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Just hours after declaring completion, Trump vowed to “not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.”
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President Donald Trump claimed that his war on Iran is “very complete” just before markets closed on Monday, causing oil prices to calm — then contradicted himself a few hours later, promising to “not relent” as the U.S. and Israel carried out some of worst bombardments of the war all the while, locals said.
In an interview with CBS on Monday afternoon, Trump said, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.” He claimed, without evidence, that the U.S. has wiped out Iran's military capabilities, saying the country now has “no navy, no communications” and “no air force.”
“If you look, they have nothing left. There's nothing left in a military sense,” he said, adding that he has “no message” for the new leader of the country, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The president also said that the U.S. is “very far” ahead of the four to five week estimate he's given for the war.
As the interview was published, U.S.-Israeli strikes were pummeling Iran. Al Jazeera reports that Tehran experienced “some of the most intense bombardment” of the 10 days of war overnight, with 40 people killed near the busy Risalat Square. Around the same time, human rights group HRANA reported that there were at least 285 attacks across 17 of Iran's 31 provinces in the previous 24 hours, killing at least 40 civilians.
Iran's Mehr news agency reported that rescue workers had recovered the body of a 1-year-old girl from the rubble of a residential building hit by U.S.-Israeli strikes in Tehran. A wave of heavy airstrikes hit Tehran, while the U.S. and Israel also bombarded other cities across Iran, including in Isfahan, where UNESCO world heritage sites were damaged in attacks.
Immediately following the publication of the CBS interview at around 3 pm Eastern Time, oil prices cooled significantly from a record spike over the weekend caused by U.S.-Israeli bombing of oil depots in Tehran and uncertainty surrounding Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Markets rallied after his remarks, with the S&P 500 closing with a 0.8 percent gain for the day.
Trump had a near-immediate about face in remarks to House Republicans in Doral, Florida, just hours later and in press comments afterward. In his remarks, he said: “We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.”
He then told reporters, “we'll not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.” He added that he “could call” the war now and label it a success, “or we could go further, and we're going to go further.”
Meanwhile, a post on X by the Department of Defense's rapid response account published just before Trump's CBS remarks on Monday afternoon said, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight,” with a picture attached of a missile that says, “no mercy.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth promised in a press conference on Tuesday morning that “today will be, yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran.” He claimed that Iran is “badly losing,” but also insisted that the U.S. is “not allowing mission creep” on the war — even though the administration has not laid out any clear goals for the objectives of the war or when it would end.
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.
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The growth of far right parties like Nigel Farage's Reform may further keep refugees from reaching European shores.
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Earlier this week, as the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran intensified, U.K. Reform Party leader Nigel Farage doubled down on his anti-immigrant and anti-refugee stances. If, he declared, refugees start leaving Iran in large numbers, they will have to be housed in the Middle East; Britain simply can't take in any more.
Farage spoke about the U.S.-Israeli operation in Iran in glowing terms. One outcome his country should celebrate, he argued, was that if the theocratic regime falls, large numbers of Iranians currently living in the U.K. will likely return home. Consider it a twofer, he was basically saying: a bad regime falls, and the U.K. may also rid itself of some of its Muslim immigrants.
Anti-immigrant tirades could well become official British policy in the not-too-distant future. The Starmer-led Labour government has disappointed the British public since coming to power in a landslide victory in the summer of 2024, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer himself is toxic with the electorate: Latest YouGov numbers show that 69 percent of the public views him unfavorably. (Amazingly, that's an improvement on his January numbers, when fully 75 percent viewed him negatively.) Farage's Reform U.K., a right-wing party backed by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, now has a good chance of being the largest grouping in Parliament come the next general election, currently scheduled for 2029.
Amid outbreaks of violence aimed at asylum seekers housed in hotels around the country, the U.K.'s Labour government is pushing through legislation that would require refugees and asylum seekers to wait 20 years before they could gain permanent residency rights. Their ability to work would also be restricted, and they would be subject to fast-track deportation proceedings should their refugee status — which will now be reviewed every 30 months — be revoked.
The U.K.'s Labour government is pushing through legislation that would require refugees and asylum seekers to wait 20 years before they could gain permanent residency rights.
Now, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week that the U.S. could rain down “death and destruction from the sky all day long” on the Iranian regime (and by extension the 90 million residents of Iran) — European governments are caught in a vise. The Spanish government has explicitly decried the war as being illegal; the U.K. government initially refused the U.S. the right to use Diego Garcia and other bases in the region — though subsequently backpedaled on this; and even hard-right governments such as Giorgia Meloni's in Italy are aware that their voters vehemently disapprove of Trump's government and his wars in the Middle East.
Yet the disapproval of Trump's wars, and the knowledge that European policymakers have been entirely sidelined in these momentous decisions impacting global security, global energy prices, and refugee flows, apparently doesn't translate to a willingness to host those who might flee the bombs.
A Decade-Long Far Right Lurch Against Immigration
In 2015, hundreds of thousands of Syrians who were fleeing the civil war in their home country sought asylum or refugee status in Europe. Germany and Sweden, in particular, admitted large numbers of these war refugees. But, in the years that followed, far right anti-immigration parties — including Marine Le Pen's National Rally in France; the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) in Germany; and Meloni's Brothers of Italy Party — built their bases on campaigns of xenophobia, and support for them surged. Seeking to neutralize the appeal of the far right, more mainstream leaders began co-opting the latter's anti-immigrant stances, acceding to arguments by the AfD, in particular, that millions of migrants should be “re-migrated” back to their home countries.
Seeking to neutralize the appeal of the far right, more mainstream leaders began co-opting the latter's anti-immigrant stances.
In 2024, the European Parliament ratified the Pact on Migration and Asylum, making it easier for member states to deport would-be asylum seekers. In late 2025, the pact was amended to expand the list of third countries that asylees have transited through that they could now be deported back into. Cumulatively, these rule changes will allow for fast-track hearings (and deportations) for residents from a slew of poor, mainly southern hemisphere countries seeking refuge in Europe. The provisions of the new pact and the third country rule will kick in this summer. Amnesty International has denounced it as a “shameless attempt to sidestep international legal obligations.”
The EU alleges that, in retaliation for its support for Ukraine since the 2022 war began, Russia and Belarus are actively bringing asylum seekers in and then helping them evade EU border patrols and enter Poland and the Baltic States. In response, EU countries began rolling back the rights to claim asylum. In March of last year, the Polish government suspended this right for migrants entering the country via its border with Belarus. Finland also moved to limit the right to claim asylum for people entering the country over its border with Russia.
The moves on the eastern borders proved politically popular, and there is now a continent-wide effort to clamp down on asylum seekers.
Opinion polls in Germany show that the governing center-right Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the extremist AfD are tied for first place, each with support from a quarter of the electorate. In France, Marine LePen's party is in pole position to win the next parliamentary and presidential elections in 2029. Italy is governed by Meloni's hard-right Brothers of Italy party, which has passed several anti-immigration policies. And in the U.K., with the electorate increasingly fractured and multiple parties breaking through in what has historically been a two party-dominated parliamentary system, Reform continues to lead in national polling. As politics moves rightward, with immigration proving to be a motivating force, mainstream governments are positioning themselves ever more against migrants.
In fact throughout all the large countries in Europe, only Spain, which has recently announced an amnesty for half a million undocumented immigrants, is bucking the trend and liberalizing many of its immigration laws. It's likely that that action, as much as the Spanish government's refusal to grant the U.S. rights to fly bombing raids from its bases, was what led to Trump's recent threat to cut the country off from all trade with the United States.
The outlook is particularly bleak for those seeking safety from U.S. bombs.
Earlier this March, European ministers began holding a series of meetings to explore options should the war in Iran — a country of nearly 100 million that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates currently houses up to 3.7 million refugees, most of them from Afghanistan — result in a flood westward of refugees. In those meetings, Sweden's migration minister declared that allowing entry to a new wave of war refugees — which would not only include Iranians, but also refugees who had sought shelter in Iran — “is not an option”for Europe.
With most of Europe now firmly committed to a lockdown model that keeps desperate people caught in war zones far from the continent's shores, and with the United States having all but ended its admission of refugees and asylum seekers, the outlook is particularly bleak for those seeking safety from U.S. bombs. Caught between the theocrats of the Iranian regime and the bombs-away brigade running Washington, D.C., Iranian civilians in 2026 have nowhere to run. The result could well be a humanitarian calamity.
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:
Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the University of California at Davis. Abramsky's latest book, American Carnage: How Trump, Musk, and DOGE Butchered the US Government, is available for pre-order now and will be released in January. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He also writes a weekly political column. Originally from England, with a bachelor's in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University and a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he now lives in Sacramento, California.
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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.
BRYANSK, March 10. /TASS/. The Ukrainian armed forces have carried out a missile strike on Bryansk, resulting in deaths and injuries, the governor of the region, Alexander Bogomaz, reported.
"The Ukrainian Nazis deliberately struck civilians. Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded. Priority measures are being taken to contain and eliminate the consequences of this inhumane terrorist act," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
The regulatory change would impact an estimated 6 million low-income Americans — including nearly 2 million children.
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The Trump administration is quietly pursuing a regulatory change that would strip federal nutrition assistance from an estimated 6 million low-income Americans — including nearly two million children — as it spends billions on an illegal, open-ended war on Iran that has killed more than a thousand people and plunged the global economy into chaos.
The change sought by the US Department of Agriculture would curb broad-based categorical eligibility in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Broad-based categorical eligibility allows states to automatically qualify residents for SNAP if they are already enrolled in other aid programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, thus reducing administrative hurdles and costs.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimated in a blog post published late last month — the day before President Donald Trump announced the joint US-Israeli assault on Iran — that gutting broad-based categorical eligibility would likely strip modest federal food aid from around 6 million people, including nearly 2 million children.
“The people losing access to food assistance from SNAP, school meals, and [the Women, Infants, and Children Program] would mainly be working families, older adults, and people with disabilities,” the think tank noted. “In other words, the change would primarily harm groups that federal and state policymakers from across the political spectrum have long sought to help: people who work but are living near poverty; older adults and people with disabilities with low, fixed incomes; and people trying to build modest savings in order to become more economically independent.”
The Congressional Budget Office has projected that restricting broad-based categorical eligibility would result in roughly $11 billion in savings over a 10-year period — or just over $1 billion a year.
The Trump administration is currently spending around $1 billion per day in US taxpayer money waging war on Iran — a price tag that would be enough to cover the daily costs of SNAP benefits for the more than 40 million Americans on the program.
Over just the first two days of the military onslaught, the Pentagon “burned through $5.6 billion worth of munitions,” according to figures reported late Monday by the Washington Post.
“Americans can't afford their groceries, they can't afford their medicine, they can't afford the cost of living, and yet we're dropping a billion dollars of bombs, it seems, every day in Iran,” US Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a CNN appearance on Monday.
During Trump's first White House term, his administration proposed a rule that would have curtailed states' option to use broad-based categorical eligibility for SNAP, but the rule was never finalized and the Biden administration later rescinded it.
The Trump Agriculture Department revived the effort late last year, submitting a rule purportedly aimed at ensuring that “categorical eligibility is extended only to households that have sufficiently demonstrated eligibility.”
“The end result,” CBPP's Katie Bergh recently warned, “will be more hunger and hardship.”
The Trump administration's new push comes months after the president signed into law the largest SNAP cuts in US history — around $187 billion over the next decade.
Trump bragged about the cuts during his State of the Union address last month, declaring that his administration has “lifted 2.4 million Americans” off SNAP — a euphemistic description of kicking people off the critical anti-poverty program.
Last week, Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee advanced a farm bill that would do nothing to mitigate the reverberating impacts of the Trump-GOP SNAP cuts.
“Instead of prioritizing the health and well-being of tens of millions of Americans, the committee failed to reverse course and continued down a path that will strip food from the tables of children, veterans, caregivers, older adults, and people experiencing homelessness,” said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center.
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.
Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep.
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.
Last month, media outlets including the BBC World Service and Bloomberg reported that China's greenhouse gas emissions are currently flat or falling, and that the economic giant appears to be on course to comfortably meet Beijing's stated goal that total emissions will peak no later than 2030.
China is by far and away the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, generating more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. As the BBC pointed out in their Feb. 12 report, “what happens in China literally could change the world's weather.”
Any drop in total emissions is good news, of course. By a different metric, however, China's progress hasn't been nearly so impressive.
Photo: TT file photo
Because total emissions tend to increase whenever there's a boom, then shrink when the economy slumps, experts regard carbon intensity, which reveals how much CO2e is emitted for a given amount of economic activity, as a better indicator. Taiwan's per capita emissions are a bit higher than China's, yet recent figures indicate that it is responsible for CO2e emissions of less than 0.19 metric tons per US$1,000 of GDP. To produce output of the same value, China's economy adds at least 0.41 metric tons of CO2e to the atmosphere.
Taiwan's carbon intensity is as low as Japan's and below that of South Korea (estimated at 0.21 to 0.23 metric tons), a country whose development trajectory mirrors that of Taiwan. Of course, international media isn't likely to highlight this fact, or that Taiwan's total emissions posted year-on-year declines in 2022, 2023, 2024 and last year, despite economic growth in those years of 2.59 percent, 1.28 percent, 4.59 percent and 8.63 percent, respectively. The rollout of renewables is one factor; burning large amounts of gas rather than coal is another.
According to the most recent edition of the Global Carbon Budget (GCB, published Nov. 13, 2025), Taiwan is one of 35 countries that have “decreased their fossil CO2 emissions significantly…while growing their economies in the decade 2015-2024.” The list includes South Korea and the US, but neither China nor Japan.
Photo: Steven Crook
By “significantly,” the scientists who collaborated on the GCB report mean they're at least 95 percent certain that the reduction is due to government policy and technological improvements, not economic malaise or sheer luck (for example, agreeable weather lessening demand for heating or air conditioning).
Over half of the 35 are European nations which have seen many of their carbon-intensive industries, such as steelmaking, relocate to Asia. The decline in Taiwan's carbon intensity, which in 2010 was north of 0.23 metric tons of CO2e per US$1,000 of GDP, is especially impressive because the country's industrial structure continues to be heavily weighted toward energy-intensive manufacturing, most famously semiconductors.
EXTERNAL PRESSURES
Photo: Steven Crook
Independent of any climate-related motivations, export-dependent economies like Taiwan don't have a great deal of choice when it comes to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
Since Jan. 1, the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) has increased costs for non-EU suppliers of aluminum, iron, steel, fertilizers, cement and related commodities. From 2028 onward, the scope of the mechanism will be greatly expanded to include downstream products like appliances, auto parts, cookware and cutlery, and heat sinks for CPUs.
The CBAM has been described as “a financially binding carbon border tax” that aims to level the playing field between EU manufacturers (who pay for their emissions under the EU's Emissions Trading System) and non-EU manufacturers who might not face similar carbon-pricing costs.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
EU Carbon Permits are financial instruments, bought and sold not only by companies such as steel mills that must purchase them if they're to comply with EU rules, but also by hedge funds and other speculators. At the end of last month, the market price of a permit representing the right to emit one metric ton of CO2e was just under 70 (US$82.30 or NT$2,593).
Since the start of this year, certain Taiwanese enterprises have been required to pay carbon fees based on their greenhouse gas emissions last year. The standard rate is NT$300 per metric ton, and those who've been working to cut their emissions under Ministry of Environment supervision enjoy steep discounts.
The CBAM allows exporters to deduct any carbon costs already paid in their home country, but if Taiwan's rates remain low, local businesses will still have to pay a substantial additional amount to the EU when shipping to European markets. Upping rates would keep that revenue within Taiwan, but quadrupling it (as some propose) might undermine companies' ability to invest in the technologies they need to adopt if they're to become green enough to survive long term.
Photo courtesy of China Steel
Last year, the BRICS grouping of countries denounced the CBAM as “unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures [being made] under the pretext of environmental concerns.” At the same time, some in the EU say the carbon-pricing mechanism might unintentionally cause greater emissions by undermining the continent's eco-friendly manufacturers — and it isn't the only feature of the international trade landscape that worries some environmentalists.
TRUMP AND PUTIN
A guest post published by Carbon Brief (Feb. 12), analyzing the apparent plateauing of China's greenhouse gas emissions, noted that while emissions attributed to the energy, transportation and metals sectors all fell in the 2024-25 period, the biggest drop was associated with the production of cement and other building materials. There can be no doubt that China's ongoing property sector crisis has helped rein in emissions.
The post went on to say that, while almost every part of China's economy reduced its emissions last year, the chemicals industry was a notable exception. Rising consumption of coal (up by 15 percent) and oil (up 10 percent) inflated the sector's greenhouse gas emissions.
This surge has been linked to China boosting its production of ethylene, a hydrocarbon gas which is a key building block for a huge variety of plastics. Until recently, China took a third of the US's ethylene exports and almost half of its ethane exports. (Ethane can be turned into ethylene). The US has an abundance of ethane — a byproduct of natural gas fracking — so it's extremely difficult for Chinese producers, who make ethylene from oil or coal, to compete on price. However, trade tensions since US President Donald Trump's return to office are driving Beijing to reduce its dependence on American suppliers.
Rather than buy shipments of ethane and/or ethylene, Taiwan has focused on “cracking” naphtha (a liquid derived from crude oil) into ethylene and other valuable byproducts. The carbon footprint of this process is about double that of turning ethane into ethylene, but Taiwan currently lacks the infrastructure, such as specialized terminals, for large-scale imports of liquid ethane. Change is on the horizon, however: Formosa Petrochemical Corp is retrofitting one of the crackers it operates at Mailiao (麥寮) in Yunlin County so it can handle ethane feedstock from next year.
Notoriously, Formosa Petrochemical was until recently the world's largest importer of Russian naphtha, taking nearly 90 percent of its total supply from the country that invaded Ukraine. The company — part of the Formosa Plastics Group, which is responsible for around 15 percent of Taiwan's total greenhouse gas emissions — is believed to have spent around US$4.7 billion on Russian naphtha since early 2022.
Negative publicity (including CNN reports on Oct. 2 and Oct. 9 last year) prompted Formosa Petrochemical to say it'd stop buying Russian naphtha as soon as its contracts expire. Some Taiwanese enterprises still import coal from Russia, however, apparently because it's cheap. For the sake of short-term financial savings, those companies are risking their reputations. Global markets are more transparent than ever, and a supply chain that's dirty (in the environmental or the ethical sense) is often a liability that no discount can fully offset.
Steven Crook, the author or co-author of four books about Taiwan, has been following environmental issues since he arrived in the country in 1991. He drives a hybrid and carries his own chopsticks. The views expressed here are his own.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets.
For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation' ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.”
Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party's acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.”
The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
March 9 to March 15
“This land produced no horses,” Qing Dynasty envoy Yu Yung-ho (郁永河) observed when he visited Taiwan in 1697. He didn't mean that there were no horses at all; it was just difficult to transport them across the sea and raise them in the hot and humid climate.
“Although 10,000 soldiers were stationed here, the camps had fewer than 1,000 horses,” Yu added.
Starting from the Dutch in the 1600s, each foreign regime brought horses to Taiwan. But they remained rare animals, typically only owned by the government or
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let's all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in.
This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
President Donald Trump, pushing back at the suggestion that the US was responsible for a deadly strike on an elementary school in Iran, claimed at a press conference Monday that Iran has Tomahawk cruise missiles. But Trump's claim was immediately rejected by arms experts.
There has never been an indication that Iran has any Tomahawks, which are made by US defense manufacturer Raytheon for the US military, subject to strict export controls and not the “generic” product Trump claimed Monday. Since the 1990s, a small number of US allies have been permitted by the US government to purchase them; the list includes the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and the Netherlands but not Israel or any other ally in the Middle East.
It certainly does not include Iran, which has been an adversary of the US since the late 1970s.
“Iran definitely does not, repeat does not, have Tomahawks,” Jeffrey Lewis, distinguished scholar of global security at Middlebury College, said in a text message Monday evening.
“Astonishing bald faced lying. Childish,” tweeted retired US Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a Trump critic, in response to the Trump claim.
Trump made the claim after a reporter told him that video footage showed “a Tomahawk missile likely destroyed that Iranian girls' school” and asked, “So will the Americans – will the US accept any responsibility?”
A video published by a semi-official Iranian news agency appears to show a US missile targeting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval base adjacent to the school. It has not been definitively determined who struck the school itself, but analyses by CNN and other news outlets have found the US was likely responsible.
Trump responded to the reporter: “Well, I haven't seen it (the footage), and I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know – is sold and used by – other countries. You know that. And whether it's Iran, who also has some Tomahawks – they wish they had more. But whether it's Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk – a Tomahawk is very generic. It's sold to other countries. But that's being investigated right now.”
The US has not sold Tomahawks to Iran. Lewis said that it's possible Trump was using the word “Tomahawk” as a generic term “like some people use ‘Kleenex,' to mean any sort of cruise missile, but we have eyes” – and “we can clearly see,” he said, that the missile in the video “doesn't look like an Iranian cruise missile.”
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, a consultancy, similarly said Monday that while Trump might have been using “Tomahawk” to refer generally to long-range cruise missiles, “a limited number of which Iran does have,” the missile the video shows striking the IRGC base near the school “is clearly a Tomahawk, rather than an Iranian design like the Soumar or Hoveyzeh.”
“Iran is not known to possess any RGM-/UGM-109 Tomahawk missiles,” Jenzen-Jones said in an email, though he emphasized he doesn't have access to the intelligence Trump does.
If Iran had somehow obtained Tomahawks through some illicit means, that still wouldn't mean it could use them. Jenzen-Jones said he agreed with a New York Times report Monday that said Iran “lacks the technical equipment and capabilities that are used to program their flight paths and upload that data into the missile's onboard computer” and that “Iran would also have to be in possession of a launcher capable of firing a Tomahawk without damaging it.”
On Saturday, Trump claimed to reporters that “based on what I've seen,” the strike on the school “was done by Iran.” But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was standing beside Trump, refused to say yes when asked if Trump was telling the truth; Hegseth said the matter was under investigation.
When a reporter pressed Trump Monday on why he is the only person in his administration to publicly speculate that Iran might have somehow obtained a Tomahawk and conducted the strike on the school, Trump said, confusingly, “Because I just don't know enough about it.” He said moments later, referring to the ongoing investigation, “But I will certainly – whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report.”
Trump also spoke about the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for oil being transported from the Persian Gulf by ship. After Trump noted that the US is now offering risk insurance to oil tankers operating in the Gulf, and said “you have to keep the straits flowing,” he added, “With all of that, it affects other countries much more than it does the United States. It doesn't really affect us. We have so much oil. We have tremendous oil and gas, much more than we need.”
It's not true that “it doesn't really affect us” – as many Americans filling up their gas tanks in the past week have learned. The sharp decline in traffic through the strait during the war, amid Iranian threats to attack ships that dare to cross, has been a major contributor to the sharp increase in global oil prices.
“While it is true that the US imports only modest quantities of oil from the Persian Gulf region, the broader picture is that U.S. fuel prices are inextricably tied to the global oil market. When oil prices go up, they go up for everyone – American drivers are not immune from that,” Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at investment firm Raymond James, said in a Monday email.
Asia is certainly far more dependent on oil transported through the Strait of Hormuz than the US is. The US Energy Information Administration estimated that in 2024, 84% of the crude oil and condensate and 83% of the liquefied natural gas that went through the strait went to Asian markets.
But even aside from US gas prices, the US economy is broadly intertwined with Asian economies. An issue causing economic problems in Asian countries affects American businesses, workers and consumers, too.
As CNN's Aaron Blake noted Monday, Trump repeatedly contradicted himself in other remarks at the press conference.
At one point, Trump claimed, “We've wiped every single force in Iran out, very completely,” but then claimed in the very next sentence that “most” – not all – of Iran's naval power had been sunk. He went on to claim there had been an “over 90% decline in the Iranian missile launchers” and an “83% drop in drone launchers,” again not a total wipeout. (Definitive independent data on these claims is not available.)
Trump also said, “Look, everything they have is gone, including their leadership.” Then he said immediately after: “In fact, there are two levels of leadership – and even actually, as it turns out, more than that – but two levels of leadership are gone. Most people have never even heard about the leaders that they're talking about.”
But Iranians and observers of the country have certainly heard of the newly appointed supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the beginning of the war. And Iran's governing regime continues to function even after the death of Ali Khamenei and other top officials.
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The bill would only affect Congress, and wouldn't ban stock trading by members of the executive branch.
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An analysis of a stock trading ban supported by President Donald Trump demonstrates that the bill would do very little to curtail insider trading, essentially rendering the proposal meaningless.
Trump told Congress at his annual State of the Union address that he wanted a bill passed that would ban lawmakers from taking advantage of loopholes that allow for insider trading.
“Let's ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information,” Trump said during his speech.
The president's statement resulted in a rare bipartisan standing ovation, catching him off guard.
“They stood up for that, I can't believe it,” Trump said, referring to Democrats who backed the idea.
But a Time magazine analysis of the bill Trump supports shows that it will do very little to limit insider trading among lawmakers.
For starters, the bill, officially titled the Stop Insider Trading Act, bans members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependents from purchasing publicly traded stocks, but allows them to keep stocks they already owned upon entering office, and to sell them off if they give a week's notice.
By allowing lawmakers to keep stocks they already owned, the bill could enable them to take advantage of their positions in Congress, even if they don't sell their stocks, by passing or opposing legislation in order to benefit their portfolios.
Lawmakers are also still allowed to buy stocks on behalf of their parents, with the assumption that the dividends their parents receive would be part of their inheritance — creating a system of straw trading.
On top of those concerns, the bill does not regulate stock trading in any other branch of government, meaning individuals within the executive and judicial branches could still engage in insider trading without repercussions.
The title of the bill suggests “that it's a ban on members of Congress owning stock,” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-New York) told the publication. “But it doesn't do that. Not at all.”
Other proposals within Congress would go much further than the bill being championed by Trump.
A bipartisan proposal called the Restore Trust in Congress Act bars “Members of Congress, their spouses, dependent children, and their trustees from owning, buying, or selling individual stocks, securities, commodities, or futures” with only limited exceptions. Members would still be allowed to invest in diversified mutual funds and ETFs, for example, as well as buy into U.S. Treasury, state, or municipal bonds. The legislation also allows members to invest in precious metals, such as gold or silver.
While the Stop Insider Trading Act allows many workarounds to allow members of Congress to continue to invest in stocks, the Restore Trust in Congress Act does not contain those same loopholes. However, while stricter in some ways, the latter bill still does not forbid stock trading within other branches of government.
A Democratic-sponsored bill called the No Getting Rich in Congress Act would take many steps that the other proposals do not. That legislation would forbid lawmakers in the legislative branch, as well as the president and vice president, “from buying or selling individual stocks, futures, commodities, and cryptocurrency, with strict reporting and enforcement mechanisms, including penalties for violations.” The bill's provisions also apply to candidates running for federal office, as well as lawmakers' spouses and dependents.
In addition to stock bans for members of Congress and the executive branch, the bill extends all gift, travel, and reimbursement rules to spouses and dependents; bars lawmakers and spouses from serving on corporate boards; and requires them to report pre-existing board service.
“The American people deserve leaders who are working for them, not for their stock portfolios, not for corporate board seats, and not for foreign adversaries,” bill co-sponsor Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Michigan) said in a statement.
“The No Getting Rich in Congress Act draws a clear line: public servants must put their communities first, not profit,” she added.
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.
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Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.
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Only two vessels not linked to Iran or Russia have braved ‘chicken run' since US president's promise on Friday
Middle East crisis – live updates
Only two vessels not linked to Iran or Russia have made the “chicken run” through the strait of Hormuz since Donald Trump said he would “ensure the free flow of energy to the world”, according to maritime records.
One of those that braved the journey since the US president's announcement of emergency measures on Friday went “dark” by switching off its transponder and a second signalled it was Chinese owned and crewed.
The Hormuz sea passage, one of the world's most strategically important choke points, would normally have about 100 vessels a day either exiting or entering the Gulf. In response to the US and Israeli attacks, Iran has effectively shut the strait, attacking at least 10 ships which were seeking to traverse it in the early days of the crisis.
On Friday, Trump announced a $20bn (£14.85bn) reinsurance scheme to revive shipping through the strait, which he said would come into effect immediately. He followed up by saying that shipowners should “show some guts” by sailing through the war zone.
A small number of tankers and bulk carriers of dry goods have braved the crossing since Friday using a variety of methods to mitigate the risk, records show.
The Shenlong, a Chinese-made vessel operated by Greece's Dynacom Tankers Management but sailing under a Liberian flag, crossed the narrow strait to exit the Gulf on Friday, according to the data agency Kpler. The vessel switched off its transponder as it approached the strait and then began signalling again near India's coastline on Monday as it made its way to Mumbai.
A second, Sino Ocean, a bulk carrier that also sails under a Liberian flag, signalled it was “CHINA OWNER_ALL CREW” as it traversed the strait after picking up its cargo from the United Arab Emirates' Mina Saqr port on Thursday.
Only eight other vessels are believed to have entered or exited the Gulf through the strait over the weekend and they all appear to have links to Iran or Russia.
They include an oil tanker named Dalia that sails under the Iranian flag and an oil/chemical tanker known as Parimal that has been identified by the US authorities as having transported Iranian oil.
On Monday, a tanker known as Cume that has been hit with US sanctions for shipping Iranian crude oil left the Gulf through the strait.
Two vessels carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) also passed through the strait over the weekend: Danuta I, which has been identified by the US as being part of the Iranian “dark fleet”, and HH Glory, which was put under US sanctions for its role assisting the Russian energy industry.
Three other bulk carriers passed through the strait, of which one sails under the Iran flag and two came from an Iranian port.
Other ships may have been passed through by turning off their transponders and using tactics to conceal their movements but the trickle of activity highlights the impact of the war.
Before the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, about 20% of the world's petroleum consumption and roughly one-fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas passed through the strait of Hormuz each day.
On Monday oil prices jumped to as high as $119 a barrel, the highest since 2022, before dropping below $90 after Trump said the war with Iran could end “very soon”.
As well as announcing his plan to insure ships making the journey on Friday, Trump had also suggested that naval escorts could be used to provide safe passage for tankers in the Gulf. Insurers have warned that such an escort would probably make the tankers more of a target.
Matthew Wright, the lead freight analyst at Kpler, said the high freight rates that companies could charge meant the insurance premiums were not the main problem. “Even record-high freight rates have failed to break the deadlock,” he said.
“Shipowners are primarily concerned with the risk of missile or drone attacks, and until there is a material improvement in the security environment, flows are likely to remain extremely limited. Iran is still displaying pretty comprehensive capabilities to strike targets and vessels if they want to.
“A diplomatic solution would get flows back in the next one, two, maybe three weeks. China would be the main negotiator there, because the Asian economies are at huge risk. Otherwise we are looking for more than a month to wait for a deterioration of the Iranian capability.
“Then there's also a scenario in which if Iran operates a more decentralised warfare approach, more akin to what the Houthis did, where they have very, very flat command structures, in which you can take out leaders and they continue to operate very effectively, then this could take months. It's particularly concerning from energy flows point of view.”
On Monday, finance ministers of the G7 nations said they were ready to take the “necessary measures” to support the global supply of energy but ended a meeting without agreement on the release of strategic crude reserves. If such reserves were released it would be the first time since 2022 after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Justice Department prosecutors leading an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan are facing increasing pressure from top Justice officials to bring criminal charges against him after the department has flailed in trying to punish President Donald Trump's perceived enemies, people briefed on the matter told CNN in recent days.
Prosecutors in the Miami US attorney's office have been leading the Brennan probe, which relates to testimony the ex-intelligence chief gave to Congress in 2023 and the Russia investigation years earlier, issuing two rounds of subpoenas to several witnesses.
Yet the push for charges has run into career prosecutors raising concerns in southern Florida, with some viewing the potential case as relatively weak.
Brennan's lawyers have been bracing for a possible indictment for months now, which has not materialized.
Justice officials and US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones made a push in January to bring a case against him, according to two people briefed on the matter, but some career prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida resisted the pressure.
Those career prosecutors are facing a new wave of pressure now, one of the sources said, and are struggling to delay bringing the case to a grand jury.
At first, the prosecutors gathered documents late last year from Brennan and other former intelligence officials. The subpoenas specifically sought information about a 2017 intelligence report on Russian meddling in the election that Brennan worked on, and which he spoke about in his 2023 congressional testimony.
A second round of subpoenas went in January to several former government officials and sought years of documents, including government records on the 2016 Russia investigation the people would no longer have access to, two people familiar with the investigation told CNN recently. At least one former intelligence community official has been interviewed in the probe, one source said.
Though Brennan could still face grand jury activity, the investigation also could fall apart.
His lawyers have said accusations of perjury, for instance, are without any merit.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment for this story, saying it does not comment on ongoing investigations.
Several of the probes launched into the actions of the president's political foes have failed when presented to a grand jury over the last year. Other investigations have been opened but have yet to result in criminal charges — hanging for months over the heads of their targets.
But even cases that never materialize can be disruptive to subjects' lives, as people who believe they are being investigated by prosecutors and a grand jury are fearful of harm to their public reputations.
Lawyers' fees add up, though some people in Trump's most politically charged criminal cases are receiving low- or no-cost legal help or financial backing from others, according to several sources in the legal industry in DC.
John Brennan accuses Justice Department of possible judge shopping and grand jury leaks
While that's true in any administration, the Trump Justice Department has more aggressively pursued Democratic political figures or individuals Trump and other top administration officials have said publicly they'd like to charge.
Trump in November called Brennan, Former FBI Director Comey and several others part of “Obama's Russia HOAX Treason Club”, in a social media post shortly after Comey was indicted.
And FBI Director Kash Patel has co-opted a similar public message.
“We're going to continue to make people like Comey and Brennan and Clapper and Page and Strzok and so many others answer for what I believe are their acts of criminal conduct,” Patel said on a recent podcast, naming a group who are not facing any charges at this time, but yet whom Trump has publicly attacked repeatedly. (Former FBI agent Peter Strzok, lawyer Lisa Page and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were key figures in the investigations into Trump's 2016 campaign.)
In a handful of districts with politically charged cases, well-respected career investigators and prosecutors have been fired en masse and replaced with more willing but less experienced line investigators.
Closing lingering cases or probes that Trump wants to succeed has its own set of consequences for prosecutors or other Justice Department lawyers.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia attempted to bring criminal charges twice against Comey and three times against New York Attorney General Letitia James, and those charges have either been tossed by judges or rejected by grand juries.
A grand jury refusing an indictment is historically a highly unusual outcome — though it's happening more frequently in politically charged cases Trump wants to pursue.
A grand jury in Washington, DC, recently denied the Justice Department's attempt to criminally charge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and five other members of Congress because of a video they taped reminding military and intelligence officers they are allowed to refuse orders they believe go against the law.
“It was a grand jury of anonymous American citizens who upheld the rule of law and determined this case should not proceed,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, another member whom the Justice Department tried and failed to charge. “Whether or not (US Attorney Jeanine) Pirro succeeded is not the point. It's that President Trump continues to weaponize our justice system against his perceived enemies.”
Several other Trump political foes have been the subject of investigative inquiries that haven't materialized into charges.
In recent weeks, federal law enforcement has been revisiting the work of former prosecutors whose work ultimately became part of the cases against Trump under special counsel Jack Smith, according to several people and a critical public statement from Patel.
CNN has previously confirmed investigative activity by the Justice Department around the financial papers of Rep. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and into Senate testimony by Federal Reserve by Chair Jerome Powell.
And Republicans on Capitol Hill have added to who the Justice Department may consider investigating next, by referring a former special counsel's office prosecutor of Trump and a former star witness after January 6 for possible criminal charges.
None of those people have been charged.
“This unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure,” Powell said in a video statement after receiving a criminal subpoena, pointing out Trump's unhappiness with the Fed-controlled loan interest rates.
“This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings,” he added. “Those are pretexts.”
The Fed chair's public messaging in response to an open criminal investigation has become part of the playbook in Washington to publicize a grand jury inquisition.
In past administrations, Justice Department and administration officials have been less willing to comment on uncharged matters or people who could be subject to an investigation. Cases could linger quietly for years.
That is not the case now. Trump himself has posted names on social media repeatedly of people he'd like to see his Justice Department indict, and the attorney general and other senior leaders of the Justice Department have repeatedly commented on ongoing investigations.
In January, Trump hosted US attorneys at the White House, where he complained about the slow pace of investigations into a number of people, including officials from previous administrations as well as Democratic officials who he said unfairly targeted him, CNN has previously reported. Shortly after, Powell made public that prosecutors' subpoenas went to the Federal Reserve.
In another recent example, a senior Justice Department official told CNN that prosecutors are probing whether former aides in the White House may have used an autopen for actions not authorized by then-President Joe Biden. The message came less than a day after the New York Times said an investigation into Biden's use of autopen was likely over.
Biden is not under investigation himself, the official said, as presidents have broad protections for the actions they take while in office following a Supreme Court decision in 2024 broadening presidential immunity.
One particularly politically motivated Justice official, Ed Martin, has pushed for several of the recent investigations against political foes, including one over autopen use.
Martin has specified he believes subjects should be named and shamed, even if they are never charged with a crime.
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we'll charge them. But if they can't be charged, we will name them,” Martin said last year. “And in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are shamed.”
Some of those investigations that officials like Martin once championed have appeared to fall apart. A renewed perjury charge against Comey, for instance, faces an even more difficult future.
“Putting on evidence and a trial is messy. It's just easier to announce an investigation … It's easier to use the integrity of the department to slime people,” Aaron Zelinsky, a former prosecutor who has been a past whistleblower about Trump and received an inquiry from Martin last year, recently told CNN. “The process is the punishment.”
