the children of a formerly famous artist (Ian McKellan), who want her to infiltrate their father's life and illicitly finish several of his abandoned canvases, so that they can “discover” and sell them upon his death. As a premise, it has all the hallmarks of one of Soderbergh's exercises in cinematic intricacy, complete with a potential tightrope walk of deception between two talented performers.
Except that that is not the film Soderbergh seems to have been interested in making—at least, not according to the trailer Neon released for the movie today. Instead, The Christophers is revealed to be far more of a character piece between Coel's Lori and McKellan's Julian, with her giving up the whole con to him during the trailer herself. (Sorry, James Corden and Jessica Gunning; better schemes next time.) Indeed, we seem to have here a vehicle for Coel—who hasn't had a really meaty on-screen role to tear into since I May Destroy You had its memorable run in 2020—to radiate her characters' love of art, and for McKellan to project an appealing flavor of cynical bitterness about the state of both his life, and his talents.
The Christophers debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, where it got almost universally strong reviews—including our own B+ assessment of Soderbergh's movie. In their review, Jason Gorber called the film “Arty, accessible, profound, and profane,” reserving especial praise for McKellan's performance as reclusive artist Julian Sklar. The rest of us will be able to make our own judgment on the film's artistic merits soon; The Christophers is slated to arrive in theaters on April 10.
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Marking yet another disastrous news day in the year of our Lord 2026, Bruce Campbell took to Instagram today to announce that he has cancer. “These days, when someone is having a health issue, it's referred to as ‘opportunity,' so let's go with that—I'm having one of those,” Campbell writes. “It's also called a type of cancer that's ‘treatable,' not ‘curable.' I apologize if that's a shock—it was to me too.” The actor from countless cult classics, blockbuster movies, and Saturday afternoon television—not to mention, a fan favorite at conventions and the owner of one of cinema's most iconic chins—announced that convention appearances and acting work need to “take a back seat to treatment” at the moment, and he has since canceled his upcoming appearances. “Big regrets on my part. Treatment needs and professional obligations don't always go hand-in-hand.” However, if treatment goes well “over the summer,” the Maniac Cop star hopes to jump on a promotional tour for his new movie Ernie & Emma, which Campbell stars in, wrote, and directed, in the fall. “I'm not trying to enlist sympathy—or advice—I just want to get ahead of this information in case false information gets out (which it will),” he writes.
The 67-year-old actor is a fixture of genre films and B-movies. His working relationship with director Sam Raimi, which spans from Within The Woods and The Evil Dead to Send Help (in the form of a nice, painterly cameo), has long been one of our most cherished director-actor pairings. But Campbell's celebrity extends to TV, starring in The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr, Jack Of All Trades, Hercules, Xena, and Burn Notice. He's directed several movies, including Man With The Screaming Brain, the parody biopic My Name Is Bruce, and the upcoming Ernie & Emma. What can we say? It's Bruce Campbell. We wish him the very best and hope he gets well soon.
“Fear not, I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch and I have great support, so I expect to be around for a while.”
Recommended for You1Sinners comes out on top at the Actor Awards2Where to watch the 2026 Oscar nominees3HBO will "operate independently" as HBO Max combines with Paramount Plus4A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms upends a universe about hereditary power5Making Wuthering Heights more explicit didn't make it any better
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Claudia Oshry claims Hailey Glassman, who was just announced as part of the cast for “Real Housewives of New York City” Season 13, has been body-shaming her since 2017.
Reacting to the “RHONY” casting news, the influencer took to Instagram Monday to call the public relations professional a “deep internet troll.”
Oshry then shared the first message she alleged received from Glassman, which read, “Omg your voice is so annoying. Like Janice from Friends.”
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Oshry went on to claim Glassman was “obsessed” with her weight, showing even more messages allegedly from the new Bravo star.
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“‘Damn, you were thin,'” Oshry said Glassman said about her, adding jokingly, “I must have posted an old photo of myself.”
“She's obsessed with my weight, look,” noted Oshry, reading more commentary allegedly from Glassman.
“‘Skinny minnie, now. Looks great but you gotta own you're on wegovy. You're an influencer and you really should be honest on your platform about it. When you need any skin tightening since you def lost enough to need it, I'll set you up with a great plastic surgeon in NYC.'”
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“‘Incredible shrinking woman,'” Oshry continued. “‘Once you get to where you want, we'll take care of you for a 30s neck lift. #GlassmanPlasticSurgery.'”
Oshry went on to show a screenshot of Glassman allegedly wishing her a happy Mother's Day, then writing, “So weird how you were skinnier pregnant than you were 2 years ago not pregnant. You're a magician!”
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“I don't know what barrel Bravo was scraping the bottom of casting this person,” Oshry concluded, “But it's giving Monica from ‘Salt Lake City.'”
Oshry was referring to Monica Garcia, who was forced out of Season 4 of the show after being exposed for running an Instagram troll account about the show called “Reality Von Tease.”
Glassman, a public relations pro, will be joining Erin Lichy, Jessel Taank and Sai De Silva, along with new cast members Erika Hammond and Daisy Toye, for the new season of the reality series.
In previous years, she made headlines for dating reality star Jon Gosselin.
Oshry, 31, a comedian and The Girl With No Job creator, welcomed her first child, Reuben, with husband Ben Soffer last May, announcing the news via Instagram.
She's been open about her GLP-1 use, first revealing she used Ozempic in August 2023 after nearly a year on the medication.
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The 'Evil Dead' and 'Spider-Man' actor revealed his health condition on social media: "I apologize if that's a shock. It was to me, too."
By
James Hibberd
Writer-at-Large
Evil Dead franchise star Bruce Campbell revealed on Monday that he's been diagnosed with cancer.
The beloved self-proclaimed “B-movie actor” took to social media to tell fans he had a condition, which was “treatable not curable.”
In a detailed post on X (below), the 67-year-old Spider-Man actor wrote, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it's referred to as an ‘opportunity,' so let's go with that — I'm having one of those. It's also called a type of cancer that's ‘treatable,' not ‘curable.' I apologize if that's a shock – it was to me too.”
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Continued Campbell: “The good news is, I'm not gonna go into any more detail. I'm posting this because professionally, a few things will have to change — appearances and [fan conventions] and work in general need to take a back seat to treatment. My plan is to get as well as I possibly can over the summer so that I can tour with my new movie Ernie & Emma this fall.”