The lingering open investigations are also fueling defense strategies.
“Taking a page from Trump's own unsavory and unethical style, his DOJ has become a willing political weapon eager to name and shame the president's foes and targets before any evidence is gathered, or even charges filed,” Abbe Lowell, a prominent defense lawyer who has collected high-profile clients who could face politically charged cases under Trump.
Lowell currently represents several high-profile people this Trump Justice Department has investigated, charged or attempted to charge. They include: James in New York; the Federal Reserve's Cook; Rep. Jason Crow, who was among the members of Congress a grand jury declined to charge; journalist Don Lemon; and John Bolton, the national security adviser in Trump's first term in office.
Lowell, too, has taken a more aggressive and public approach defending clients he has who believe they may be investigated.
He's also regularly teased the possibility of asking for criminal charges to be dismissed because he alleges the Justice Department has unfairly singled out people to charge. Those types of attempts to have a case dismissed are exceedingly difficult to win in court, but have gotten more traction in front of some judges in recent months.
The push to charge Brennan, the former CIA director, for his official work in 2016, is part of a broader effort by Quiñones, the US attorney in the Southern District of Florida who has sought to establish himself as a Trump loyalist since taking office last year.
Brennan's attorneys just before Christmas made the unusual move of writing to the chief judge in Miami with their accusations of unfair grand jury activity. The lawyers said they believed Quiñones was attempting to investigate Brennan through a Fort Pierce, Florida-based grand jury, under the direction of Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon in Ft. Pierce previously dismissed the criminal case against Trump.
Yet if Brennan were to be charged, it may be in Washington, DC, according to people briefed on the matter. There, prosecutors would face a grand jury that may be much less willing to indict a former administration official that Trump publicly criticizes.
Prosecutors have focused on allegations from congressional Republicans that Brennan made false statements in testimony to Congress in 2017 and 2023 about the Intelligence Community Assessment.
Brennan testified that the CIA was not involved with the now-discredited Steele dossier — which alleged that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election — and its inclusion in the Intelligence Community Assessment. Republican lawmakers have claimed that Brennan was in fact aware of the dossier's inclusion in the report.
Brennan has denied any wrongdoing.
“Not surprisingly, this unrelenting presidential pressure to pursue political targets without regard to the law or facts has resulted in an unprecedented spike in the incidence of irregular prosecutorial conduct, especially in relation to grand jury investigations and charging decisions relating to matters of political interest to the President,” Brennan's attorneys wrote in the December letter to Southern District of Florida Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga.
CNN's Paula Reid contributed to this report.
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Authorities in New Mexico launched a search this week of a sprawling ranch formerly owned by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which has come under renewed interest after allegations surrounding the estate were included in files recently released by the US Justice Department.
The New Mexico Department of Justice announced the Monday morning search of the property, known as Zorro Ranch, in a brief statement posted to its website. It is part of the criminal investigation announced by state authorities last month into allegations of illegal activity surrounding the ranch at the time Epstein, who died in 2019, owned it.
The statement did not indicate whether anything of interest has been found during the search or how long it is expected to continue.
The ranch had previously not been subject to the same level of law enforcement scrutiny as Epstein's other properties in New York, South Florida and the Caribbean. But following the release of troves of federal government files related to Epstein, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez ordered the reopening of the state's criminal investigation into the property, which he said closed in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors.
Included in the millions of files released by the Justice Department in late January was a 2019 email received by a local radio host that alleged that “somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G.” That allegation is unverified, but it is also not clear to what extent it had been investigated by law enforcement before the recent renewed interest in Epstein.
The host, Eddy Aragon, previously told CNN that he believed the email was sent to him by someone who worked on the ranch but wouldn't disclose who he thought the person was. He said he tried sending an email to the address, but it had bounced back. The files show he forwarded the allegations to a redacted email address four days after receiving it.
The radio host added that he went to the local FBI office with the email and forwarded it to a local FBI agent. Following the reopening of the state investigation, Aragon told CNN on Tuesday that he reached out to the New Mexico Department of Justice and had an approximately 30-minute interview.
The release of the email sent to Aragon prompted Stephanie Garcia Richard, New Mexico's commissioner of public lands, to send a letter last month asking the state Department of Justice to investigate the claims. She told CNN in February that the special investigative office of the New Mexico DOJ later reached out to her for “background information” on state lands and her agency's processes and documents it released in 2019.
Apart from the criminal inquiry, the state's House of Representatives last month voted to create a bipartisan “Truth Commission” looking into allegations of criminal activity surrounding the ranch. The commission has the power to issue subpoenas and compel the attendance of witnesses at its hearings.
The property is now owned by the family of Don Huffines, a businessman and former Texas state senator who is running for state comptroller. Huffines previously said he would cooperate with any law enforcement investigation surrounding the ranch. The New Mexico Department of Justice said in its statement that the owners and staff are cooperating with the search.
Authorities asked members of the public to stay away from the ranch, which is in a remote area about 30 miles south of Santa Fe, to avoid interfering with law enforcement.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN's Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
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Ed Martin, an outspoken Trump administration official, is facing attorney discipline proceedings in Washington, DC, for a letter he sent to Georgetown Law about its diversity programs, the district's professional conduct investigator announced on Tuesday.
Martin is formally accused of violating his ethical codes as an attorney for telling Georgetown Law's dean last year that his Justice Department office wouldn't hire students because of the school's diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives programs, according to the filing from Hamilton Fox, the disciplinary counsel for DC who acts as a quasi-prosecutor on attorney discipline matters.
Unlike unsolicited complaints, Fox's formal disciplinary complaint kicks off professional conduct proceedings for Martin in which he will need to respond and could be sanctioned or ultimately lose his law license.
Fox's announcement on Tuesday marks the first major bar discipline proceeding against a high-profile administration official or attorney supporting President Donald Trump during Trump's second term. Several Trump lawyers faced disciplinary proceedings after the efforts to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election, including Rudy Giuliani, who lost his law license.
“Acting in his official capacity and speaking on behalf of the government, he used coercion to punish or suppress a disfavored viewpoint, the teaching and promotion of ‘DEI,'” Fox wrote in the complaint. “He demanded that Georgetown Law relinquish its free speech and religious rights in order to continue to obtain a benefit, employment opportunities for its students.”
Justice Department review found Trump ally Ed Martin improperly leaked grand jury material in probe of president's foes
Martin was removed from the top prosecutor job in DC after senators made clear he would not be confirmed to the role, but has remained at the Justice Department in several roles, including as pardon attorney.
“Mr. Martin knew or should have known that, as a government official, his conduct violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States,” Fox wrote.
Martin is being represented by a Justice Department attorney, a source told CNN.
A spokesperson for DOJ attacked Fox's complaint. “The DC bar's attempt to target and punish those serving President Trump while refusing to investigate or act against actual ethical violations that were committed by Biden and Obama administration attorneys is a clear indication of this partisan organization's agenda,” DOJ said.
Martin had sent the letter to Georgetown Law while serving temporarily as US attorney for DC, a prominent Justice Department position, and told the school his federal prosecutors' office wouldn't hire Georgetown's law school students. It came at a time when the Trump administration was beginning to crack down on universities for their DEI efforts.
In his letter, Martin claimed a whistleblower told him that the school was teaching and promoting DEI.
Martin also violated attorney ethics rules by contacting judges of the DC court directly, Fox alleged, rather than going through official channels, once he was informed he was under investigation for his professional conduct. The DC Court of Appeals ultimately signs off on attorney discipline findings.
Early last year, Fox's office had formally asked Martin to respond to a complaint it received by a retired judge regarding the Georgetown letter.
Martin instead wrote to the judges on the DC court complaining about Fox.
“In that letter, he stated that he would not be responding to Disciplinary Counsel's inquiry, complained about Disciplinary Counsel's ‘uneven behavior,' and requested a ‘face-to-face meeting with all of you to discuss this matter and find a way forward,'” Fox wrote.
“He copied the White House Counsel ‘for informational purposes because of the importance of getting this issue addressed,'” Fox said.
The top judge in the DC courts told Martin the court wouldn't meet with him about the disciplinary matter and that he would need to follow procedure.
With Fox's complaint, there will now be several steps ahead of bar discipline authorities looking at Martin's action, and Fox didn't specify how Martin should be reprimanded or punished if the discipline boards and the court ultimately determine he violated his ethical codes.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday morning.
In recent days, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced her office would have a more powerful role in reviewing attorney discipline complaints against Justice Department attorneys, potentially setting up an approach that could keep the department at odds with the bar on behalf of DOJ attorneys facing their own individual disciplinary proceedings.
CNN's Paula Reid contributed to this report.
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MOSCOW, March 10. /TASS/. Aggressors are deliberately seeking to "drive a wedge" between Iran and its Arab neighbors, the Russian foreign ministry said after a meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alimov and Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Kazem Jalali.
"The Russian side reiterated its readiness to do everything possible to bring the situation back to a political and diplomatic track as soon as possible. It was emphasized that the aggressors are deliberately driving a wedge between Iran and its Arab neighbors. The Russian side expressed regret that civilians and civilian infrastructure in many countries of the region are suffering from the hostilities," it said.
According to the ministry, Alimov and Jalali discussed the unprecedented military escalation in the Middle East amid the US-Israeli aggression against Iran, which violates the fundamental norms and principles of international law. They also touched upon issues of Russia-Iran cooperation within multilateral formats, primarily in the United Nations.
"Alimov briefed the Iranian diplomat about Russia's efforts in the UN Security Council to ensure its fair and objective response to the aggression against Iran and the situation around it," the ministry added.
The meeting was requested by the Iranian diplomat.
The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.
MOSCOW, March 10. /TASS/. The counterterrorism system Russia has been developing over the past 20 years has made it possible to cope with new threats during wartime, Alexander Bortnikov, Federal Security Service (FSB) director and chairman of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC), said in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily on the 20th anniversary of the NAC's establishment.
"The counter-terrorism system built in peacetime has generally met the new challenges of the war period, which testifies to the correctness of our chosen course," he noted. "Yes, the range of threats has expanded, but we have found methods to mitigate them, developed new countermeasure mechanisms, strengthened coordination between government and law enforcement agencies, expanded their framework, reviewed the balance of forces and resources, improved the regulatory framework, and strengthened interaction with civil society."
According to him, "this work never stops for a minute." The NAC personnel are continuously monitoring the situation—receiving and analyzing information on new terrorist threats—for an objective assessment of the effectiveness of its work. The findings are reviewed at meetings of the NAC and the Federal Operational Headquarters, during which necessary adjustments are made to counter-terrorism efforts.
Bortnikov recalled that decisions made by the NAC are binding on all government agencies, organizations, and citizens. "Thus, our system allows us to quickly respond to any adverse changes in the situation and develop adequate and effective measures to rectify it," the FBS chief noted.
HHS says the MIT professor is ‘more than qualified' to serve on the agency's vaccine advisory panel and calls ‘attacks' on him ‘politically motivated'
The MIT professor who has been appointed by Robert F Kennedy Jr to review the safety of Covid-19 vaccines has failed to meet basic scientific standards in his own research on the topic, according to more than a dozen scientists and public health experts.
Retsef Levi, an operations management professor, is a member of the US health department's vaccine advisory committee (ACIP) which is meeting later this month and – many experts fear – could seek to rollback recommendations on who should receive Covid-19 vaccines.
Levi, who holds Israeli and American citizenship, has claimed that Covid-19 vaccines are the “most failing medical product in the history of medical products”, despite a body of research that has shown they are safe and effective. A modeling study published in 2022 in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet estimated that Covid-19 vaccines saved nearly 20 million lives in the first year they were available.
He holds a coveted seat on ACIP, which was once considered the “international gold standard for vaccine decision-making” but has faced criticism after Kennedy fired 17 of the group's voting members – including doctors, immunologists and epidemiologists – and replaced them with individuals who have been criticized for undermining public trust in the safety and efficacy of many vaccines, without any basis in fact.
A Guardian review of Levi's record found that more than a dozen experts have criticized research papers he has authored on the topic for being misleading. Some experts also said they believed Levi, who is not a physician or vaccine expert and now heads ACIP's special immunizations work group on the Covid-19 vaccines, approaches the topic with a pre-determined agenda, instead of a spirit of true scientific inquiry.
In a statement to the Guardian, Levi, 55, said that criticism of his work was not valid. “My papers are factual, balanced, rigorous and accurately contextualize their findings,” he said. “My record, expertise and experience speak for themselves.”
Dr Sharon Alroy-Preis, who served as head of Israel's public health services during the pandemic, and stepped down from that role earlier this year, told the Guardian she could recall reading a draft of a paper Levi wrote in 2021, which suggested a correlation between Israel's vaccination rate and emergency calls received by first responders in Israel that involved cardiac arrest.
“We took it very seriously at the ministry of health. We invited him to a meeting to thoroughly look at the research,” she said. “At the meeting it was clear that he was not familiar with the way the data is collected and potential wrong interpretations. What was more troubling: he didn't seem to care.”
She added: “Having no answers to our professional questions he continued to insist he was right and ‘on to something'. It was clear he came with an agenda.”
Levi did not comment on this specific criticism.
Nadav Davidovitch, an epidemiologist and public health physician who was on a national advisory committee in Israel during the pandemic, said Levi was one of a handful of prominent individuals from prestigious institutions who sought to share their opinions on how to tackle the pandemic even though they were not experts in vaccines, epidemiology or infectious disease.
Davidovitch, a fellow at the Hastings Center for Bioethics, and member of faculty of medicine at Bar Ilan University, said he believed Levi became “more radical” as the pandemic went on, specifically in regards to children being vaccinated, because he seemed to believe the government was doing “dangerous things”.
“What was different with him was that after a year or so he became very vocal on social media and attracted people who were even more conspiratorial than he was,” he said.
Davidovitch said he believes the Covid-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, though there could also be side effects, and said the medical establishment was not always transparent enough – not because of conspiracy theories, but because doctors were racing against time during the pandemic.
“Levi was very engaged. He is very eloquent and well connected, and he also got the ear of people like Robert Kennedy,” he said. “The issues of transparency and trust were a major lesson learned as experts seek to improve their response in future public health crises.”
Levi defended his credentials in a statement to the Guardian. “I have over two decades of experience as a professor at MIT developing advanced analytical methods to evaluate complex risk–benefit trade-offs in healthcare and public health systems, manufacturing systems of biologics, as well as pharmacovigilance and drug safety – to name a few,” he said. He added that he also had “extensive experience working with clinicians, regulators and industry experts”.
Levi's research citing Israeli emergency calls to first responders – which was thoroughly criticized by the Israeli ministry of health in a paper – was later peer reviewed and ultimately published in 2022 by Scientific Reports, where it would become one of the most widely cited studies to suggest vaccines could be causing harm. It still garnered intense criticism online.
One paper, which was signed by 10 scientists but not peer-reviewed, called on Scientific Reports to retract the paper, saying it was the “perfect demonstration” of a phenomenon that had developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, in which publications were rushed “potentially without rigorous peer review”.
The authors wrote: “The paper does not pass basic statistical and epidemiological review, which brings into question whether the findings do indeed ‘raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side-effects' … or whether the reported weak correlations are simply the result of inadequate and inappropriate methodological choices.”
In response to some of the criticism, Levi told FactCheck.org in 2022 that the paper's findings were “merely correlation and NOT providing causality”, and said more studies should be done. Scientific Reports did investigate the paper and Levi was ultimately forced to issue a correction that cited several errors. But it was never retracted.
Lonni Besançon, an assistant professor in data visualization at Linköping University in Sweden who has been called a “research integrity sleuth”, said the paper failed to distinguish between the effects of Covid-19 itself and effects of the vaccine.
“Despite this, it surely had an impact of [promoting] vaccine hesitancy,” he said. “It is the 41st most shared paper of all time … which is shameful.”
In 2023, Levi tweeted that there was “mounting and indisputable” evidence that mRNA vaccines – the technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines – “cause serious harm, including death”. Besançon said the claim was unsubstantiated and harmful to science and public health. Indeed many believe the use of mRNA technology represents a new frontier in vaccine science.
At least one other paper Levi published about Covid-19 – which has not been peer reviewed and found that recipients of the Pfizer vaccine had a roughly 40% higher all-cause mortality than Moderna over 12 months – was heavily criticized by public health experts who were asked to read it by the Guardian. The paper was co-authored by Joseph Ladapo, the surgeon general of Florida who has been called an “unexpected source of vaccine misinformation” and once compared vaccine mandates to slavery. Ladapo has hit back at critics, including at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and said his attempts to get more “honesty and transparency” from the government has been met with “a word salad of pandering and gaslighting”.
“The pattern across Levi's work is using study designs that can generate associations but cannot establish causation, then having those findings amplified as evidence of vaccine harm, sometimes even when he acknowledges the limitations himself,” said Jess Steier, executive director of the Center for Unbiased Science & Health. “Someone who repeatedly chooses study designs that can't answer causal questions, and whose work gets weaponized to support conclusions he admits it can't support, is not who you want driving vaccine policy.”
Elizabeth Jacobs, professor emerita at the University of Arizona and a founding member of Defend Public Health, said the Pfizer paper was “messy” and “sloppy” and difficult to evaluate because certain data was missing. She said the work did not take into account pre-existing health conditions, which she called “a major red flag that the study isn't scientifically rigorous”.
“Dr Levi has made a number of easily-disproved statements about his baseless belief that mRNA Covid-19 vaccines are harmful, despite having little or no education, training or experience in public health,” Jacobs said. “If Mr Kennedy were serious about objective evaluations of the data, Dr Levi would not be included in any assessment of Covid-19 vaccine safety, let alone leading it. His biases are clear, insurmountable and disqualifying.”
Levi disputes the claim that he lacks relevant expertise.
The Guardian asked Levi to address all of these critiques of his work. In response, Levi said in a statement: “The mentioned criticism on my research has been addressed through formal peer-review processes, with all retraction requests, including the one by the Israeli Ministry of Health, denied by Scientific Reports.”
A spokesperson for HHS said “attacks” on Levi were “clearly politically motivated and ignore his substantial credentials”.
“He is more than qualified to serve on ACIP. Secretary Kennedy appointed members who are willing to ask hard questions and follow the evidence, which is exactly what restores public trust, not rubber-stamping recommendations,” the spokesperson added.
The published agenda for ACIP's 18-19 March meeting indicates the committee will focus on Covid-19 vaccine injuries, long Covid, and potential changes to vaccine recommendation methodologies.
Dr Jake Scott, an infectious diseases specialist and clinical associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine who is a nationally-recognized vaccine expert, said he fears ACIP will use data that has not been peer-reviewed or publicly released – like an unsubstantiated allegation by a former FDA official that at least 10 children died from Covid vaccination – to justify restrictions on vaccine recommendations, even in cases when real-world data does not merit the limits.
“What concerns me is not that someone is reviewing the data, but that the person who is reviewing it has said mRNA vaccines should be removed from the market,” he said. “The question becomes, is this a genuine scientific inquiry or a review with a pre-determined decision?”
Dr Scott said he was concerned not just as a vaccine research expert, but as a doctor who was on the front lines of the pandemic. He said he had lost more than 100 patients – people in nursing homes and others who were vulnerable – and then saw the “dramatic change” that occurred once vaccines were introduced. After that, he witnessed a sharp drop-off in Covid-19 associated deaths.
“In 2021 the vast majority – nearly all – of my patients who I lost to Covid had chosen to be unvaccinated, and that was tragic in its own way. Many were younger. I lost parents who had relatively young kids, who would not have died had they been vaccinated.”
Dr Scott added: “There is so much misinformation about Covid vaccines in general, so many extreme fringe theories that continue to fuel doubt and mistrust in vaccines, in public health, and in doctors. It is heartbreaking and mind blowing and hard to put into words how high the stakes are.”
A Zamyad pick-up truck carries an Iranian made Shahed 136 drone during a parade in downtown Tehran, Iran, on January 10, 2025. (Hossein Beris / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP)
A Saudi Arabian arms company has signed a deal to buy Ukrainian-made interceptor missiles, the Kyiv Independent has learned, with one source within Ukraine's defense industry saying that Riyadh and Kyiv are negotiating a separate "huge deal" for arms that could be finalized this week.
Iran's recent air attacks across neighboring Gulf States amid the U.S. and Israel-led war against Tehran have kicked off a scramble for military equipment to combat ballistic missiles and Shahed attack drones.
While cost-effective against expensive missiles, air defense interceptors like the U.S.-made Patriot cost millions of dollars — making them an unsustainable way to shoot down cheap drones built en masse for tens of thousands of dollars a piece.
Two sources within Ukraine's defense industry who asked to remain anonymous to discuss non-public negotiations told the Kyiv Independent that major contracts were up for discussion between the governments of Ukraine and Saudi Arabia.
One of the sources told the Kyiv Independent to expect a "huge deal" between Saudi Arabia and Ukraine as soon as March 11.
The other told the Kyiv Independent that a contract for Ukrainian-made air defense missiles had just been signed, with a Saudi arms maker acting as a local intermediary.
The Kyiv Independent has contacted the Saudi Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Saudi Embassy in Kyiv, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Iran has unleashed swarms of its Shahed drones across its Arab Gulf neighbors following U.S. and Israeli attacks starting at the end of February. Israel's air defense relies heavily on its Iron Dome, while Gulf nations depend on Korean-made Cheongung-II batteries, and most famously, U.S. THAAD and Patriot surface-to-air missiles.
Ammunition for such air-defense systems is much more expensive than the Shahed drones that they are now tasked with shooting down. Ukrainians are eager both to pitch the value of their low-cost interceptor drones and stop the depletion of PAC-3 missile stocks worldwide.
"Ukraine has never had this many missiles to repel attacks. More than 800 have been used over the past three days alone," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a March 5 press briefing.
The same evening, Zelensky wrote on Telegram that he had received "a request from the United States for concrete support in defense from Shaheds in the Middle East region. I ordered to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists, who can guarantee the necessary security."
"With what's happening in Iran, a lot of Gulf states are interested in export from Ukraine or in buying the technology or in hiring Ukrainian trainers," Bohdan Popov, chief analyst for Triada Trade Partners, a consulting and lobbying firm for international arms businesses in Ukraine, told the Kyiv Independent.
"But as far as I know, there is still no decision made on exporting anything, but the Gulf State ambassadors have already reached out to our government to start talks."
The Middle East has run up against the problems of high-end air defense longer than almost anybody. Starting in 2015, Saudi intervention in Yemen laid bare just what an armed and determined group with garage-made rockets could do to top-of-the-line air defenses. Namely, bleed them dry for pennies on the dollar.
Air defense for Ukraine is a touchy topic. Following questions as to the effectiveness of interceptor drones over a winter that saw Russian air attacks hammer the capital of Kyiv, Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky wrote on March 3 that interceptor drones had accomplished nearly 6,300 flights and destroyed "over one and a half thousand Russian UAVs of different types" over February.
Ukraine's fleet of interceptor drones includes models like TAF Industries' "Octopus," Skyfall's P1Sun, and a project by Google co-founder Eric Schmidt called Merops.
Wild Hornets, which makes the "Sting" interceptor drone, is likely the largest by volume. "Our product is the leader by number of struck targets," a representative for Wild Hornets told the Kyiv Independent, saying that current production is over 10,000 units per month.
As to political decisions to export to the Middle East, "the decision is being made, but we aren't taking part in the process," the representative, who asked not to be named for security reasons, said.
Ukraine has tightly controlled its export of weaponry during wartime. The government is especially concerned about letting its interceptor technology slip abroad.
While Ukrainian officials have eagerly touted interceptors as the basis for hoped-for massive deals — especially, PAC-3 missiles from the U.S. — they are extremely reluctant to advertise them. In November, the General Staff ordered military units not to publish photos or videos of their interceptors.
"On the deep tech market, a lot of private manufacturers are seeking to steal the technology, not only to buy or to do a joint venture, but directly," Popov said.
For the Middle East in particular, the concern for Ukraine is the persistent influence of Russia on the region. Saudi Arabia and Russia, for example, just signed a visa-free travel agreement in December.
"There is no direct production on the territory of the Gulf Arab Nations because the region is pretty problematic, because there is a lot of Russian influence and a lot of Iranian influence," Popov said.
But a relative lack of regulation among Gulf nations that makes them open to Russian money also makes them faster to work with arms producers from Ukraine than U.S. or EU militaries.
And militaries eager to reach regional dominance as the U.S. targets regimes like Iran and Syria makes them the most willing to do concrete business with Ukrainian counterparts.
Emirati defense conglomerate Edge earlier this year signed a deal to buy 30% of the equity in Fire Point for $760 million. Fire Point the year prior had shown off its FP-5 "Flamingo" for the first time at a defense conference in Abu Dhabi under the auspices of a British-Emirati firm called Milanion.
Defense Industry Reporter
Kollen Post is the defense industry reporter at the Kyiv Independent. Based in Kyiv, he covers weapons production and defense tech. Originally from western Michigan, he speaks Russian and Ukrainian. His work has appeared in Radio Free Europe, Fortune, Breaking Defense, the Cipher Brief, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, FT's Sifted, and Science Magazine. He holds a BA from Vanderbilt University.
President Donald Trump's sway over the Republican Party faces a fresh test Tuesday with a free-for-all special election in northwest Georgia to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Trump ally-turned-critic who vacated her seat in Congress in January.
Clay Fuller, a former prosecutor and Air Force veteran, won Trump's endorsement from a field of nearly 20 candidates. But the presidential seal of approval, which Trump delivered last month on a visit to the district, has done little to streamline the remarkably crowded contest.
“We're the candidate that's going to have his back on Capitol Hill,” Fuller told reporters Tuesday outside a polling place in Rome, Georgia. “Even though some other candidates in this race may say that they're 100% pro-Trump, I think it's important for the voters to ask them what percentage they are now that President Trump has endorsed us.”
Yet other GOP rivals on the ballot have also vowed to fully support the president and his agenda.
Colton Moore, a former state senator and conservative firebrand, has been running ads suggesting he is the true “America First” candidate and Trump loyalist in the race. He praised the president but dismissed the importance of a Trump endorsement, saying: “The swamp money has come in against us.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene's district is in disbelief at her resignation announcement
“There's a lot of folks who talk a big conservative game, but when it comes down to doing conservative stuff, they're nowhere to be found,” Moore said Monday in an interview on a conservative talk radio show on WLAQ, a station in the district based in Rome, Georgia. “We need to find a fighter, a legislator, who's willing to bring that fight with true vigor.”
Tom Gray, a pastor who is also running to replace Greene, expressed his support for Trump but added: “We're independent thinkers and decision-makers.”
Jim Tully, a former Greene staffer and longtime Republican activist who is on the ballot, also touted his admiration for Trump. Yet he said voters loyal to the president could draw their own conclusions about the race, saying: “We've never talked about this being President Trump's district. This district belongs to the people.”
The sprawling 14th Congressional District covers 10 counties stretching from the Atlanta suburbs to the Appalachian foothills along the Tennessee state line.
It's ruby-red Trump country but with enough Democrats and independents to cause heartburn for Republicans in a special election that sends the top two vote-getters — regardless of party — into an April runoff if no candidate wins over 50%.
“If Georgia 14 turns blue, it would be a tragedy for the president's agenda,” Fuller told CNN. “We as a party need to start having an honest conversation about that.”
Shawn Harris, a retired Marine brigadier general who lost to Greene in 2024, is the Democratic contender who worries Republicans the most. He received nearly 135,000 votes the last time he was on the ballot — a fraction of which would likely vault him into a runoff — though turnout on Tuesday is expected to be lower than in the 2024 contest.
Harris said Republicans tried to get him to change parties, but instead he is trying to recruit moderates or disillusioned Republicans to his campaign — even, he said, if they come secretly.
“Voting is not church,” Harris said in an interview. “You don't have to confess. You just have to go in there and do what's best for you, your family and your grandkids.”
Republican officials believe Harris is likely to be one of the top two finishers to advance to an April 7 runoff. Regardless of the outcome of that election, candidates must run again for the seat this fall, starting with the primary on May 19, in a dizzying series of elections.
The feud between Trump and Greene — a former ally — has created a sense of unease and anger among some voters in the district. Greene has remained on the sidelines of the race but has kept alive her relentless criticism of Trump, most recently on his decision to strike Iran.
It's an open question whether any of those critiques will cause Republican voters to sour on Trump or to take his endorsement less seriously.
Georgia has long stood as a leading barometer for Trump's performance. He won the state in 2016. He lost it in 2020, which placed it at the center of unfounded claims of widespread election fraud. He won it again in 2024.
Moore was at the center of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. His actions ultimately led to him being kicked out of the Republican state Senate caucus. He was later arrested at the state Capitol in Atlanta after trying to enter the House chamber, where he had been banned by Republican leaders.
If elected, Moore said, he would join the House Freedom Caucus and help “defend against bad legislation.”
Yet that is precisely what concerns Republican leaders in Congress, particularly the speaker, who helped persuade Trump to endorse Fuller over Moore or other candidates. Republican leaders are searching for a reliable vote, a top GOP aide told CNN, “not another rabblerouser.”
From ‘A+' grade to ‘we can't stand this much longer,' Georgia voters take stock of Trump's first year back in office
For all of the challenges facing Trump as he enters his second year back in power, the ability to maintain his winning coalition will be at the center of the fight for Congress as voters give their verdict on the first half of his second term.
One of the most closely watched US Senate races in the nation, a wide-open contest for governor and competitive state legislative races are already shaping up in Georgia as a referendum on Trump's agenda and how the state has fared over the past year.
In the abbreviated two-month campaign, Fuller pledged to voters that he would “have President Trump's back” on Capitol Hill and that he would not become a thorn in his side, a not-so-subtle reference to Greene.
“We have to support President Trump,” Fuller said. “He's the greatest foreign policy president in our time. I'll fight for him, and that's why he endorsed me in this race.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
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The former US marine with presidential ambitions who was deployed to Iraq has long argued against American intervention abroad
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In January 2023, JD Vance decided to let bygones be bygones and back the probable Republican presidential nominee.
His pitch to the American people was simple, as he laid out in an article for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) announcing his endorsement: “Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”
It was a stark indication of Mr Vance's own political strategy.
The 41-year-old former US marine, who was deployed to Iraq, had long argued against American intervention abroad, from supplying weapons to Ukraine, to the invasion of Iraq.
“American taxpayer money has continued to flow to Ukraine,” he wrote in the WSJ. “A wiser foreign policy wouldn't have let such conduct go unnoticed.”
Three years later, sitting in the White House beside the man he once compared to Adolf Hitler, Mr Vance has been notably quiet since the president chose to launch devastating strikes on Iran, weeks after raiding Venezuela and capturing its president.
As Republicans rushed to praise the strikes Mr Vance, a prolific social media presence, was notably silent for almost 72 hours, aside from reposting official administration content.
The silence prompted speculation across Washington that there had been a split between Mr Vance and Mr Trump.
“Where the hell is JD Vance? Where is he?” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former congresswoman, asked on Megyn Kelly's show last Monday.
Mr Vance broke his silence a few hours later on Fox News, defending what he described as a limited strike with specific goals.
“The president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish,” he said. “There's just no way Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multiyear conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective.”
It was a characteristically loyal defence of the president, but for Mr Vance it signalled a clear change in tone.
“He has a long record of defending America First and no more wars, and especially in the Middle East,” Prof Matthew Dallek, of George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management, told The Telegraph. “It was core to his identity as he rose up in politics.”
In November 2024, Mr Vance argued explicitly against US military action in Iran.
“Our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran,” he said on a podcast. “It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”
In an April 2024 speech on the senate floor, he cited his own experience serving in Iraq as the basis for his scepticism of interventionism.
“I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to, that the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke,” he said, adding that “too many in this chamber have decided that we should police the entire world… The American taxpayer be damned.”
So how did Mr Vance balance his isolationism with his loyalty to his president in the run-up to the latest US military action?
According to insiders, he initially laid out the negative implications of striking Iran. But once he and other top officials came to see the conflict as inevitable, he put up “little resistance”, CNN reported, instead “racing to execute Trump's wishes rather than trying to change them”.
The New York Times said on Monday that once Mr Vance had accepted the US would hit Iran, he wanted to “go big and go fast” in the White House Situation Room.
“He is either changing his mind, evolving with the situation, but also following the leader here,” Mathew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump appointee to the state department, told The Telegraph. “There's no scenario where the vice-president would ever publicly, and possibly even privately, make a break with the president.
“That is going to continue on, but that does certainly leave questions for the vice-president's political future,” he said, adding that “if he's still having to talk about the war with Iran” by 2028, that is “not something that would bode well”.
Mr Trump told RealClearPolitics during a brief Monday interview that Mr Vance “did not take persuading”.
Defending the war presents a political liability for the heir apparent to Mr Trump's Maga dynasty, who is widely considered the front-runner for the next election.
If he makes a bid for the White House in 2028, he will need to argue the case for the war to the American voters, which could prove challenging given the current level of public support.
Nearly 60 per cent of the public disapprove of the US decision to take military action in Iran, according to a recent CNN poll, while just one in four approves of the strikes, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
There is a “small and growing” chance that Mr Trump “could tell him not to run and choose Rubio”, Mr Bartlett said.
He points to 2016 when Barack Obama sidelined his vice-president Joe Biden in favour of Hillary Clinton as the successor to his legacy.
Already there are whisperings that Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, could be replacing Mr Vance as the favourite.
After launching the Iran strikes, Mr Trump asked a group of roughly 25 GOP donors if they would support Mr Vance or Mr Rubio. “It was almost unanimous for Marco,” a person in attendance told NBC news. “It was clear, at least that night,” another added.
Other insiders argue that Mr Vance's silence in those first few hours of the war was simply a sign of his unswerving loyalty to the president.
“I have no knowledge as to what he was thinking in those 72 hours,” concludes Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation.
“But it's a complicated situation, and many people were being told, what is the message right now from the president?”
As vice-president, she said, “you don't want to be spouting out any messages if you don't know what's going to happen and what the message of the administration is”.
If the war continues, that loyalty may prove both an asset and a constraint for Mr Vance.
Should he run for president, the anti-interventionist politics he built his career on may have to be reconciled with the conflict he is now helping to defend.
A spokesperson for Mr Vance told The Telegraph: “The premise of this story is ridiculous and false. The vice-president hasn't been keeping a low profile.
“He's attended a dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base, went on primetime TV after the start of Operation Epic Fury, and delivered a speech in which he discussed the heroic sacrifice of America's service members.”
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Election will be a test of Trump's sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in the southern state
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A special election for the successor to Marjorie Taylor Greene's congressional district in Georgia on Tuesday will be a test of Donald Trump's sway, and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of the southern state.
Republican former prosecutor Clay Fuller is likely to come out of Tuesday's jungle primary, in which the top two candidates go to a runoff regardless of party, alongside retired army general Shawn Harris, a Democrat. The two would face a run-off election on 7 April.
Fuller has Trump's endorsement and had raised more than $1m leading into voting Tuesday, but Harris, who faced Greene two years ago, has raised more than four times as much. Even though four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the Republican field is fractured between more than a dozen candidates, including former state senator Colton Moore, a combative agitator to the right of most Republican legislators in Georgia.
Greene, also a firebrand on the right, broke hard against Trump last year, beginning by questioning his first strike on Iran in June, then by sounding alarms during budget talks that the end of healthcare subsidies would wreck her constituent's finances. The administration's resistance on the Epstein files was the last straw; Trump and Greene turned on each other, leading to Greene's resignation in January to avoid a contentious, divisive primary challenge.
Fuller, a lieutenant colonel in the air national guard, is also a former Trump White House fellow and – by current Republican standards – a mainline conservative and Trump loyalist, which paved the way for Trump's endorsement.
Harris, a soldier turned cattle rancher, won about 135,000 votes in a losing effort in 2024, a record in Georgia's 14th district. The Cook Political Report still rates the district as R+19, but Democrats have been over performing in Republican districts since Trump's election.
In an interview in December, Harris told the Guardian that the field for Greene's successor appears open to a Democrat.
“I don't care who it is, but when we do our analysis – because Marjorie Taylor Greene was so far out there – we don't see the Republican party, Donald Trump or the local Republican party getting somebody that's closer to the center,” said Harris. “Because if you get somebody that's closer to the center, then guess what? You got Shawn Harris.”
Even before war in Iran, Harris said that people in Georgia are more focused on economic issues than foreign wars, and that Congress should be working on getting the cost of groceries to fall.
“The economy is very bad,” Harris said. “People know that things cost more now. People know that. You don't have to be told, you just know it, you can feel it across the board. Middle-class families are now struggling to pay the light bill, put food on the table, trying to figure out how they're going to pay their rent or pay their mortgage.”
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By Kenta Nakajo / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
15:50 JST, March 10, 2026
Rakugo storyteller Hayashiya Sanpei is seeking to pass on the history of the Great Tokyo Air Raid by performing a wartime piece, as he looks to fulfill the wishes of his late mother.
Tuesday marks the 81st anniversary of the Great Tokyo Air Raid, which claimed about 100,000 lives overnight. Late last year, 55-year-old Hayashiya Sanpei — the second to hold this performing name, his father being the first — lost his mother, Kayoko Ebina, who was age 92.
Ebina had long dedicated herself to sharing her experiences of the massive bombing, which left her an orphan.
In the Great Tokyo Air Raid, U.S. B-29s indiscriminately bombed the capital in the early hours of March 10, 1945, in the final stages of World War II.
Large numbers of incendiary bombs were dropped on densely populated areas where there were many wooden houses, including in what are now Sumida, Koto and Taito wards.
About 100,000 people were killed, 270,000 houses burned down and 1 million people were affected.