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“That's about it,” he concluded. “I'm not trying to enlist sympathy — or advice — I just want to get ahead of this information in case false information gets out (which it will). Fear not, I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch and I have great support, so I expect to be around a while. As always, you're the greatest fans in the world and I hope to see you soon!”
Campbell's breakout role was in Sam Raimi's 1981's cult classic The Evil Dead and its popular sequels, 1987's Evil Dead II and 1993's Army of Darkness. He reprised his role as Ash Williams in the series spin-off Ash vs Evil Dead. He's also had cameos in Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and starred in 2002's Bubba Ho-tep.
He chronicled his adventures in Hollywood in his 2002 autobiography, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor.
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In a new social post, the "Blow" singer calls a White House TikTok with the song a "blatant disregard for human life."
By
Annie Harrigan
Editor's note: This story has been updated with a response from the White House.
Kesha is slamming President Trump for unauthorized use of her song “Blow” in a TikTok posted to the White House's account last month.
In a Monday (March 2) Instagram Story and X post, Kesha accuses the administration of using her song to “incite violence and threaten war.” She goes on to say that she does not approve of her music “being used to promote violence of any kind” and that this is “the opposite of what I stand for.”
. pic.twitter.com/9Tc0L4soS9
Kesha's post concludes by calling Trump a “criminal predator” and saying that this should not distract us from Trump being named in the Epstein Files more than a million times. (According to The New York Times, there were 38,000 mentions of Trump's name in the public documents released in January related to late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.)
In keeping with their troll-forward vibe, White House communications director Steven Cheung fired back at Kesha for her response on Monday night, re-posting her objection with the added note, “All these ‘singers' keep falling for this. This just gives us more attention and more view counts to our videos because people want to see what they're b–ching about. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Kesha is just the latest in a list of artists who have called out the White House and the Trump administration for unauthorized use of their music in promotional videos, social media posts and rallies.
In December, the White House quietly deleted an ICE video shared to X featuring Sabrina Carpenter's song “Juno” after the pop star responded calling the video “evil and disgusting.” Carpenter then said to the administration to not involve her or her music “to benefit your inhumane agenda.”
this video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.
This was not the end of the Carpenter-White House saga: Just days later, the White House doubled down with an edited video clipped from the Grammy winner's Saturday Night Live promo. In the post, Carpenter appears to be saying “I think I might need to arrest someone for being too illegal,” however, the word “illegal” is clearly falsified. In the original promo, Carpenter says to SNL's Marcello Hernandez that she's arresting him for being too hot. Much like the ICE footage, the edited video has since been taken down as well.
Other artists who have fought back against the Trump administration using their music include Olivia Rodrigo, Celine Dion and Foo Fighters. SZA also called out the administration for their pattern of using popular music as a distraction, saying, “White House rage baiting artists for free promo is PEAK DARK,” in a December post to X.
White House rage baiting artists for free promo is PEAK DARK ..inhumanity +shock and aw tactics ..Evil n Boring https://t.co/PIKoYEdn2y
At the time of publication, the White House has not removed the “Blow” TikTok — which has 1.8 million likes and nearly 17 thousand comments — nor responded to Kesha's Instagram Story.
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By Natalie Oganesyan
Weekend Editor
The Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell revealed he has been diagnosed with a ‘treatable' but not ‘curable' type of cancer, forcing him to seek medical care and cancel forthcoming public appearances.
While the horror icon did not specify the details of his diagnosis, he noted in a social media announcement, “I'm posting this, because professionally, a few things will have to change — appearances and cons and work in general need to take [a] back seat to treatment.”
The actor said he hopes to get well by the summer in order to tour his comedy movie Ernie & Emma, which he wrote, directed and stars in, this fall.
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“There are several cons this year summer [sic] that I have to cancel. Big regrets on my part. Treatment needs and professional obligations don't always go hand-in-hand,” he explained.
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Concluding, he said, “That's about it. I'm not trying to enlist sympathy—or advice—I just want to get ahead of this information in case false information gets out (which it will). Fear not, I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch and I have great support, so I expect to be around a while. As always, you're the greatest fans in the world and I hope to see you soon!”
pic.twitter.com/xnBYzY4wsS
Campbell is best known for originating the protagonist role of Ash Williams in Sam Raimi's 1981 cult classic, and for portraying the sole character to appear in each subsequent franchise entry of the quintessential indie horror film. In 2023's Evil Dead Rise, Campbell appeared in a voice role.
He most recently served as the executive producer on sequel Evil Dead Burn, which wrapped filming in October of last year and will be due out later this year.
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BC must be protected at all costs
I wish you all the best, Bruce.
Eat well, have fun and enjoy your life.
Love you.
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Savannah Guthrie has shared a brief new social media message shortly after visiting the crime scene of her mother's abduction on March 2, 2026. The “Today” anchor took to Instagram and shared a flower-filled photo of a growing memorial to Nancy Guthrie. Alongside the snap, Savannah wrote, “We feel the love and prayers from our neighbors, from the Tucson community and from around the country.”
She inserted a yellow heart emoji before continuing, “Please don't stop praying and hoping with us. Bring her home.”
Days before Savannah's visit to the home, an arrest was made outside the house after an individual was seen repeatedly driving past it “suspiciously.”
Guthrie's fellow journalist and “Today” contributor, lifestyle expert Jill Martin, reacted by commenting, “We will never stop until she is found. We all have your back and continue to pray hard for your family.”
Longtime “Today” correspondent Donna Farizan echoed, “We won't stop.”
Savannah Guthrie visits mom‘s memorial with sister and brother-in-law.
Around 1 p.m. on Monday, March 2, reporter Brian Entin published footage of Savannah and Annie Guthrie, accompanied by Annie's husband Tommaso Cioni, visiting their mother's Catalina Foothills house. The trio was seen walking towards a memorial that has been set up for Nancy, and all three carried small bunches of yellow flowers.
The heartbroken family laid down the flowers before Savannah stooped down a few times, appearing to read various notes that had been left. Annie could be heard sobbing as she clung to Cioni. Savannah and Annie's brother, Camron Guthrie, was notably absent from the trip.
The most recent status update on the investigation from the Pima County Sheriff's Department reads, “This remains an active investigation and will continue until Nancy Guthrie is located or all leads have been exhausted. The Pima County Sheriff's Department is refocusing resources to detectives specifically assigned to this case. As leads are developed and resolved, resource allocation may fluctuate. PCSD will maintain a patrol presence in the Guthrie neighborhood.”