Ahead of the anniversary on Tuesday, the first since his mother passing, Sanpei was determined to keep the memory of the tragedy alive by weaving her experiences into his performances.
“Normally, my mother would be here to speak, but on Dec. 24 last year, she rode off on Santa Claus' sleigh into the sky …” he said on Sunday, at a gathering of about 200 people in Koto Ward, Tokyo. He then began to recount his mother's wartime experiences, which he had heard since childhood.
Ebina was the only member of her family who was not harmed in the air raid, as she had been evacuated to Shizuoka Prefecture. Back at their home in what is now Sumida Ward, Tokyo, six of her family members — her grandmother, parents and three of her brothers — were killed in the bombing.
Only one brother, two years older than her, managed to survive.
Orphaned by the war at age 11, Ebina was moved between the homes of various relatives. She was eventually adopted into a family of comic storytellers, or rakugo performers, and married the first Hayashiya Sanpei, the legendary “king of laughter” in the Showa era (1926-1989).
In the decades following her husband's death and after raising their four children, she became a prominent voice, recounting her experiences in numerous essays and public talks.
Sanpei, her second son, grew up listening to his mother's memories. Many were happy stories from before the war, such as about the family enjoying fruit parfaits or sukiyaki together. It was these vivid glimpses of a joyful past, he said, that made him feel the depth of the grief she felt at losing nearly all her family in a night.
His mother also told him of the time she received chewing gum from a U.S. soldier during the postwar occupation. The gum was so delicious she spat it out. “If I keep chewing this, I'll end up feeling grateful to the U.S. military, which killed my family,” she thought. She never had gum again.
Maybe because she had never seen her family's remains, she would sometimes murmur even in her later years, “I wonder if my brothers might come home tomorrow.”
With his mother's advancing age, Sanpei felt a growing sense of urgency as fewer remained who could tell of their lives as war orphans as his mother could. He struggled, worried that his own words would not be weighty enough to pass on her stories, as he had not experienced the war firsthand.
He wondered how he could pass on this history in his own way. He concluded that he should perform kokusaku rakugo — stories that supported Japan's wartime efforts.
During the war, rakugo storytellers refrained from performing pieces that satirized the authorities or included romantic scenes out of a fear of censorship.
Instead, they created and performed kokusaku rakugo to boost morale, but this genre was forgotten after the war.
Based on historical documents, Sanpei revived “Shussei Iwai” (A celebration of being sent to war), a piece created by his grandfather, the seventh Hayashiya Shozo, and has been performing it in various places since 2016.
The story is about a father who rejoices when his son receives his draft papers and sends him off to war. In fact, the first Sanpei was also mobilized as a member of a suicide attack unit when students were drafted.
Reflecting on his grandfather's reasons for writing “Shussei Iwai,” Sanpei speculated that by cooperating with the military, Shozo was pleading for his son to be kept off the front lines.
“I hope this will be a chance to think about why the atmosphere in Japan at that time made families feel they had no choice but to celebrate their loved ones' departure for the war,” Sanpei said.
At Sunday's gathering, Sanpei performed “Shussei Iwai” after offering a disclaimer: “To be honest, this is not funny at all.”
Amid the hush of the audience, he vowed to deepen his role as the child of an air raid orphan, drawing a mass wave of applause as he finished.
“My mother has passed away, and this is the start of my journey as a storyteller,” Sanpei said. “I will keep going, with the knowledge that her wishes are now in my hands.”
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‘How do you explain an illegal war of aggression? You lie. We have become a nation of compliant sheep and have a psychopath leading us as shepherd' – Former US weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
In the latest episode of ‘Sanchez Effect,' we dive into the chaos of a war that Washington promised would be quick and painless. Reality tells a different story – Ritter argues that America has already dropped the ball. Instead of toppling Khamenei, they've inadvertently made him a martyr; now, people rally around his legacy, vowing to avenge his demise. Trump's strategy? It changes with the wind – he doesn't have one. And he's not alone; his close ally, Pete Hegseth, is equally lost as America flounders in its military objectives.
Ritter foresees a grim future: the US will exhaust its defense options long before Iran runs out of ways to strike back. Rick questions why interceptors aren't taking down missiles – why are Iranian rockets slipping through? Aren't those fancy US missiles supposed to work? Ritter points out how Iranians are outsmarting Washington, rendering radars blind and deaf while launching a frenzy of outdated missiles to overload defenses before unleashing their more advanced weaponry.
And let's not forget Turkiye – it's not innocent in this mess either, and Ritter reveals its agenda. Meanwhile, RT correspondent Yasin Eken joins us from Turkiye to weigh in on whether Ankara might throw its hat into the ring. Get the full scoop only on RT!
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Editor's Note: This is a developing story and is being updated.
Russian overnight attacks on March 10 struck the Ukrainian cities of Dnipro and Kharkiv, leaving at least 20 people injured as emergency crews continue assessing the damage.
In Dnipro, Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said that 10 people were wounded, including a 12-year-old boy. Mayor Borys Filatov said that there was damage to numerous buildings.
“As a result of another Russian attack, at least eight multi-story buildings were damaged. Several hundred windows were shattered in the buildings," Filatov wrote.
Dnipro, Ukraine's fourth largest city with a pre-war population of 968,000, continues to suffer from regular Russian missile and drone attacks due to its proximity to Ukraine's front-line regions, lying about 130 kilometers (80 miles) from the nearest active fighting.
In Kharkiv, Russian drones targeted the Industrialnyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts, injuring around 10 people, including a teenage girl.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the Shahed drone attack damaged residential buildings and outbuildings in the Kholodnohirskyi district.
Authorities said the full extent of casualties and damage was still being clarified as rescue operations and damage assessments continued through the morning.
The overnight strikes come just days after Russian forces hit a five-story residential building in Kharkiv with a ballistic missile on March 7, killing 11 people — including two children — and injuring at least 15 others.
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.
Ukraine is expected to receive 35 PAC-3 Patriot interceptor missiles in the coming weeks as Kyiv faces a shortage of air defense ammunition amid continued Russian missile attacks.
Janos Lazar, Hungary's construction and transport minister, has openly acknowledged a connection between the seizure of over $80 million worth of Ukrainian cash and gold last week and the suspension of oil shipments via Ukraine.
"Ukrainians will pay for that choice in blood," Alexander Kirk, a sanctions campaigner at the NGO Urgewald, told the Kyiv Independent.
Kyiv hopes to acquire PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot air defenses in exchange, Zelensky told journalists.
Ukraine has nearly liberated the remaining Russian-occupied parts of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after several weeks of counterattacks in the part of the front line where Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts meet.
The March 4 decree removes the deadline for residents of occupied Ukrainian territories to obtain Russian citizenship through a simplified process established by a 2022 Russian law, effectively making the policy permanent.
Lawmakers urged Hungary's government to "avoid sending money or weapons to Ukraine" and instead support "international peace efforts," Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs said.
Maksym Krippa, who has splashed out on several landmark properties in central Kyiv during wartime, secured 100% ownership of Ukrainian development firm Graal LLC on March 7 via his investment fund ARS Capital, according to state registry records.
Russia launched 137 drones against Ukraine overnight, the Air Force reported.
The number includes 950 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
Russian overnight attacks on March 10 struck the Ukrainian cities of Dnipro and Kharkiv, leaving at least 20 people injured as emergency crews continue assessing the damage.
Energy World Corporation Ltd ( (AU:EWC) ) has issued an update.
Energy World Corporation has appointed long-time adviser and current director Alan Jowell as Executive Chairman to provide stronger executive leadership as it advances its strategic review and project development agenda. Jowell, who was instrumental in the group's balance sheet restructuring and debt-to-equity deal with major shareholder Energy World International, will steer the company through its next phase of restructuring and growth.
The board has expanded its investment bank's mandate beyond financing for the Pagbilao LNG and Power Project to explore asset-level transactions, including potential asset sales and strategic partnerships that could unlock earlier value from the group's portfolio. While completion of the Pagbilao project remains the base case, the company is assessing alternative uses for its largely built infrastructure, such as LNG storage and logistics, renewable generation and flexible peaking power solutions, alongside management changes that include the retirement of CFO Joseph Meyer and a reshuffle of the audit committee.
The most recent analyst rating on (AU:EWC) stock is a Hold with a A$0.03 price target. To see the full list of analyst forecasts on Energy World Corporation Ltd stock, see the AU:EWC Stock Forecast page.
More about Energy World Corporation Ltd
Energy World Corporation Ltd is an Australia-based energy company focused on power generation and liquefied natural gas infrastructure, with a key development presence in the Philippines. Its primary activities center on the Pagbilao LNG and Power Project, aimed at providing reliable, scalable electricity and related LNG storage and logistics services to meet growing regional power demand.
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French President Emmanuel Macron said on March 9 that France and its partners are preparing a naval mission to escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, once the most intense phase of the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran subsides.
Speaking during a visit to Cyprus on March 9, Macron said both European and non-European countries would take part in the initiative, which aims to safeguard maritime traffic through one of the world's most critical energy routes.
“Its purpose is to enable, as soon as possible after the most intense phase of the conflict has ended, the escort of container ships and tankers to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz,” Macron said.
The French leader stressed that the planned operation would be strictly defensive and focused on protecting commercial shipping as tensions in the region remain high.
Ultimately, we aim to guarantee freedom of navigation and maritime security," Macron added.
The remarks come as global oil prices have surged amid continued strikes by the United States and Israel on Iran, alongside retaliatory Iranian missile and drone attacks across the wider Middle East.
Global oil prices briefly climbed above the $100‑per‑barrel mark for the first time since 2022.
The conflict has effectively disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — a strategic Gulf waterway through which roughly 20% of the world's oil supply normally passes.
As fuel prices climb, Russia is poised to profit from the global energy crisis. The U.S. on March 6 granted Inida a temporary waiver allowing it to once again purchase Russian oil — and Washington has floated the possibility of lifting its own sanctions on Russian fuel lifting to mitigate the global supply shortage.
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.
Kyiv hopes to acquire PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot air defenses in exchange, Zelensky told journalists.
Ukraine has nearly liberated the remaining Russian-occupied parts of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after several weeks of counterattacks in the part of the front line where Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts meet.
The March 4 decree removes the deadline for residents of occupied Ukrainian territories to obtain Russian citizenship through a simplified process established by a 2022 Russian law, effectively making the policy permanent.
Janos Lazar, Hungary's construction and transport minister, has openly acknowledged a connection between the seizure of over $80 million worth of Ukrainian cash and gold last week and the suspension of oil shipments via Ukraine.
Lawmakers urged Hungary's government to "avoid sending money or weapons to Ukraine" and instead support "international peace efforts," Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs said.
Maksym Krippa, who has splashed out on several landmark properties in central Kyiv during wartime, secured 100% ownership of Ukrainian development firm Graal LLC on March 7 via his investment fund ARS Capital, according to state registry records.
"Ukrainians will pay for that choice in blood," Alexander Kirk, a sanctions campaigner at the NGO Urgewald, told the Kyiv Independent.
Russia launched 137 drones against Ukraine overnight, the Air Force reported.
The number includes 950 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
Russian overnight attacks on March 10 struck the Ukrainian cities of Dnipro and Kharkiv, leaving at least 20 people injured as emergency crews continue assessing the damage.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on March 9 that France and its partners are preparing a naval mission to escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, once the most intense phase of the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran subsides.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on March 9 that the U.S. is preparing to waive certain oil-related sanctions to stabilize global energy prices as the war in Iran drives markets higher.
The comments signal a potential shift in Washington's sanctions enforcement as the escalating conflict in the Middle East threatens global oil supply and economic stability.
Trump did not specify which country could receive sanctions relief. The Kyiv Independent has learned that the administration is considering reducing sanctions on Russian oil.
"We're waiving certain oil-related sanctions to reduce prices," Trump said. "So we have sanctions on some countries. We're going to take those sanctions off until this straightens out."
"Then who knows, maybe we won't have to put them on."
The remarks came hours after Trump held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine and the growing conflict in Iran.
Global oil and gas prices surged after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. In response, Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a route that carries roughly 20% of the world's oil supply.
While easing sanctions could boost global energy supplies, critics say it risks undermining efforts to pressure Moscow over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which entered its fifth year in February.
Alexander Kirk, a sanctions campaigner at the NGO Urgewald, told the Kyiv Independent that relaxing restrictions could embolden the Kremlin to further continue its aggression.
"The call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin only underlines what is at stake," Kirk said. "Easing sanctions on Russia now would throw the Kremlin a rope at the very moment the walls are closing in. Ukrainians will pay for that choice in blood."
"At the moment Moscow is positioning itself as a partner in solving the global energy crisis, the West should remember that this is the same fossil fuel revenue stream funding the war in Ukraine."
The potential sanctions relief follows a temporary waiver granted last week, allowing India to purchase Russian crude already loaded on tankers at sea to offset supply disruptions from the Middle East.
The waiver came after months of U.S. pressure on New Delhi to scale back imports of Russian oil. Last year, the Trump administration imposed a 25% "reciprocal" tariff on Indian goods and an additional 25% penalty linked to purchases of Russian crude.
The U.S. president later lifted the additional penalty on Feb. 7 after India pledged to halt direct and indirect imports of Russian crude and increase purchases of U.S. energy.
Despite the temporary measures, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed on March 8 that Washington does not plan to abandon its broader sanctions policy toward Russia.
"We just made a pragmatic decision," Wright told Fox News. "I don't think there's any change in the pressure there… Russia's oil remains sanctioned. There's no change in policy towards Russia."
The debate over sanctions comes as concerns grow about Moscow's role in the Middle East crisis. U.S. officials have alleged that Russia provided Iran with intelligence on American military positions in the region, including ships and aircraft.
Iran remains one of Russia's closest partners since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Reporter
News Editor
Kyiv hopes to acquire PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot air defenses in exchange, Zelensky told journalists.
Ukraine has nearly liberated the remaining Russian-occupied parts of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after several weeks of counterattacks in the part of the front line where Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts meet.
The March 4 decree removes the deadline for residents of occupied Ukrainian territories to obtain Russian citizenship through a simplified process established by a 2022 Russian law, effectively making the policy permanent.
Janos Lazar, Hungary's construction and transport minister, has openly acknowledged a connection between the seizure of over $80 million worth of Ukrainian cash and gold last week and the suspension of oil shipments via Ukraine.
Lawmakers urged Hungary's government to "avoid sending money or weapons to Ukraine" and instead support "international peace efforts," Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs said.
Maksym Krippa, who has splashed out on several landmark properties in central Kyiv during wartime, secured 100% ownership of Ukrainian development firm Graal LLC on March 7 via his investment fund ARS Capital, according to state registry records.
"Ukrainians will pay for that choice in blood," Alexander Kirk, a sanctions campaigner at the NGO Urgewald, told the Kyiv Independent.
Russia launched 137 drones against Ukraine overnight, the Air Force reported.
The number includes 950 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
Russian overnight attacks on March 10 struck the Ukrainian cities of Dnipro and Kharkiv, leaving at least 20 people injured as emergency crews continue assessing the damage.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on March 9 that France and its partners are preparing a naval mission to escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, once the most intense phase of the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran subsides.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Protesters wave Iranian flags and hold a portrait of the late Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to support his selection as the new Iran's Supreme Leader in Baghdad, Monday, March 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are divided along party lines on U.S. military action against Iran, according to polls conducted since the war began, with most polls showing opposition is higher than support.
Polls suggest that many Americans are worried the military action is making the U.S. “less safe,” even as they see Iran as a threat to U.S. security. There are also warning signs for President Donald Trump as he confronts the possibility of a prolonged conflict that could come with significant economic turmoil. Trump gave conflicting messages on Monday about the war's timeline, suggesting it could be near its end while also threatening additional force against Iran if the country disrupted the global flow of oil.
Fluctuating oil prices may already be alarming voters. Polls conducted over the weekend found a large majority of Americans are worried about the war causing oil and gasoline prices to rise. The vast majority expect the U.S. action against Iran will last at least “months,” if not longer.
Republicans are largely behind the president, a Republican, the polls show, but there are indications that they are wary of any response that would lead to U.S. troops on the ground in Iran. And after Trump campaigned on the pledge of putting “America first” and ending U.S. involvement in “forever wars,” the Iran conflict could become a particular point of friction.
About half of registered voters — 53% — oppose U.S. military action against Iran, according to a new Quinnipiac Poll conducted over the weekend. Only 4 in 10 support it, and about 1 in 10 are uncertain. A new Ipsos poll also found more disapprove than approve of the strikes.
That's similar to the results of text message snap polls from The Washington Post and CNN, both conducted shortly after the joint U.S.-Israel attacks began, which also indicated that more Americans rejected the military action than embraced it.
A recent Fox News poll found opinions more evenly divided: Half of registered voters approved of the U.S. military action, while half disapproved.
Several of the recent polls show a majority of Americans believe the Trump administration has not provided a clear explanation of the reasons behind the military strikes, and there are some divisions about whether Iran truly posed an “imminent and direct threat” to the United States, as the White House has said.
Most voters in the Quinnipiac poll — 55% — said they did not believe Iran posed an “imminent military threat” to the U.S. before the current military action. On the other hand, about 6 in 10 registered voters in the Fox News poll said Iran poses a “real national security threat,” and a recent AP-NORC poll found about half of U.S. adults were highly concerned that Iran's nuclear program posed a direct threat to the U.S.
As oil prices oscillate, the vast majority of voters are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about oil and gasoline prices rising in the U.S., according to the Quinnipiac poll. Only about one-quarter of voters are “not so concerned” or “not concerned at all.”
The highest levels of concern are driven by Democrats and independents, but about half of Republicans are also at least somewhat concerned about the war increasing gas prices.
About two-thirds of Americans expect U.S. gas prices will “get worse” over the next year as a result of the U.S. military action, according to the Ipsos poll conducted March 6-9. Republicans were more likely to say gas prices would worsen than improve as a result of the war: 44% said they would get worse, while 26% expected they would improve. About 2 in 10 thought they would remain the same. Democrats and independents overwhelmingly expect gas prices will worsen.
On Monday, Trump said the U.S. would take further action against Iran if they made any attempt to stop the global oil supply.
As the Iran war spreads into the Middle East, many Americans also worry Trump's military decisions have made the U.S. less safe.
About half of voters in both the Quinnipiac and Fox News polls said the U.S. military action in Iran makes the U.S. “less safe,” while only about 3 in 10 in each poll said it made the country safer. The CNN poll found about half of U.S. adults thought the strikes would make Iran “more of a threat” to the U.S., while only about 3 in 10 thought it would lessen the danger.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they trusted Trump “not much” or “not at all” to make the right decisions about the U.S. use of force in Iran, according to the CNN poll. Republicans expressed more trust in the president than Democrats or independents.
An AP-NORC poll conducted before the strikes similarly found that 56% of U.S. adults trusted Trump “only a little” or “not at all” to make the right decisions about the use of military force abroad.
Most voters are concerned about a possible expansion in the war's scope.
About three-quarters of voters oppose the idea of sending ground troops into Iran, according to the Quinnipiac poll that was conducted after the deaths of six U.S. service members were announced. The death of a seventh service member was reported later..
The Trump administration has acknowledged the likelihood of American casualties, and has not ruled out sending American soldiers to Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last week that it was “foolishness” to expect U.S. officials to say publicly “here's exactly how far we'll go.”
Only about 2 in 10 in the Quinnipiac poll supported sending troops to Iran. Even among Republican voters, the poll found more oppose than support sending ground troops, 52% to 37%.
The new Ipsos poll found bipartisan concern that the U.S. military action would risk the lives of American military personnel. About 9 in 10 U.S. adults are “very” or “somewhat” concerned about this, including 86% or Republicans and 93% of Democrats.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2026 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG.
Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports on the scenes emerging from Tehran as Operation Epic Fury enters a new phase.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that Russia "should not be involved" in the escalating conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran, even as analysts point to Russian military activity that aligns with reports Moscow may be aiding Tehran.
"The president maintains strong relationships with world leaders, which creates opportunities and options for us in very dynamic ways," Hegseth said when asked about President Donald Trump's recent call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But as it relates to the Middle East conflict, he added, Russia "should not be involved."
IRAN LAUNCHES SATELLITES ON RUSSIAN ROCKETS AS MOSCOW-TEHRAN TIES DEEPEN
The administration's messaging comes amid reports that Russia has provided information that could help Iran identify U.S. military assets in the Middle East. Moscow has not publicly confirmed the claims.
Intelligence assessments have reportedly said Russia provided Iran with information that could help identify the locations of American warships, aircraft and other military assets. Officials reportedly stressed there is no public evidence that Moscow is directing Iranian strikes, but said the information could assist Tehran's targeting efforts.
The scope, timing and operational impact of that information have not been publicly detailed.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that Russia "should not be involved" in the escalating conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
While there is no public evidence definitively proving Russia is providing real-time targeting data, George Barros, a Russia expert at the Institute for the Study of War, said open-source indicators are consistent with the type of support described in the reports.
Barros pointed to Russian military reconnaissance satellites, including Cosmos-2550, a radar and electronic signature spacecraft that recently passed over the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea — areas where U.S. forces have been operating.
"They're specialized for naval reconnaissance and detecting ships, because the radar signature off the water really pings it quite well," Barros said. "These are known capabilities of the Russians."
Such radar systems can detect maritime targets and electronic emissions that reveal force positioning. Barros said those capabilities align with known gaps in Iran's own space-based intelligence collection.
Although he cautioned that he does not have dispositive proof of real-time targeting support, Barros said the convergence of Russian reconnaissance capabilities, satellite positioning and reported cooperation "makes total sense."
Trump on Monday described his recent conversation with Putin as "very good" and "constructive," saying the Russian leader "wants to be very constructive." Trump suggested Moscow could be more helpful by helping bring the war in Ukraine to an end.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, acknowledged over the weekend that Russia is assisting Iran "in many different directions" in its war with the United States and Israel. Pressed on whether that includes intelligence sharing, Araghchi said, "They are helping us in many different directions," but added, "I don't have any detailed information."
AS UKRAINE WAR DRAGS ON, TRUMP HITS PUTIN BY SQUEEZING RUSSIA'S PROXIES
Beyond intelligence collection, analysts say battlefield patterns suggest tactical cross-pollination between Russia and Iran.
Iran's foreign minister acknowledged over the weekend that Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, pictured here, is assisting Tehran "in many different directions" in its war with the United States and Israel. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)
During the war in Ukraine, Iran supplied Russia with Shahed one-way attack drones, which Moscow deployed extensively against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Over time, Russian forces refined strike packages combining drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to overwhelm integrated Western air defense systems.
"The Russians got really, really good at learning how to launch drones against integrated Western air defense systems," Barros said.
Those lessons, he said, appear to have informed Iranian strike tactics in the Middle East, where Tehran has launched large-scale combined missile and drone attacks against U.S. and allied targets.
If confirmed, Barros argued, intelligence sharing that materially supports Iranian targeting would amount to Moscow acting as a "co-belligerent."
"The Russians are coming out with Iran as a co-belligerent," he said, adding that the Kremlin has long viewed the United States as a geopolitical adversary.
At the same time, Russia remains constrained in how far it can go.
Russian ground forces are tied down in Ukraine and are not in a position to deploy to assist Iran. Analysts say any Russian support is far more likely to come in the form of intelligence sharing, technology transfers or drone production rather than boots on the ground.
A drone hits an apartment building in Kyiv during Russia's attack on Ukraine in December 2025. "The Russians got really, really good at learning how to launch drones against integrated Western air defense systems," Russia expert George Barros says. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
One potential avenue involves drone manufacturing.
Russia operates large-scale Shahed-derived drone production facilities that were initially enabled by Iranian technology transfers. If Iran's domestic drone factories are degraded by strikes, Russian production could theoretically help sustain Tehran's aerial campaign, though there is no confirmed evidence that such transfers are occurring.
Defense officials have publicly downplayed the operational impact of any reported Russian assistance, saying U.S. commanders are tracking foreign intelligence activity and factoring it into planning.
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The contrast between Trump's characterization of Putin as "constructive" and Hegseth's warning that Russia should stay out of the conflict underscores the delicate balance the administration is attempting to strike — pursuing diplomacy in Ukraine while confronting the possibility of deeper cooperation between Moscow and Tehran in the Middle East.
For now, analysts say the evidence stops short of conclusive proof. But the alignment of Russian reconnaissance capabilities, battlefield tactics refined in Ukraine and Tehran's own acknowledgment of assistance has intensified scrutiny of Moscow's role as the regional war unfolds.
Russia has not publicly responded to the allegation of intelligence sharing with Iran, but has broadly called for de-escalation of the conflict.
The Russian embassy could not immediately be reached for comment.
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President Donald Trump says 'everything Iran had is gone' while speaking at a press conference.
A week and a half into the U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran, the latest national public opinion poll indicates that more than half of American voters oppose U.S. military action.
But the survey from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut is the latest to indicate a wide partisan divide when it comes to support for the U.S. military operation, known as Epic Fury, which has resulted in the death of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the decimation of the country's military.
Fifty-three percent of voters questioned in the poll, which was conducted Friday through Sunday, said they oppose the U.S. military action against Iran, which was ordered by President Donald Trump, with 40% supporting the operation.
The Quinnipiac poll joins other recent surveys from NPR/PBS/Marist (44%–55%), CBS News (44%–56%), NBC News (41%–54%), Washington Post (39%–52%), CNN (41%–59%), and Reuters/Ipsos (27%–43%), in indicating minority support for U.S. military action.
HEAD HERE FOR FOX NEWS LIVE UPDATES ON THE ATTACK ON IRAN
But the latest Fox News poll, conducted Feb. 28–March 2, showed Americans split at 50% in their support or opposition to the fighting.
And three other national polls conducted over the past week and a half indicated majority or plurality support for the operation.
The surveys highlight the divergence between Democrats and Republicans over the fighting.
TRUMP'S TWO WORD ANSWER AFTER IRAN PICKS NEW SUPREME LEADER
More than 8 in 10 Republicans surveyed by Fox News said they approved of the U.S. use of force against Iran, with 6 in 10 saying the president's actions on Iran are making the U.S. safer.
But nearly 8 in 10 Democrats and 6 in 10 independents disapproved of the U.S. strikes and said things are less safe because of Trump's performance.
A week and a half into the U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran, the latest national public opinion poll indicates that more than half of American voters oppose U.S. military action. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)
The vast majority of Democrats surveyed by Quinnipiac University, as well as 6-in-10 independents, said they opposed the strikes on Iran, with 85% of Republicans supporting the military action.
A majority (55%) questioned by Quinnipiac said they didn't think Iran posed an imminent military threat to the U.S. before the attacks, with nearly four in ten disagreeing.
Again, there was a partisan divide, with 83% of Democrats and 63% of independents saying Iran didn't pose an imminent threat, while nearly three quarters of Republicans said Tehran did pose an imminent threat.
But there was no partisan gap when it came to the possibility of sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
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Nearly three quarters of voters opposed sending U.S. ground troops into Iran, including 95% of Democrats, 75% of independents and 52% of Republicans.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly not ruled out using ground troops in Iran.
Asked how long the fighting between the U.S. and Iran, which has retaliated with strikes against Israel and other nations in the volatile Middle East, will last, just 3% of Quinnipiac pollees said days, 18% offered weeks, 32% guessed months, 13% thought the attacks could last a year, and just over a quarter said more than a year.
Plumes of smoke rise following reported explosions in Tehran, Iran, on March 2, 2026. (Sohrab/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
"Very soon," Trump said at a news conference Monday, when asked when the strikes would end. "Look, everything they have is gone, including their leadership."
And the president described the operation as an "excursion."
Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Peter Malloy noted that "perhaps compelled by memories of long wars, Americans see no early end to the enormous upheaval in the Middle East."
Trump recently dismissed the polling on Iran, telling the New York Post March 2: "I don't care about polling. I have to do the right thing. I have to do the right thing. This should have been done a long time ago."
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Trump's overall approval rating stood at 37% in the Quinnipiac poll, with 57% giving the president a thumbs down on the job he's doing in the White House.
The president stood at 43% approval in the Fox News poll, and at 44% in the NBC News survey. An average of the latest national surveys that gauged the president's performance put Trump at 43% approval and 54% disapproval.
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. He covers the campaign trail from coast to coast."
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Drivers speak out after the average price for a gallon of gasoline jumped 11 cents overnight in the U.S.
Marcus Hopkins, a street performer, does a backflip in front of advertised gas prices Monday, March 9, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Francisco Castillo stands next to his son's Ford F-150 after filling up, Monday, March 9, 2026, at a gas station in De Soto, Iowa. (AP Photo/Hannah Fingerhut)
Gas prices are displayed, Monday, March 9, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Gas prices are visible on a marquee outside of a Kroger grocery store Monday, March 9, 2026, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
An American flag flies outside a gas station as gasoline prices are displayed on Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
DE SOTO, Iowa (AP) — Standing alongside his son's Ford pickup truck at a central Iowa gas station off Interstate 80, Francisco Castillo was not happy.
He had voted for President Donald Trump in the last election. He believed Trump had strengthened the economy in his first term, and he wanted more of that.
“I thought that he was going to bring some of those things back,” said Castillo, a 43-year-old factory worker. And now? “He said he was going to bring gas down, but the war in Iran is now making everything worse.”
It seems a country divided on so many fronts is finding common ground in pain at the pump, where the cost of the Iran war is hitting Americans squarely in the wallet and aggravating people across the political spectrum.
Marcus Hopkins, a street performer, does a backflip in front of advertised gas prices Monday, March 9, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Francisco Castillo stands next to his son's Ford F-150 after filling up, Monday, March 9, 2026, at a gas station in De Soto, Iowa. (AP Photo/Hannah Fingerhut)
For Castillo and many others filling their tanks on Monday at gas stations in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina and Iowa, it was a reminder that politicians' promises aren't going to pay the bills.
“They do what benefits them,” Castillo said. “I have to go to work every day no matter what.”
Some are optimistic that the sticker shock will be short-lived. Others blame corporate interests rather than the president. Electric vehicle owners are especially grateful about their decision as they cruise past gas stations with escalating prices.
The national average gas price was $3.48 a gallon on Monday, up from $2.90 a month ago, before the war, according to tracking by AAA.
The higher prices are a reminder of how Trump has veered from his campaign promises. Not only were Americans embroiled in a new war overseas, they were paying for it every time they filled up their tanks.
The Republican president insisted the conflict was worth it.
“We're putting an end to all of this threat once and for all, and the result will be lower oil prices, oil and gas prices for American families,” he said at a news conference Monday. The war, he said, is “just an excursion into something that had to be done.”
Robert Coon from Omaha, Nebraska, filled up on his way to Ames, Iowa. Though not a Trump voter, he believed the strikes in Iran needed to happen.
Even so, he fears U.S. involvement is not going to go the way he wants, which is “in, out, over.”
A Quinnipiac poll conducted over the weekend found about half of registered voters oppose the U.S. military action against Iran while about 4 in 10 support it. The vast majority of Democrats were against it (89%), the vast majority of Republicans for it (85%) and independents against it (60%).
Overall, three-quarters were concerned about the war raising gas and oil prices. Recent polling also suggests that the vast majority of voters expect the U.S. action against Iran to last months or longer, and many worry it is making the U.S. less safe.
Gas prices are displayed, Monday, March 9, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
For now, surging prices aren't keeping Ray Albrecht from hauling his 32-foot (11 meter) camper on his Silverado pickup truck around the country as he attended motorcycle festivals like Bike Week in Florida's Daytona Beach.
However, he said he would stop traveling if the price reached $5 a gallon since he only gets 8 miles per gallon with his truck and camper. He stopped at a Speedway gas station off Interstate 4 in Winter Park, Florida, paying $3.59 per gallon for half a tank to keep him rolling toward his home in Wisconsin.
“I've been pretty grateful that the gas prices have been really reasonable” at least until the last week, said Albrecht, 67, who identified as an independent voter.
At the same gas station, Republican-leaning Tyler Nepple, 23, said the price of gas for his Toyota Tacoma may shape his vote in the midterm elections this fall but won't change his driving habits.
“You've just got to fill it up and bite the bullet and hope that the prices go back down — that's all I can really do,” said Nepple, who runs a startup in the Orlando, Florida, area. “I still have to get from point A to point B, and I need gas to do that.”
Kathryn Price Engelhard, 70, gassed up her Subaru Forester at a Wawa in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs. A retired nonprofit executive director and “strong Democrat,” she said she had to stop at over a half a tank because she's on a fixed income. Last week, she paid only $30 to top herself off.
Similarly, she cut her order for home heating oil by half because that cost is up, too. “I look at the prices of oil in the past and the stupid war, how did we — how did anybody — think that that was not going to impact oil?” she asked. “Of course it's impacting oil.”
In Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, Vivian Knight, 53, is hoping her fill-up last week will last her a month. She is a former exterminator out on disability. “If I had to go to work or something like that, gas prices would be ridiculous,” she said.
Speaking of Trump, she said “he kind of starts some problems that really don't need to be started,” and she puts the Iran war in that category.
The saga will have no effect on how Joey Perillo, 74, will vote in November.
“The gas price could have gone down to two cents a gallon and I'd vote against him,” said the volunteer firefighter, retired actor and political independent from Yardley, Pennsylvania.
An American flag flies outside a gas station as gasoline prices are displayed on Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)
In the Detroit suburb of Livonia, Anthony Gooden, 57, sized up the plight of gas-powered vehicle owners while waiting for his Chevy Equinox EV to charge at a station.
“Whoa, they're going through it right now,” said Gooden, 57, from nearby Redford Township. “And it's only getting worse.”
Gooden ditched his internal combustion engine vehicle over a year ago and said days like these reinforce that decision. “You're happier now,” he said. “No comparison.”
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Elvana Hammoud, 55, a diversity strategist, drives a Mach-E electric SUV as well as a Ford Raptor truck that costs $100 to fill up when gas is over $3. It's an easy choice which to use more now.
“I mostly drive the EV, especially to work because I have a long commute,” she said. The Raptor is for snowy days, short errands or when moving something big. ”I used it more frequently just for fun when gas prices were lower.”
Trump has put up a number of roadblocks to rapid expansion of electric vehicles in favor of policies promoting gasoline-powered ones. Among them, his tax and spending bill passed by Congress last year eliminated federal tax credits that saved buyers up to $7,500 off new and used EV purchases.
Gas prices are visible on a marquee outside of a Kroger grocery store Monday, March 9, 2026, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Kevin Kertesz, 65, filled his pickup at a Shell station in Graham, North Carolina, where unleaded started at $3.34 per gallon, up from $2.59 in the area last week.
The Republican retiree asserted that “everyone who is selling fuel for these elevated prices is price gouging, and there's nothing we can do about it because we all have to have gasoline to keep driving.”
Ken Shuttlesworth, a 70-year-old IT manager from Graham who described himself as an independent Democrat, said he can absorb higher gas costs but worries about his children and grandchildren and others who live closer to the financial margins.
Trump, he said, should have consulted Congress and had a more public discussion before taking the country to war.
“We have somebody who doesn't follow the policy,” he said. “He follows his instincts.”
___
Householder reported from Michigan, Schneider from Florida, Catalini from Pennsylvania and Barrow from Georgia. Associated Press writers Calvin Woodward and Linley Sanders contributed.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
People gather outside the Alabama Governor's Mansion in Montgomery, Ala., on Feb. 16, 2026, to urge Gov. Kay Ivey to grant clemency to Sonny Burton, who is scheduled to be executed on March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler)
This 2025 photo provided by Matt Schulz shows Charles “Sonny” Burton at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala. (Matt Schulz via AP, File)
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old inmate who was set to be executed this week even though he was not in the building when the victim was killed.
Ivey reduced Charles “Sonny” Burton's sentence to life in prison without possibility of parole, marking just the second time the Republican governor has granted clemency to a death row inmate since taking office in 2017.
Burton was sentenced to death for the 1991 shooting death of a customer, Doug Battle, during a store robbery. But Burton had left the building before another man, Derrick DeBruce, killed Battle. DeBruce's death sentence was later reduced on appeal to life in prison.
Ivey, who has presided over 25 executions, said she firmly believes in the death penalty as “just punishment for society's most heinous offenders,” but said it also must be administered fairly and proportionately.
“I cannot proceed in good conscience with the execution of Mr. Burton under such disparate circumstances. I believe it would be unjust for one participant in this crime to be executed while the participant who pulled the trigger was not,” Ivey said in a statement.
Burton was scheduled to be executed Thursday night by nitrogen gas.
Battle was shot in the back during an Aug. 16, 1991, robbery of an AutoZone auto parts store in Talladega. Court testimony indicated that DeBruce shot Battle after Burton and other robbers had left the store. Battle had entered the store as the robbery was winding down and exchanged words with DeBruce.
Burton's supporters and family members had urged Ivey to consider clemency for the inmate, who is sometimes confined to a wheelchair. Multiple jurors from Burton's 1992 trial were among those urging his life be spared. Battle's daughter sent a letter to Ivey urging clemency, asking “how does it legally make sense” to execute Burton.
Members of Burton's legal team cheered when they received the news Tuesday.
“I'm just so happy, so happy. It's just tears of joy,” Burton's daughter, Lois Harris, said through sobs during a telephone interview. Harris said she wants to thank Ivey for granting clemency.
Alice Marie Johnson, whom President Donald Trump had tapped last year as his “pardon czar” after commuting her sentence for federal drug and money laundering charges, praised Ivey. She said the governor “showed what courageous and common sense leadership looks like.”
“By commuting the death sentence of Charles “Sonny” Burton, she ensured that justice — not technicalities — guides the most serious decision a state can make,” Johnson wrote on social media.
But Attorney General Steve Marshall slammed the move, saying “There has never been any doubt that Sonny Burton has Douglas Battle's blood on his hands.”