People says they spoke to one of Nancy's neighbors, identified as Laura Gargano, who told them the choice of using yellow flowers and ribbons at the memorial “dates back to a movement in 1979, when the same was done in honor of the 52 U.S. diplomats who were held hostage in Iran.”
The outlet says she explained, “Some of us put flowers at the front of Nancy's house, while others who may not have wanted to go down to Nancy's house, put ribbons on their mailboxes. The yellow ribbon is a sentiment of hope and support after someone goes missing. I believe the use of the yellow ribbons goes back to hostage-taking in the 1970s.”
The story notes one of the yellow ribbons seen at the site contained words from the Bible verse Isaiah 43:2 which says, “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you.”
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Aside from a profound reliance on ampersands, the action-comedy Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice bears little resemblance to Paul Mazursky's battle of the sexes Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Instead of enlightened couples bringing their newfound sexual philosophy to the bedroom, it's Vince Vaugn traveling backward through time to kill his former self in a bid to fix past mistakes. Written and directed by BenDavid Grabinski (Scott Pilgrim Takes Off), the movie follows two gangsters, Mike (James Marsden) and Nick (Vaughn), and the woman they love, Alice (Eiza González), as they try to survive Future Nick's jaunt in the past. Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice bolsters its original premise and styleized filmmaking with a stacked cast, including Keith David, Jimmy Tatro, Lewis Tan, Ben Schwartz, Emily Hampshire, Arturo Castro, and Stephen Root as the cannibal assassin known as The Baron. Need anyone say more?
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice streams on Hulu on March 14.
Recommended for You1Sinners comes out on top at the Actor Awards2Where to watch the 2026 Oscar nominees3HBO will "operate independently" as HBO Max combines with Paramount Plus4A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms upends a universe about hereditary power5Making Wuthering Heights more explicit didn't make it any better
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Hallmark Channel star Tyler Hynes has warned his fans repeatedly to be wary of online scammers posing as him. But as scam artists' tactics grow increasingly sophisticated, including using AI to generate video and audio that looks and sounds just like the celebrities they're impersonating, it can be easier than it seems to fall for a fake.
On March 2, 2026, Hynes shared a video that's gone viral, produced by YouTubers Stephen Findeisen (known as Coffeezilla) and Kitboga, both known for investigating and exposing all kinds of internet scams. The 24-minute video, called “Exposing a Romance Scammer,” chronicles their efforts to find and identify a man who scammed one of Hynes' fans out of $15,000 before her death.
Hynes wrote in the caption of his post, “Awareness is the first step. ‘Exposing A Romance Scammer' is a story wonderfully told that you can find on YouTube. Sending my love to Deirdre's family and everyone behind this lovely video.”
Hynes has a dedicated and growing fandom of “Hynies” who love to support the actor and connect with each other online and at in-person events.
For Deirdre Gonzalez, a formerly vibrant and energetic mom who became a quadriplegic after breaking her neck in a freak accident, connecting with her online friends and following her favorite stars online became a source of comfort, her daughter Erin told Findeisen.
After Gonzalez died at age 62, Erin and her brother discovered nearly two years' worth of private messages between their mom and someone posing as Hynes. They also discovered she'd been scammed out of $15,000 after someone who noticed her commenting on a Hallmark Facebook page reached out to her, pretending to be someone from Hallmark “management.”
The scammer convinced Gonzalez to pay for exclusive access to a private online club, promising she'd be able to connect with her favorite stars, including Hynes. No such club exists, but the scammer made sure his communications looked very real, from official-looking Hallmark stationery to leaving voicemails using AI technology, which sounded exactly like Hynes.
Gonzalez's grown kids reached out to Findeisen, hoping he could track down the perpetrator. Incredibly, using some very clever techniques and high-tech tools, he and Kitboga were able to secure the ID of the scammer — a man in Nigeria, which Findeisen called “the capital of romance scams” like this one.
Hynes is determined not to let the scammers destroy the beautiful community his fans have created, writing in his latest post, “The world is a wonderful place filled with lovely people like this looking out for one another and I am very grateful for you.”
That requires continually reminding people about new ways the online impersonators are trying to lure fans into their heartbreaking, money-making schemes. The filmmakers behind a documentary on Hynes' fandom, due for release in 2027, have also begun sharing warnings from fans who've fallen victim to scammers.
In January, Hynes told EntertainmentNow, “In this time of cultural and technological transition, it seems the most lovely people can also be the most vulnerable. I've had the privilege of meeting many of them and when they realize the truth that they suspected, that who they've been speaking to is in fact not me (or any public figure)…well, that moment stays with me in ways I don't think many can understand until you experience it.”
Hynes noted that he doesn't want any fans who've become prey for scammers to feel embarrassed about sharing their stories as a way to help others avoid the same.
“They need to feel like it's safe to share something they may feel is personal or even embarrassing.” he said. “It is not embarrassing. It is human nature and it's a moment of history where we can hopefully show how we care for one another.”
There are literally hundreds of social media accounts pretending to be Hynes, but the “Three Wisest Men” star only posts to his Instagram account (@tyler_hynes) and never reaches out directly to fans via private messages on any app.
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Way to go Tyler hynes in get the scammer so proud you and the people that help you .
Just another reason why I love you, Tyler. Your humanity and loving, caring spirit is evident in everything you do. And kudos to all your loving fans and those who work to expose and stop scammers.
I've received Friend Requests from Tyler but wasn't sure it was really him. Too many Scammers around. Glad his Scammers have been caught. Good Job Tyler, You're the Best & a Fabulous Actor.
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For a movie widely panned as the weakest entry in its franchise, “Scream 7” had a killer opening weekend. Directed by original “Scream” screenwriter Kevin Williamson, the new sequel debuted to record-setting box office numbers for Paramount — earning $97.2 million worldwide and outperforming every previous chapter in the long-running slasher series.
“Scream 7” achieved that milestone despite abysmal reviews and an unusually turbulent release cycle. The film currently holds a 32 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 36 on Metacritic, arriving amid the most significant off-screen controversy in the property's history. In nearly three decades, the horror universe launched by Wes Craven has endured artistic highs and lows while remaining consistently commercially viable. In 2026, fans protesting the dismissal of “Scream VI” star Melissa Barrera — who was fired from the sequel after posting pro-Palestinian remarks on social media — organized petitions, social media campaigns, and coordinated theater calls for audiences to skip the film altogether.
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While much of that activism originated within fandom spaces, the dispute quickly spread beyond genre circles and became a recurring entertainment-industry flashpoint covered across mainstream outlets. It was amplified by labor and free-speech debates already reshaping Hollywood discourse, and underscored in importance by the dire stakes of the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The night of the world premiere, demonstrators lined outside the historic Paramount Pictures backlot in Los Angeles.
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By traditional studio metrics, the protest appears to have failed spectacularly. But after just one weekend, that premature conclusion could misunderstand how franchise damage actually works. Opening weekends measure curiosity and habit, not audience confidence, and horror success has always hinged less on debut numbers than on second-weekend endurance and buzzy word-of-mouth. Viewed through a longer industry lens, “Scream 7” suggests the momentum Paramount benefited from to get this far may not extend much further.
Horror franchises don't get major theatrical openings based on merit alone. They become blockbuster events because audiences recognize the name and the core concept attached to it. Thanks to the review embargo put in place by Paramount, pre-sale tickets for “Scream 7” were a done deal days before most critics weighed in on the quality of the new film.
Franchise loyalists and nostalgia-driven moviegoers will often treat sequels as mandatory viewing, regardless of early reception. That dynamic has carried countless lackluster follow-ups to strong debuts before general sentiment catches up. Yes, “Scream 7” still has a 77 percent on Rotten Tomatoes among general audiences, but that's faint praise regardless and hardly indicative of last enthusiasm.
Paramount has spent decades training audiences to show up for “Scream” automatically. The real test begins once obligation viewing gives way to recommendation… or lack of it. For horror movies especially, the second weekend tells the truth the first cannot.
Boycotts rarely destroy the businesses they're directly targeting, but they can reshape consumer conversation and gradually force people in power to change their behavior. Slashers survive on continuity of emotional investment, and “Scream” in particular depends on viewers believing the series respects both its beloved core characters and their enduring, self-aware fanbase.
The reported pay dispute that kept final girl Neve Campbell out of “Scream VI” spurred fans into action in 2023 and backlash followed suit. But working with the buzz of the Radio Silence filmmakers, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Paramount was able to overcome fandom headwinds and break records at the box office anyway — bringing in $44.4 million with its then series-best opening.
The sequel was good enough to distract from behind-the-scenes controversy, but that before Barrera's exit introduced more instability. Her removal from “Scream 7” was followed by even more shuffling, including the departures of Jenna Ortega and would-be director Christopher Landon, and that mounting internal strain impacted the result. Whether opening weekend viewers knew about the Barrera controversy or not, Williamson's sequel is bad in a way no marketing campaign can fully smooth over.
If audience trust has now weakened, even slightly, the consequences will come in stages. First, next weekend. Then, with “Scream 8.” Considering that studios greenlight sequels based on IP trends instead of isolated wins, that project seems likely — even if the belated consequences of a “D+” film are certain.
Perhaps the strangest outcome of this sequel's success is how little audience conversation surrounds the movie itself. For most of its existence, “Scream” has generated enough twists, kills, and meta-commentary to create a genuine horror “moment” well beyond the typical Halloween season. Nostalgia for the groundbreaking 1996 original ensured that even weaker installments were absorbed into the genre's shared language, making each sequel endlessly quotable, debatable, and eventually reclaimable.
That process seems unlikely to repeat here. The newly released trailer for “Scary Movie 6” prominently parodies “Scream VI,” underscoring how quickly the Radio Silence filmmakers' previous installment entered recognizable pop-culture canon. By contrast, “Scream 7” has struggled to produce imagery or narrative beats strong enough to eclipse the political fallout dominating online discussion.
Conversation surrounding “Scream 7” remains focused less on the film itself than on the circumstances of its making, and its enormous opening weekend may ultimately cement that reality rather than soften it. Ghostface may remain financially dominant and culturally unavoidable, but the franchise's latest chapter suggests the mask's legacy is becoming creatively disposable… if not deceased.
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The duo, who brought the hit animated film to life, also weigh in on whether or not streaming versus theatrical helped the release and where the highly anticipated sequel stands.
By
Nicole Fell
Assistant Editor
KPop Demon Hunters directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans are reflecting on their long journey to the Oscars.
The film, which was released in June on Netflix, has become the streamer's most-watched title. The sleeper hit spawned toy lines and food tie-ins, along with a theatrical run for its sing-along companion. “It's beyond anything I could have ever imagined this concept becoming,” Kang tells The Hollywood Reporter.
The film has catapulted the team into the spotlight, led by the film's lead singing voice and songwriter for multiple songs, EJAE. But Kang and Appelhans are quick to emphasize that the film is only possible because of the large team behind it. “Animation is such a collaborative process,” Kang says.
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KPop Demon Hunters is up for best animated feature and best original song at the 2026 Academy Awards. It's undoubtedly a big moment for Kang and Appelhans, but the directors are keen to share this moment with their team that brought the film to life over its seven-year incubation period. “We honestly haven't had much time to be with them post-release and just hold hands, jump up and down and celebrate,” Appelhans says, adding they've finally been able to have those moments during the awards campaign.
“Every time I think about the crew, I just burst into tears,” Kang admits. “I'm so grateful to everybody. You make sacrifices in your life working on these things, no matter what your role is and how long you're on it.”
The Oscars are shaping up to be the biggest moment for the directors to celebrate with their crew. “We got extra tickets, so we're only inviting our crew to it; just as a reward and also so that we could all be there to celebrate, no matter what happens,” Kang explains. “They all deserve to be there.”
Given KPop Demon Hunters' success, it wouldn't be surprising if Kang and Appelhans found themselves unable to be surprised at anything surrounding the movie at this point. The pair deny that, however. Appelhans noted in recent Q&As, like their American Cinematheque program moderated by director Guillermo del Toro, there are still moments of shock. “I am always wonderfully surprised when filmmakers that we really admire [appreciate the film],” he says.
“The sort of clarity that they see — through all the bedazzling in the movie — to the hard stuff. [They] have such interesting questions about it and notice the things that took the most work behind the scenes to pull off,” Appelhans continues. “Artist to artist, you feel sort of appreciated.”
For Kang, meeting with artists who know how much the movie means remains rewarding. “We recently met Daniel Dae Kim in person,” she says, adding that he's “so lovely” and how she can't believe they hadn't met.
She adds, “[He] just knows how much this means for our industry and for Korean creators because he's somebody who really stands up for that.”
KPop Demon Hunters' success has been immense, due in part to the gradual growth it initially experienced on the streaming platform. There's been plenty of conversation around whether or not a theatrical release would've changed that. “As an industry, as filmmakers, you want the theaters to still be there,” she begins, noting the film was greenlit during the COVID days. “To get a green light in a time of super uncertainty. To be able to make an original IP in this climate, where we are just typically getting sequels and regurgitated '80s films, I just saw it as an opportunity to get a movie made. That's all you really can ask for, especially as a first-time filmmaker.”