Burton organized the armed robbery and “held a gun to the store manager's head” before dividing up the proceeds, Marshall said in a statement.
Burton told The Associated Press last month that no one was supposed to be injured in the robbery and that he didn't know until later that DeBruce had shot anyone.
“I didn't know anything about nobody getting hurt until we were on the way back. No, nobody supposed to get hurt,” Burton said in a telephone interview from Alabama's Holman Correctional Facility
Burton said he wants to apologize to Battle's family. “I'm so sorry. If I had the power to bring him back, I would. I'm so sorry,” Burton said.
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The Common Sense Department has advice for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the media— instead of focusing solely on condemning the right, why not focus on getting it right?
New York City's democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, sparked online backlash this week after posting a photo showing him hosting one of the most prominent anti-Israel activists for dinner inside Gracie Mansion.
In a Monday night post on X, Mamdani released a photo from inside Gracie Mansion of his dinner with Mahmoud Khalil, who was facing deportation by the Trump administration, which labeled him a Hamas supporter.
"For Mahmoud Khalil, this past year has been marked by profound hardship—and by profound courage," Mamdani wrote in the post, which has been viewed almost 3 million times.
"Last night, as we marked the one-year anniversary of his detention, Rama and I were honored to welcome Mahmoud, Noor, and their son Deen to Gracie Mansion to break our fast together," Mamdani said. "Mahmoud is a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City."
MAMDANI'S RESPONSE TO TRUMP'S IRAN STRIKE SPARKS CONSERVATIVE BACKLASH: 'ROOTING FOR THE AYATOLLAH'
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York on Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
The post was quickly criticized by conservatives on social media.
"Posting a celebratory photo of an anti-Israel college protester who should be deported next to your ‘non public figure' wife, who cheered the rape and murder of Jews on 10/7, the day after two radical Muslims threw pipe bombs on your sidewalk is a hell of a choice, Mamdani," Outkick founder Clay Travis posted on X.
Travis' post referenced reports over the weekend that put Mamdani in hot water after it was revealed that his wife "liked" a variety of social media posts celebrating the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel.
Mamdani responded to those reports by claiming his wife, who was pictured at the dinner smiling, is not a "public figure."
"Nothing says that the NY City Mayor condemns Islamic terrorism quite like having dinner in Gracie Mansion with those who actively promote it," Superintendent of the Kiryas Joel School District Joel M. Petlin posted on X.
"Just a casual dinner at Gracie with the lovely, private citizen, shy wifey whose fingers could not keep up with liking posts about the MASSACRE of Jews, and the RING LEADER & CHIEF ‘NEGOTIATOR' of Columbia's antisemitic encampments where Jewish students were harassed and intimidated, and where they literally glorified convicted terrorists," New York City Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov posted on X.
MAMDANI PUTTING NYPD 'BETWEEN ROCK AND A HARD PLACE' IN MOVE THAT COULD ULTIMATELY HELP HIS GOAL: EXPERT
Photo posted by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday night that sparked backlash. (Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani/X)
"This is what Zohran Mamdani stands for," journalist Neria Kraus posted on X. "Mahmoud Khalil justified October 7th. ‘We couldn't avoid such a moment,' he viciously explained in an interview. Well, he was invited to the people's house of NYC, Gracie Mansion, to a celebratory dinner. This is everything you need to know."
"Syrian national Mahmoud Khalil, refers to Hamas as as ‘we'. Tonight, he dined with Zohran Mamdani in the mayor's mansion," UPenn student Eyal Yakoby posted on X. "It shouldn't be a surprise that Islamists launched an IED at New Yorkers over the weekend—they feel empowered."
"After getting exposed for liking posts about Oct. 7, why waste any time before hosting a man who justifies terrorism too?" Leo Terrell, civil rights attorney and chair of the Department of Justice Taskforce on Antisemitism and senior counsel at the Justice Department, posted on X. "These people are proud!"
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Mahmoud Khalil attends a vigil and protest outside Columbia University in New York City, Oct. 7, 2025. (Adam Gray/Getty Images)
"In NYC, terrorist sympathizers have a seat at Zohran Mamdani's table," The Republican Jewish Coalition posted on X. "Mahmoud Khalil should be deported, not fluffed by the Mayor of the City of New York. Disgraceful."
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani's office for comment.
Mamdani, who was widely criticized during his mayoral campaign for his comments and stances on Israel, was already under scrutiny over his reaction to an attack over the weekend involving two men accused of throwing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) near Gracie Mansion that is being investigated as an "act of ISIS-inspired terrorism."
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
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The attack comes a day after a drone attack injured 32 people, including several children, early Monday in the Sitra area near Manama, authorities said. Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khaifa visited those injured in Sitra in hospital on Monday night.
New footage shows what an expert investigative group says is likely an American Tomahawk missile hitting a compound in southern Iran, meters from the school where a deadly unclaimed blast killed over 165 people at the start of the war raging in the Mideast.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warns that Tuesday “will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran: The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever.” He adds: “We do so on our timeline.”
Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Motorbikes drive past a billboard depicting Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, handing the country's flag to his son and successor Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, right, as the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini stands at left, in a square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People walk past closed shops at the nearly empty traditional main bazaar in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A man passes in front of a destroyed building that housed a branch of Al-Qard Al-Hassan, a non-bank financial institution run by Hezbollah, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People take shelter in an underground metro station as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strike, in Ramat Gan, Israel, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's attacks on regional oil infrastructure and pledges to choke off maritime traffic left markets on edge Tuesday as the United States promised blistering new strikes. The war entered its 11th day with no end in sight as its effects were felt across the region and beyond.
Both sides sharpened their rhetoric as they dug in, with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth again promising the most intense strikes yet, while Iran's leaders ruled out talks and directly threatened U.S. President Donald Trump.
Iran launched new attacks Israel and Gulf Arab countries, and Israel — America's key ally in the fight — launched more airstrikes on Tehran and in Lebanon, where it is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The United Arab Emirates reported two more deaths as nine drones struck the country, while nearly three dozen other drones and missiles were intercepted. Firefighters battled a blaze in the industrial city of Ruwais — home to petrochemical plants — after an Iranian drone strike, officials said. No injuries were reported there.
Attacks on the wealthy Gulf country — home to the business and travel hub of Dubai — have killed six people and wounded 122 others since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, triggering a shatter-shot response by Tehran across the region.
In Bahrain, authorities said an Iranian attack hit a residential building in the capital, Manama, killing a 29-year-old woman and wounding eight people. Saudi Arabia said it destroyed two drones over its oil-rich eastern region, and Kuwait's National Guard said it shot down six drones.
Sirens also sounded in Jerusalem, and sounds of explosions could be heard in Tel Aviv as Israel's air defenses worked to intercept barrages from Iran. Hezbollah, which began firing on Israel after the start of the war, launched missiles into Israel.
At the Pentagon, Hegseth warned that Tuesday “will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran: The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever.” He said “the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest amount of missiles they have fired yet.”
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces hit more than 5,000 targets, and that their objectives included striking “deeper into Iran's military and industrial base.”
Witnesses reported hearing several explosions in Tehran in the afternoon as Israel commenced a new wave of airstrikes. Many shops were shuttered.
Iran's leaders have remained defiant after days of heavy strikes targeting the country's leadership, military, ballistic missiles and disputed nuclear program. Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said on X that Iran was “definitely not looking for a ceasefire.”
“We believe that the aggressor should be punched in the mouth so that he learns a lesson so that he will never think of attacking our beloved Iran again,” he said.
A top Iranian security official, Ali Larijani, appeared to threaten Trump himself, writing on X that “Iran doesn't fear your empty threats. Even those bigger than you couldn't eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.” Iran has been accused of plotting attempts to kill Trump in the past.
Along with firing missiles and drones at Israel and at American bases in the region, Iran has targeted energy infrastructure, attacks that appear aimed at generating enough global economic pain to pressure the U.S. and Israel to end their strikes.
Brent crude, the international standard, spiked to nearly $120 on Monday before falling back but was still at around $90 a barrel on Tuesday, nearly 24% higher than when the war started on Feb. 28. The Dow Jones Industrial Average drifted lower at the open Tuesday.
Iran has effectively stopped tankers from using the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil is carried. Attacks on merchant ships near the strait have killed at least seven sailors, according to the International Maritime Organization.
Larijani tweeted that the strait, which is 33 kilometers (21 miles) wide at its narrowest point between Iran and Oman, would “either be a Strait of peace and prosperity for all or will be a Strait of defeat and suffering for warmongers.”
Trump wrote on social media that “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it “will not allow the export of even a single liter of oil from the region to the hostile side and its partners until further notice.”
A bulk carrier likely came under attack on Tuesday off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, with the captain reporting a splash and a loud bang nearby, according to a monitoring center run by the British military.
Amin Nasser, the president and CEO of Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco, said tankers were being rerouted to avoid the strait, and that its East-West pipeline would reach its full capacity of 7 million barrels a day being brought to the Red Sea port of the Yanbu this week.
“The situation at the Strait of Hormuz is blocking sizable volumes of oil from the whole region,” he said. “If this takes a long time, that will have serious impact on the global economy,” Nasser said.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq have launched attacks at U.S. bases in the country since the beginning of the conflict.
Early Tuesday, an airstrike killed at least five militiamen of the 40th Brigade of the Popular Mobilization Forces in the city of Kirkuk. Four were wounded, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters. It was not immediately clear who was behind the strikes.
Israel's military meanwhile reiterated a call for all residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate their homes, saying it planned to “operate forcefully” there against Hezbollah.
Since the war began, at least 1,230 people have been killed in Iran, at least 397 in Lebanon and 11 in Israel, according to officials. Seven U.S. service members have been killed.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo, and Keaten reported from Geneva. Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, David Rising in Bangkok, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Toqa Ezzidin and Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this story.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2026 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG.
Fox News legal editor Kerri Urbahn and 'The Fixer' host Marcus Lemonis join 'The Faulkner Focus' to discuss the Supreme Court's decision to rule against President Donald Trump's global tariffs.
Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett Kavanaugh had a dispute over the high court's approach to its emergency docket in a rare, candid discussion during an event Monday night.
Jackson, a Biden appointee, signaled that the high court's willingness to side with President Donald Trump most of the time when it comes to the emergency docket, sometimes known as the "shadow docket," was a "problem." The liberal justice is one of three, and all have frequently sided against Trump in emergency decisions, which have often broken 6-3 in favor of the president.
"The administration is making new policy ... and then insisting the new policy take effect immediately, before the challenge is decided," Jackson said, according to reports from The Associated Press and NBC News. "This uptick in the court's willingness to get involved in cases on the emergency docket is a real unfortunate problem."
SUPREME COURT'S EMERGENCY DOCKET DELIVERS TRUMP STRING OF WINS AS FINAL TESTS LOOM
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Jackson said: "It's not serving the court or this country well."
Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, countered that the Supreme Court's approach to emergency requests was not unique to the Trump administration and that the high court handled the Biden administration the same way despite there being fewer interim requests under the former president.
Kavanaugh said presidents "push the envelope" more with executive orders because Congress is passing less legislation.
"Some are lawful, some are not," Kavanaugh said, later adding, "None of us enjoy this."
The pair spoke in a courtroom during an annual lecture honoring the late Judge Thomas Flannery of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., while several federal judges, including high-profile ones like Judge James Boasberg, looked on.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh speaks. (Reuters)
Jackson's criticism is not new; she has been perhaps the most vocal dissenter in emergency docket cases.
In August, she lambasted the Supreme Court majority for "lawmaking" from the bench in a dissent to an emergency decision to temporarily allow the National Institutes of Health's cancellation of about $738 million in grant money.
"This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins," Jackson wrote.
The Trump administration has faced hundreds of lawsuits and adverse rulings in the lower courts, and the Department of Justice's solicitor general's office, which represents the government before the Supreme Court, often does not elevate cases to that level.
JACKSON'S SCATHING DISSENT LEVELS PARTISAN CHARGE AT COLLEAGUES AFTER HIGH-PROFILE RULING
The Supreme Court is seen, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
Such emergency requests allow the government to bypass the lengthy court process, involving extensive briefings and oral arguments, to seek immediate relief in the face of restraining orders and injunctions in the lower courts.
The Trump administration has brought about 30 emergency applications to the Supreme Court and secured victories about 80% of the time, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
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Through the emergency docket, the Supreme Court has greenlit Trump's mass firings and curtailed nationwide injunctions. The high court has also cleared the way for deportations and immigration stops viewed as controversial by critics of the administration. The justices have also found that the government can, for now, discharge transgender service members from the military.
But Trump has not won out all the time by taking this route. The justices required the administration to give more notice to alleged illegal immigrants being deported under the Alien Enemies Act and agreed with a lower court that the president improperly federalized the National Guard as part of his immigration crackdown in Chicago.
Ashley Oliver is a reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business, covering the Justice Department and legal affairs. Email story tips to ashley.oliver@fox.com.
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Justice Department prosecutors leading an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan are facing increasing pressure from top Justice officials to bring criminal charges against him after the department has flailed in trying to punish President Donald Trump's perceived enemies, people briefed on the matter told CNN in recent days.
Prosecutors in the Miami US attorney's office have been leading the Brennan probe, which relates to testimony the ex-intelligence chief gave to Congress in 2023 and the Russia investigation years earlier, issuing two rounds of subpoenas to several witnesses.
Yet the push for charges has run into career prosecutors raising concerns in southern Florida, with some viewing the potential case as relatively weak.
Brennan's lawyers have been bracing for a possible indictment for months now, which has not materialized.
Justice officials and US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones made a push in January to bring a case against him, according to two people briefed on the matter, but some career prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida resisted the pressure.
Those career prosecutors are facing a new wave of pressure now, one of the sources said, and are struggling to delay bringing the case to a grand jury.
At first, the prosecutors gathered documents late last year from Brennan and other former intelligence officials. The subpoenas specifically sought information about a 2017 intelligence report on Russian meddling in the election that Brennan worked on, and which he spoke about in his 2023 congressional testimony.
A second round of subpoenas went in January to several former government officials and sought years of documents, including government records on the 2016 Russia investigation the people would no longer have access to, two people familiar with the investigation told CNN recently. At least one former intelligence community official has been interviewed in the probe, one source said.
Though Brennan could still face grand jury activity, the investigation also could fall apart.
His lawyers have said accusations of perjury, for instance, are without any merit.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment for this story, saying it does not comment on ongoing investigations.
Several of the probes launched into the actions of the president's political foes have failed when presented to a grand jury over the last year. Other investigations have been opened but have yet to result in criminal charges — hanging for months over the heads of their targets.
But even cases that never materialize can be disruptive to subjects' lives, as people who believe they are being investigated by prosecutors and a grand jury are fearful of harm to their public reputations.
Lawyers' fees add up, though some people in Trump's most politically charged criminal cases are receiving low- or no-cost legal help or financial backing from others, according to several sources in the legal industry in DC.
John Brennan accuses Justice Department of possible judge shopping and grand jury leaks
While that's true in any administration, the Trump Justice Department has more aggressively pursued Democratic political figures or individuals Trump and other top administration officials have said publicly they'd like to charge.
Trump in November called Brennan, Former FBI Director Comey and several others part of “Obama's Russia HOAX Treason Club”, in a social media post shortly after Comey was indicted.
And FBI Director Kash Patel has co-opted a similar public message.
“We're going to continue to make people like Comey and Brennan and Clapper and Page and Strzok and so many others answer for what I believe are their acts of criminal conduct,” Patel said on a recent podcast, naming a group who are not facing any charges at this time, but yet whom Trump has publicly attacked repeatedly. (Former FBI agent Peter Strzok, lawyer Lisa Page and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were key figures in the investigations into Trump's 2016 campaign.)
In a handful of districts with politically charged cases, well-respected career investigators and prosecutors have been fired en masse and replaced with more willing but less experienced line investigators.
Closing lingering cases or probes that Trump wants to succeed has its own set of consequences for prosecutors or other Justice Department lawyers.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia attempted to bring criminal charges twice against Comey and three times against New York Attorney General Letitia James, and those charges have either been tossed by judges or rejected by grand juries.
A grand jury refusing an indictment is historically a highly unusual outcome — though it's happening more frequently in politically charged cases Trump wants to pursue.
A grand jury in Washington, DC, recently denied the Justice Department's attempt to criminally charge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and five other members of Congress because of a video they taped reminding military and intelligence officers they are allowed to refuse orders they believe go against the law.
“It was a grand jury of anonymous American citizens who upheld the rule of law and determined this case should not proceed,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, another member whom the Justice Department tried and failed to charge. “Whether or not (US Attorney Jeanine) Pirro succeeded is not the point. It's that President Trump continues to weaponize our justice system against his perceived enemies.”
Several other Trump political foes have been the subject of investigative inquiries that haven't materialized into charges.
In recent weeks, federal law enforcement has been revisiting the work of former prosecutors whose work ultimately became part of the cases against Trump under special counsel Jack Smith, according to several people and a critical public statement from Patel.
CNN has previously confirmed investigative activity by the Justice Department around the financial papers of Rep. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and into Senate testimony by Federal Reserve by Chair Jerome Powell.
And Republicans on Capitol Hill have added to who the Justice Department may consider investigating next, by referring a former special counsel's office prosecutor of Trump and a former star witness after January 6 for possible criminal charges.
None of those people have been charged.
“This unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure,” Powell said in a video statement after receiving a criminal subpoena, pointing out Trump's unhappiness with the Fed-controlled loan interest rates.
“This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings,” he added. “Those are pretexts.”
The Fed chair's public messaging in response to an open criminal investigation has become part of the playbook in Washington to publicize a grand jury inquisition.
In past administrations, Justice Department and administration officials have been less willing to comment on uncharged matters or people who could be subject to an investigation. Cases could linger quietly for years.
That is not the case now. Trump himself has posted names on social media repeatedly of people he'd like to see his Justice Department indict, and the attorney general and other senior leaders of the Justice Department have repeatedly commented on ongoing investigations.
In January, Trump hosted US attorneys at the White House, where he complained about the slow pace of investigations into a number of people, including officials from previous administrations as well as Democratic officials who he said unfairly targeted him, CNN has previously reported. Shortly after, Powell made public that prosecutors' subpoenas went to the Federal Reserve.
In another recent example, a senior Justice Department official told CNN that prosecutors are probing whether former aides in the White House may have used an autopen for actions not authorized by then-President Joe Biden. The message came less than a day after the New York Times said an investigation into Biden's use of autopen was likely over.
Biden is not under investigation himself, the official said, as presidents have broad protections for the actions they take while in office following a Supreme Court decision in 2024 broadening presidential immunity.
One particularly politically motivated Justice official, Ed Martin, has pushed for several of the recent investigations against political foes, including one over autopen use.
Martin has specified he believes subjects should be named and shamed, even if they are never charged with a crime.
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we'll charge them. But if they can't be charged, we will name them,” Martin said last year. “And in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are shamed.”
Some of those investigations that officials like Martin once championed have appeared to fall apart. A renewed perjury charge against Comey, for instance, faces an even more difficult future.
“Putting on evidence and a trial is messy. It's just easier to announce an investigation … It's easier to use the integrity of the department to slime people,” Aaron Zelinsky, a former prosecutor who has been a past whistleblower about Trump and received an inquiry from Martin last year, recently told CNN. “The process is the punishment.”
The lingering open investigations are also fueling defense strategies.
“Taking a page from Trump's own unsavory and unethical style, his DOJ has become a willing political weapon eager to name and shame the president's foes and targets before any evidence is gathered, or even charges filed,” Abbe Lowell, a prominent defense lawyer who has collected high-profile clients who could face politically charged cases under Trump.
Lowell currently represents several high-profile people this Trump Justice Department has investigated, charged or attempted to charge. They include: James in New York; the Federal Reserve's Cook; Rep. Jason Crow, who was among the members of Congress a grand jury declined to charge; journalist Don Lemon; and John Bolton, the national security adviser in Trump's first term in office.
Lowell, too, has taken a more aggressive and public approach defending clients he has who believe they may be investigated.
He's also regularly teased the possibility of asking for criminal charges to be dismissed because he alleges the Justice Department has unfairly singled out people to charge. Those types of attempts to have a case dismissed are exceedingly difficult to win in court, but have gotten more traction in front of some judges in recent months.
The push to charge Brennan, the former CIA director, for his official work in 2016, is part of a broader effort by Quiñones, the US attorney in the Southern District of Florida who has sought to establish himself as a Trump loyalist since taking office last year.
Brennan's attorneys just before Christmas made the unusual move of writing to the chief judge in Miami with their accusations of unfair grand jury activity. The lawyers said they believed Quiñones was attempting to investigate Brennan through a Fort Pierce, Florida-based grand jury, under the direction of Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon in Ft. Pierce previously dismissed the criminal case against Trump.
Yet if Brennan were to be charged, it may be in Washington, DC, according to people briefed on the matter. There, prosecutors would face a grand jury that may be much less willing to indict a former administration official that Trump publicly criticizes.
Prosecutors have focused on allegations from congressional Republicans that Brennan made false statements in testimony to Congress in 2017 and 2023 about the Intelligence Community Assessment.
Brennan testified that the CIA was not involved with the now-discredited Steele dossier — which alleged that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election — and its inclusion in the Intelligence Community Assessment. Republican lawmakers have claimed that Brennan was in fact aware of the dossier's inclusion in the report.
Brennan has denied any wrongdoing.
“Not surprisingly, this unrelenting presidential pressure to pursue political targets without regard to the law or facts has resulted in an unprecedented spike in the incidence of irregular prosecutorial conduct, especially in relation to grand jury investigations and charging decisions relating to matters of political interest to the President,” Brennan's attorneys wrote in the December letter to Southern District of Florida Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga.
CNN's Paula Reid contributed to this report.
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Vicki Parmelee, owner of Jumby Bay Island Grill in Jupiter, Florida, tells Fox News Digital that tips should be earned, not expected, and reveals the common scenario that she says makes many restaurant customers "uncomfortable."
Americans are sick of today's tipping culture — to the point where 83% say automatic service charges should be banned, according to new research.
In a survey released Tuesday, WalletHub found that nearly nine in 10 Americans think the country's tipping culture is "out of control."
The group also found that three in five Americans think businesses are replacing employee salaries with customer tips — while 83% support banning automatic service fees.
AMERICA'S BIGGEST TIPPERS REVEALED: THE 5 MOST AND LEAST 'GENEROUS' STATES
Mandatory service fees are seen as a way to fairly compensate workers serving large parties, but WalletHub's findings suggest they are overwhelmingly unpopular among consumers.
The results were based on an online survey of 200 U.S. adults.
Nearly nine in 10 Americans say today's tipping culture is "out of control," according to WalletHub's new survey. (iStock)
Americans in general are "fed up with increased tipping obligations," said Chip Lupo, an analyst at WalletHub.
"Tips have gone far beyond traditional establishments, which had been places like sit-down restaurants, bars and hair salons," Lupo told Fox News Digital.
"Now, it's everywhere you look. That's part of the frustration, because people are at a point where they don't know who to tip and how much to tip."
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Some restaurant owners, however, are wary of eliminating tipping altogether.
Vicki Parmelee, owner of Jumby Bay Island Grill in Jupiter, Florida, previously told Fox News Digital she was skeptical of a "no-tip standard," which typically translates to a mandatory service fee.
Etiquette experts say consumers should feel comfortable selecting "no tip" during simple transactions. (iStock)
"There's no incentive for the servers to be attentive and give extra-good service. … I'm not interested in doing that here," she said.
Christopher Dietz, chief financial officer of Triple T Hospitality Group, told Fox News Digital that tipping is not intended to replace employer-paid wages in restaurants.
"[Tipping] supports higher earnings for workers and helps ensure restaurants remain places where people can build careers."
"Tipping is not about replacing wages, but about rewarding exceptional hospitality," the New Jersey-based expert said. "Our service professionals are specially trained and highly skilled at what they do."
Dietz added, "Tipping allows these professionals, who often go above and beyond to make guests happy, to earn more per hour than what any restaurant could afford to pay given the tight margins of the industry."
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Michelle Korsmo, president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C., said research shows that tipped servers earn a median of $27 per hour, "and that earning potential is a major reason people choose careers in restaurants — along with flexible schedules and the opportunity to build valuable skills that translate far beyond the industry.
"For years, full-service restaurant operators and their employees have worked together to preserve tipping because it works for servers," Korso continued to Fox News Digital. "It supports higher earnings for workers and helps ensure restaurants remain places where people can build careers that fit their lives and long-term goals."
WalletHub's new survey of U.S. respondents suggests tipping fatigue is becoming a widespread consumer sentiment. (iStock)
Jules Hirst, the owner of Etiquette Consulting Inc. in California, agreed with the sentiment of the survey takers.
"In some ways, tipping is out of control," Hirst told Fox News Digital.
"Nobody should be tipping when you've grabbed your own water from the refrigerator," she said. "Everywhere you go, the option for tipping comes up."
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The etiquette expert added, "Tipping is for someone who goes above and beyond in service for you."
Americans do need to know when to tip and when to skip, said Diane Gottsman, owner of the etiquette-focused Protocol School of Texas.
Many experts say tip prompts have become unnecessary or tied to tasks that customers are doing for themselves. (iStock)
"When you have a simple exchange, perhaps buying a cup of coffee at the coffee shop, and you are presented with an option to tip, you can hit 'skip' or 'no tip,'" she said.
"Not every exchange requires gratuity."
Although she acknowledged "tip fatigue," Gottsman said that until tipping is banned, it's important to keep in mind that restaurant servers are generally paid a lower base salary.
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"If tipping [were] to be banned, it would mean that the hourly wage would need to be increased," she said.
Fox News Digital's Peter Burke contributed reporting.
Andrea Margolis is a lifestyle writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Readers can follow her on X at @andreamargs or send story tips to andrea.margolis@fox.com.
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Crime is falling to historic lows. This economist knows how to make it plunge even faster.
The United States is in the middle of one of the most dramatic crime declines in its history — and almost no one seems to know it. (Unless, of course, you read this newsletter.)
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FBI data shows violent crime fell 4.5 percent in 2024, with murder plunging nearly 15 percent. Data from the Council on Criminal Justice suggests homicides dropped another 21 percent in 2025 across major cities, potentially putting the country on track for the lowest murder rate ever recorded.
And yet, the US murder rate is still roughly two-and-a-half times Canada's and five times higher than most of Western Europe. America still locks up more people per capita than almost any other nation on earth. Compared to other wealthy nations, we still have a serious crime problem — and a criminal justice system that too often fails both victims and offenders.
Jennifer Doleac wants to change that. Doleac is the executive vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures and a member of our inaugural Future Perfect 50 list. Her new book, The Science of Second Chances, makes a data-driven case that small, evidence-based interventions at key points in the criminal justice system can dramatically reduce recidivism — and that we're leaving an astonishing number of those opportunities on the table.
I talked to Doleac recently about what the research shows. Here are five takeaways.
For decades, the default American response to crime has been to make prison and jail sentences longer. Doleac argues we've been focused on the wrong end of the problem. “My team at Arnold Ventures is spending a lot of time trying to shift the policy conversation from adding sentence enhancements and passing bills that increase sentence length, to solving more crimes faster,” she told me. “That's something that not only works better, and it's cheaper, it also has an opportunity for bipartisan support.”
The logic is rooted in behavioral economics. Most people who commit crime are heavily focused on the present; they're not weighing the difference between a 10-year and a 15-year sentence. What does change their behavior is the probability of getting caught right now.
Doleac's own research offers a striking illustration: when Denmark expanded its law enforcement DNA database to include anyone charged with a felony, future criminal convictions among those added fell over 40 percent in a study that focused on men ages 18-30. Not because these people were locked up, but because a simple saliva swab changed the calculus. They knew they'd be more likely to be identified if they reoffended.
“It's really that reduction in recidivism that most excited me as a researcher,” Doleac said. “The opportunity to use the ability to increase the probability of getting caught as a way to change behavior and put people on a better path.”
This may be the most counterintuitive finding in the book: dropping charges against first-time misdemeanor defendants doesn't lead to more crime. It leads to dramatically less.
Doleac and her co-authors studied what happened when nonviolent misdemeanor cases in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, were dismissed at arraignment — essentially because the defendant got lucky with a more lenient prosecutor. The result: a 53 percent reduction in the likelihood of future criminal complaints. A separate study in Harris County, Texas, found nearly identical effects for first-time felony defendants who avoided a felony conviction via deferred adjudication or dismissal. Their reoffending rates were cut roughly in half, and their employment rates rose by nearly 50 percent over a decade.
These are major effects, and Doleac told me she was initially skeptical. “If we reduce the consequences in some way, you're probably going to see some people commit more crime. And so the question is just, what's the cost-benefit, right?” she said. “And then it just turned out to be this massive drop in crime, costing less money, taking less time, and leaving everybody better off.”
Why does this work? The mechanism appears to be the criminal record itself. Once you're arraigned, that charge is visible to employers and law enforcement — even if the case is eventually dropped. “It makes it harder to get a job or keep a job, harder to get housing,” Doleac explained. For first-timers, avoiding that first record keeps them on a path where they can still find work and stability.
Some of the most effective interventions in Doleac's book are almost absurdly simple.
In New York City, researchers found that about 40 percent of people issued a summons for low-level offenses missed their court hearings — often not because they were fleeing justice, but because the instructions were confusing and people forgot or couldn't get there. Redesigning the paperwork cut failures to appear by 6 percentage points (a 13 percent reduction), and text reminders raised appearance rates from 62 percent to 70 percent (8 points.) That matters because a missed hearing typically triggers an arrest warrant and new charges, pulling people deeper into the system over what might have started as an open-container violation.
In Johnson County, Kansas, outreach workers simply called people leaving jail who screened positive for mental illness and offered to make them a health care appointment. That was it — a phone call and an appointment. No follow-up, no hand-holding. That “warm handoff” reduced the likelihood of another jail booking (a proxy for rearrest) by 17 percent over the following year, at a cost of $15 per person. As the book puts it, these are examples of how small shifts in information and access — what economists would call changing incentives on the margin — can divert people away from the system at a fraction of the cost of incarceration.
Doleac's commitment to evidence cuts in every direction, and some of her findings have upset people on both the left and the right.
The most prominent example is her research on “Ban the Box” — the popular policy preventing employers from asking about criminal records on job applications early in the hiring process. The goal was to help people with records get hired. The unintended result was the opposite.
“Economists look at that and they're like, wait, you didn't actually change any of the underlying incentives involved,” Doleac told me. “Employers are not just going to treat everyone equally now — they're going to try to guess about the information that they wish they could see. And in the United States, criminal records are highly correlated with race.”
Her study found that Ban the Box increased racial gaps in employment, reducing job prospects for young Black men. The effect was particularly felt by those who didn't have a record, and who could no longer signal that fact to employers. Subsequent research found the policy wasn't even helping the people it was designed for. But by the time the evidence came out, “there was a really established Ban the Box lobby, whose jobs depended on not being convinced by the evidence, and it became very difficult to shift that.”
The broader lesson isn't that reform is hopeless — it's that good intentions aren't enough. Policies need to be tested rigorously, and policymakers need to be willing to pivot when the data says something isn't working.
Falling crime rates create a paradox. On one hand, less fear means more political space to experiment with smarter approaches. On the other, there's a risk of complacency.
“You could imagine everyone saying, ‘Okay, good, that's over,‘” Doleac said. “But maybe part of the lesson here is when we all try really hard to reduce crime, we can do it. And crime is still, even if it's not a problem in your neighborhood right now, it's a problem in a lot of neighborhoods.”
The reason Doleac is optimistic has less to do with the data and more to do with what she's seeing on the ground. “I now spend a lot of time talking to state lawmakers,” she told me. “And that is just a very different world from the cable news political conversation.”
These lawmakers are part-time, understaffed, and trying to solve real problems in real communities.
“When I took this job, I really thought a lot of the fights would be over whether we believe the evidence or not,” she said. “What I've learned is it's a much more human problem — policymakers and researchers just do not know each other.”
That bipartisan potential — on issues like improving clearance rates, testing what works in reentry, and reducing unnecessary prosecution — may be the most underappreciated good news in criminal justice today. “We might not know why there are big swings in crime,” Doleac said. “But we can point people in the right direction. It's not just random chance, and we don't just have to cling to our theories. We can go out and test them.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
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OB/GYN Dr. Mary Claire Haver of The 'Pause Life reveals why women face far higher fracture rates than men and shares her top recommendation for keeping bones strong and healthy.
For women over 60, muscle strength plays a critical role in longevity, a new study confirms.
Researchers at the University at Buffalo, New York, followed more than 5,000 women between the ages of 63 and 99, finding that those with greater muscle strength had a significantly lower risk of death over an eight-year period.
The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.
EXERCISE AFFECTS THE HEART IN A HIDDEN, POWERFUL WAY BY REWIRING NERVES, STUDY FINDS
Muscle function was measured using grip strength and how quickly participants could complete five unassisted sit-to-stand chair raises.
These are two tests commonly used in clinical settings to evaluate muscle function in older adults, the researchers noted.
A recent study shows that stronger muscle strength in women over 60 is linked to a lower risk of death over eight years. (iStock)
"In a community cohort of ambulatory older women, muscular strength was associated with significantly lower mortality rates, even when we accounted for usual physical activity and sedentary time measured using a wearable monitor, gait speed and blood C-reactive protein levels," study lead author Michael LaMonte, research professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo, told Fox News Digital.
"Movement is the key — just move more and sit less."
Many earlier studies did not include those objective measurements, making it difficult to determine whether muscle strength itself was linked to longevity, according to LaMonte. "Our study was able to better isolate the association between strength and death in later life," he added.
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Even for women who don't get the recommended amount of aerobic physical activity, which is at least 150 minutes per week, muscle strength remained important for longevity, the researchers found.
Women with greater muscle strength were more likely to live longer, even if they did not meet the recommended amount of aerobic exercise. (iStock)
"The findings of lower mortality in those who had higher strength but were not meeting current national guidelines on aerobic activity were somewhat intriguing," LaMonte said.
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Federal guidelines recommend strengthening activities one to two days per week, targeting major muscle groups.
Resistance training does not have to require a gym membership, LaMonte noted. These exercises can be performed using free weights, resistance bands, bodyweight movements or even household items, such as soup cans.
Experts recommend working major muscle groups one or two days a week using weights, bands or bodyweight exercises. (iStock)
"Movement is the key — just move more and sit less," he said. "When we can no longer get out of the chair and move around, we are in trouble."
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LaMonte acknowledged several limitations of the study. The researchers assessed muscle strength in older age but did not explore how earlier levels in adulthood might influence long-term health outcomes.
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"We were not able to understand how strength and mortality relate in younger ages," he said, noting that future research should explore whether building strength earlier could have an even greater impact on longevity.
Kelly McGreal is a production assistant with the lifestyle team at Fox News Digital.
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Fox News Digital spoke to former GOP Congresswoman Michelle Steel about a report suggesting Chinese spies have infiltrated Stanford University
FIRST ON FOX: The House Select Committee on China is calling on the National Science Foundation (NSF) to pause a $67 million research security initiative, citing concerns that the universities leading the effort have engaged in problematic collaborations with Chinese military-linked institutions.
In a Tuesday letter to NSF Interim Director Brian Stone obtained by Fox News Digital, House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, a Republican from Michigan, urged the agency to suspend funding for the "Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem" (SECURE) initiative and conduct a comprehensive review of the participating institutions.
Moolenaar's concern, expressed in the letter, is that several of those participating institutions, including Texas A&M University and the University of Washington, receive tens of millions from the grant despite ties to the CCP that the committee finds concerning.
"The program is intended to develop tools, data infrastructure, and analytic capabilities for assessing research-security risks," Moolenaar wrote. "Faculty from UW and TAMU – the same institutions now charged with designing systems and processes to protect taxpayer-funded research – have been collaborating with People's Republic of China (PRC) defense research and industrial base entities, many of which are on various U.S. government national security entity lists, as detailed in this letter."
NEW REPORT SOUNDS ALARM ON 'STAGGERING' AMOUNT OF FOREIGN MONEY POURING INTO US UNIVERSITIES
The House Select Committee on China is sounding the alarm about taxpayer dollars going to CCP-linked entities. (Li Gang/Xinhua via Getty Images)
The committee alleges the University of Washington collaborated on research with Chinese institutions tied to the CCP's military and defense sector, including entities on U.S. government watchlists. The committee cited joint publications with PLA-linked organizations, China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences and universities known as the "Seven Sons of National Defense," involving work in AI, advanced materials and other dual-use technologies.
The letter describes the university's ties as "high-risk research relationships with PRC military- and defense-linked institutions."
The University of Washington is designated to be awarded $50 million from the grant.
Additionally, the note claims that Texas A&M partnered with Chinese defense-affiliated institutions, including the PLA's National University of Defense Technology and Harbin Institute of Technology. They argue these collaborations, some involving federally funded research, raise national security concerns and could conflict with U.S. research security and export control laws.
Texas A&M is designated to be awarded $17 million from the grant.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS SOUND ALARM OVER CCP-LINKED FAKE RESEARCH THREATENING US TAXPAYER-FUNDED SCIENCE
"Institutions entrusted with U.S. taxpayer dollars to safeguard the nation's research enterprise should not simultaneously enable foreign adversaries to access and exploit sensitive research and taxpayer-funded scientific advances," Moolenaar wrote.
"These joint research projects detailed above raise serious concerns about allocating taxpayer dollars for research security initiatives to institutions like TAMU and UW—institutions with documented and ongoing failures in safeguarding U.S. research from PRC defense entities," Moolenaar said, adding that it is "troubling that U.S. institutions that collaborate with China's defense research and industrial base, its nuclear weapons programs, its mass surveillance infrastructure, and institutions on U.S. government national security lists are being entrusted to co-lead the development of national research security frameworks."