Kang says that given the budget they got to make the film, it was a great opportunity. “The whole theater climate is strange. We just don't know how people are consuming content these days. We're still trying to figure it out,” she says.
“Our film rolled out on a streaming platform, got this love from the fans and then ended up three weeks later in a movie theater. The fact that that's possible for something is really interesting,” Kang continues. “It just tells us that every film is different. How it's consumed is different. How it's enjoyed is different. Hopefully we see more, I guess, bespoke releases [or] approaches to each film.”
KPop Demon Hunters, as a title, is at once a straightforward example of what the film is, but doesn't allow for audiences to know it's so much more than that. “Streaming is great in our case,” says Appelhans. “It's very hard to explain that to an audience in a marketing piece. The most convincing version of that is word of mouth, firsthand experience and people speaking up for the film.”
He continues, “That snowball effect is entirely so much more easy to do in streaming, I think. I wonder if there's [a] certain type of movie that will always benefit from having that opportunity to create buy-in and build momentum versus trying to persuade everybody cold that they should show up to the theater on the first Saturday or whatever.”
With a sequel eventually on the way — reports of the film's release date were initially stated for 2029; however, the Sony Pictures Animation bosses recently alluded to it likely being longer. Animation, famously, is a long process. The directors are understandably coy about what they can share; the pair have essentially been promoting the film nonstop since it blew up in July 2025.
“I've seen a lot of comments on YouTube interviews that have been voted right to the top that say something along the lines of, ‘If there's going to be a sequel, let them cook. Don't rush it. We can all wait,'” Appelhans says. “The audiences are so media savvy now. They don't know the animation pipeline per se, but they have sort of spoken in the sense of if we make it great, they'll be there.”
Kang relates it to another SPA title that experienced a years-long wait time in between films. “The diehard Spider-Verse fans really know that. They understand that level of artistry takes a really long time,” she says. “Anytime you're trying to do something new and different, it takes even longer. I think whatever we do next is going to be just pushing ourselves even more than what we did with this movie.”
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Recently in Los Angeles, the Oscar-nominated “Train Dreams” filmmakers had one of their dreams realized in the form of a pop-up gallery highlighting stand out images from the Best Picture contender.
“The way we kind of envisioned the movie and what we wanted the movie to feel like when you're watching it [is] almost like you found that box full of pictures and you're figuring out who that person was through those pictures,” said “Train Dreams' cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, as he gave IndieWire an exclusive tour of the exhibit alongside the film's director Clint Bentley. “And to now have all those pictures up on the walls, and in a still photography sense have that same feeling, looking at those pictures and trying to figure out what the movie is, and what the life was through those pictures, is a very beautiful and special moment for us.”
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Ahead, IndieWire shares some of the stills the pair curated for the exhibit, with commentary below some of their favorites.
To start, Bentley and Veloso go back to beginning with the first image of “Train Dreams” that they released publicly, when the film was selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. “It's just so lovely. And you have their whole relationship and their whole dynamic in one frame while the sun's setting behind it,” said Bentley of the image of stars Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton as married couple Gladys and Robert Grainier. “We just set this up, put them in place, and ran it like 20 times as the sun was going down behind them.”
Practical lighting was a huge part of Veloso's approach to the cinematography for the film. He points to the photo of Edgerton's silhouette, saying “the amazing thing about shooting on location is there's no sky replacements in the movie. It's all real skies. Of that sky, it's actually what we had there, and it's surreal how beautiful it was, and how many beautiful sunsets and sunrises we got.”
Bentley finds another photo of Edgerton and his onscreen daughter that reminds him of one of his favorite scenes in the film. “[In the photo] she's pointing at her mom because she's like, ‘Mama.' She hands Joel a pine cone, but the scene that's in the movie is she hands him some things that she says are eggs and he's like, ‘Oh, an egg,' and he laughs, but it's really some shit from a deer or something,” says the Best Adapted Screenplay nominee with a laugh. “But I love it. It's one of the sweetest moments in the film.”
Veloso, who this year became the first ever Brazilian nominated for Best Cinematography, recalls a moment during production where the harsh weather was actually to his benefit. “We got to go on the mountain and we rode on [snowcats]. For a Brazilian, that was a first.” He added, “The amazing thing is that a snowstorm started to come towards us. Everybody was like, ‘Ok, we should go then.' But then Joel said, ‘Go? No way, we're going to shoot this.' And then Clint and I just looked at each other and we were really happy because if Joel is saying it, who's going to tell him that we shouldn't?”
For one of the stills that speaks to the title of “Train Dreams,” Bentley explains how “Adolpho had the idea of this, almost like a train light going past. And so we just had this big light on a long dolly track behind them and then set up almost these music video shots.” Veloso said that in order to evoke a sense of the train being present in Grainier's dream of his late wife, “We put a light on a drone too for those shots passing through them in the middle of the forest.”
For the image they chose of the climactic fire scene, Veloso employed more techniques to achieve that feeling of the film being like the viewer going through a box of pictures. “That whole scene with Gladys point of view of the fire. We shot it with like four frames per second, six frames per second, just a position to really sharp images in other parts of the movie,” said the cinematographer. “That's very common in still photography, but not necessarily common in films.”
Finally, for one of the closing images in the film, Bentley also gives a shoutout to production designer Alex Schaller. “I had super high hopes for what this plant man could be after Grainier dies, and nature kind of starts to take him back. And it surpassed everything that I thought it would be… just the way it turned out with busting a hole in the roof and having all these flowers come in.”
In the above video, the pair visit another room that is playing clips of their Netflix film. “The shots really wrap around you. I love this room so much. It feels like it's very moving. It feels like stepping in the movie,” said Bentley. “Yeah, I got really emotional when I first stepped in here,” said Veloso of their vision for the film being realized in the form of the exhibit. Though now he jokes, “I'm getting used to it.”
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By
Charisma Madarang
Justin Timberlake has filed a petition to stop the public release of body camera footage from his traffic stop and arrest on June 18, 2024 after he allegedly failed to stop at a stop sign in the Southampton village of Sag Harbor, New York. The filing arrives after the singer pleaded guilty to one count of driving while impaired months following the arrest.
In the request filed on March 2 and obtained by Rolling Stone, Timberlake's attorneys state that the footage depicts the Grammy winner in “an acutely vulnerable state during a roadside encounter with law enforcement, capturing intimate details of Petitioner's physical appearance, demeanor, speech, and conduct,” adding that footage also includes Timberlake during hours of confinement after the arrest.
The footage is currently part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by members of the media, including ABC News, per an emergency filing to block the bid.
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In the paperwork, his legal team argues that public release of the video would “cause severe and irreparable harm” to his reputation, subject him to “harassment,” and serve no “legitimate public interest in understanding the operations of government.” His attorneys also assert that the footage's disclosure would “constitute an unwarranted invasion” of the artist's “personal privacy.”
Timberlake's attorneys did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
The singer was arrested on suspicion of DWI back in June 2024. According to a previous court filing, police officers clocked Timberlake allegedly driving through a stop sign and then failing to “keep to the right side of the road” for multiple blocks.
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Timberlake was initially charged with a single misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated, to which he pleaded not guilty, following the Sag Harbor arrest. The following September he agreed to plead guilty to the lesser, noncriminal charge of driving while impaired. He will reportedly only have to pay a fine of $500, make a public safety service announcement, and serve up to 40 hours of community service at a nonprofit of his choosing.
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Four siblings have sued the Michael Jackson estate, alleging that they were each sexually trafficked and abused by the singer over periods that collectively spanned more than a decade. The plaintiffs—Frank, Dominic, Marie-Nicole, and Aldo Cascio—recently appeared in court in an effort to void a prior settlement that they said was designed to “silence victims of childhood sexual abuse.” A ruling on that is set for March 5. The new lawsuit, filed on February 27 in Los Angeles, arrives a month after the siblings' last appearance in court.
The Cascio siblings' father reportedly met Jackson while working at a luxury hotel he often stayed at. According to the complaint, Jackson began sexually abusing each sibling when they were around seven or eight. He allegedly showed them pornography—including child pornography—and forced two boys to watch him assault Marie-Nicole, while telling her it was “a normal thing between a man and a woman.”
The lawsuit goes on to allege that Jackson plied the children with alcohol and hard drugs, as well as prescription drugs such as Xanax and Viagra. He reportedly used childlike language to encourage the consumption of these substances, calling wine “Jesus Juice” and hard liquor “Disney Juice.” The plaintiffs claim that Jackson's employees were complicit in Jackson's abuse, often procuring alcohol and drugs for him with the knowledge of what they would be used for.
Jackson is said to have stressed that the lives of the plaintiffs as well as their family would be ruined if anyone were to find out about their sexual acts. He allegedly instructed the children on what to say if an adult were to ask them if they had been molested. The lawsuit also claims that Jackson repeatedly employed manipulation tactics—such as isolating the siblings from each other, convincing their parents to homeschool them, and taking them on interstate and international trips arranged by the Jackson organization—to gain more access to them. The abuse reportedly continued until days before Jackson's death in 2009.
A lawyer for the Cascio siblings, Howard King, told Pitchfork in a statement: “Ignoring threats from the Michael Jackson Estate of financial ruin and faced with the Estate's false public accusations of extortion and lying, the Cascios have elected to remain silent no longer. Not only do they seek fair compensation for more than a decade of abuse of an entire family, they hope their filing will embolden other victims and enablers to come forth and shake off the shackles of their silence.”
The Cascio family had previously supported Jackson during a 2003 trial in which the singer, who was later acquitted, was charged with molesting Gavin Arvizo, who was 13 years old at the time of the alleged abuse. In media appearances, the siblings often described themselves as Jackson's “second family.” Frank Cascio explicitly countered many of the allegations against Jackson in his 2011 memoir, My Friend Michael. “My greatest is hope is that, as you read this book, you can put aside all the scandals, all the rumors, all the cruel jokes that surrounded him later in his life, and come to know him through my eyes,” he wrote in the book.
The 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland allegedly “deprogrammed” the siblings, allowing them to “become conscious of the reality: Jackson's abuse was wrong and had severely damaged them.” That same year, prior to securing legal representation, they signed a Confidential Acquisition and Consulting Agreement which, they claim, was explained to them as being a “life rights” agreement. However, the contract included non-disparagement and binding arbitration clauses which would have prevented the siblings from going to the police with their allegations or suing the Jackson estate in open court.
In addition to charges of child sex trafficking, the Cascio's lawsuit seeks damages for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, negligent hiring, and fraud. In a statement to People, the lawyer representing Jackson's estate, Martin Singer, described the lawsuit as “a desperate money grab by additional members of the Cascio family who have hopped on the bandwagon with their brother Frank, who is already being sued in arbitration for civil extortion.”
Singer continued: “The family staunchly defended Michael Jackson for more than 25 years, attesting to his innocence of inappropriate conduct. This new court filing is a transparent forum-shopping tactic in their scheme to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars from Michael's estate and companies.”
A separate lawsuit against Jackson is set to go to trial in November this year. That one, revived in 2023, is filed by James Safechuck and Wade Robson, the subjects of Leaving Neverland.
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Kesha took to Instagram and X to make her point clear: "Also, don't let this distract us from the fact that criminal predator Donald Trump appears in the files over a million times."
By
Chris Gardner
Kesha called out the White House and Donald Trump‘s administration Monday afternoon for the unauthorized use of her song on TikTok “to incite violence and threaten war.”
The pop superstar took to Instagram and X to clear the air after her song “Blow” was used in a social media clip posted by the White House's official account featuring fighter jets in the sky with the caption, “Lethality.”
“It's come to my attention that the White House has used one of my songs on TikTok to incite violence and threaten war,” she shared in the wake of the United States' attack on Iran. “Trying to make light of war is disgusting and inhumane. I absolutely do NOT approve of my music being used to promote violence of any kind.”
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She continued by posting, “Love always trumps hate. Please love yourself and each other in times like this. This show of blatant disregard for human life and quite frankly this attack on all of our nervous systems is the opposite of what I stand for.”
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She closed the post by calling attention to how many times Trump's name appears in the Epstein Files. “Also, don't let this distract us from the fact that criminal predator Donald Trump appears in the files over a million times.”
Lethality 🔥🦅
The White House posted the clip featuring “Blow” on Feb. 10. The track, which appeared on her first EP, Cannibal, from 2010, is a dance pop song that was officially released on Feb. 1, 2011. The accompanying music video came out later that month and features the late actor James Van Der Beek. “This place about to blow, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh,” Kesha sings. “Now what? (What?) We're taking control. We get what we want. We do what you don't.”