Moolenaar's letter urges NSF to assess whether the institutions are complying with a range of federal requirements, including National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 (NSPM-33) Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, and U.S. export control laws.
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Chinese honor guards prepare for the arrival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Chinese President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)
Moolenaar also raised concerns about potential violations of the Wolf Amendment, an appropriations restriction in effect since 2012 that prohibits NASA from engaging in bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government or Chinese government-affiliated organizations in NASA-funded research without specific certification.
Moolenaar's letter concludes with four requests for NSF to respond to by March 31.
First, the congressman asks if NSF will pause its SECURE contract funding to conduct a "full review" and also requests that NSF provide the committee with the results of that review.
The letter also requests that NSF "provide the award and contract details for the SECURE Initiative" and asks whether NSF believes that "it is appropriate for universities to use U.S. taxpayer funds to conduct research in collaboration with known Chinese defense research and industrial base entities or entities implicated in human rights violations?"
"Will NSF update its terms and conditions to expressly prohibit the use of award funds to conduct research with, or for the benefit of, any entity that appears on a publicly available U.S. government entity list?" the last question in the letter asks. "If not, please explain why."
Fox News Digital reached out to Texas A&M University for comment, as well as Stanford University, who is mentioned in the letter as being a participant in the program.
"NSF will respond directly to the Committee's letter," an NSF spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, a University of Washington spokesperson said, "SECURE is a dynamic program that is not prescriptive but can assist universities of all sizes and other research entities to address research security concerns. The University of Washington takes research security and integrity very seriously. The UW directs significant effort and resources toward being leaders in research security and integrity, and goes above and beyond SECURE's guidance and recommendations. Given the evolving landscape, we are regularly reviewing our guidelines and protocols."
Fox News Digital has extensively reported on rising concerns about the CCP's attempts to infiltrate the education system in the United States, including a sweeping report last year warning that America's top universities have been quietly partnering with Chinese artificial intelligence labs deeply embedded in Beijing's surveillance and security state and in some cases co-authoring thousands of papers with entities tied to oppressive efforts against Uyghur Muslims.
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
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America's clutter problem, explained.
It often feels like people fall into one of two categories: those who throw things away easily, and those who hold onto everything. For those of us who fall into the latter category, tasks like spring cleaning and downsizing can be a challenge, especially when you take into account the amount of stuff we as Americans tend to accumulate.
In fact, 71 percent of Americans say they buy things they already have because they can't find the original in all of their clutter. And as baby boomers age, they and their children are trying to get a handle on all the things that have accumulated between them.
So what's the difference between someone who might have a few too many things and someone who could be considered having a hoarding problem?
Mary Dozier is a clinical psychologist and professor at Mississippi State University. She studies hoarding disorder and specializes in intervention to help older adults with hoarding problems, and she says that at the end of the day, it's subjective.
“The level of clutter that one person finds to be completely functional, another person might find that they can't use their home the way they want to anymore,” she told Vox. “That's how I always think about it: is the level of clutter keeping you from using the home how you would like to use it?”
How can we learn to get rid of the clutter in our lives? And when should we hold onto things? Dozier answers these questions and more on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox's weekly call-in podcast.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you'd like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
You work with people who hold on to too much stuff in a way that really limits them and impacts their lives in a negative way. But I think a lot of us struggle to manage our things. Why do we hold on? What's going on with us?
I think of the items we have as an external manifestation of ourselves. We tend to hold onto things from either our past or family members' past because it gives us this sense of where we've come from. But we also often hold onto things because of the promise of who we could be.
The silly example I have from my life is a pasta maker. It's embarrassing, but a whole decade ago, I took a pasta-making class with my husband, and in the class, it was really easy, and so we were like, “We're definitely going to go home and make pasta.” We tried it once. It was not easy. And I think some of those dreams are easier to let go of than others.
How often is throwing everything out the answer? Like, should we just throw that pasta maker in the garbage?
I felt my heart rate go up when you said that. Truthfully, one of the things we know is that when people have really, really severe hoarding problems, it's not safe for them to be in their home.
Sometimes what has to happen is this massive cleanout, but it's an incredibly traumatic thing that it's the same kind of a PTSD response as if you lost your home in a tornado, because in essence, you did. A tornado swept through your home and took everything away.
I know that there's a broad spectrum of minimalism to maximalism, but I think I'm a fan of keeping the things around us that help us feel like who we are. It's that external way that we present the world, whether it's through our clothing or our accessories or the clutter that we have in our handbags. The things that we choose to keep on ourselves or to keep in our home signal to the world of who we think that we are.
I'm curious if things like the Marie Kondo method or any of those other kinds of minimalist decluttering hacks work for the people that you help. Is it that simple or is there a little more there?
I think there's more to it, and especially to the idea of sparking joy. If you put a puppy in front of me, I'm going to say this puppy is sparking some joy right now. There's a difference between happiness and fulfillment.
I always encourage people to go through your clutter and think about what you want to keep and what you want to let go of. Starting before you even do that, ask yourself what are your values? What do you care about in the world? What's important for you in a broader sense? And then as you're going through these items, thinking through if that item is consistent with those values.
You don't have to hold onto something out of guilt. If somebody gives you a present and you don't want it, that's okay. It doesn't say anything about you or your friendship with that person to not keep that item. That guilt shouldn't be part of why you're holding onto things.
In your opinion, what are some of the good reasons not to get rid of stuff?
Come back to that sense of what this item is doing for you. Is it that this is the one thing that seeing it gives you that connection to your grandfather? I think sometimes people get lost in, “I'm going to hold onto everything that reminds me of my grandfather. I'm going to hold onto everything that's about this dream I could be.” Try to think through why you keep things and how many of those things you need to keep.
Are there ways that we can reframe clutter to better serve us?
I think it can be helpful to take that step back and think, “If there wasn't anything in this home, what would I want to be in here?” Everything that you keep, you're making a decision to keep, and sometimes people default to that decision because it's hard to think through.
But you're still making that choice. That inaction in itself is still an action, which I think is probably one of those broader truths about life. Are you staying in a relationship because you're choosing to be in that relationship every day, or are you staying in the relationship just because it's what you've been doing? You can kind of think about our relationships with our items.
I think as boomers age and younger generations start to get more of their stuff it can be like, “What do you do with it?” Do you have any advice for that?
There's something called Swedish Death Cleaning. I don't know if you've come across it, but it's basically putting the responsibility on the baby boomers: They're the ones that should be going through their things before we're inheriting it. It's this idea of cleaning out your things before you die.
It's something that I deal with a lot of my patients that I've treated. These older adults who will say things like, “I could get rid of these things, but I want to make sure it goes somewhere where it's going to be appreciated. I want my daughter to inherit my wedding china but I know that right now she doesn't want it.” And so they're holding onto it as this responsibility for it. Our responsibility is to people, but not necessarily to things.
Is it possible to be a happy maximalist?
Absolutely. It comes back to if it's dysfunctional or not. If your home is filled to the brim, but you're living a healthy, happy life in that environment, that's absolutely okay.
It's all about the subjectivity of it. Just because there might be a current cultural norm for minimalism or — I know cottagecore was in for a while — these trends come and go, but think about what's your truth of how you like your space to be.
Are you someone who likes a completely blank wall, or do you want it to be gallery style? I think whatever somebody's truth may be is good if you're healthy, if you're happy, if it's not hurting anyone.
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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2026 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG.
Fox News host Lara Trump says it's easy to see the president's domestic policy promises made and kept ahead of the State of the Union on 'My View.'
Some House Republicans are getting worried over the prospect of colleagues quiet-quitting after losing their primary races as election season heats up, threatening to whittle down the GOP's already perilously slim majority.
House Republicans will likely only be able to lose two votes on any party-line measure after a special election in a deep-red Georgia district this week.
Some told Fox News Digital they're worried, however, that their colleagues could begin missing key votes before the end of their terms if their ambitions for higher office do not go as planned.
"It's a real problem," one House Republican who was granted anonymity to speak candidly told Fox News Digital. "Is one of them going to be gone for his runoff? Will another not come back at all because he's mad? Is another one not going to come back because he lost?"
DEMOCRATS SALIVATE AT GOP ZERO-VOTE MARGIN AS SHUTDOWN LOOMS OVER ICE REFORM GRIDLOCK
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., and other House GOP leaders walk through National Statuary Hall to his daily news conference on the government shutdown in the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 4, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
Asked if such absences could translate to Republicans losing a functional majority in the House, that GOP lawmaker said, "We could, that's why everybody's nervous about it."
In the Lone Star State alone, two House Republicans are guaranteed not to be returning next year after last week's primaries. Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, lost his bid to unseat Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is headed for a runoff with state Attorney General Ken Paxton. And Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, faced an upset against a primary challenger running to his right, conservative state lawmaker Steve Toth.
Neither has indicated they will be skipping House votes for the remainder of the term due to those losses, but Hunt's attendance record has already generated frustration among his colleagues.
Aside from them, there are 18 other House Republicans currently vying for different positions in upcoming primaries and general elections.
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a high-ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, told Fox News Digital that he too was worried about GOP attendance as election season heats up.
"Our margins are as razor-thin as they can possibly be, so we need everybody to show up," he said. "So yeah, that could potentially be an issue. I hope it isn't."
Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital, "I think it's a concern."
HOUSE GOP'S RAZOR-THIN MAJORITY THREATENS TO GRIND TRUMP'S CAPITOL HILL AGENDA TO HALT
Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Republican from Texas and U.S. Senate candidate, speaks during an early voting kickoff event at Sandlewood Manor in Tomball, Texas, Feb. 17, 2026. (Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"I hope that they recognize the moment. There's still a lot of lane left in this Congress, and people have put their faith in their elected representatives to get the job done. So they need to be here," Fry said.
But the election season starting up is not the first time this Congress — or even this year — that worries about the GOP's margins have flared up.
For example, a small group of Republicans was able to join with Democrats to successfully force a vote on extending expired Obamacare subsidies that the GOP largely opposed. And just last month, President Donald Trump's tariff strategy faced a public setback when a similarly small number of GOP lawmakers voted with Democrats to rebuke it.
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN ACCUSED OF AFFAIR WITH LATE AIDE TO FACE RUNOFF ELECTION
Neither of those measures will likely be taken up in the Republican-held Senate, but it's a testament to the slim margins Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is presiding over.
And aside from the legislative setbacks seen earlier this year, the sudden, tragic death of one House Republican and abrupt resignation of another have served to further whittle down the conference's numbers.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, left, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, speak during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Nov. 5, 2025. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Car accidents and other health problems have also at times forced the House to amend its schedule. It's prompted House GOP leaders to warn their lawmakers to be as cautious as possible when outside of Washington.
"The margins are really, really close. A few of us were in a car the other day, driving … if that became an accident, that would have tipped the scale," Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital back in January. "It's a big deal to change power outside of a normal election cycle."
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House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters last week that attendance is "always a concern" but was optimistic about navigating through it.
"We've had elections along the way, and yet we're still able to move our agenda," Scalise said. "We track people that have surgeries, tell us in advance, and we work around that. But at the end of the day, we've been able to move President Trump's agenda and our agenda, and get the things done for the American people that we ran on."
Elizabeth Elkind is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital leading coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
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President Donald Trump began his second term with a promise to cut “billions and billions of dollars” in government spending, empowering Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate programs and fire workers it deemed wasteful.
One year later, cuts to programs and personnel at federal agencies that had been declared unneeded mere months ago have hampered the US government's abilities to prepare for domestic emergencies; monitor terror threats; guard against cyber-attacks; broadcast US information into Iran; and quickly help US citizens stranded abroad, current and former government officials told CNN.
Democrats and a handful of Republicans have long criticized the way that DOGE and the Trump administration slashed government programs, warning it harmed the US domestically and abroad. Now the cuts, which continued even after Musk left government last spring, are again being scrutinized as US strikes on Iran have sparked a war that's spilled out across the Middle East.
“I think it went overboard. I thought it was too aggressive, too fast, too soon,” GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said of the DOGE cuts.
A former FBI special agent and federal prosecutor, Fitzpatrick told CNN he was against the way DOGE took a “sledgehammer” to agencies, and that lawmakers should look at whether there are “any negative implications from what was done through that process (and) if it's having any negative impact on any aspect of our government, including our national security and national defense.”
The funding cuts did not appear to have affected the military's funding for the war — though DOGE did propose nixing some programs at the Pentagon. Still, lawmakers are already talking about the need to pass supplemental funding to give the Defense Department tens of billions more for the war.
The Trump administration and Republicans argue that it's Democrats who have harmed government preparedness to threats by not funding the Department of Homeland Security, which is shut down as the two parties point fingers over who's to blame.
“Despite the Democrats' decision to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, the Trump Administration is working diligently to ensure government security apparatuses continue to operate at the highest levels – and they are,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Some Republicans also say the impact of the DOGE cuts to the government's war response is overstated. GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees the State Department and related national security budgets, maintained that the DOGE cuts only eliminated waste and did not impact the country's ability to go to war with Iran.
The spending legislation he helped pass through Congress gave more money to US allies to confront China and Iran, he argued.
“We put more money, actual real hard money, into helping our allies confronting our adversaries” Diaz-Balart told CNN. “What we did is we got rid of all this trash that was there.”
The confusion and frustration from Americans who were stranded in the Middle East as the war began laid bare what former State Department officials said was the agency's diminished ability to quickly and clearly respond to the crisis following last year's cuts and loss of personnel.
The State Department launched a 24/7 task force to assist Americans in the Middle East on the day the strikes began. However, until last Tuesday, the message on a State Department emergency call line told callers: “Please do not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuation at this time.” The recording has since been updated.
And last Monday, a post on X from the top official for consular affairs sparked questions and fear among stranded citizens as she urged them to “depart now” from 14 countries in the Middle East — before US government evacuation flights had begun and while the majority of commercial flights were suspended.
The first chartered evacuation flight carrying hundreds of American citizens arrived in the US last Thursday afternoon — five days after strikes began. The Department has since organized more than two dozen flights from the Middle East for thousands of Americans, a top official said.
The initial messaging was abysmal, one former official said, questioning how many people were laid off who could have helped the task force for stranded Americans.
“The administration thoughtlessly terminated people with crisis experience, and now they're left without depth in the bench in the middle of a wide scale and broadening crisis,” said another former official with more than a decade experience in evacuation operations.
Terminations last July affected 1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service officers in Washington, DC, and a quarter of the foreign service “resigned, retired, (have) seen their agencies dismantled, or been removed from their posts” since last January, according to a December report from the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the union representing foreign service officers.
The State Department rejected the assertion that last year's reductions in force (RIFs) impacted their assistance to US citizens stranded in the Middle East or to State's consular operations.
“There were no RIFs that affected our overseas operations that are working in the field to assist Americans,” a senior State Department official said.
The AFSA argued last week State has been weakened by losing experienced personnel with “critical regional, crisis management, consular, and language expertise, including specialists in Farsi and Arabic — skills that are indispensable in moments like this,” the association argued last week.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CNN: “There was always going to be a cost to the shortsighted gutting of the State Department, and now we're plainly seeing the consequences.”
Several former State officials reached out offering to help with consular affairs after the war started, but either received no response or were told there were “no opportunities” for those who were laid off last year, according to emails shared with CNN.
State Department principal deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Monday that “hundreds of experienced personnel are working on the task force” and that “there is currently no wait time for Americans reaching out for assistance.”
The State Department task force has directly assisted “over 23,000 Americans and organized two dozen charter flights,” Pigott said. Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson said Monday that “at this time, seats available on the Department's charter options are significantly greater than the demand from Americans in the region.”
Separately, a State Department office within its counterterrorism division that oversaw initiatives including countering Iran-linked terrorism was eliminated during last year's agency reorganization and its civil servants laid off.
Work the office was doing was transferred to a new one now staffed with contractors and employees with limited experience working directly on counter-Iran initiatives, according to a former State Department official.
But beyond just the loss of personnel, the DOGE-led cuts at the State Department created a culture in which career staff are afraid to push back against political leadership for fear of retaliation, former officials told CNN.
“When you have people who are only politically oriented and want to appear like they're following the Trump administration, they're less likely to speak up when there's lack of preparation,” another former State official said.
The DOGE cuts have also put a spotlight on domestic preparedness for potential retaliatory attacks from Iran or its proxies on the US homeland.
Cuts to cyber personnel and resources at the Department of Homeland Security have meant less information-sharing with critical infrastructure firms on potential Iranian hacking threats than in similar situations in years past, according to current and former US officials and industry executives.
Officials still on the job are trying to pick up the slack — and have shared information on Iranian hacking techniques with private companies in recent days. But executives at industry groups have noticed a sharp drop in the level of engagement from government cyber officials compared to before last year's DOGE-driven cuts at DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other disruptions at the department.
“[T]here's no comparison. I mean, our nation's at war, the entire Middle East is being exposed to risk, including Americans and American business interests and critical dependencies, and we don't have a DHS secretary or CISA director,” said Andy Jabbour, CEO at cybersecurity firm Gate 15, who is involved with multiple industry groups that trade cyberthreat information with the government.
The pace of intelligence sharing with the private sector has “dangerously slowed,” said Errol Weiss, chief security officer of the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC), another industry threat-sharing group.
“To truly secure the homeland, the government must bring its unique, actionable intelligence to the table,” Weiss told CNN. “Otherwise, the US critical infrastructures are dangerously exposed.”
Trump administration cybersecurity officials held a short call last week with multiple industry groups. Officials relayed that there were no major cyber threats from Iran for the time being — but an industry source on the call described it as “a waste of time.”
At the Federal Emergency Management Agency — another agency overseen by DHS, charged with federal disaster response and keeping the government operational during emergencies — current and former officials say an overhaul during the last year has significantly weakened FEMA's ability to respond to potential attacks on US soil.
FEMA has lost many of its most seasoned leaders, taking with them decades of expertise that can't be outsourced or quickly replaced. At the same time, cuts to key contracts, trainings, equipment, maintenance and travel are reducing national preparedness and tanking morale at the agency, the current and former officials warned.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Biden administration formed a CISA and FEMA-led task force to monitor intelligence and threat indicators and prepare for a possible domestic attack, several sources said. “One could make the argument that we should be doing the same thing now,” one senior FEMA official told CNN.
But funding problems and scaled-back operations are putting pressure on the agency more broadly.
“We're spending a tremendous amount of time on filling staffing gaps, writing contract memos, and dealing with the fact we're in a lapse,” the senior official said. “Because everything is more complicated, rather than being able to put 100% of our effort on preparedness and readiness for a potential incident, we're maybe able to put 50% of our attention on that.”
In a statement, DHS acknowledged that national security and preparedness are strained, but claimed it “has nothing to do with DOGE and everything to do with the Democrats refusing to fund DHS.”
“FEMA has the right leadership in place to remain focused on our mission,” the statement said, adding that “CISA was back on mission focused until two‑thirds of the workforce are furloughed at a time when cyber threats never stop.”
It's not just DOGE cuts that are under scrutiny. Just days before the US began military operations, FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen agents and staff members from a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran, CNN previously reported.
The officials were removed because they were involved in the investigation into Trump's alleged retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
The dismissals hamstrung the Washington, DC-based FBI counterintelligence unit, known as CI-12, that tracks foreign spies operating on US soil.
In Trump's first term, CI-12 tracked potential threats from Iran following the 2020 drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, then-leader of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force.
The latest firings only added to concerns inside the Justice Department and FBI that counterterrorism and intelligence investigations could become hampered by a loss of national security experts, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.
An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “maintains a robust counterintelligence operation, with personnel all over the country.”
Beyond the military's kinetic ability to fight a war, other tools in the government's arsenal that help determine success have been diminished, current and former officials say.
Voice of America, the government-funded US broadcaster, has become, according to one veteran VOA employee, “a shell of our former self.” The media outlet has long been seen as an important tool of American soft power and bringing the free flow of information to closed societies.
Kari Lake, who was named acting-CEO of the agency that oversees VOA last year, tried to fire most of the government-run broadcaster's staff. Last week, a judge ruled Lake unlawfully ran the agency for several months last year and voided mass layoffs she carried out at VOA, but Lake says the agency will appeal.
While VOA brought back some furloughed employees before the war began, employees told CNN the efforts over the past year to dismantle Voice of America significantly harmed the agency's ability to quickly and successfully broadcast in Iran — and to connect with Iranians as Trump was calling on them to “take over your government.”
In addition to the loss of manpower, VOA cut its broadcast infrastructure, canceling contracts with satellite providers last year to broadcast into Middle Eastern countries, according to VOA employees. That contributed to a broadcast outage in Iran the day before US military operations began when the agency's satellite provider faced disruptions.
“We had a really good tool in the information war, and now it's gone,” said the VOA employee. “You can't just flip it on the next day. … And then I think even more difficult is the audience trust, because we disappeared for almost a year.”
The US ability to understand what is happening on the ground inside Iran has fallen, too, argued Michael Duffin, a former State Department official who was laid off and is now running for Congress as a Democrat.
An office within the State Department that tracked human rights, democracy and labor had its mandate shifted away from those issues, which “has made us limited in our view into what's happening in the Middle East and Iran,” he said.
“When you're talking to a human rights activist, a civil society leader of Iranian descent, who's living in the UAE or Oman or elsewhere, that information goes into a cable,” he said. “That information is reviewed, seen by analysts in the intelligence community, analysts at the State Department and elsewhere, and it informs our foreign policy.”
CNN's Lauren Kent, Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
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U.S. military launches punishing airstrikes on Iranian regime military targets and oil facilities. Iran names Mojtaba Khamenei, a hardline cleric, as its new supreme leader, whom President Donald Trump calls 'unacceptable'.
Democrats and their media enablers are doing everything possible to turn the American people against the war in Iran. They deny the rationale for attacking Tehran, they pretend that President Barack Obama's nuke deal was anything but appeasement of a bloodthirsty anti-U.S. regime, and they have alarmed Americans that we face a devastating "energy crisis" because of President Donald Trump's "war of choice."
None of it is true.
Over the weekend, Democrat Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said on Fox News that Trump had failed to make the case that Iran posed an "imminent threat" to the U.S., implying that he saw no such threat. He also said Trump had picked "the wrong time" to carry out the mission.
The Virginia senator made those remarks the very same week that a Pakistani assassin paid by the mullahs in Tehran was convicted of attempting to murder Trump. Iran's Revolutionary Guard, who hired the would-be killer, had apparently targeted not only Trump, but other U.S. officials, including former President Joe Biden and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. For those potential victims, Iran posed an imminent threat.
TRUMP SAYS HE MIGHT HAVE 'FORCED ISRAEL'S HAND' IN IRAN STRIKE DECISION AS CRITICS QUESTION WAR POWERS
People who support the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, rally near the White House, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, in Washington. (Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)
It isn't the first time the mullahs have sent spies to the U.S. to arrange the murder of Trump and others, like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Thankfully, those attempts have been foiled. Were we supposed to simply wait until Tehran took down a leading U.S. politician before hitting back? These were not rogue agents; they were hired by Iranian officials, making the country a legitimate target.
Warner expressed concern about Iran's store of ballistic missiles, which he contended would be difficult to eradicate. Does the senator imagine those weapons would be easier to eliminate as the stockpiles grew? Would it be safer to wait until Tehran developed intercontinental missiles which could strike the U.S.?
As Iran has fomented terror and attacks against the U.S. and Israel over the past 47 years, taking Americans hostage, arranging the murder of hundreds of G.I.s, what would have been the perfect time to fight back? For Democrats, including Biden and Obama, that time would never come.
KT MCFARLAND: OPERATION EPIC FURY PROVES IT IS BOTH AMERICA FIRST AND PROUDLY MAGA
They prefer appeasement or, worse, imagine that a bloodthirsty regime that is content to slaughter its own citizens and routinely chants "Death to America" is only kidding. Obama and Biden seemed to believe that, given the proper incentives, Iran would forsake its terror mission and become a neutral partner. That's like imagining a rattlesnake could become cuddly, if only fed enough Puppy Chow.
Obama, acting on his naïveté in 2015, famously oversaw the creation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a multi-nation agreement that was supposed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Few saw the pact as a serious deterrent, given the loose verification requirements and permissions to continue enriching uranium for "peaceful" purposes. (For a major oil producer!)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress at the time, urging members to reject the agreement, noting that as part of the deal the U.S. and others would lift sanctions and funnel funds to Iran, which would go to building a nuclear stockpile and spreading terror.
FETTERMAN CONDEMNS DEMOCRATS FOR REFUSING TO PUT 'COUNTRY OVER PARTY' ON IRAN STRIKES
Trump extricated the U.S. from the JCPOA in 2018. At the time, former Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman correctly summed up the deal, writing it "gave Iran a clear path to a nuclear weapon in 2025; no inspection of military sites and free rein for its nefarious deeds in the region — with over $100 billion to pay for it all!"
Some Democrats continue to assert, like former Obama national security aide Ben Rhodes, that there was no need to confront Iran, because the JCPOA prevented the mullahs from building a nuclear weapon. This is straight-up baloney. Even the U.N. atomic watchdog, the IAEA, charged with ensuring Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, finally admitted last year what everyone suspected — that Iran had cheated for years and not met the deal's requirements.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard, who hired the would-be killer, had apparently targeted not only Trump, but other U.S. officials, including former President Joe Biden and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
That body passed a resolution declaring that Iran was "not complying with its obligations regarding nuclear non-proliferation." The IAEA said they could not guarantee that Iran's program was "exclusively peaceful" and confessed that Tehran had hidden evidence of its enrichment program.
In addition to arguing the merits of the war with Iran, Democrats are screaming that the conflict is bringing on an "energy crisis." That is false. While tankers are piling up at the Strait of Hormuz, the world is enduring a temporary oil price surge.
Iran's blockage of the strait has caused Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar to shut in some production, since they have no place to store the oil. Given the supremacy of U.S. and allied airpower, it is unlikely this situation will endure. Once tankers start to pass through the Strait, oil prices will quickly plummet.
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Democrats' opposition and criticism are falling flat. A new Rasmussen poll shows a majority of the country supports the attack on Iran. Democrats are hopeful that Trump's "war of choice," will hang like an albatross around GOP necks as we approach the midterm elections this fall. What will prove them wrong? Success, and common sense.
Warner and many of his colleagues deny the solemn intonations of former presidents, including Obama and Biden, that Iran could not be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapon. Americans understand there was realistically only one way to stop them, and Trump had the guts to take that path.
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Democrats are afraid that the U.S. will win this war, that Iran will be forced to repudiate its reign of terror, and that President Trump's legacy will include a remarkable transformation of the world's most troublesome region — which began with the Abraham Accords during his first term. Imagine a prosperous, growing Middle East; imagine Gaza being rebuilt without the oppression of its people by Iran-backed Hamas.
Americans should cheer for success, for the Iranian people, for the world and for the U.S.
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Dana Perino discusses Australia granting asylum to five Iranian women's soccer players who refused to sing the national anthem with world champion Iranian wrestler, Sardar Pashaei.
The fate of 21 members of Iran's women's national soccer team remained uncertain Tuesday after five teammates were granted asylum in Australia, leaving the rest of the squad to decide whether to return to a country still reeling from war.
The Iranian team arrived in Australia for the tournament before the U.S.-Israeli attacks against Iran began on Feb. 28.
An official roster lists 26 players, along with coaches and staff. While Australian authorities confirmed that five players were transported by federal police to a secure location overnight to finalize humanitarian visas, the remaining members of the delegation have not publicly indicated whether they will seek similar protections or return to Iran.
While only five players were granted asylum, Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the offer was given to everyone on the team.
IRANIAN WOMEN'S SOCCER FANS SHOW SUPPORT FOR TRUMP AS TEAM APPEARS TO PIVOT ON NATIONAL ANTHEM STANCE
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke poses with five Iranian women soccer players who have been granted asylum in Australia, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (Australia Ministry of Home Affairs)
"I don't want to begin to imagine how difficult that decision is for each of the individual women, but certainly last night it was joy, it was relief," Burke told reporters after signing the documents. "People were very excited about embarking on a life in Australia."
"These women are tremendously popular in Australia, but we realize they are in a terribly difficult situation with the decisions that they're making," he added. "The opportunity will continue to be there for them to talk to Australian officials if they wish to."
The move comes after the team refused to sing the Iranian anthem before their first Women's Asian Cup match early last week against South Korea — a gesture some interpreted as protest and others as mourning amid turmoil at home. The team later sang and saluted the anthem in two subsequent matches, including ahead of their final match, when they were eliminated by the Philippines.
After the team was knocked out of the tournament over the weekend, they faced potentially returning to a country still under bombardment. The team's head coach, Marziyeh Jafari, said on Sunday the players "want to come back to Iran as soon as we can."
Outside the team's hotel on Australia's Gold Coast on Tuesday, a brief commotion erupted as demonstrators gathered near a white bus believed to be transporting players. Some protesters knelt or lay in front of the vehicle, chanting "Save our girls" and waving pre-Revolution Iranian flags before the bus departed minutes later.
The five women granted asylum said they were happy for their names and pictures to be published, according to Burke, who emphasized that the players wanted to make clear that they were not political activists.
IRAN FLAG REMOVED FROM PARALYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY AFTER SOLE ATHLETE WITHDRAWS OVER TRAVEL SAFETY CONCERNS
Iran players during their national anthem ahead of the Women's Asian Cup soccer match between Iran and the Philippines in Robina, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAPImage via AP)
"Last night I was able to tell five women from the Iranian Women's Soccer team that they are welcome to stay in Australia, to be safe and have a home here," Burke said on X.
It remains unclear when the remaining players and staff will depart Australia or whether additional asylum requests will be made.
For the majority of the squad, the next move carries significant personal stakes — balancing family, national loyalty and safety as conflict continues in their home country.
"Australians have been moved by the plight of these brave women," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters. "They're safe here and they should feel at home here."
"They then had to consider that and do it in a way that did not present any danger to them or to their families and friends back home in Iran," he continued.
The asylum offer came after U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday called on Australia to grant asylum to any team member who wanted it.
Trump had blasted Australia on social media, saying Australia was "making a terrible humanitarian mistake" by allowing the team to be "forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed."
Supporters react towards a bus transporting Iranian woman players following their Women's Asian Cup soccer match against the Philippines on the Gold Coast, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAP Image via AP)
"The U.S. will take them if you won't," Trump said, despite his administration's efforts to limit the number of immigrants in the U.S. who can receive asylum for political purposes.
Just hours later, Trump praised Albanese in another post.
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"He's on it! Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way," Trump wrote.
Albanese said Trump had called him for "a very positive conversation," about the issue. The prime minister said he explained "the action that we'd undertaken over the previous 48 hours" to support the women.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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President Donald Trump has spent a lifetime talking himself out of tough spots. But in the war with Iran, his trusty technique of sowing confusion to postpone reckonings is beginning to fail.
Ten days in, Trump still hasn't settled on a consistent rationale for why he went to war. Now, he's hinting that peace might soon be at hand — even while he and top aides simultaneously warn the fighting might get more intense and last longer.
The messaging disconnect goes beyond Trump's flood-the-zone rhetoric and odd tendency to commentate on his own actions. It reflects fast-escalating political and military pressures bearing down on a president who gambled his legacy on a war that has spawned a global energy and geopolitical crisis.
Tumbling stock markets and spiking oil prices have raised the possibility that a prolonged conflict could shatter the global economy. Days of Iranian retaliatory drone and missile strikes on Gulf states stoked fears of a wider conflagration.
The political clock is now ticking faster inside the United States, where Trump and his allies fret reverberations will worsen the cost-of-living misery that threatens the GOP's midterm election prospects.
With each passing day, Trump's war aims — as impenetrable as they may be — seem ever more incompatible with his political stature as polls show majorities of Americans never wanted to go to war again.
So Trump had another stab Monday at explaining to Americans why their troops are at war in the Middle East.
At a Florida news conference, he argued — without evidence — that if he hadn't launched the attack on Iran, the Islamic Republic would have taken over the entire Middle East. There's no doubt that Iran, if armed with ballistic missiles and a nuclear weapon, would represent an existential threat to Israel and the rest of the world. But Trump has produced no evidence to show it was anywhere near that point.
In fact, many analysts believe one reason the war erupted was that Iran was weaker than at any time in the almost 50-year history of the Islamic Republic. Israel has already pummeled its regional proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, and sanctions had driven its economy and society to near breaking point.
Trump also seemed to understand that Americans' patience is limited. He insisted, “We're ahead of our timeline by a lot” and billed the war as an economic winner.
“We're putting an end to all of this threat once and for all. And the result will be lower oil prices — oil and gas prices for American families,” Trump insisted. “This was just an excursion into something that had to be done. We're getting very close to finishing that, too.”
But he also repeatedly spoke of the war in the past tense, as if he wished it were already over.
Trump's rhetorical fog of war contrasts sharply with the methodical and relentless US and Israeli air campaign that is inflicting catastrophic damage on the Islamic Republic's war machine. These are plans refined for decades. Trump's leadership, in contrast, evolves by the hour.
There could, at a pinch, be rational explanations for the messaging mayhem.
Perhaps Trump is seeking to confuse the enemy ahead of possible future escalations: CNN reported Monday, for instance, that the White House was mulling a complex and risky mission to retrieve Iran's highly enriched uranium.
Or his hints at an approaching combat halt could be a shrewd play to mitigate political and economic heat. He told a CBS News reporter on Monday afternoon that the war was “very complete.” Within minutes, oil prices eased and stock markets pared losses, which didn't seem like a coincidence.
But as the conflict grinds through its second week, the key question is not necessarily about whether Trump wants to end the war, but whether he can.
First, the US must assess whether its operational gains have sufficiently degraded Iran's capacity to threaten its neighbors and US allies in Europe and eventually the US mainland. There are so far no independent battle damage reports. But Trump may have a case that the assault degraded Iran's missile, nuclear and drone programs and the military infrastructure of its brutal regime.
This alone pushes off an existential threat against Israel and may make the world safer. And a successful US special forces raid to pull out Iran's enriched uranium would set back any attempt to reconstitute its nuclear program for many years.
But there are more fundamental questions about the war's endgame facing Trump.
In short: Was this a war about ending Iran's regime, or just its current threat?
Trump has often implied the former.
Such possibilities always seemed highly unlikely and betrayed a misunderstanding of the internal power dynamics of a nation that might be oppressed but also features a strong nationalist streak.
By any measure, Tehran's current political reality is well short of Trump's goals. And the Islamic regime has never had qualms about sacrificing its own people, notably during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. For the regime, survival means victory.
No one from the outside can know its true state after days of aerial pounding of government facilities and heavy loss of life.
But so far, the operation has succeeded only in replacing an aged supreme leader — who was already close to his eternal rest and had no succession plan — with a younger version with the same last name.
The choice of Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his martyred father as supreme leader was a signal of defiance from the theocracy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that rule Iran with an iron fist.
It remains unclear how Khamenei will be able to consolidate power in such extreme circumstances. His medical condition is also unclear. He was believed to have been injured in the strike that killed his father, mother and other relatives. But in theory, Khamenei could rule for years to come.
Of course, Khamenei's life expectancy may be measured in hours given Israel's hints that it will try to kill him. But his accession was a rebuke to Trump's demands to choose Iran's leaders or for it to produce a new ruler who'd do a deal with him.
“This is not a one-assassination regime,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN's Erin Burnett on Monday. “It is a regime that is dug in right now. They believe it is kill or be killed, and I think they will find a replacement for him.”
History shows that it's often impossible to identify when revolutions are brewing in advance — the US was surprised, for example, when the Soviet Union fell. But there's no outward sign that the uprising of Iranians against their corrupt and repressive rules that Trump sought to trigger is about to materialize.
Perhaps US and Israeli attacks on Iranian economic and energy infrastructure could so weaken the regime's foundation that a revolt could materialize in the months and years ahead, even if the clerics cling on for now. But this requires Iranian civilians taking to the streets against ruthless security forces pining for revenge following the US onslaught. Only weeks ago, thousands were killed in a previous thwarted uprising. It seems just as likely that the unintended result of the war will be more repression rather than a flowering of freedom.
Trump also faces pressing strategic dilemmas. Will he use force to try to open the Strait of Hormuz — the world's vital oil conduit, which has been all but closed by Iran? And would the survival of the regime lead to an almost permanent state of simmering warfare between the US and Israel and Iran that requires regular escalations to prevent the Islamic Republic rebuilding its threat?
There's precedent here. After the 1990-91 Gulf War, US pilots spent years patrolling no-fly zones in the south of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Successive US administrations conducted anti-terror campaigns in Iraq and Syria against ISIS.
Seth Jones, a former senior US adviser in the Afghan war, drew an analogy with Israel's years of operations against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. “I just don't think we are close to this being over,” he told CNN's Burnett.
Perhaps this gets at the reason for Trump's confusing war messaging.
The president might want it to be done — but he likely knows it isn't.
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Iraq's men's national soccer team is just 90 minutes away from qualifying for the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 40 years – in theory. Events far beyond the team's control have reinforced the adage that the last mile is often the hardest.
On March 31, the Lions of Mesopotamia are due to play the winner of Bolivia and Suriname, who face off five days earlier, in a playoff qualifier for a berth in the 2026 World Cup. But the war in Iran and the violence that has spilled over into many other Middle Eastern countries means that Iraq almost certainly won't be able to travel to the game in Monterrey, Mexico, in time.
Graham Arnold, the team's Australian coach, told CNN Sports that most of his players and all his coaching staff are going to be stuck in Iraq until at least April 1, the day after the game is due to be played, because the airspace above the country has been closed.
“It's stressful,” he explained. “It's a big challenge. I've got about four or five plans at the moment, and obviously, they're all different. A lot of sleepless nights worrying about getting that planning right.”
The Iraq Football Association (IFA) has formally requested world soccer governing body FIFA to delay the playoff game to allow the team to travel to Mexico, a source at the organization told CNN Sports. FIFA is expected to decide by the end of the week.
In the meantime, Arnold is made to stress. Not only is roughly 60% of his squad grounded in Iraq for the rest of the month, but his medical team is also stranded in Qatar and he's stuck in Dubai, where he'd been scouting a couple of his players when the hostilities broke out on February 28. It's a situation that Arnold compares to the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when he was coaching the Australian national team
He said at that time he had had a plan “A, B, C, D, E and F to try to get through it,” but this time, his hands are completely tied, not just by the travel logistics, but also because embassy closures in the region are making it hard to obtain visas for either Mexico or the United States. He says a planned training camp in Houston, Texas, to acclimatize to the weather and time zone has already been scrapped.
With the airspace closed, the only remotely viable solution would be to bus the players out of Iraq, but Arnold says that's a non-starter.
“A 30-hour bus trip to another nation, that's not possible, that's not healthy for the players, and then you've got the complications, again, of potential visas to get into those countries.”
Meanwhile, FIFA must now be preparing for the possibility that Iran could withdraw from the tournament, which is being co-hosted by the country that attacked them.
Mehdi Taj, the president of Iran's Football Federation (FFIRI), cast doubt on his country's participation when he said: “What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope.” Not since the 1950 tournament in Brazil has any team withdrawn from the competition after qualifying.
If Iran drops out, FIFA will need to find a replacement and Arnold is confident that the open berth should be awarded to his team.
“Iran is part of the Asian Football Confederation and so is Iraq; if Iran is out, we're next in line,” he said.
The solution he proposes is that FIFA delays the playoff game against either Bolivia or Suriname until the week before the start of the World Cup, giving his team a fair chance to travel and prepare, and also giving FIFA some room to maneuver the Iran situation.
“Bolivia and Suriname can play in March,” he said, “they've got no complications. We could play the winner of that just before the World Cup starts; the winner stays, the loser goes home. I'm just focused on ourselves, to make sure that the players and everything is ready. But at this moment, it's very difficult.”
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Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is denying that pressure from the MAGA movement was behind his decision to endorse the talking filibuster to secure passage of the SAVE America Act.
In a brief interview with the Washington Examiner on Monday, Cornyn said that pressure from runoff primary opponent Ken Paxton or a potential endorsement from President Donald Trump did not influence his decision to endorse a procedure he was once skeptical of.
“I've always been open to it,” Cornyn said of using the talking filibuster. “I think, because there were people misrepresenting my position, I felt like it would be good to just be very clear.”
Over the weekend, Cornyn set aside past reservations about a talking filibuster and announced on social media that he would support the procedure to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot. Cornyn noted he was a supporter of the legislation “from Day One.”
Paxton, Texas's attorney general, advanced to a runoff election against Cornyn last week after neither garnered 50% of the vote. For weeks, Paxton has tried to make Cornyn's noncommittal stance on a talking filibuster a political liability as MAGA World grows frustrated with the lack of Senate action, and both men aggressively court the president for an endorsement.
At times, Cornyn has echoed GOP leaders in expressing resistance to the talking filibuster tactic, which would require Democrats to physically hold the floor to block the bill. Critics say the talking filibuster could logjam floor proceedings indefinitely and divide Republicans over unlimited simple-majority amendments from Democrats.
Meanwhile, Trump has stepped up his pressure campaign, vowing not to sign any bills into law until the GOP-controlled Senate passes the measure. Trump has also prodded congressional Republicans to attach other conservative policies to the legislation, including bans on vote-by-mail, men participating in women's sports, and gender transition surgery for children.
But Cornyn, an institutionalist who's long defended preserving the traditional filibuster that only requires a senator to express opposition before 60 votes are needed, also has political cover from leadership.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) reiterated Monday the lack of support among Republicans for the talking filibuster, which many fear would forever weaken the 60-vote threshold. He downplayed the conservative backlash he's faced over the SAVE Act, chalking it up to a “paid influencer ecosystem” that is amplifying calls for its passage.
“Having studied it, researched it pretty thoroughly, you have to show me how in the end it prevails and succeeds,” Thune told reporters. “Because I think what has been promised out there is that it would actually, in the end, get an outcome, and I find it very hard to see that based on actual past experience.”
THUNE CHALKS UP MAGA PRESSURE ON SAVE AMERICA ACT TO ‘PAID INFLUENCER ECOSYSTEM'
Shortly after, Trump doubled down on his threat “not to sign anything” into law until the SAVE Act passes during a House Republican retreat in South Florida, pitching the party that the legislation will be pivotal to success in the November midterm elections.
“If it takes you six months, I'm for not approving anything. I'm for not approving anything. I don't think we should approve anything until this is approved, and they can't win politically,” Trump said. “You have them in a corner, and they're listening to every word I'm saying.”
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
President Donald Trump gestures as Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and House Speaker Mike Johnson of La., applaud at the Republican Members Issues Conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump speaks at the Republican Members Issues Conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla., as House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., and House Speaker Mike Johnson of La., listen. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump speaks at the Republican Members Issues Conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday he won't sign any other legislation into law until Congress passes a strict proof-of-citizenship voting bill that he says also must end Americans' ability to vote by mail, a startling demand months before the midterm elections.
Trump told House Republicans during their annual retreat at his golf club in Florida that he doesn't think they will win elections unless voting laws are toughened up to prevent fraud — even though mail ballots are popular in many states and federal law already requires that voters in national elections be U.S. citizens, with scant evidence that noncitizens ever try to vote.
The president wants to bolster the so-called SAVE America Act, which the House has already approved, and he pressed the Senate to push past its filibuster rules to send it to his desk. Voting experts have said the bill could disenfranchise some 20 million American voters who don't have birth certificates or other documents readily available, a number that would likely swell with the additional ban on mail balloting that Trump is demanding.
“I'm not going to sign anything until this is approved,” Trump said, calling it his No. 1 priority.
“It'll guarantee the midterms,” he said. “If you don't get it, big trouble.”
The president's determination to impose election changes has sounded alarms from voting rights groups as the Trump administration reaches deep into the realm of the states, which, under the Constitution, are in charge of election ballots and procedures in the U.S.
It also comes as his Republican Party, which narrowly controls Congress, faces headwinds this fall, its majorities at risk. Lawmakers have other priorities, including the more immediate need to fund the Department of Homeland Security as airport workers and others are going without paychecks amid the fight in Congress over the agency's immigration and deportation operations.
Democrats largely oppose Trump's efforts to seize more control over elections, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump's demands would gridlock the chamber.
“This is what he does — he's a thug, he's a bully,” said Schumer of New York.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is close with Trump, appeared alongside the president on the stage with other GOP leaders applauding the bill.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said using the so-called “talking filibuster” to pass the voting bill, as Trump and others propose, isn't as easy as it seems.
“We can't find a piece of legislation in history that's been passed that way,” Thune told reporters.
Trump has said even if it takes six months, he wants the bill approved before any others will be signed into law.
The president continues to claim that he was not the loser in the 2020 election and his Justice Department is digging into his concerns. The FBI took the highly unusual move of seizing ballots and elections materials in Georgia and, most recently, in Arizona.
Trump wants the GOP-led Congress to build on the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, with a new package, which he calls the “best of Trump.”
Already, the bill, as approved by the House, would require voters to present proof of citizenship with a passport or birth certificate when they register to vote. They would also have to show a photo ID when they cast ballots, as many states already require.
Trump would add one main provision: to ban mail-in ballots, which are used by many states nationwide. He would make exceptions for voters who are disabled, in the military, or in other situations.
The president believes mail-in ballots are fraudulent, but voting groups have long championed the practice as helping to make it easier for Americans to vote.
The president also wants to tack on two unrelated provisions around transgender rights issues — one that would ban those born as men from playing in women's sports and another to block sex reassignment surgeries on some minors.
Trump also mentioned the possibility of adding an unrelated foreign surveillance bill, known as FISA, which is up for an extension and is often a difficult political matter in Congress.
“Let's go for the gold,” he told the House Republicans at his resort in Doral.
A coalition of Trump supporters has been pushing versions of the SAVE America Act, with its proof of citizenship provisions a longtime goal of the president's MAGA coalition. Trump also warned the House GOP that their existing version of the bill is inadequate. “We're not going to sign a watered-down version,” he said.
Republican senators plan to discuss how to move forward at their own private meetings this week. So far, there is no consensus, with some wanting to use a talking filibuster to pass the voting bill and others strongly against.
Thune has warned that opening the Senate to endless debate, as would happen under the talking filibuster proposal, would also open the floor to endless amendments that could change the bill in ways that could divide the Republicans.
But other senators say the time has come to force the issue, and push past Democrats who oppose the bill.
___
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Steven Sloan in Doral, Florida, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
In this courtroom sketch, from left, Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander, defense attorney Teny Geragos, Tal Alexander, and Marc Agnifilo, listen for the verdict in Manhattan federal court with Judge Valerie Caproni presiding on the bench, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
In this courtroom sketch, Alon Alexander, second from left, Oren Alexander, center, and Tal Alexander, watch the jury file out of the courtroom after the verdict was read in Manhattan federal court, Monday, March 9, 2026, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Oren and Tal Alexander speak at a panel at the Rockstars of Real Estate Event in New York., on Sept. 3, 2013. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Invision for DETAILS Magazine/AP Images, File)
This photo provided by the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department shows Alon Alexander, left, and Oren Alexander, both of whom have been charged with sex trafficking. (Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Three brothers, including two of the nation's most successful luxury real estate brokers, were convicted of sex trafficking Monday after a five-week trial over accusations that they drugged and raped scores of women they had dazzled with their wealth and opulent lifestyle.
The verdict came after 11 women testified in Manhattan federal court they were sexually assaulted by one or more of the brothers: twins Oren and Alon Alexander, 38, and Tal Alexander, 39. All three shook their heads as the jury foreperson said “guilty” 19 straight times, a powerful reckoning that could put them behind bars for the rest of their lives.
Tal Alexander dropped his head into his crossed arms. Their stunned parents sat in the gallery behind them. Alon Alexander's wife shielded her face with her hand and appeared to fight back tears.
Judge Valerie E. Caproni set sentencing for Aug. 6. The brothers, jailed since their 2024 arrests, will appeal the verdict, their lawyers said.
AP correspondent Jennifer King reports the verdict is guilty at the sex-trafficking trial of the Alexander real estate brothers.
“We believe in our clients' innocence and we're not going to stop fighting until we prevail, and we believe that we will one day prevail,” defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo said outside the courthouse.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton lauded the verdict as vindication for victims of crimes that often go unreported and unpunished.
“The truth is sex trafficking and other federal sex offenses are present in many walks of life and we have not done enough to root it out,” Clayton said in a statement.
The verdict represented a spectacular fall for Oren and Tal Alexander, once known as real estate's “A Team” for their high-ticket sales and celebrity clientele. After smashing sales records at industry powerhouse Douglas Elliman, the brothers started their own firm. Alon Alexander ran their family's private security company.
Victims testified that they met the brothers at nightclubs, parties and on dating apps, and were attacked after accepting their invitations to all-expense paid getaways to the Hamptons; Aspen, Colorado; and a Caribbean cruise. More than 60 women say they were raped by one or more of the brothers, according to prosecutors.
Defense lawyers suggested the accusers had faulty memories or were hoping to cash in on the brothers' fortunes. The brothers were womanizers, their lawyers conceded. But they insisted any sex was consensual.
In addition to the top charges, Alon and Tal Alexander were also convicted of sex trafficking of a minor while Alon and Oren Alexander were convicted of aggravated sexual abuse by force or intoxicant and sexual abuse of a physically incapacitated person. Oren Alexander was also convicted of sexually exploiting a minor after prosecutors showed the jury a video he recorded of himself appearing to assault a drugged 17-year-old.
Besides the criminal case, the brothers have faced about two dozen lawsuits over the last two years, including one filed last week in which Tracy Tutor, a star of Bravo's “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles,” alleges Oren Alexander drugged and assaulted her while she was in New York City for a real estate event.
When the first of the lawsuits were filed, multiple women came forward claiming they had also been assaulted, and that the brothers' misconduct had been an open secret in the real estate world. The government took notice and opened a criminal case.
During the trial, many women who testified said they believed the brothers had spiked their drinks. Some described feeling like they'd lost control of their bodies.
One woman testified that she met the brothers in 2012 at a party at actor Zac Efron's Manhattan apartment. She said she had almost no interaction with the actor, who was not accused of any misdeeds, and went to a nightclub later in the night before waking up naked with a nude Alon Alexander standing over her.
“I don't want to have sex with you,” she testified telling him. “Haha, you already did,” she recalled him snapping back as he “laughed in my face.”
Prosecutors pushed back against the idea that the accusers were hoping to cash in on lawsuits. Only two have lawsuits pending, prosecutor Elizabeth Espinosa told jurors, and both are wealthy.
One woman who testified said she was raped by Alon Alexander in Aspen, Colorado, in 2017, when she was 17. She said she was the daughter of a billionaire.
“I don't want their money. I just don't want them to have it,” she told jurors.
Lindsey Acree, an artist and gallery owner, testified she was raped by Tal Alexander and another man at a home in the Hamptons in 2011 after taking a drink that left her feeling paralyzed.
The woman said she sued last year even though she will “never need their money” because the Alexanders “kept calling us gold diggers, shake down artists, con artists.”
“If there's a kid with a stick who keeps hitting people, you take their stick away,” she told the jury. “Money is their stick, so you take it away so they can't hurt people anymore.”
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they choose to come forward publicly, as Acree and Tutor have done.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
The entrance of the San Rafael Ranch, which was previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein and called the Zorro Ranch, is seen, Jan. 31, 2026, near Stanley, N.M. (AP Photo/Savannah Peters)
A fence marks the boundary of the San Rafael Ranch, which was previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein and called the Zorro Ranch, on Jan. 31, 2026, near Stanley, N.M. (AP Photo/Savannah Peters)
San Rafael Ranch, which was previously owned by Jeffrey Epstein and called the Zorro Ranch, is seen, Jan. 31, 2026, near Stanley, N.M. (AP Photo/Savannah Peters)
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — State investigators began searching a secluded ranch in New Mexico on Monday where financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein once entertained guests amid allegations that the property may have been used for sexual abuse and sex trafficking of young women.
The office of state Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced that the search was being done with the cooperation of the current ranch owners.
Torrez last month reopened an investigation of the ranch. New Mexico's initial case was closed in 2019 at the request of federal prosecutors in New York, and state prosecutors say now that “revelations outlined in the previously sealed FBI files warrant further examination.”
Epstein purchased the sprawling Zorro Ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Santa Fe, in 1993 from former Democratic Gov. Bruce King and built a hilltop mansion with a private runway.
The property was sold by Epstein's estate in 2023 — with proceeds going toward creditors — to the family of Don Huffines, a candidate in Texas for state comptroller who won the Republican primary last week.
“The New Mexico Department of Justice appreciates the cooperation of the current property owners,” the agency said in a statement. Prosecutors “will continue to keep the public appropriately informed, support the survivors, and follow the facts wherever they lead.”
Additionally, New Mexico state legislators have established a new commission to look into past activities at the ranch.
Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges that he sexually abused and trafficked dozens of underage girls.
Epstein never faced charges in New Mexico, but the state attorney general's office in 2019 confirmed that it had interviewed possible victims who visited Epstein's ranch.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Vice President JD Vance walks to board Air Force Two, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., to attend the casualty return for Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., at Dover Air Force Base, Del. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
DORAL, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump said his vice president, JD Vance, was “philosophically a little bit different than me” at the outset of the war in Iran even as he dismissed the notion of a disagreement between the two.
Speaking to reporters on Monday at his golf club in Doral, Florida, the president said Vance was “maybe less enthusiastic about going” but insisted that his decision to launch airstrikes in Iran alongside Israel was necessary.
“I felt it was something we had to do,” Trump said. “I didn't feel we had a choice.”
Heading into a challenging election year, the war in Iran has stoked tension among Republicans, with some expressing reservations about how the operation fits into the “America First,” isolationist-leaning movement the party has embraced during the Trump era.
Few have embodied that movement as prominently as Vance, who over the course of a decade rose from an author to U.S. senator and ultimately vice president. He's now considered a top contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, giving him the opportunity to carry Trump's movement into the future.
Alongside his political rise, Vance, a former Marine, has often reinforced Trump's vision of an America more focused on solving problems at home than intervening in conflicts abroad. In a 2023 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that's garnered renewed attention after the Iran strikes, Vance wrote that Trump has his support because “I know he won't recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.”
On the eve of the strikes, Vance told The Washington Post there was “ no chance ” that the U.S. would become involved in a drawn-out war as it did in Iraq.
Since then, the administration has provided conflicting messages about how long the war would last. Trump has said it could go on “as long as necessary.” Amid intensifying economic turmoil on Monday, Trump described the war as a “short-term excursion.”
If Vance has the reservations Trump hinted at on Monday, he has been publicly supportive of the president since the strikes began. In a Fox News interview with Jesse Watters, Vance rejected comparisons of the Iran operation to earlier wars, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“If you think back to Afghanistan, 20 years of mission creep, 20 years (of) not having a clear objective and 20 years (of) the United States trying to bring liberal democracy to Afghanistan,” Vance said at the time. “Iraq was a little bit shorter, but we were still in that country for nearly a decade with no clear mission, no clear definition.”
“What's so different about this, Jesse,” Vance added, “is that the president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish.”
On Monday evening, Vance was at Dover Air Force Base to attend the dignified transfer for Sgt. Benjamin Pennington, the seventh U.S. service member to die in combat during the Iran war.
When it comes to Iran, Trump, over his five years in the White House, and long before, has shown a steadiness in his hawkish views toward Tehran, said Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research fellow focused on Iran security issues at the Foundation for Defense Democracies.
The president, in his first term, moved to end a landmark Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration, in the face of strong objections from European allies. Later in his first term, he boasted of serving up “American justice” by ordering a drone strike to take out Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, while jeering Democratic leaders for questioning his decision to carry out the attack without first consulting Congress.
At the time, the killing of Soleimani, the Quds Force commander and arguably the most powerful figure in Iran after the supreme leader, was widely considered the most provocative U.S. military action in the Middle East in years, marking a severe escalation in tensions with Tehran.
Trump's deep skepticism toward the Islamic Republic's cleric leadership dates back to his days as a young New York real estate developer when he publicly urged military intervention during the Iran hostage crisis.
“There's this narrative with Trump on Iran that Bibi's in his ear,” said Taleblu, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Or that Vance is in his ear. But Trump has had a fundamental view and personal interest on Iran for years.”
And on Monday, Trump insisted there was no disagreement between him and Vance.
“We get along very well on this,” Trump said.
___
Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Doral, Florida, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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A day after Anthropic sued the Trump administration for designating the artificial intelligence company a supply chain risk, Google is deepening its relationship with the Defense Department and expanding the role of its Gemini AI models inside the military bureaucracy.
On Tuesday, Google said it will introduce a feature that lets civilian and military personnel build custom AI agents for unclassified work on GenAI.mil, the Pentagon's enterprise AI portal. The DOD's workforce of more than 3 million people will now be able to use a no-code or low-code tool called Agent Designer to create their own digital assistants for repetitive administrative tasks.
Google said that those agents can help with work such as drafting meeting notes, creating action items and breaking large projects into step-by-step plans. They will initially run on unclassified networks, but talks are reportedly already underway about expanding them to classified and top-secret environments.
Emil Michael, the DOD's technology chief, told Bloomberg he has "high confidence" Google will be "a great partner on all networks." Michael also told Bloomberg the Pentagon was "moving on" from its dispute with Anthropic and that the issue would not be resolved through the courts.
On Thursday, Anthropic confirmed that it had officially been designated a supply chain risk, an extraordinary move that's historically been reserved for foreign adversaries. In its legal complaint on Monday, Anthropic said the government's actions are "unprecedented and unlawful" and claimed they are "harming Anthropic irreparably." Anthropic was booted for refusing to allow the DOD to use its technology for autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance.
Until recently, Anthropic had been the only AI provider operating inside the Pentagon's classified cloud. But the Defense Department has added OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI to restricted networks, while also expanding cooperation with Google.
The rollout also lands at a moment of rising tension inside the tech industry over the military's use of AI.
Google AI chief Jeff Dean, along with a couple dozen other employees from OpenAI and Google, signed onto an amicus brief backing Anthropic in its court battle against the Pentagon. Dean had previously expressed sympathy with some internal concerns about military AI and surveillance after employees were circulating letters calling for clearer limits on how their employer works with the military.
WATCH: Anthropic sues Trump administration over Pentagon blacklisting
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Russian leaders in a call with President Donald Trump on Monday denied allegations that they are sharing intelligence with Iran during the war, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said.
"So, you know, we can take them at their word," Witkoff told CNBC's "Money Movers" during an interview on Tuesday. "Let's hope that they're not sharing."
Trump spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Monday.
Witkoff was asked during his interview if he thought Russia was sharing intelligence with Iran about the location of U.S. military assets, and, if so, why the Trump administration would waive sanctions that had barred Indian refiners from buying Russian oil.
"Well, I'm not an intel officer, so I can't tell you," Witkoff replied.
"I can tell you that yesterday, on the call with the president, the Russians said they have not been sharing," Witkoff said. "That's what they said."
Witkoff also said he and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had separately had a phone call on Monday morning with Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy advisor.
Ushakov, in that call, "reiterated the same," that Russia is not sharing intelligence with Iran, Witkoff said.
MS Now, in a report on Saturday that cited two U.S. officials with knowledge of the situation, reported that Russia has been giving Iran information that could help that nation's forces strike American ships, aircraft, and military bases in the Middle East.
"Russia is providing intelligence help to Iran," one of the officials told MS Now.
Trump on Friday blasted Fox News reporter Peter Doocy for asking him about suggestions that Russia was helping Iran target and attack American forces in the region.
"What a stupid question that is to be asking at this time," Trump snapped.
One official who spoke to MS Now for Saturday's article said, "I've seen nothing that suggests that Russia is playing a strategic or tactical combat role."
At a press conference in Florida on Monday, Trump said that during his call with Putin earlier in the day, the Russian leader "was very impressed with what he saw" regarding the United States' progress in the war.
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Nvidia has made a "significant investment" in Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab as part of a new multi-year strategic partnership, the companies announced on Tuesday.
Thinking Machines Lab is an artificial intelligence startup that Murati founded last year, and it aims to make AI systems that are "more widely understood, customizable and generally capable," according to its website. The company has kept its work largely under wraps and has shared few details about its long-term ambitions.
Nvidia has been one of the biggest winners of the AI boom because it makes the graphics processing units that are necessary to train models and run large workloads. It's invested in a number of prominent AI startups in recent years, including OpenAI and Anthropic, which are also customers.
Murati is the former CTO of OpenAI, and she served as the company's interim CEO when Sam Altman was briefly ousted in 2023. She departed OpenAI the following year and has remained largely out of the public eye since then.
As part of its partnership with Nvidia, Thinking Machines Lab has also agreed to deploy at least one gigawatt of Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems, the chipmaker's most advanced offering that's expected to ship in the second half of the year.
The companies declined to share additional details about the size of Nvidia's investment.
"Thinking Machines has brought together a world-class team to advance the frontier of AI," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. "We are thrilled to partner with Thinking Machines to realize their exciting vision for the future of AI."
The startup released its first product, known as Tinker, in October, which is an application programming interface that allows researchers and developers to fine-tune AI models. Thinking Machines Lab raised $2 billion from investors in July.
Murati appeared on the third annual CNBC Changemakers list this year.
WATCH: Large cap tech stocks like Nvidia are a deal now, says Silvant Capital's Michael Sansoterra
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Amazon plans to address a string of recent outages, including some that were tied to AI-assisted coding errors, at a retail technology meeting on Tuesday, CNBC has confirmed.
Dave Treadwell, a top executive overseeing the technical foundations of Amazon's website, told employees that the company's "This Week in Stores Tech," or TWiST, meeting would be a "deep dive" on "some of the issues that got us here." The meeting is scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. ET.
"Folks - as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently," Treadwell, senior vice president of eCommerce Foundation, wrote in a note to employees viewed by CNBC. He added that he was shifting the focus of the meeting "given the incidence of Sev 1s," referring to high severity incidents that cause outages or degraded performance of critical systems.
Amazon experienced four such incidents in a week, Treadwell said and noted the deep dive is necessary to "regain our strong availability posture."
The Financial Times was first to report on the memos. An Amazon spokesperson said TWiST is a regular weekly meeting where retail tech leaders review the performance of store operations.
"As part of normal business, the meeting will include a review of the availability of our website and app as we focus on continual improvement," the spokesperson said in a statement.
The meeting comes after Amazon's online store malfunctioned for some users last week. For roughly six hours on Thursday, website and app users were unable to checkout, access account information or view product prices. Amazon said in a statement that the issues were related to a "software code deployment."
Amazon and its hyperscaler rivals are ramping up spending on infrastructure to manage soaring demand for artificial intelligence services, which require increasing amounts of computing power. In its earnings report last month, Amazon said it expects $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, more than any of its tech peers.
As it boosts AI spending, Amazon is simultaneously continuing to slash jobs. The company in January laid off about 16,000 corporate workers, after a prior round of mass job cuts in October, when roughly 14,000 roles were eliminated. Amazon also laid off more than 27,000 employees between 2022 and 2023.
Treadwell wrote in a separate memo to staffers that "genAI-assisted changes" were one of the contributing factors to recent incidents dating back to the third quarter of 2025.
He pointed to "GenAI tools supplementing or accelerating production change instructions, leading to unsafe practices," among other factors, according to the memo viewed by CNBC. Treadwell also acknowledged that "best practices and safeguards" around generative AI usage haven't been fully established yet.
Amazon plans to "reinforce" various safeguards to prevent further issues, including requiring more senior engineers to review "GenAI-assisted" production changes made by lower level staffers, according to the memo.
"We are implementing temporary safety practices which will introduce controlled friction to changes in the most important parts of the Retail experience, in parallel we will invest in more durable solutions including both deterministic and agentic safeguards," Treadwell wrote.
Amazon Web Services has also been hit with several outages in recent months, though the company said Tuesday that the cloud group is not involved in the incidents referenced by Treadwell.
AWS was hit in December in an incident that took down a cost management feature for an extended period of time, according to several reports. The FT reported the issue occurred after engineers allowed its Kiro AI coding tool to make changes.
Amazon said in a statement at the time that the outage was the result of "user error" and not AI.
WATCH: Amazon's a cheap stock and there's opportunity
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The Iran war is causing global disruption, and restaurants in India are under threat because of it.
The conflict is threatening India's supply of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), most of which is imported and the global supply of which is threatened by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
On Tuesday, India's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said that it was directing oil refineries to prioritize supplying LPG to the 330 million households that use it as a primary cooking fuel, over 3 million businesses that use commercial LPG cylinders.
This is causing a "crisis situation" that will lead to the closure of many restaurants over the next few days, Sagar Daryani, president of the National Restaurant Association of India, told CNBC.
He added that 90% of restaurants in India rely on LPG cylinders to run their kitchens.
The industry was already facing low demand and high costs, but if the LPG supply issues persist, it would lead to "closure of business and job losses," Daryani said.
The NRAI represents over 500,000 restaurants across India. India's industry generates an annual turnover of over 5.7 trillion rupees ($78.9 billion) and employs over 8 million people, per the NRAI.
On Tuesday, India's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said in an X post that it was directing oil refineries to prioritize LPG supply to households and use imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) for essential commercial sectors such as hospitals and educational institutions.
Announcing the shifts in LPG supply, India's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said it would form a committee to review representations for LPG supply to restaurants, hotels and other commercial industries.
The NRAI is urging the government to classify the restaurant industry as an essential service, Daryani said.
India is the world's second-largest importer of LPG and consumed 31.3 million metric tons of it in the financial year 2025, according to a S&P Global report on Tuesday. The country can only meet 41% of this demand from its domestic LPG supply, it said.
"India imports roughly 67% of its LPG requirements, with about 90% of these imports transiting through the Strait of Hormuz," said Manish Sejwal, senior vice president of commodity markets, oil-NGLs/LPG & Naphtha at Rystad Energy, told CNBC by email.
Mumbai-based AHAR, another lobby group of hotels and restaurants, has raised the issue of shortage of LPG supplies with the local authorities and has warned that many of its members are on the "verge of closure."
Nearly 10,000 establishments will shut down by Wednesday across India's southernmost state, Tamil Nadu, M. Ravi, president of Chennai Hotel Association, told CNBC. He added that this would include the majority of small and medium-sized restaurants there.
Restaurants and hotels were already facing LPG supply constraints after the government, on Thursday, asked domestic oil marketing companies to direct supplies to domestic consumers, but did not explicitly halt supplies to hotels and restaurants.
Chandra Prakash, the president of All India LPG Distributors Federation, told CNBC that LPG distributors have now been asked to not only concentrate on supplies to households but halt supply to restaurants and hotels.
Restaurants will have to find alternate sources of fuel like wood or kerosene or shift to electric stoves, said Prakash, whose organization represents nearly 25,000 LPG distributors in the country.
LPG supply is a politically sensitive issue in India and is closely linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship social welfare scheme that offers subsidized LPG to poorer households. As of November, the government had provided 103 million subsidized gas connections under the scheme.
The price of cooking gas is a hotly debated issue during elections. Five Indian states — Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry — are due to go to the polls in the first half of 2026.
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Swedish legaltech Legora has raised $550 million at a $5.55 billion valuation in a Series D round, the company announced on Tuesday, as investors pile money into European AI startups.
The round was led by Accel, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, ICONIQ, Redpoint Ventures and Y Combinator.
New investors including Alkeon Capital, Bain Capital, Firstmark Capital, Menlo Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Sands Capital and Starwood Capital were also involved.
Legora's Series D is its third raise in the past year.
The announcement comes on the back of a bumper start to the week for European AI companies.
U.K.-based AI infrastructure Nscale said on Monday that it had raised a $2 billion Series C and on Tuesday former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun's new AI startup Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs announced it had picked up over $1 billion. U.K. autonomous driving startup Wayve hit an $8.6 billion valuation in February after raising a $1.2 billion Series D.
Record funds were ploughed into European AI startups in 2025, with $21.7 billion invested, according to dealcounting platform Dealroom. Just over two months into 2026, AI startups in the region have raised more than $9 billion.
"Over the past year, the pace of adoption in the U.S. has exceeded our expectations, as leading firms and in-house teams move decisively from experimentation to embedding AI across their organisations," Max Junestrand, CEO and cofounder of Legora, said in a statement.
"This funding enables us to accelerate our U.S. growth – investing in talent and infrastructure, strengthening our presence in key markets, and ensuring we can support customers on the ground as they integrate AI into their core workflows."
Legora is expanding its footprint in the U.S. with new offices in Houston and Chicago, alongside its existing presence in New York and Denver. The company expects to open additional local hubs and grow to more than 300 employees across its U.S. offices by the end of 2026, it said.
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Another top executive has departed Tesla as Elon Musk's EV maker continues to lose high-profile employees.
Finance VP Sendil Palani said on Monday that he had left after more than a decade at the automaker, and used his farewell message to reference one of Tesla's darkest days.
"Tesla barely survived Christmas 2008. I started a few days later in our Finance team, under an ongoing 'Tesla Deathwatch,'" Palani wrote in a post on X.
"I slept under my desk in San Carlos, CA at least once, and I wasn't the only one," he added.
Tesla has flirted with bankruptcy several times in its history, but a funding crunch in late 2008 left the young company perilously close to extinction.
Tesla eventually secured $40 million in financing in November 2008, but Elon Musk — who took over as Tesla CEO in October 2008 — later said that the company was only three days from bankruptcy when the funding round was completed on Christmas Eve.
"I put in all money I had, didn't own a house & had to borrow money from friends to pay rent. Difficult time," Musk wrote on X in 2020.
Since then, Tesla has risen to become an EV powerhouse and one of the world's most valuable companies. The company has had several other brushes with bankruptcy, with Musk and other executives resorting to sleeping on the factory floor as Tesla struggled to scale its mass-market Model 3 EV between 2017 and 2019.
Palani is the latest high-profile executive to depart Tesla in recent months. Fellow VP Raj Jegannathan left in February, while software director Thomas Dmytryk also announced his departure last week.
Siddhant Awasthi and Emmanuel Lamacchia, the program managers for Tesla's Cybertruck and Model Y EVs, both left in November, while Cybercab lead Victor Nechita also confirmed his departure last month.
In his farewell message, Palani thanked Musk and praised his colleagues at Tesla. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
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KPMG is betting that a well-placed carrot, in the form of cash prizes, will spur consultants into becoming the AI pioneers it needs for the future.
In an effort to boost internal AI innovation, the Big Four firm is launching an awards program for its US advisory division.
Dubbed the "AI Spark Innovation" awards, it plans to identify and reward employees who can demonstrate "an incredible thing that they've done with AI," with a view to scaling those ideas across the firm, Rob Fisher, KPMG US's vice chair of advisory, told Business Insider.
The firm will award "outsized monetary awards" for the most "exciting ideas" that create value for clients or enable KPMG's back office to operate more efficiently, said Fisher.
Fisher declined to specify the exact dollar amounts, but he said that, in most cases, the cash prizes would be "materially larger than an end-of-year variable compensation award."
The Big Four firms typically award annual bonuses of 3% to 6% of employees' salaries. For early-career consultants, that can range between $70,000 to $120,000, depending on location, meaning that the prize could be worth several thousand dollars.
However, the money may be split between teams and will vary based on the impact of the idea, a person familiar with the program told Business Insider.
Employees from the director level below are eligible, they said.
"It's really intended to be a pretty exciting amount of money, especially for our more junior staff, because they're fixed dollar amounts. The upside relative to salary is more for our less tenured folks," Fisher said.
KPMG and its Big Four rivals — Deloitte, EY, and PwC — are on the front lines of AI in the business world. The firms have poured billions of dollars into integrating AI across their own workforces, and are now responsible for guiding Fortune 500 companies through the same transition.
They act as "client zero," these firms serve as a template for how AI can drive value, meaning the pressure is on to demonstrate AI excellence.
The traditional consulting model has measured success primarily through "utilization," or billable hours. That model is evolving with AI to focus more on outcomes and value, but the existing culture still leaves busy consultants with little time to experiment.
When employees are just measured on utilization, it actually discourages people from bringing their best and "coolest" uses of AI, said Fisher. He hoped the financial boost would encourage employees to come forward with ideas.
"We're trying to figure out how we get all that grassroots innovation unlocked by trying to bring some more carrots forward to our folks," said Fisher.
The firm is also aiming to accelerate the advisory division's shift to an AI-first culture and make technology adaptation visible and rewarding, a person familiar with the program told Business Insider.
Having run a pilot in the first quarter of 2026, the first tranche of official rewards will be awarded next quarter. Nominations will come from various group leaders and will be reviewed quarterly by a steering committee.
Though KPMG has set a budget, the firm is willing to overspend if there are enough ideas that deliver measurable client impact, potential future savings, and boost efficiency.
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A prolonged conflict in the Middle East could impact the semiconductor industry's access to key materials while rising costs could hit demand for chips that have been central to the artificial intelligence boom, analysts warned.
The U.S.-Israel war with Iran has shone a spotlight on the role countries in the Middle East play in the complex and intricate semiconductor supply chain.
Semiconductor stocks were caught in the sell-off seen in equity markets before President Donald Trump said on Monday that war will end "very soon."
Memory chipmakers SK Hynix and Samsung have been hit particularly badly with more than $200 billion wiped off their combined value since the start of the war, even with both stocks rallying sharply on Tuesday. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF is down about 3% since the start of the war paring some losses after a 3.6% jump on Monday.
"A prolonged regional conflict could potentially disrupt chipmakers' manufacturing operations regarding sourcing materials like Helium and Bromine," Ray Wang, memory analyst at SemiAnalysis, told CNBC.
"For now, the impact appears to be limited. However, a prolonged conflict could eventually lead to disruptions or require adjustments in the sourcing of key materials."
A South Korean lawmaker warned last week that the Iran war could hamper access to key materials from the Middle East such as helium, Reuters reported. The lawmaker also warned a prolonged conflict could lead to higher energy prices.
So, what exactly is the role of certain countries in the Middle East in the semiconductor supply chain?
Qatar produces over a third of the world's helium supply, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Helium is used in the manufacturing process to transfer away heat. It is also used in areas like lithography, which is key for printing the intricate circuitry of a chip. There is no viable alternative to helium.
In 2023, the Semiconductor Industry Association warned that if the supply of helium were to be disrupted, "there would likely be shocks to the global semiconductor manufacturing industry."
Not only is production an issue. Transportation of the element out of the Middle East could become increasingly difficult with the effective closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz shipping route.
More than 25% of the world's helium supply would be taken off the market by an extended shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, Phil Kornbluth, president of Kornbluth Helium Consulting, told CNBC.
Qatar's state-owned QatarEnergy produces helium as a byproduct of liquefied natural gas (LNG). QatarEnergy's Ras Laffan Industrial City was hit by an Iranian drone attack last week, taking the site offline.
Kornbluth said it "is getting hard to imagine" that the world is not looking at a "minimum" two-to-three month shutdown of helium production and a four-to-six month period before the helium supply chain "returns to normal."
Bromine is another element in focus and is a key part of the semiconductor manufacturing process. Around two-thirds of the world's bromine production comes from Israel and Jordan, according to the USGS.