. pic.twitter.com/9Tc0L4soS9
She's the latest in a long line of artists who have called out the White House and/or Trump for using their songs without permission, whether at campaign rallies or on social media. Those include Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, SZA, Celine Dion, Kenny Loggins, Linda Ronstadt, Foo Fighters, the White Stripes and more.
Stop using my music, perverts @WhiteHouse
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The "Raise Your Glass" singer is taking over hosting duties for the first week of Women's History Month.
By
Annie Harrigan
Hosting The Kelly Clarkson Show is now a family affair — at least it was on Monday (March 2) for P!nk.
The “So What” singer is taking over the daytime talk show for the first week of Women's History Month, and for the first episode of her stint, she brought along Willow Sage Hart, her 14-year-old daughter with husband Carey Hart.
Together, the mother-daughter duo did a very special Cameo-oke, a segment where the show's guests cover a song without Kelly present. Both Broadway superfans, P!nk and Willow performed a beautiful rendition of “Hopeless War” from the 2024 Tony Award winner for best musical The Outsiders.
Keeping with the Broadway theme, P!nk and Willow also invited Glee and Maybe Happy Ending star Darren Criss and Grammy-winning Broadway legend Shoshana Bean to the show. Together, the group of four played a Broadway trivia game called “I Have to Know If You Know This Show!” It was mother vs. daughter, as Bean and Willow partnered up against Criss and P!nk and answered questions about shows like Grease, Wicked and Hadestown. Although Criss and P!nk put up a good fight, they ultimately lost to Willow and Bean.
The Cameo-oke performance with her daughter was not the only duet P!nk performed on Monday's episode: After interviewing Bean about her new album Only Smoke, P!nk joined the Broadway star for a performance of her single “Let Me Believe.”
P!nk's time on The Kelly Clarkson Show comes a month after Clarkson announced that the series would be ending after seven seasons. Despite rumors that P!nk would permanently take over the show, the “Raise Your Glass” singer shared in a now-deleted Instagram video that her stint on the show is a temporary thing and that hosting a talk show full-time is not something she has time for in her “busy, busy, busy world.”
The next episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, also hosted by P!nk, will feature special guests Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and Chloe Kim, airing Tuesday on NBC.
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🔥✊🏼Beautiful! Go Gettum Girl! 💙
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A TikTik Psychic has been will be liable for $10 million in damages for defamatory videos about the University of Idaho Bryan Kohberger murders.
According to KIVI-TV 6 in Idaho, a few weeks after Kohberger murdered four University of Idaho students on November 13th, 2022, the psychic began to post videos that blamed a respected University professor.
Ashley Guillard used Tarot cards to make claims that Professor Rebecca Scofield, the Department Chair and Associate Professor of History, "orchestrated" the killings. She also claimed Scofield had an inappropriate relationship with a student. The videos were seen by thousands, if not tens of thousands of viewers.
Law enforcement was able to establish Kohberger was the primary suspect and he was captured after a nationwide manhunt, and authorities found a large amount of evidence linking him to the murders. There was so much evidence Kohberger at the last minute pleaded guilty in his trial to avoid losing in court and facing the death penalty.
Kohberger, a grad student, gave an admission of guilt and how he did it in his court appearance before sentencing.
Guillard continued to claim Scofield was involved in the murders, and she had an inappropriate relationship with a student, despite federal judicial orders to stop. So the professor sued the psychic.
In US District Court for the District of Idaho, Judge Raymond Dl Patricco had already ruled the videos were defamatory, but left the damages up to the jury.
Guillard had represented herself throughout the proceedings. The 41-year-old from Texas arrogantly tried to claim Scofield's charges of mental and physical anguish were from a hysterectomy in December of 2022. The jury did not buy her claims, and delivered a resounding defeat for the psychic.
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Lamb of God vocalist Randy Blythe says that he believes he spotted a UFO once while hanging out with friends in Oak Island, North Carolina.
By Stephen Andrew Galiher
As we all learned about aliens and UFOs from Mulder and Scully… “The truth is out there.” And one person who's on board with the X-Files take on extraterrestrials is Lamb Of God's Randy Blythe, who is pretty sure he once saw an unidentified flying object.
Blythe shared his experience with Metal Hammer, recounting what he saw. “Yes, I'm pretty sure I've seen one, by the house I rented down on Oak Island, North Carolina,” the heavy metal frontman told the outlet. “It was a block from the ocean. I was sitting on the front porch there with my friend, T-Roy from Sourvein, and his girlfriend.”
“All of a sudden we saw these two sets of four lights in a kind of square pattern over the ocean, very bright,” he continued. “They went horizontal very quickly, one this way and one that way, then they went up and then down, and then they both shot into the sky at an incredible speed. We were honestly freaked out.”
Blythe also made it clear that he's aware his sighting could be debunked and got out in front of any skepticism. “I'm quite aware of our military take-off vehicles, and they can't go that fast,” he said. “They weren't drones. I am not obsessed with aliens or weird conspiracy stuff like some of my friends, but I think it's improbable that we're the only intelligent thing in the universe. And I definitely saw an unidentified flying object that night.”
In other Lamb Of God news, the band is about to release their new album, Into Oblivion, on March 13. Following the release, they'll be heading out on a headlining tour with supporting bands Kublai Khan TX, Fit For An Autopsy, and Sanguisugabogg. Get tickets and find a complete list of tour dates below.
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Queer supernatural horror film Leviticus will be light up theaters on June 19 via Neon.
The studio acquired the Australian film in a seven-figure deal out of Sundance.
Writer-director Adrian Chiarella makes his feature debut on the film, which will screen at SXSW in Texas later this month.
Joe Bird (Talk to Me) and Stacy Clausen star as star-crossed teenage boys who must escape a violent entity that takes the form of the person they desire most — each other.
Mia Wasikowska (Crimson Peak) co-stars, marking her return to the screen after a three-year absence, alongside Jeremy Blewitt, Ewen Leslie (The Nightingale), and Davida McKenzie (Silent Night).
Talk to Me and Bring Her Back producers Samanta Jennings and Kristina Ceyton of Causeway Films produce alongside Hannah Ngo. Causeway also bankrolled the picture with Salmira Productions.
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The FBI has joined the search for a retired US Air Force general — who once led a site long rumored to be tied to UFO research — after he was reported missing in New Mexico.
Retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, 68, was last seen in Albuquerque at about 11 a.m. on Friday, local authorities said.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office quickly issued a “silver alert” — a system often used for missing people with medical issues — amid concerns for his safety and well-being.
The feds have since confirmed they are now assisting the sheriff's office, as well as New Mexico Search and Rescue, as the search stretched into its fourth day.
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“The FBI Albuquerque Field Office is involved in this investigation, as it is standard practice for the FBI to assist our local law enforcement partners if we have a tool, tactic, or technique that could benefit their investigations,” a spokesperson told The Post in a statement. “The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office is leading this investigation.”
The sheriff's office said they had exhausted several efforts in recent days, including drone, K9 and helicopter searches.
“There are no signs of any criminal activity such as a kidnapping or anything else,” a spokesperson told The Post.
“His disappearance is only being investigated as a missing person/silver alert at this time.”
Prior to his retirement, McCasland was a commander at Kirtland's Phillips Research Site and Air Force Research Laboratory — a critical US Air Force base in Ohio, according to his online profile.
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Alien enthusiasts have long claimed the site has been linked to various UFO sightings.
The base was at the center of the military's infamous “Project Blue Book” investigation into Unidentified Flying Objects back in the 1950s and 1960s.
McCasland, meanwhile, was also a longtime leader at the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and had prior stints at the Pentagon before retiring in 2013.
Col. Justin Secrest, commander of the 377th Air Base Wing at Kirtland, told the Albuquerque Journal that the base was coordinating with local authorities in the search for the retired general.
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“Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time,” Secrest said.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury was among those who blasted out the silver alert in the search for McCasland.
“Bernalillo County has issued a Silver Alert for retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, a longtime leader at Kirtland and former commander of the Phillips Research Site and Air Force Research Laboratory,” she in a post on X.
“He was last seen Friday morning near Quail Run Court NE, and due to medical concerns, authorities are asking for our community's help.”
The sheriff's office said it was unclear what McCasland was wearing, or which direction he was headed, when he was last seen.
The FBI has joined the search for a retired US Air Force general — who once led a site long rumored to be tied to UFO research — after he was reported missing in New Mexico.
Retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, 68, was last seen in Albuquerque about 11 a.m. Friday, local authorities said.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office quickly issued a Silver Alert — a system often used for missing people with medical issues — amid concerns for his safety and well-being.
The feds have since confirmed they are assisting the sheriff's office, as well as New Mexico Search and Rescue, as the effort stretched into its fourth day.
“The FBI Albuquerque Field Office is involved in this investigation, as it is standard practice for the FBI to assist our local law enforcement partners if we have a tool, tactic, or technique that could benefit their investigations,” a spokesperson told The Post in a statement. “The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office is leading this investigation.”
The sheriff's office said it had tried several angles in recent days, including drone, K9 and helicopter searches.
“There are no signs of any criminal activity such as a kidnapping or anything else,” a spokesperson told The Post.
“His disappearance is only being investigated as a missing person/silver alert at this time.”
Prior to his retirement, McCasland was a commander at Kirtland's Phillips Research Site and Air Force Research Laboratory — a critical US Air Force base in Ohio, according to his online profile.
Alien enthusiasts have long claimed the site has been linked to various UFO sightings.
The base was at the center of the military's infamous “Project Blue Book” investigation into unidentified flying objects back in the 1950s and '60s.
McCasland, meanwhile, was also a longtime leader at the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and had prior stints at the Pentagon before retiring in 2013.
Col. Justin Secrest, commander of the 377th Air Base Wing at Kirtland, told the Albuquerque Journal that the base was coordinating with local authorities in the search for the retired general.
“Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time,” Secrest said.
US Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) was among those who blasted out the Silver Alert in the search for McCasland.
“Bernalillo County has issued a Silver Alert for retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, a longtime leader at Kirtland and former commander of the Phillips Research Site and Air Force Research Laboratory,” she in a post on X.
“He was last seen Friday morning near Quail Run Court NE, and due to medical concerns, authorities are asking for our community's help.”
The sheriff's office said it was unclear what McCasland was wearing or in which direction he was headed when he was last seen.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has voiced opposition to President Donald Trump's airstrikes against Iran, saying foreign intervention was straying away from the “America First” message that resonated with him and other voters.
Over the weekend, Jones hosted several livestreams to discuss the ongoing military operations that have killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, and 48 other Iranian leaders. The strikes on Iran have killed at least 787 people including 176 children – more than 100 of whom are from a girls' school in Minab, the non-profit Human Rights Activists in Iran reported.
“This is going to enrage the world against Israel and the United States,” Jones said of the deadly school missile strike. “Again, I don't like the mullahs, but this is supposed to be America First. We're not supposed to be running around doing this anymore.”
In another livestream, Jones said Trump was “breaking” a promise to his supporters by attacking Iran and forcing “regime change.”
“Trump ran on not doing regime change,” Jones said. “I'm just saying, you don't tell us ‘no more regime change' that we've seen the CIA do and many times put worse people in on purpose, and then you turn around and say ‘oh no this is a great thing.'”
Trump and members of his administration have given conflicting statements about the goal of the Iran attacks. On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that the airstrike campaign in Iran is “not a regime change war.” But over the weekend, Trump told ABC News the attack “knocked out most of the candidates” for the Iranian regime.
"It's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead,” Trump said, suggesting the U.S. was conducting regime change. The president also encouraged Iranians to use the opportunity to “take over” their government.
Officials have maintained the reason for the attack was to take out Iran's nuclear weapon facility, to prevent the country from building a nuclear weapon or ballistic missiles, as well as destroy Iran's navy to prevent the country from attacking neighboring countries.
Trump administration officials reportedly told congressional staff in private briefings Sunday that U.S. intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a pre-emptive strike against the U.S. The administration officials instead acknowledged there was a more general threat in the region from Iran's missiles and proxy forces.
Jones also criticized Trump for posting AI-generated videos of the U.S. bombing Iran on Truth Social to brag about the attacks, calling it “unseemly.”
Jones was once a staunch Trump ally – supporting the president's 2016 presidential campaign, peddling conspiracy theories against Democrats and raising money for Trump's 2021 “Stop the Steal” rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol.
Jones is the founder of InfoWars, a far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website. He has peddled theories from Pizzagate to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which led to a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit ruling, which Jones was ordered to pay the families of victims.
Since Trump returned to power last year, Jones has been more critical of the administration, disagreeing with the handling of the Epstein files and the president's desire to pursue more foreign intervention. Other known MAGA allies, such as former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, have voiced similar criticisms about the president sending the U.S. military to the Middle East.
With reporting from The Associated Press