"There is modest risk to critical materials. Helium is the main one we are watching. Qatar is one of the largest sources of Helium. Canada and the United States are also large suppliers," Peter Hanbury, partner in Bain & Company's Technology practice, told CNBC.
Rising energy costs could also impact the semiconductor industry. That's because so much of semiconductor demand, from Nvidia's graphics processing units to the memory chips products by Samsung and SK Hynix, are designed for data centers that are training and running huge AI models.
These energy-intensive data centers are being built by large U.S. tech companies from Microsoft to Amazon who are buying up these semiconductors.
The conflict caused the price of Brent crude to rise above $100 before paring some of those gains on Tuesday. The "high depedency" of the U.S. on crude oil "indicates significantly higher costs for AI datacenters" which are roughly three-to-five times "more power-hungry than regular data centers," Jing Jie Yu, equity analyst at Morningstar, told CNBC.
"This could significantly increase the total cost of ownership (TCO) for hyperscalers, thereby posing a threat towards AI infrastructure adoption," Yu added. "An extended war would lead to some pullback in AI memory chip demand."
Samsung and SK Hynix are the two-biggest producers of memory chips. These are components that are critical for consumer electronics like smartphones and laptops. But in recent years, they have been critical semiconductors in data centers designed for AI.
HBM is a type of dynamic random access memory, known as DRAM, where chips are vertically. HBM is a key component of Nvidia's systems. Other type of memory also are installed in data centers.
Because of the huge demand for AI and the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured by hyperscalers into building infrastructure, the world's supply of memory chips has been funnelled into these projects. This has created a shortage of memory and an unprecedented price rise of these chips.
This, in turn, has fueled strong profits at both Samsung and SK Hynix and a massive rally in the share price over the last nine months or so, which has been built on this AI build out. But rising costs and the threat of weaker demand is making investors nervous.
MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, said electricity accounts for about half of a data center's operating expenses and roughly half of that is used to power memory.
"Therefore, if memory prices continue to rise due to supply chain instability while energy-driven operating costs also climb, customers operating data centers may reduce their capital spendings and semiconductor demand," Hwang told CNBC.
Morningstar's Yu noted both Samsung and SK Hynix have supply contracts for HBM locked in for the year and "both players have sufficient reserves to sustain production for the time being."
However, Yu said "an extended war could materially delay AI infrastructure builds" and weigh on more "conventional DRAM" products that are not subject to these longer term contracts. That could lead to weaker DRAM pricing and lower-than-expected revenues.
"An extended war also drives up overall cost of productions, from a utilities angle as well lower yields due to the lack of key stabilizing materials as mentioned above. Coupled with weaker DRAM pricing, we think this potentially weighs on the high margins that the market is currently pricing into valuations," Yu said.
— CNBC's Dylan Butts contributed to this report.
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The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a decades-old prescription vitamin called leucovorin as the first treatment for a rare genetic disorder in certain adults and children.
The move comes months after the Trump administration touted leucovorin as a potential therapy for a broader group of patients with autism spectrum disorder symptoms. The claim sparked skepticism among some in the medical and research community, but fueled excitement among families, spiking prescriptions of the drug in the U.S.
One FDA official told reporters Monday that "we don't have sufficient data to say that we could establish efficacy for autism more broadly" but said the agency is open to interest from companies in studying leucovorin in the autism population.
The medication, also referred to as folinic acid, is a synthetic form of vitamin B9 that has been used to treat the toxic side effects of chemotherapy. Just a handful of small trials have suggested that leucovorin could be effective as an off-label treatment for children with autism, and some families have reported that it helped their nonverbal kids develop more language and social skills.
FDA officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the decision, told reporters Monday that they started with a broad review of leucovorin as an autism treatment before narrowing its approval to a smaller population with cerebral folate deficiency, a rare genetic mutation that prevents folate – a key vitamin – from properly reaching the brain.
The condition shares overlapping features with autism, typically develops in young children under age 2 and can cause severe developmental delays, seizures, a lack of muscle control and other serious neurological complications.
The officials said the FDA found that using leucovorin in patients with that condition produced the "highest quality data" to support an expanded approval, which will apply to both generic versions of the drug and GSK's old branded medication, Wellcovorin.
"That was the data where we saw the largest effect sizes," one FDA official said on the call. "So we narrowed in on that population, just because we felt like that was the strongest both scientific rationale and also the largest treatment effects that could be used to then overcome some of the limitations in the data sources."
The approval was based on a systematic review of published literature on the area, including patient case reports, but not a randomized controlled clinical trial. The same official acknowledged there can be biases with systematic reviews, but emphasized that the treatment effects were so large that they outweighed those concerns.
The FDA is encouraging existing manufacturers of leucovorin to increase production to match higher demand for the drug, the officials added. While GSK originally marketed the drug from 1983 until 1997, the company said in September that it has no plans to relaunch and manufacture the product itself.
In a release Tuesday, Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said the approval demonstrates the FDA's commitment to "rapidly identifying effective treatments for ultra rare diseases while maintaining the same evidentiary standards for approval."
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This is CNBC's Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.
Happy Tuesday. I have too many Lego-loving adult friends to be surprised that the company continues to outpace the toy industry.
Stock futures are lower this morning. The market is coming off a winning, though volatile, day.
Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
Wall Street witnessed a stunning midday recovery yesterday after President Donald Trump indicated the U.S.-Iran war could be over soon. Trump told a CBS News reporter on Monday that "the war is very complete, pretty much" and later said during a press conference that the conflict would end "very soon."
Here's what to know:
Breaking news this morning: Billionaire investor Bill Ackman is taking his hedge fund to the New York Stock Exchange. Ackman's Pershing Square today filed to list under the ticker symbol "PS."
As CNBC's Yun Li reports, the listing will allow public investors to take a stake in Ackman's investing platform. It will be a dual listing, meaning investors can buy either Pershing Square's common shares or shares of its investment vehicle, which will trade under the ticker "PSUS."
Pershing Square said it has $2.8 billion worth of secured commitments heading into the offering, coming from groups such as family offices, pension funds and high-net-worth individuals.
The rising price of oil and last week's weak jobs report are leading some economists to warn that the U.S. could end up with high inflation and slow growth — otherwise known as stagflation.
Fears of U.S. stagflation similarly rose after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and again when Trump announced tariffs last year. But both cases failed to materialize into a true stagflationary environment like that of the 1970s.
Meanwhile, prediction markets bettors are increasingly pricing in a recession. Odds of a U.S. recession jumped above 34% on Kalshi yesterday after sitting below 25% late last week.
CNBC's Morning Squawk recaps the biggest stories investors should know before the stock market opens, every weekday morning.
Subscribe here to get access today.
Anthropic is taking the federal government to court. In a lawsuit filed yesterday, Anthropic said the Pentagon's recent move to blacklist the AI company is "unprecedented and unlawful" and "irreparably" harms the startup.
The lawsuit is the latest update in the dramatic stand-off between Anthropic and the Trump administration. Anthropic went from being the federal government's AI provider of choice to being designated a "supply chain risk" — a label typically used for foreign adversaries — after it disagreed with the Pentagon's usage demands.
The Trump administration's move concerned defense experts, who say Anthropic's blacklisting risks setting a troubling precedent and writing off a key U.S.-based AI vendor.
Stellantis is turning to some unexpected automotive suppliers to launch its newest hybrid SUVs.
As CNBC's Michael Wayland reports, the first-ever hybrid Jeep SUV for North America contains a system from Toyota-backed Blue Nexus. Its forthcoming extended-range electric vehicles, meanwhile, will use technology from Bosch — the world's largest auto supplier.
Automakers often use components from suppliers in their vehicles. What's not as common is using supplier components for main systems and technologies, especially when those components come from a competitor like Toyota.
Luxury hair care brand Olaplex has given up nearly 95% of its value since going public in late 2021. Here's how the company is trying to regain Wall Street's confidence.
— CNBC's Dan Mangan, Spencer Kimball, Sean Conlon, Jeff Cox, Ashley Capoot, Jonathan Vanian, Eamon Javers, Michael Wayland and Laya Neelakandan contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.
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U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his threat of a "friendly takeover" of Cuba, saying the communist-run Caribbean island is in "deep trouble."
His latest comments come less than a week after he suggested that his administration would turn its sights on Havana after U.S. military operations in Iran ended.
The Trump administration has sought to ratchet up the pressure on Cuba since the Jan. 3 military operation to depose Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a long-time ally of Cuba's government.
The U.S. has effectively cut Havana off from Venezuelan oil, called its government "an unusual and extraordinary threat," and pledged to impose tariffs on any country that supplies it with oil.
Speaking at a news conference in Doral, Florida, Trump said on Monday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was dealing with Cuba's leadership as the country grapples with a worsening economic crisis.
"It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn't matter because they are down to, as they say, fumes," Trump said.
"They have no energy. They have no money. They are in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis and we don't want to see that," he added.
Cuba's government has denied being in talks with the U.S. government, although it has previously confirmed "communications" between the two administrations.
A spokesperson for Cuba's embassy in London did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
The U.S. president and his allies have since spoken publicly about the prospect of Cuba becoming the subject of another major foreign policy move.
"Cuba's next," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Fox News shortly after the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
Trump has previously said that after Iran's regime is toppled, "Cuba's going to fall, too," according to Politico.
The comments, alongside the U.S. attacks on Iran and Venezuela, have done little to allay growing fears in Havana, experts have told CNBC.
Beset by a string of blackouts and a worsening fuel shortage, Cuba's government recently adopted rationing measures to protect essential services and fuel supplies for key sectors.
The U.S. Treasury said late last month that it would allow the resale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba's private sector.
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Stocks emerged unscathed from a wild day in the oil markets. Can it last?
The price of oil eclipsed the all-important $100-a-barrel benchmark, and everyone got really nervous. (Here's a roundup of what a bunch of smart people said.)
But G7 countries pledged to release strategic oil reserves if needed, easing oil prices. President Donald Trump's insistence the war is "very complete" was another boost. By market close, major indexes actually finished the day in the green as oil prices dropped.
At least, for now.
Wall Street vet Ed Yardeni, who is typically bullish, raised the chances of a stock meltdown from 20% to 35%. He also mentioned the dreaded s-word — stagflation — in a nod to the 1970s oil crisis that gave investors headaches.
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Others are less fearful. Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a note to clients on Monday that fears over oil prices spiking inflation are overblown. The reason? The US labor market is too weak to support large price spikes.
"Higher inflation expectations will be meaningless if employers still hold the cards in wage setting and their customers retrench," wrote Samuel Tombs, Pantheon's chief US economist.
Energy economist Daniel Yergin is also taking an optimistic view. He believes the global economy is more resilient than we're giving it credit for.
Ultimately, what matters most is how long this oil crisis lasts.
An extended closure of the Strait of Hormuz will be a lot harder for the markets and economy to shake off than just a one-off price spike.
"While market and survey-based inflation expectations can be sensitive to oil at high frequency, history suggests only marked and persistent spikes in the price of crude trigger persistent inflationary cycles," BofA analysts wrote.
That's not stopping some people from preparing for the worst.
Governments are offering suggestions to help people mitigate the impact of oil price spikes, from cutting out non-essential travel to offering more flexible work.
As useful as some of that advice might be, it's not always actionable for Americans. With so many US cities suffering from subpar public transportation, avoiding the gas pump won't be easy.
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In February, Americans were feeling pretty good about their financial standing. But that was before the Iran war, which is threatening to upend household budgets.
A New York Federal Reserve survey released Monday found that consumers expected inflation to be lower in the year ahead, and households, overall, said they were better off than a year ago. The New York Fed's monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations was fielded from Feb. 2 through Feb. 28.
That same day, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, causing the biggest oil supply disruption in history. U.S. crude prices soared more than 35% as a result, recently notching the biggest weekly gain since the futures contract began trading in 1983.
U.S. oil prices went on to hit a high of $119.50 on Monday, and the national average gasoline price topped $3.50 a gallon as of Tuesday, up 21% from a month ago, according to AAA.
Though U.S. oil prices dropped below $90 per barrel Monday afternoon and continued to slide on Tuesday, they remain far above the near $60-per-barrel level where they started the year.
President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday evening that a gain in "short term oil prices" was a "very small price to pay" for "safety and peace."
However, experts say surges in energy costs have fed into longer-term inflation fears.
"Consumers threaten to be hammered by the surge in oil prices, which has already lifted the cost of a gallon of gas by 50 cents," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's, told CNBC.
"If oil prices stay near current levels of $100 per barrel, gasoline will be closing in on $4 a gallon by this time next week. Inflation will quickly accelerate, cutting into consumers' purchasing power, and hitting consumer spending, GDP and jobs," Zandi said.
Even before the expanding U.S. war in the Middle East fueled inflation fears, the high cost of living and a softening labor market pointed to an affordability crisis taking hold.
The U.S. economy lost jobs in February and the unemployment rate edged up to 4.4%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.
February's consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, is slated for release on Wednesday. In January, the inflation barometer declined to 2.4% on an annual basis, down from 2.7% in December but still above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.
Now, affordability concerns are likely to worsen quickly, experts say.
"Rising oil prices have a direct and immediate impact on consumer costs, and not only at the gas pump," said certified financial planner Stephen Kates, a financial analyst at Bankrate. "Unlike last year's higher tariffs, which took months to filter meaningfully into prices, increases in oil prices are quickly reflected," he said.
"An immediate spike in gasoline prices strains household budgets and also raises the cost of shipping, airline tickets, and products that rely on oil-based inputs," Kates said.
Renewed inflationary pressures in the wake of the joint U.S.-Israel strike also helped push the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury up more than 4 basis points to 4.173%. The yield on the 10-year note is a barometer for mortgage rates and other types of loans.
Most Americans' largest liability is their home mortgage. The average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.14% as of Monday, up from 5.99% at the end of February, according to Mortgage News Daily.
San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly also told CNBC on Friday that higher prices at the gas pump, coupled with "inflation printing above target," create an even more challenging environment for everyday Americans. "I don't think it really feels comforting to consumers," she said.
In the face of geopolitical upheaval, inflation pressures and an unclear outlook for tariffs and fiscal policy, Federal Reserve officials will meet next week and announce a decision on interest rates. The Fed's benchmark also has a ripple effect on many of the borrowing and savings rates Americans see every day.
"The uncertainty created by the turmoil in the Middle East will ensure the Fed puts any changes on monetary policy on hold until policymakers can better gauge whether the inflation or growth effects of the fallout are predominant," Zandi said. "Higher oil prices are another negative supply shock, lifting inflation and hurting growth, putting the Fed in a no-win situation."
Futures market pricing is implying almost no chance of a rate cut, according to the CME Group's FedWatch gauge.
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Oracle reports third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, and it will be an unofficial test for the artificial intelligence trade.
Following the announcement of a $50 billion financing plan at the beginning of February that included debt and equity, investors have been eager to understand the pace of dilution for current stockholders. "The cadence matters," said Gil Luria, equity analyst at DA Davidson, told CNBC.
Of all the hyperscalers that are leaning into AI cloud computing, Oracle has had to rely the most on financing measures to fund its ambitious data center build-out plans. Its latest debt raise included a $5 billion convertible preferred offering and roughly $25 billion in senior notes at different maturities, according to a credit investor who spoke to CNBC. The deal was oversubscribed, indicating strong demand.
Oracle's ability to deliver data center assets to OpenAI, its main customer, is of utmost importance to investors.
Late Friday, Bloomberg reported that talks to expand its deal with OpenAI in Abilene, Texas, fell through. A source familiar with the situation told CNBC that Oracle's deal to deliver eight sites to OpenAI remains on track and on schedule. The source asked not to be named in order to discuss a confidential matter.OpenAI executive Sachin Katti later posted on X that while it contemplated expanding its presence in Abilene, it would look to other markets across the U.S.
"We considered expanding it further, but ultimately chose to put that additional capacity in other locations," Katti wrote. "Today we have more than half a dozen sites under development across multiple states, including the site we're building with Oracle in Wisconsin, where the first steel beams went up just this week."
Katti is in charge of spearheading OpenAI's compute infrastructure and previously held the role of AI chief and chief technology officer at Intel.
The market has become hypersensitive to any developments tied to Oracle's $300 billion deal with OpenAI.
News of the deal initially sent Oracle's stock up by 35% last September, its biggest intraday gain since 1992. The deal reinforced Oracle's position as a major contender in the AI cloud computing space, putting it alongside Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
However, in late fall, Oracle surprised the market by raising a significant amount of debt, fueling investor fears that its AI build-out would be costly and put pressure on its balance sheet.
Oracle's 5-year credit default swaps widened as bond investors were skeptical of the enterprise software company's ability to hold on to its investment-grade credit rating, currently two notches above junk.
Credit default swaps are like insurance for investors, with buyers paying for protection in case the borrower can't repay its debt. Bond investors told CNBC that they've become a popular way to hedge the risk tied to the AI trade.
Wall Street is looking for a clear read on the return on investment of Oracle's AI bet when the company reports earnings Tuesday, in addition to any future capital raises.
Analysts have also speculated that the company may undergo consolidation measures to streamline costs.
TD Cowen wrote in a note to clients on Jan. 26 that "our channel checks indicate that Oracle is evaluating multiple paths forward to address financing questions including a 1) a RIF (Reduction in workforce) of 20-30K employees which could drive ~$8-10B of incremental free cash flow."
Analysts there added that divestitures and securing vendor financing deals could also be in the cards.
Watch the video to learn more.
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Tickers above American gas stations are flashing higher prices.
EV owners, meanwhile, are plugging in — and laughing about it online.
Across social media, electric-vehicle drivers are touting their savings as fuel costs climb during the US and Israel's military interventions in Iran.
Many have posted meme-filled victory laps about the price of "filling up."
One shared a compilation of a mustached Tom Selleck turning toward the camera with a smug grin in "Magnum P.I." Others are posting screenshots of their cheap charging sessions. Some are sharing gleeful TikToks while plugging their EVs into a home charger.
Juicy J — the cofounder of Three 6 Mafia and a producer of the Academy Award-winning song "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp" — also weighed in, saying it was "time to go full electric."
People who drive electric cars right now pic.twitter.com/sMdVVKatSW
Gas Prices Up? Enjoy overpaying for it! #ev #cars #automotive #canada
Time to go full electric
Gas prices have surged as military strikes in the Middle East disrupted oil production and heightened fears about tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — a key artery for an estimated 20% of global oil and liquified natural gas shipments.
Brent crude climbed over $100 a barrel Sunday night as traders reacted to the instability. By Monday afternoon, the price had dropped back to the low $80s.
American drivers are paying more at the gas station. On February 21 — before tensions escalated — the average price of a gallon of regular gas in the US was $2.93, according to AAA.
By Monday, it had risen to $3.48, an 18.7% jump in 15 days.
In some areas, the increases have been even steeper. A Los Angeles gas station advertised prices above $8 a gallon, according to local ABC affiliate KABC.
Public EV charging rates, by contrast, have risen far less.
Over the same period, the national average price per kilowatt-hour at public charging stations increased from $0.39 to $0.42 — a 7.6% bump, according to AAA data.
And most EV owners charge at home, where electricity rates are typically lower and less directly tied to crude oil prices than gasoline.
"I had no idea," one driver wrote on X about oil prices. "I drive a Tesla."
Some users on X pointed out that charging costs vary widely by state and utility provider.
In regions where electricity generation relies heavily on natural gas, power prices could rise if energy markets remain volatile.
Almost no saving in New York because of the recent increases from the power company we're at $0.33 per kWh with more increases coming especially in the summer months
For example, in Kansas, EV charging costs about $0.30 per kilowatt-hour, according to AAA. In Louisiana — where charging stations are more sparse — the average is $0.47.
The online gloating comes at a complicated moment for the EV market. Even as gas prices heat up, sales of electric vehicles have cooled.
In January 2026, sales of EVs at American dealerships fell by 53.5% compared to the same month last year, per CarGurus' data shared with Business Insider.
Even as EV sales shrink, Americans who have traded in the gas tank for the battery are taking this time to bask in their money-saving glory.
"Who's glad to have an EV during this time of high gas prices?" one person wrote on Reddit. "I guess not having to deal with the ups and downs of gas prices is one of the benefits of owning an EV."
Are gas prices affecting your daily travel? We want to hear from you. Contact Ben Shimkus at bshimkus@insider.com or Signal at bshimkus.41. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.
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DETROIT — Jeep maker Stellantis is leaning on technologies from automotive suppliers for its newest hybrid SUVs as the market for more fuel-efficient vehicles is expected to continue growing, CNBC has learned.
The trans-Atlantic automaker's first-ever Jeep hybrid SUV for North America, its recently launched Cherokee, features a system from a Toyota-backed company called Blue Nexus, while its upcoming extended-range electric vehicles, or EREVs, are utilizing major technologies from Bosch, the world's largest automotive supplier.
It's not uncommon for automakers to use components from suppliers, but it's less common for key systems or technologies, especially ones pioneered by a competitor like Toyota.
But Stellantis' push is a prime example of broader market shifts away from all-electric vehicles and a way carmakers can more quickly get hybrid vehicles — which have been increasingly in demand even before oil prices spiked — to market, potentially at a lower capital cost. Many automakers have already lost billions of dollars due to massive spending on EVs, including developing and producing many of the technologies themselves.
The Jeep Cherokee, which is using Blue Nexus' two-motor electric continuously variable hybrid transmission, and the upcoming Jeep Grand Wagoneer EREV are major launches for the automaker this year, especially as it attempts to regain market share in the U.S. Stellantis also plans to use the EREV system on its Ram pickup trucks.
"Electrification trends are pretty flat. Hybrid trends are absolutely growing," Richard Cox, Jeep senior vice president of brand operations, told CNBC during a recent media event for the 2026 Cherokee. "So I think it was a big move in the right direction."
Officials with Stellantis and the auto suppliers declined to comment on the tie-ups, but sources with each of the companies who weren't permitted to speak publicly about the partnerships confirmed the details to CNBC.
Both hybrid systems operate differently. The Cherokee is more of a traditional hybrid vehicle, much like many of Toyota's models, including the Prius.
The upcoming EREVs, meanwhile, drive like all-electric vehicles until an engine kicks in and works as a generator to power the vehicle's electric motors when the vehicle's battery is depleted. The engine powers the electric motors rather than the vehicle itself.
Both hybrid systems use Stellantis engines and have been integrated to meet the company's own standards and driving dynamics, according to two sources with the automaker.
Both systems are also expected to significantly improve the fuel economy of the vehicles, including the Cherokee, that at 37 mpg combined is the most fuel-efficient, non-plug-in Jeep ever produced for the U.S.
"Consumers have been accepting of [full-hybrid electric vehicle] technology due to improvements in fuel economy, [a] wide portfolio of vehicles to choose from, and as they do not require lifestyle changes to benefit from the system," said Eric Anderson, S&P Global Mobility associate director of Americas light vehicle powertrain forecasting.
Stellantis and other automakers invested billions of dollars in recent years to develop all-electric vehicles to meet federal regulations and unsubstantiated consumer demand, but most have pulled back on those investments and are eyeing hybrids to increase the fuel economy of vehicles and meet customers' expectations.
Stellantis last month disclosed $26 billion in charges related to its EV plans, while its crosstown Detroit rivals also have announced write-downs. Ford Motor said it would record $19.5 billion in special charges as it pulls back on EV plans, while General Motors said its write-down would be $7.6 billion due to its EV changes.
Peter Tadros, president of Bosch's North America power solutions, said the auto supplier has received an influx of inquiries into its hybrid systems as automakers look to pivot away from EVs and get to market quickly, with a reliable system and partner.
"There's definitely a very big interest in these systems," he told CNBC. "What's been very apparent over the last few years is hybrid sales have increased regardless of what's in the regulations, regardless of the political leaning. It's been a consistent increase in the market."
Led by Toyota, sales of hybrids in the U.S. have increased from 7.3% of the market in 2023 to 12.6% last year, according to S&P Global Mobility. That compares with sales of all-electric vehicles during that time rising from 7.5% to 8%.
S&P Global Mobility expects hybrid electric vehicles to account for 18.4% of U.S. sales this year, while all-electric vehicles are forecast to be 7.1%.
Tadros declined to comment on any relationship with Stellantis, citing company policies, but said it's common for Bosch to work closely and partner with automakers to launch new vehicles and products.
"There is no one silver bullet, and everybody's coming at it from a different direction," he said. "It depends on each [automaker], where their strength, where their capital equipment, is and how they best utilize it, and this is their starting point."
Bosch offers what the industry refers to as "off the shelf" components, which the company then integrates with each automaker's particular use case. Other than EREV, Bosch also offers components for more traditional hybrids as well as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that operate similar to EREVs but drive more like traditional gas-powered vehicles rather than EVs.
Stellantis, more than some other automakers, has a history of teaming up with others in the industry to reduce research and development costs and capital. It has a long-standing partnership with German auto supplier ZF for transmissions and axle systems.
"They've often relied on supplier partners for things like that," said Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at communications and advisory firm Telemetry. "The benefit is, you can take something that has perhaps already been invested in, developed by a supplier. Take something off the shelf, you potentially bring it to market more quickly."
Abuelsamid said downsides include the parts potentially not integrating perfectly with vehicle systems and a company not having control over the supply chain of key components.
In the 2000s, as the Toyota Prius was gaining traction in the U.S., the Japanese automaker cut deals with Ford and Nissan Motor to license or use certain hybrid technologies for their vehicles. But those deals and the vehicles that were produced from them, such as Ford Escape and Nissan Altima hybrids, did not last long.
Blue Nexus is a joint venture established in 2019 between Japanese automotive suppliers Denso and Aisin, which are both part of Toyota Motor's parent group. It sells electrified components such as electronic axles, or e-axles, and hybrid systems such as the Toyota Hybrid System II, which includes the two-motor electric continuously variable hybrid transmission the Jeep Cherokee is using.
A representative from Blue Nexus could not be reached for comment. Toyota, Denso and Aisin declined to comment or did not respond for requests to comment.
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SETERMOEN, Norway — More than 150 miles above the Arctic Circle, NATO artillery crews are training for modern battlefields where drones mean moving isn't always the right call.
For years, mobility was artillery's best defense. Now, against persistent aerial surveillance and cheap loitering munitions, crews are relearning when to shoot and scoot and when to dig in and disappear.
Drones — and their overwhelming presence above the battlefield in Ukraine — are forcing NATO artillery soldiers to reckon with their own vulnerabilities. Being spotted from above could be catastrophic, so knowing when and how to hide rather than run is crucial.
With surveillance and strike drones "being more of a thing now than ever before, we have started to put even more emphasis on camouflage," Maj. Kay-Arne Schjetne, a Norwegian artillery battalion operations officer, told Business Insider at a firing range in Setermoen in late February.
Schjetne's soldiers fired their artillery alongside British commandos and US Marines in Setermoen as part of Cold Response 26, a routine Norwegian-led military exercise that prepares NATO forces for Arctic combat.
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Arctic security has become a focal point for NATO in recent years as officials from the Western military alliance grow increasingly concerned about Russian and Chinese activity in the strategic region.
NATO leadership has pushed for more investment in Arctic defense. Allies have expanded their exercises; this year, Cold Response falls under a newly announced deterrence operation called Arctic Sentry.
From a snow-covered road, the Norwegians fired into a valley, employing their K9 VIDAR, a modified version of the South Korean K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer that shoots 155mm rounds. The tracked artillery is designed for mobility, once a defining characteristic of artillery warfare.
"The current situation in Ukraine shows that if you move, you will be taken out because you will be spotted by UAVs or other sensors," Schjetne shared. "Even self-propelled artillery — with mobility really being its main thing — are staying put in static positions, preferably dug down."
"That is something we wouldn't put much emphasis on just a couple of years back," he said. "But now we're taking that tool out of the toolbox again."
The high drone saturation above the battlefield in Ukraine is giving both sides the ability to constantly surveil and strike the other. Ukrainian officials say that roughly 80% of strikes on Russian targets are carried out with drones.
Moving around is now particularly dangerous; open roads or fields leave tracked vehicles vulnerable to strikes. Fiber-optic cables and expanded ranges have only made drones more threatening to anything caught in the open, including tracked artillery. Hundreds of self-propelled howitzers are reported to have been destroyed during the war.
Schjetne said Norwegian artillery used to heavily emphasize movement, but now soldiers are also training to stay in their firing positions, even though that risks counter-battery fire from the opposing side. Ultimately, in real-world scenarios, they will make a judgment call based on which option is safer.
"Is the risk of being taken out greater if you move or if you stay put? The situation can develop very quickly," Schjetne said.
Maj. Robin McArthur, a battery commander for a unit with the British Army's 29th Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, said that survivability is one of his biggest defensive takeaways from the war in Ukraine.
"So camouflage, concealment, deception, and dispersal," McArthur told Business Insider at the firing range in Setermoen. "We've been working with the Norwegians to try and hone our skills at being harder to kill, as well as being able to be more lethal at the front end."
McArthur said troops are working with combat engineers to figure out how to dig better positions so his unit's firing point is "completely invisible from the air."
Hiding in battle also involves maintaining a significantly lower electronic and thermal profile to avoid drone detection — a practice that soldiers in Ukraine have been forced to master. Even radio transmissions can be problematic, revealing one's location.
"It's all the layers of what we call the survivability onion," McArthur shared. "So first of all, we don't want to be seen. Then we don't want to be identified. Then we don't want to be engaged or shot — or if we are shot, then killed."
His unit of British commandos fired their 105mm howitzers, a lighter gun, from under white camouflage nets that matched the snow. Only the cannon tube poked out from under.
The British and Norwegian units fired their cannons alongside M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers operated by US Marines from different positions in the snow-blanketed wilderness.
While some troops are digging in, others are still thinking carefully about mobility. In a future conflict, ideally, the Marines won't always be on the move and risking giving away their position, First Lt. Landon Foster, the HIMARS platoon commander, told Business Insider, but the threat of drones that can spot heat signatures may require the platoon to be more mobile.
For the Marines, it's a shift in mindset that mirrors how the other artillery units are thinking about warfare, informed by lessons from Ukraine.
Drones are "on our mind, and it certainly impacts how we operate in terms of concealing our positions," Foster said.
Col. William Soucie, the 10th Marine Regiment commanding officer, said that the proliferation of drones above the battlefield in Ukraine is one of the threats that has become rather commonplace there, but much of the world is yet to experience it firsthand.
"These are all things that we are considering — or must consider — in order to provide force protection to our people," Soucie told Business Insider. "Those are the large lessons that we are learning."
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Silicon Valley has long competed for talent with ever-richer pay packages built around salary, bonus, and equity. Now, a fourth line item is creeping into the mix: AI inference.
As generative AI tools become embedded in software development, the cost of running the underlying models — known as inference — is emerging as a productivity driver and a budget line that finance chiefs can't ignore.
Software engineers and AI researchers inside tech companies have already been jousting for access to GPUs, with this AI compute capacity being carefully parceled out based on which projects are most important. Now, some tech job candidates have begun asking about what AI compute budget they will have access to if they decide to join.
"I am increasingly asked during candidate interviews how much dedicated inference compute they will have to build with Codex," Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead at OpenAI's Codex, the startup's AI coding service, wrote on X recently.
He added that usage per user is growing much faster than overall user growth, a sign that AI compute is becoming even scarcer and more valuable.
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That scarcity is reshaping how engineers think about their work and pay. OpenAI President Greg Brockman put it bluntly: "The inference compute available to you is increasingly going to drive overall software productivity."
In other words, access to AI may soon matter as much as access to a fat salary and juicy equity awards. As a coder in the AI era, if you don't have access to massive compute, you might end up producing far less software than your colleagues, threatening your career prospects.
Hakeem Shibly, a data specialist at Levels.fyi, recently spotted a compensation submission from a software engineer that listed "Copilot subscription" as part of the pay and benefits, a small but symbolic step toward AI access as a standard perk.
Some in the AI community see an even more explicit future.
"OpenAI and Anthropic should create recruitment sites where their clients can advertise roles, listing the token budget for the job alongside the salary range," said Peter Gostev, AI capability lead at Arena, a startup that measures the performance of models. Those startups didn't respond to requests for comment on Monday.
Investors are taking note. Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures said companies are effectively adding AI inference as a fourth component of engineering compensation: salary, bonus, equity, and now tokens.
Tokens are the economic language of generative AI. Models break down words and other inputs into numerical tokens to make them easier to process and understand. One token is about ¾ of a word. They're also used to price AI model use, via an industry-standard cost per million tokens.
"Will you be paid in tokens? In 2026, you likely will start to be," Tunguz said.
For CFOs, this potentially big new expense must be tracked as closely as other headcount-related costs, Tunguz said.
"It is starting to happen," Tunguz told me, as employee use of AI increasingly contributes to total cash burn. "It is a consideration for the Office of the CFO."
With Levels.fyi pegging the 75th percentile software engineer salary at $375,000, Tunguz estimates that adding $100,000 in annual inference costs brings the fully loaded cost to $475,000 — meaning just over 20% of the compensation cost could come from AI usage in the future.
The key question for finance leaders: what's the return on that AI spend? If cloud infrastructure performance is judged by gross profit per hour of GPU use, Tunguz suggests the employee equivalent is productive work per dollar of inference.
Tunguz has been building AI tools and models into his daily workflow and is automating 31 tasks a day at a cost of about $12,000 a year in inference.
"The engineer still burning $100k? They'd better be 8x more productive!" he wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.
If this trend continues, 2026 may mark the year engineers don't just negotiate pay in dollars and equity, but in tokens.
Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.
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He hit a tech trifecta, working at Google, Meta, and OpenAI. He has some advice for finding success in Big Tech.
Michael Bolin is the tech lead on Codex, OpenAI's coding assistant. Before joining Sam Altman's AI giant in 2024, Bolin spent almost 12 years at Meta, per his LinkedIn. Before that, he worked at Google on tools that have stood the test of time, like the company's Calendar.
On "The Peterman Pod," Bolin shared three steps for making an impact in Big Tech. While they're certainly helpful at companies like Google and Meta, the tips extend well beyond Silicon Valley to almost every white-collar worker.
His first step is personal: figure out what you like to do. "It's good to broaden that, but it's also good to be honest with yourself," Bolin said.
Bolin referenced a "hero quest" that he went on at Google. He thought there would be a challenge that all the other engineers couldn't solve that he could, he said. Bolin called it "embarrassing" because there's "something about ego" involved.
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The problem with this quest was also that he didn't love the work. "I can do a lot of things, but there is a smaller subset of things that I genuinely enjoy doing," he said.
Bolin's second step was to find out what's "really valuable" to your employer.
Here, he uses the counterexample of his time at Google yet again. "I did stuff that I was really excited about, but it wasn't AdWords for Google or anything like that," he said.
Finally, workers should find the intersection between Bolin's first and second steps — and then lean into it.
That intersection might not be in your current workplace, something that Bolin calls a "challenge." To get ahead, workers might have to "go somewhere else to make that happen."
The steps are consistent, no matter where you're working. Know what you want, know what your employer wants, and live in the cross-section of the two.
"The more that you can do that, the more successful you're going to be," Bolin said.
Do you work in Big Tech? Contact the reporter from a non-work email and device at hchandonnet@insider.com, or on Signal at henrychand.30
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Russia is shaping up to be a major beneficiary of the war between U.S.-Israel and Iran, as higher oil prices and temporary sanctions relief boost the value and volume of its crude exports, analysts told CNBC.
The Middle East conflict has rattled global energy markets, sending oil prices sharply higher amid fears of supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most critical energy corridors.
"Russia stands to gain revenue from higher oil prices, especially as the U.S. has relaxed restrictions on selling Russian crude to India," said Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Marquee.
Oil prices surged over $100 per barrel on Monday as traders priced in the risk that conflict in the Gulf could disrupt shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint that carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil supply.
Even as oil fell about 7% on Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump signaled that the conflict with Iran could end soon, prices are still around 27% higher compared to before the war started.
For Russia, which remains one of the world's largest oil exporters despite Western sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine, the price rally directly translates into stronger state revenues.
Henning Gloystein, managing director for energy and resources at Eurasia Group, said Russia has "already hugely benefited" from the crisis after Washington granted India a temporary waiver allowing it to continue purchasing Russian crude.
"Cargoes have been sold around $90 per barrel, so this is a large increase in price and sales volume for Russia," he said, compared to around $50 from before the Iran war.
Higher prices combined with looser enforcement of sanctions will allow more Russian barrels to remain in circulation, providing a short-term boost to Moscow's finances, said analysts.
Muyu Xu, a senior analyst at Kpler, echoed that renewed buying from India has helped lift Russian crude prices while clearing a backlog of cargoes that had accumulated at sea.
According to Kpler data, Russian crude held on tankers fell to 118.3 million barrels this week from 132.9 million barrels at the end of February, suggesting cargoes were moving to buyers fast.
If the crisis continues to constrain Gulf exports, the upside could be substantial. Gloystein estimates Moscow could generate tens of billions of dollars in additional state revenue as elevated oil and gas prices persist.
In addition to the temporary waiver granted to India, Trump is also reportedly weighing easing oil sanctions on Russia, according to Reuters.
Russia's advantage may also extend beyond crude oil. Gloystein said Europe could increase imports of Russian liquefied natural gas because there are currently no European sanctions on those shipments, at least until the European Union's planned phase-out takes effect in 2027.
Russia's ability to fully capitalize on the situation, however, remains constrained.
Years of sanctions and Ukrainian attacks have damaged parts of Russia's energy infrastructure, limiting the speed at which the country can ramp up production or exports.
"The benefit could be meaningful in the short term because Russia gains both from higher prices and from some easing in the practical enforcement of sanctions," said Carole Nakhle, founder of Crystol Energy. "But the upside is still constrained."
She added that shipping and insurance restrictions, as well as the concentration of Russian exports to a small pool of buyers such as India and China still limit how fully Moscow can take advantage of supply disruptions.
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Iran has defended its strikes against its Gulf neighbors, telling CNBC that U.S. military assets located in surrounding territories were "legitimate" targets in its fight back against America and Israel.
But Gulf states told CNBC that the attacks have created a "huge trust gap" that will last for years to come.
Iran's decision to attack its neighbors as part of its retaliation against U.S.-Israeli strikes has confused analysts and Tehran itself has sent mixed messages over its strategy, apologising for strikes against neighbors including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, before carrying out yet more strikes.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson in Tehran told CNBC on Monday that the Islamic Republic felt "no hostility" toward Gulf countries, but that U.S. military assets in the region were legitimate targets.
"We have said many times that we feel no hostility toward any country in the region, toward the UAE, Bahrain, you name it," said Esmail Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"The only thing we are doing is defending ourselves against the aggressors. Did we start this war? Or this war was imposed on Iran for no reason?" he told CNBC's Dan Murphy.
Baghaei said Iran had aimed attacks "against military bases and assets" belonging to the U.S. in the region and said this was "legitimate under international law" as Tehran was "defending" itself under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
"All military bases, installations and assets that in any form or manner are being used to help the aggressors are regarded as legitimate targets ... We had warned often that if they start war against Iran, that war would not be limited only to Iran. That was not a threat. That was because of the realities in our region. The military bases of the United States are scattered around us," Baghaei said.
Despite Iran's insistence that it has only targeted military assets in the surrounding region, its attacks have targeted critical energy infrastructure, particularly oil facilities, as well as military bases, in neighboring countries.
Iranian drones and debris from strikes have also hit civilian infrastructure across the Gulf, including airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as hotels and residential buildings. Intercepted drones and missiles have also caused injury to civilians and soldiers, and several fatalities.
Analysts say this strategy has aimed to create maximum discomfort for Iran's immediate neighbors, as well as showing that Tehran can shake the global economy and disrupt oil markets.
It has also been seen as an attempt to make the affected Gulf states — anxious to protect their diversifying economies — exert pressure on the U.S. and Israel to end their aerial bombardment of Iran.
Iran's neighbors are not impressed with Iran's actions, to say the least, warning that diplomatic relations could be impacted for years.
A senior UAE official, who is not customarily identified by name, told journalists on Friday at an official briefing, "I am not saying, relations between Gulf states and Iran are not going to go back, because at the end of the day, you are neighbours but it creates a huge trust gap that, in my opinion, will last for decades to come."
CNBC has asked Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain to comment on what impact Iranian attacks are having on their relationships with Tehran and is awaiting responses.
Qatar pointed CNBC to the latest statement from the country's prime minister and foreign minister on Tuesday in which they said they, "strongly condemned Iranian attacks on the State of Qatar and other Gulf countries," adding that the justifications provided by Tehran are "totally rejected."
The Gulf Co-operation Council, a political and economic union of six Gulf states, has issued statements condemning Iran's "treacherous" and "heinous" attacks, saying they will take "all necessary measures" to defend their security and territory.
Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have threatened to retaliate against Iran, but they have stopped short of potentially escalatory action, for now.
Iran has both recognized the damage being done to its already-tense relations with neighboring states, while continuing on the same path.
Last weekend, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized for the attacks, stating: "We do not intend to invade other countries. Let us set aside all the disagreements, concerns, and resentments we have toward each other. Today, let us defend our own soil to bring Iran out of this crisis with dignity." Shortly after, however, Iran fired rockets toward a U.S. air base in the UAE.
Pezeshkian's apology also prompted a backlash from hardliners in Iran's Revolutionary Guards and clerical elite, with hardline cleric and lawmaker Hamid Rasai berating the president on social media, saying: "Your stance was unprofessional, weak and unacceptable."
Iranian spokesperson Bagheaei reiterated Pezeshkian's apology to CNBC but said neighboring countries were being used by the U.S.
"We are very, very sorry that in the holy month of Ramadan, the territories of some regional states, some countries of the region, are being abused by the United States to attack other Muslim countries."
Michael Herzog, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., told CNBC Tuesday that people in the Gulf he has spoken to "are really upset with what the Iranians have been doing."Iran targeted the Gulf states, their infrastructure and not only American bases but also energy infrastructure and civilian targets, in a bid to get them to pressure the Trump administration to stop the war earlier," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe."I don't think it worked well for Iran because it isolated itself in the Gulf and got all of them to come out against Iran," he said, adding: "Iran also wanted to show that this is going to be a regional war, but I think they miscalculated."
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Iran has wielded its missiles and drones to strike most neighboring states in this ongoing war that's raged for 10 days. However, their destructive scale has so far been blunted by the advanced defenses of Israel, the US and their regional Arab partners. Iran's powerful regime armed forces, utilizing a decentralized strategy they devised decades ago, are likely in a race to preserve what's left of their offensive weaponry.
"The biggest surprise has been that Iran has not chosen or been able to overwhelm Gulf Arab air defenses in ways that would be very impactful," Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company RANE, told Business Insider.
Iran, Bohl noted, preferred to either "spread out strikes" or focus largely on the United Arab Emirates, which he noted is "handling the incoming attacks as well as the Israelis."
A central test is whether Iran's armed forces, which are seemingly operating with minimal centralized command and control, can preserve the drones and missiles that the US and Israel are hunting, military analysts told Business Insider.
The large-scale air campaign that began on February 28 has severely damaged Iran's arsenal. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed to a more than 80% drop in missile attacks less than a week into the war as a sign of how the strikes are strategically and systematically weakening Iran's offensive capabilities. Furthermore, after just over a week of war, the Israeli military announced that 75% of Iran's missile launchers are now destroyed.
So far, it's difficult to determine whether Tehran's weapon choices are driven by its strategy or what has survived the US-Israeli strikes. Iranian state media claimed that Tehran fired 500 ballistic missiles and cruise missiles while launching 2,000 drones as of March 5.
Iran's short-range Fatah-110 ballistic missiles appear have been fired in significant numbers while more advanced medium-range models like the Khorramshahr-4 and Fattah-1, the latter of which Tehran claims is hypersonic, have only seen sparing use so far.
"Iran is using its missiles somewhat differently from 2025," James Devine, an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Mount Allison University, said. "They seem to keep firing them at a steady rate and across a large range of targets, rather than using large mass attacks targeting a single location. Rather than trying to just cause as much damage as possible, they seem to be trying to wear down the US and its allies' supplies of interceptors."
The erratic attacks with small numbers of munitions could also be a sign of Iran's strained command and control. A day after Iran's supreme leader was killed in an enormous airstrike along with other top officials, the country's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran had shifted to a "decentralized mosaic defense," allowing Iran's military units to act more independently.
"I don't think Araghchi is bluffing, and there is evidence that Iran is implementing a mosaic strategy that helps it overcome its command and control issues," Arash Azizi, a visiting fellow at Boston University and author of "The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran's Global Ambitions," told Business Insider.
"Iran has depleted significant military resources, but it still can ration enough (and even carry out production) to go on for a while," he said. "Its drone capabilities are especially significant and ongoing. It's effectively fighting a guerrilla-like war."
Iran's tactics now are likely informed by its experience in the air campaign last June, an Israeli-led effort that the US joined to strike Iran's heavily fortified nuclear sites with strategic B-2 Spirit stealth bombers in Operation Midnight Hammer.
"The idea is to decentralize command so that the military can continue to fight even if the political leadership is destroyed," Devine said. "The (June 2025) 12-day war reinforced the importance of the strategy after the regime hesitated to respond after the decapitation strikes at the start of that conflict. They clearly have been better prepared this time."
Aside from hitting Israel with its more advanced medium-range ballistic missiles, Iran has also targeted all of the Gulf Arab countries. Many of these states have advanced American-made air defense systems. Early in the war, the UAE reported that its air defenses, which include THAAD and Patriots, intercepted 94% of incoming drones and 92% of all missiles.
Iran has built underground lairs dubbed "missile cities" to conceal and protect its arsenal from strikes. The US has targeted these in the current war with its B-2s.
"While the underground missile cities do pose a threat, they are facing an issue of Israeli and American warplanes hovering over them as their locations are mapped, making it harder for them to necessarily fire as often," said Bohl, the Middle East analyst at RANE. "In addition, repeated strikes on them will eventually reduce their effectiveness."
Even if Iran retains significant numbers of missiles, multiple launchers have been hit — Israel's military estimates three-quarters of them — reducing its ability to fire.
"It remains the simple Shahed drone, however, that is the latest threat to which the US, Israel, and the Gulf states don't have a clean option to stop," Bohl said. "As Ukraine has struggled to stop this system entirely, it seems likely so too will these advanced militaries."
Iran has managed to directly hit the US military in places. One of its projectiles hit a tactical operations center in Kuwait on March 1, killing six US troops. And satellite images from last week reveal that Iranian munitions hit the radar of an American THAAD system in Jordan and buildings containing similar radars in the UAE. The THAAD, short for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is the most advanced missile defense system in the region aside from Israel's analogous Arrow 3.
At present, Iran is enduring magnitudes more strikes against its offensive arsenal.
"It's impossible to say what has been destroyed and what has survived," Devine said. "This is true of the missile cities and the launchers more generally. The US is now claiming a major decrease in Iranian attacks, but it's not clear if that's tactical or due to a significant change in Iranian capabilities."
Iran has also fired missiles fitted with cluster warheads at Israel in what's likely an attempt to threaten civilians.
"The cluster munitions will not do a great deal of structural damage or penetrate proper bomb shelters. However, they are hard to stop, and they are very dangerous to soft targets and civilians," Devine said.
"I doubt they will be a game-changer, but they will increase the political pressure on the US and Israel."
Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist and columnist who writes about Middle East developments, military affairs, politics, and history. His articles have appeared in a variety of publications focused on the region.
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Lego just put up another banner year — with help from a behind-the-scenes secret weapon.
The Danish company on Tuesday reported a 12% jump in revenue to 83.5 billion Danish kroner, or $12.9 billion, for fiscal year 2025. Operating profit rose 18% year over year to 22 billion Danish kroner, or $3.4 billion, the company said.
"When we look at the growth area, it's kind of pretty broad-based in the sense that it's not one product or one theme, it's pretty much across the board," Lego CEO Niels Christiansen told CNBC.
Lego's consumer sales jumped 16%, outpacing the overall toy market's 7% growth over the same period, the company reported. Lego has steadily outperformed the toy industry since the pandemic, growing its market share and its space on retail shelves.
The brickmaker's secret: a combination of trendspotting and a streamlined supply chain.
Lego has a hearty licensed product line, featuring sets based on a wide range of popular films, TV shows and video games, as well as a substantial number of in-house brands like its flower arrangements, art pieces and architectural structures.
Last year, Lego launched its largest portfolio ever, with more than 860 sets hitting shelves, the company said. Around half of those were new items.
In expanding its catalog of products, Lego has also grown its consumer base. Gateways into the brand such as its line of botanicals — plants, flower bouquets and succulents — and its ongoing partnership with Epic Games — which brings Lego to the digital space and elements from the popular video game Fortnite into the physical world — have encouraged newcomers into the brick-building space, Christiansen said.
Once there, these customers discover other sets and continue building. And it's not just kids, adult builders are an important piece of Lego's sales.
Toy experts told CNBC that Lego was ahead of the curve, embracing adults as a key toy consumer long before the industry coined the term "kidult." Adults buying for themselves account for between 25% and 30% of all global toy sales, according to data from Circana.
"We hit really well on a lot of different type of products and ways of building and passion points," Christiansen said.
One of the company's recent additions to the portfolio is its partnership with Formula One auto racing. Lego has been present at F1 races since last season, hosting in-person activities that have included functional, life-size cars and handcrafted trophies made out of bricks for podium finishers.
F1 building sets range from Duplo sets for preschool children, traditional sets for casual builders and Lego Technic sets for more advanced crafters. Additionally, as part of the ongoing relationship between the two brands, Lego has signed on as a team sponsor for an F1 Academy car starting in 2026.
But Lego's real secret weapon in outpacing the toy industry isn't as flashy.
Lego has developed an incredibly efficient supply chain, which allows it to produce products closer to their final retail destination.
For example, right now the company's Mexico-based factory supplies the Americas, while its Hungary factory helps supply parts of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Lego recently opened a Vietnam location to service the Asia-Pacific region and is set to open up a new facility in Virginia in 2027.
Christiansen said the new U.S.-based factory will help keep up with the growing demand for product in the Americas.
Not only does this make the shipping process more efficient and shorten delivery times for fans, it also reduces costs. Lego can tailor what it's manufacturing based on regional demand, meaning it's not creating excess inventory.
Lego can also be more nimble than its competitors during trade disputes or shipping disruptions because its factories are not all concentrated in one area.
"You come out of a year like 2025, and we've seen that growth that was beyond our expectations, and ... what a mountain to climb," Christiansen said. "On the other hand, we have really strong momentum. It continues throughout the year and into this year. So, I think we feel good about growing on top of '25, maybe not to the same growth rate. Our expectation would be high-single-digit, which would be fantastic."
In 2026, Lego is introducing sets based on the likes of Pokémon, "Lord of the Rings" and The Legend of Zelda, as well as launching its new innovation: the Lego Smart Brick. The new high-tech, two-by-four Lego brick, which is part of several new "Star Wars" sets, contains sensors that react to movement and play sounds and light up when played with.
"So I think there are many different things that should take well throughout the year," Christiansen said.
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The Iran war threatens "catastrophic consequences" for the global oil market, the CEO of Saudi oil giant Aramco has warned.
Amin Nasser told an earnings call on Tuesday that the war had caused "a severe chain reaction" and "a drastic domino effect" beyond shipping, "on aviation, agriculture, automotive, and other industries."
"There will be catastrophic consequences for the world's oil market. The longer the disruption goes on and the more drastic the consequences for the global economy," he said, adding that it was "by far the biggest crisis" faced by the region's oil and gas industry.
Aramco's Ras Tanura refinery was hit by a projectile last week, amid widespread Iranian drone and missile attacks on the Gulf states in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes on it.
The price of oil surged amid supply fears but fell after U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. would hit Iran "twenty times harder" if it attempted to halt oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking after Saudi Aramco reported full-year 2025 earnings that beat analysts' estimate, Nasser warned: "With the current geopolitical crisis, global inventories, which are already at a five-year low, would see downwards at a faster rate.
"Global spare capacity is mostly concentrated in this region, so it is absolutely critical that shipping resumes in the Strait of Hormuz."
On Monday, the spokesman for Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNBC that oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz "must be very careful."
"As long as the situation is insecure, I think all tankers, all maritime navigation, must be very careful," said Esmail Baghaei, who is also head of the Center for Public Diplomacy.
The Saudi state oil giant reported a full‑year adjusted net income of $104.7 billion, which it described as "robust growth" despite a year of oil‑price volatility.
Fourth‑quarter adjusted profit came in at $25.1 billion, slightly above the median consensus estimate of $24.8 billion compiled by the company.
Free cash flow for the year reached $85.4 billion.
The company also declared a base dividend of $21.89 billion for the fourth quarter, up 3.5% from a year earlier, to be paid in the first quarter of 2026. The company remains one of the world's biggest dividend payers and a crucial source of income for the Saudi state.
Total shareholder distributions for the year reached $85.5 billion, as the company continued to prioritize payouts despite easing crude prices in 2025.
Aramco also announced a share buyback program of up to $3 billion over 18 months.
Shares of Aramco have risen sharply in recent sessions as oil prices surged amid fears of supply disruptions in the Middle East.
Aramco generated $136.2 billion in operating cash flow last year, driven by what the company said was steady production and strong downstream results. Capital investments totaled $52.2 billion, in line with company guidance and slightly below 2024 levels.
"Our disciplined capital allocation, combined with lower‑cost and highly reliable operations, drove strong financial performance in a year marked by price volatility," Nasser said in the earnings release.
Crude prices during 2025 fell to $69.2 per barrel, from $80.2 in 2024, reflecting a softer oil market and rising global supply. In recent days, though, crude spiked to nearly $120 per barrel as war in the Middle East escalated.
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Employees at rival companies — including OpenAI — are rallying behind Anthropic as the startup warns its escalating dispute with the Pentagon could cost $5 billion in lost business.
More than 30 researchers from OpenAI and Google, including Jeff Dean, the chief scientist of Google DeepMind, filed a joint amicus brief on Monday supporting Anthropic in its legal battle with the government. The employees signed in a personal capacity and do not represent their companies' official views.
Their filing argues that the Pentagon's decision to label Anthropic a "supply-chain risk" could harm the broader US AI industry.
"If allowed to proceed, this effort to punish one of the leading US AI companies will undoubtedly have consequences for the United States' industrial and scientific competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond," the employees wrote.
The dispute stems from a breakdown in negotiations between Anthropic and the Pentagon over guardrails around how its AI models could be used, particularly around mass domestic surveillance and autonomous lethal weapons.
Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that "no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic," marking a dramatic expansion of the "supply chain risk" designation.
Anthropic has since sued the government in two courts, arguing the decision violates its First Amendment rights and unfairly retaliates against the company.
In court filings, Anthropic executives warned that the fallout is already hitting the company's finances. Chief financial officer Krishna Rao wrote in a court statement that hundreds of millions of dollars in expected revenue tied to Pentagon-related work are at risk this year. If the government succeeds in discouraging companies from working with Anthropic more broadly, Rao added, the company could ultimately lose up to $5 billion in sales, which is roughly equivalent to its total revenue since commercializing its AI technology in 2023.
Anthropic's chief commercial officer, Paul Smith, wrote in a separate court statement that the pressure from the government is causing business partners to take steps that "reflect deep distrust and a growing fear of associating with Anthropic." Smith added that some customers have paused negotiations or demanded escape clauses, while others have canceled meetings entirely after the supply-chain designation.
The situation has also drawn criticism from industry leaders. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, despite singing its own contract with the Pentagon after Anthropic's fell apart, wrote on social media that enforcing the supply chain risk designation "would be very bad for our industry and our country."
Major cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft have said they will continue offering Anthropic's Claude AI models to customers without ties to the Pentagon.
Anthropic is now seeking a temporary court order that would allow it to continue working with military contractors while the legal fight continues. The first hearing could take place in San Francisco as soon as Friday.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside normal business hours.
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Free housing. Discounted office space. Cash subsidies worth up to $720,000.
These are some of the perks local governments in China would offer to lure startups and developers building on OpenClaw.
In the high-tech zone of Wuxi in Eastern China, Chinese officials announced in a policy draft published on the city's official WeChat account on Monday that it is supporting what Chinese developers call "raising the lobster" — a nickname for deploying OpenClaw agents to perform automated tasks.
The draft outlined 12 measures to support startups and developers working with the AI agent, which began circulating widely in tech circles earlier this year.
Projects building industrial AI applications — such as predictive maintenance or quality inspection systems — could receive rewards of 500,000 yuan, or $72,000. Major breakthroughs involving robotics or embodied AI could qualify for subsidies of up to 5 million yuan, or $720,000, the draft wrote.
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Startups using OpenClaw may also receive rent-free office space for up to three years, along with living subsidies for "outstanding contributors to the OpenClaw open-source community who are starting a business in the district for the first time," it added.
Designed to operate around the clock, OpenClaw can plug into a range of consumer apps to automate tasks such as scheduling, monitoring vibe-coding sessions, or creating AI employees. Its creator, Peter Steinberger, joined OpenAI last month to help develop what Sam Altman has called the "next generation" of personal AI agents.
Shenzhen's Longgang district, a major tech hub in southern China, on Saturday published a similar draft proposal offering subsidies of up to 2 million yuan, or $290,000, for projects tied to the OpenClaw ecosystem.
"Projects contributing key code to mainstream international communities, developing and listing skill packages related to Longgang's advantageous industries on skill trading platforms, and developing applications integrated with embodied intelligent devices will receive subsidies of up to 2 million yuan upon verification," the draft proposal said.
Officials in Shenzhen's Longgang district said newly registered or relocated one-person startups may get up to two months of free accommodation and up to "18 months of preferential office space" under a "one desk, one office, one floor" workspace system designed to lower barriers for new teams. Young talents relocating to the district could also receive a settlement subsidy of up to 100,000 yuan.
The policy push comes as OpenClaw continues to generate buzz in China's tech circles.
Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters drew a queue of nearly a thousand people last week, all waiting for engineers to help install OpenClaw at no charge, according to local media reports.
On the Chinese social media platform RedNote, posts about people offering paid OpenClaw installation services have circulated widely. In one post published last week, a user said some installers had earned as much as 260,000 yuan, or $36,000, in just a few days helping others set up and configure the software.
The AI tool has also raised concerns about privacy and security risks.
In early February, China's National Vulnerability Database, operated by the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued a warning about potential security risks linked to the open-source AI agent.
The notice said that some OpenClaw deployments could pose significant security risks if improperly configured, potentially exposing users to cyberattacks and data leaks.
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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lucy Rieger, 37, the cofounder of distillery J. Rieger & Co. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I originally wanted to be a doctor, until I figured out I don't really do math or science. Once I ruled those out, I found my way into PR and marketing, quite the opposite of my now husband, Andy, a math finance major who worked in private equity.
We'd moved away from his hometown, Kansas City, to pursue our careers, but after getting engaged in 2013, we started kicking around a wild idea: What if we moved back and revived the prohibition-era distillery his family had owned three generations back?
The family business had been passed down for decades until it closed in 1919 due to prohibition.
Fast forward to 2014, and the idea of quitting our stable corporate careers for this dream was frowned upon by our family and friends alike. "What are you doing?" both sets of parents asked us.
In particular, we had on our hearts Andy's dad, who died of cancer in 2010, but had always said, "Don't move home unless you have a real good reason to."
This felt like it just might be that real good reason.
Andy, always conservative in life choices and not prone to emotional or rash decisions, began analyzing the feasibility of the idea.
We were only 26, but he was convinced we could make it happen. We officially opened in 2014, got married in 2015, and had our first son in 2017. Our pipe dream had become our daily life, with a baby in tow and all.
I know we couldn't have done this alone. Instead, an amazing nanny saved us and gave us the flexibility to mesh our work and home lives together.
She and her wife are like family to us; we even hosted their wedding at the distillery. I see it more as co-parenting than a nanny role. When we had our second kid in 2020, we learned we really couldn't do it without her.
During the pandemic, the distillery transformed into a hand sanitizer production plant, and days blurred into nights as we tried to produce sanitizer to keep up with demand while parenting.
Our nanny sometimes slept at our house, brought the kids to the distillery, and realized there are no "working" or "off" hours — it's all one big endeavor. I remember her saying, "I'm just going to be here, and you come home whenever you can." So she moved in.
It was a whole team effort, resulting in 250,000 bottles of sanitizer produced in six weeks.
Sometimes I hear people talking about having to convince their husbands to do something, and I'm grateful to say I really can't relate.
Andy is a business-minded man and a fabulous dad. We're both working all the time at home and at the distillery. He cleans the kitchen. He doesn't need to be told what to do with the kids or ask basic questions like where to find their socks when I'm traveling for work.
Having a team approach means that while I'd never say I can have or do it all, I'm able to be involved as a parent and business owner, and in that space where both merge.
For example, we hosted our school auction at the distillery, and I'm able to be a class mom at my kid's school.
On top of that, I make time for Pilates, playing Mahjong with friends, and needlepoint. This is all possible because my husband and I are a team, and I genuinely like him.
There are worse places my kids could spend their afternoons — after all, the distillery has a fun slide to get down from the second floor. When we're closed, they can run around, ride their bikes, and even throw a football on the production floor.
They don't love it when we're open because they have to actually follow the rules. Though they aren't quite old enough to bus tables or officially work, at 5 and 8, they love to help me with projects. Over the holidays, they helped me decorate the distillery.
They get to see what goes into running a business day to day, and that you aren't too good for any of the work. If I ask them to pick up the trash, and they ask, "Why us?" I teach them, "Who else is going to do it?"
But it's not all work. They were elated when Travis Kelce recently mentioned J. Rieger & Co. on a podcast. Kelce and Patrick Mahomes' steakhouse in Kansas City now serves products from our distillery.
We also prioritize a big spring break trip every year, where they do see us still running the business on the phone and laptops, but at least we are traveling together, having fun, and still building our business together. This year, we're heading to Hawaii.
I don't expect the kids to work for us when they're teenagers or beyond. I think it's important they work for other people. In a perfect world, maybe someone will show up and offer us millions of dollars for the distillery before the kids have to decide whether to take over.
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Four years after Ukraine was thrust into a war many feared would be lost in days, Kyiv has found itself fielding nearly a dozen inquiries from militaries scrambling to learn how it fights.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday that his government had received 11 requests for help — from the US and countries in the Middle East and Europe — on how to deal with Iran's Shaheds.
"There is clear interest in Ukraine's experience in protecting lives, relevant interceptors, electronic warfare systems, and training," Zelenskyy said.
It's unclear if this means 11 countries have lodged requests or if some nations may have filed multiple requests, such as through individual military or law enforcement branches.
Zelenskyy said his government would work to determine how it could deliver matériel, expertise, or training on fighting Shaheds without compromising Ukraine's ability to defend its own skies.
"Ukraine is ready to respond positively to requests from those who help us protect the lives of Ukrainians and the independence of Ukraine," he added.
The Pentagon said last week that Iran has launched over 2,000 of the cheap attack drones at its neighbors and US forces in the region, after the US and Israel began a massive airstrike campaign over Iran on February 28.
Ukraine, meanwhile, says it deals with hundreds of similar drones at a time, sometimes on a daily basis. Russia has, for years, manufactured multiple versions of the Shahed to bombard Ukrainian cities, often pairing the loitering munitions with decoy delta-wing drones.
In late February, Zelenskyy said that Russia had launched 57,000 Shaheds at Ukraine since February 2022.
A key initial dilemma for Ukraine, and one that the US and its allies now face with Iran, is that the Shahed costs much less than a typical interceptor missile. At an estimated price of $20,000 to $50,000, the attack drone is a poor target for even lower-cost traditional anti-air missiles such as the AIM-132, which can cost $250,000 apiece.
Ukraine has tried to solve the problem, with relative success, by surging electronic warfare measures, deploying mobile ground crews with machine guns, and producing interceptor drones — cheap, small drones designed to chase and ram into Shaheds with an explosive payload.
These interceptors can cost between $2,000 and $6,000 each, and are made to fly faster than a typical Shahed-136's reported top speed of 115 mph. But most also require human pilots, who often need months of practice and training to intercept a Shahed effectively.
In his statement on Monday, Zelenskyy didn't specify the exact systems or expertise Ukraine is willing to provide in the Middle East.
However, the Ukrainian president told The New York Times that Kyiv was sending an unspecified number of interceptor drones and a team of experts to assist US bases in Jordan.
"We reacted immediately," he told the outlet, in its Monday report.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia also host American military bases and have reported hundreds of Iranian drone and missile attacks since the US-Israeli campaign began. Similar attacks have been recorded at a smaller scale in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Cyprus, and Azerbaijan.
Ukraine has a high interest in sharing its expertise and tech with the world; it wants to grow its defense export market, and has already been selling some systems and building manufacturing hubs in Europe, where fears of war with Russia run deeper.
It's not yet clear how many interceptor drones Ukraine can spare for the Middle East. Kyiv said last year that it had achieved daily production of 1,000 interceptor drones.
Ukrainian drone manufacturer Skyfall, which makes the P1-Sun 3D-printed interceptor, told Reuters on Saturday that it could produce 50,000 P1-Suns a month and possibly export up to 10,000 drones without sapping local supplies.
US forces also have homegrown anti-Shahed interceptors. On Saturday, American defense officials told Business Insider that the US Army was deploying the Merops interceptor system, which launches a reusable $15,000 drone, to the Middle East.
They did not say how many systems would be deployed, but said US troops in the region would be trained on how to use the Merops.
Meanwhile, Kyiv has repeatedly hinted at receiving Patriot missile supplies in exchange for its help with fighting Shaheds. Zelenskyy has said his country faces a dire shortage of these interceptors, which it needs to counter Russian missile strikes.
The US and its allies, however, have also been using Patriots extensively in the Middle East since the war began, on top of earlier concerns that munitions for the air defense system were already running low.
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Stocks erased losses and rallied late on Monday, while oil prices pulled back from highs in the day after Donald Trump's latest comments on the Iran war.
The president told CBS News that the war is "very complete, pretty much," and well ahead of the four to five week timeline he indicated last week.
Oil dropped after spiking above $100 per barrel for the first time since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Brent, the international benchmark, was down 3% to $90.17, while US oil fell 5% to around $86.50. Brent briefly traded close to $120 on Sunday evening.
Here's where major US indexes stood at the 4 p.m. ET closing bell on Monday:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 47,740.95, up 0.5% (+239.40 points)
S&P 500: 6,795.90, up 0.83%
Nasdaq Composite: 22,695.946, up 1.4%
The moves are a big reprieve for investors, who woke up on Monday to a historic spike in oil prices that prompted dire predictions of an economic crisis and more market turmoil.
"Investors were hoping cooler heads would prevail in the Iran war this weekend, and instead, tensions escalated, which is exacerbating last week's stock market declines and oil price spikes," Carol Schleif, chief market strategist at BMO Private Wealth, said. "Triple digit oil prices rapidly translate into sizable increases at the gas pump, which is a dynamic that understandably spooks investors and consumers alike."
Traders were already on edge last week. Then sentiment turned to outright panic after reports that major oil producers Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had begun trimming output as storage facilities filled up rapidly in the wake of the Strait of Hormuz closure. Iraq, another major producer, started production cuts days earlier.
Prices settled in early-morning Monday trading reports that G7 ministers and the International Energy Agency are set to discuss a joint release of emergency oil reserves.
Since the start of the Iran war, the $100-per-barrel level has been viewed as a psychologically significant threshold that, when crossed, would spell inflationary trouble for the economy and the stock market.
The narrative is the same one that sent crude prices nearly 30% higher last week: as long as the Iran war rages on — and as long as countries in the Middle East continue to cut production — prices will move higher.
The focal point has been the Strait of Hormuz, which handles a fifth of the world's oil flow. As regional disruption has persisted, the scope of concerns has expanded to the entire global oil logistics network.
"This oil shock won't end until ships can sail freely through the Strait," wrote veteran strategist Ed Yardeni.
"Until then, the financial markets are likely to become increasingly concerned about a 1970s-style stagflation scenario; back then, the period of stagflation included two recessions," Yardeni added.
Warren Patterson, the head of commodities strategy at ING, wrote that even if shipments through the Strait of Hormuz restart, producers won't be able to quickly restore output.
With production offline and no clear signs that the conflict is easing, traders are being forced to factor in the risk of an extended disruption, he added.
"The bottom line is that, as long as we don't see oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices will only move higher," Patterson wrote.
José Torres, a senior economist at Interactive Brokers, told Business Insider last week that $100 would mark a true price shock for oil, leading to persistently high inflation and a possible down year for stocks. (The equity market already started feeling that pressure last week.)
Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer, Mike Wilson — one of the most bullish stock strategists on Wall Street — has also been eyeing $100 as the level where he'd lower his base-case scenario for stocks this year.
Market pros said last week that they expected more trouble as long as oil keeps rising.
"$120 for Brent, you're at zero growth. That's the trigger for a recession," Bruce Richards, the CEO of Marathon Asset Management, said last week. "That's what I believe. And I believe that's what the markets believe, although no one said it yet."
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Renowned investor Ross Gerber responded to Michael Saylor on Sunday after the Strategy Inc. Chair said the company is gearing to buy more Bitcoin.
Gerber replied to Strategy Chair Michael Saylor's X post, “The Second Century Begins,” implying that the company is gearing up for 100 more BTC acquisitions.
“Please buy my tokens,” Gerber teased Saylor in what seemed to be a cheeky jibe at Strategy's continued Bitcoin accumulation.
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As of writing, Strategy has unrealized losses of $6.3 billion on Bitcoin, the asset it has been buying with convertible debt and equity.
Moreover, Strategy's market valuation stands at $44.84 billion, while its Bitcoin holdings are valued at $48.28 billion. This means that the stock is trading at a discount to its net asset value.
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The MSTR stock has tumbled nearly 60% over the past six months and became one of the most shorted large-cap U.S. stocks last month.
But that hasn't deterred the company from halting its Bitcoin purchases. In fact, it has snapped up BTC every week since 2026 began, and recently marked its 100th purchase.
Saylor previously claimed that Strategy is "engineered" to endure an 80 to 90% drawdown and continue operating, describing its capital structure as “extremely robust.”
Photo courtesy: PJ McDonnell / Shutterstock.com
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Rad AI's award-winning artificial intelligence technology helps transform data chaos into actionable insights, enabling the creation of high-performing content with measurable ROI. Their Regulation A+ offering allows investors to participate at $0.85 per share with a minimum investment of $1,000, providing an opportunity to diversify portfolios into early-stage AI innovation. For investors seeking exposure to the rapidly growing AI and tech sector, Rad AI offers a chance to get in on the ground floor of a data-driven growth story.
Paladin Power is addressing the growing demand for energy independence with a fire-safe energy storage system that doesn't rely on lithium-ion batteries. Instead, its ESS uses non-lithium, solid-state graphene battery technology designed for durability, safety, and long service life—positioning it as an alternative to fire-prone storage solutions that dominate today's market. Since launching in 2023, Paladin has generated $185 million in contracted revenue, achieved strong year-over-year growth, and secured a manufacturing agreement with NYSE-listed Jabil. With systems already deployed across residential and commercial properties and a $500B global electrification market opportunity ahead, Paladin offers investors exposure to decentralized energy infrastructure backed by real contracts, U.S.-based manufacturing, and scalable next-generation technology.
Elf Labs is an IP-focused entertainment company built on a strategy that has powered giants like Disney and Marvel: ownership of globally recognized character IP. After more than a decade of rights acquisition, the company controls 500+ protected trademarks and copyrights tied to iconic characters including Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Peter Pan. This foundation has generated over $15 million in royalties, expanded licensing into 30+ countries, and supported development of 100+ product lines. With its Nasdaq ticker ($ELFS) reserved and valuation growth exceeding 1,600% in under two years, Elf Labs is now scaling distribution through patented production systems, global licensing, and streaming and mobile initiatives—offering investors exposure to a private entertainment company with a clear public-market trajectory.
Valley Center Wellness is setting a new benchmark in luxury behavioral health with its flagship facility in Corona, California. Designed as a private, resort-style wellness retreat on a 4.2-acre estate, the center combines discretion, comfort, and comprehensive care, offering patients private chefs, daily massages, acupuncturist sessions, and access to a pool, spa, gym, and basketball court. Focused on high-profile and affluent clients, Valley Wellness provides fully customized treatment plans outside the constraints of insurance, emphasizing long-term recovery, holistic wellness, and life-after-addiction strategies. Through its three-stage care model—including residential, outpatient, and transitional housing—patients experience continuity of care that supports lasting change. For investors, Valley Wellness has launched an equity crowdfunding opportunity, offering a way to participate in a fast-growing $42 billion behavioral health sector while gaining exposure to both high-end real estate and a premium healthcare business.
Immersed is a private, pre-IPO technology company operating at the intersection of AI, spatial computing, and remote work. Best known for building the most widely used productivity app on the Meta Quest platform, Immersed enables professionals and teams to work full-time in shared virtual environments across macOS, Windows, and Linux. The company is expanding beyond software with its own productivity-focused XR headset and AI tools, supported by partnerships with major technology firms including Meta, Samsung, and Qualcomm. Immersed is currently allowing retail investors to participate in its pre-IPO round, subject to eligibility and offering terms.
Backed by Jeff Bezos, Arrived Homes makes real estate investing accessible with a low barrier to entry. Investors can buy fractional shares of single-family rentals and vacation homes starting with as little as $100. This allows everyday investors to diversify into real estate, collect rental income, and build long-term wealth without needing to manage properties directly.
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.
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.
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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.
AdviserMatch is a free online tool that helps individuals connect with financial advisors based on their goals, financial situation, and investment needs. Instead of spending hours researching advisors on your own, the platform asks a few quick questions and matches you with professionals who can assist with areas like retirement planning, investment strategy, and overall financial guidance. Consultations are no-obligation, and services vary by advisor, giving investors a chance to explore whether professional advice could help improve their long-term financial plan.
This article Ross Gerber Says 'Buy My Tokens' As Michael Saylor Hints Strategy Will Accumulate More Bitcoin originally appeared on Benzinga.com
© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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Meanwhile, more than half of XRP's total supply is sitting at a loss.
XRP, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency and closely connected to Ripple, has increased nearly 5% in the last 24 hours to trade at $1.42, outpacing bitcoin, ethereum, and solana.
Traders are betting on XRP's price rising higher in March, with prediction market-implied odds of the token climbing above $1.50 rising to 67% on Tuesday, an increase from 50% yesterday.
(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)
Despite the recent spike, XRP is trading substantially below $2.26, the price when its spot ETFs launched in November 2025. “The XRP ETFs have actually held up pretty well despite the massive pullback in price. They've taken in a cumulative $1.4 billion since launch,” Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart wrote in a social media post.
Some of the largest holders of spot XRP ETFs include Goldman Sachs with an exposure level of $153.8 million, Millennium Management with $23.1 million, and Logan Strone Capital at $5.3 million, per Seyffart, citing data from Bloomberg Intelligence. “We only know a small portion of them [buyers/holders] because the vast majority don't file 13Fs,” Seyffart added.
Meanwhile, the percentage of XRP's supply not in profit sits at over 56%, data from blockchain analytics firm Glassnode shows.
“My view is that crypto ETFs are primarily an access vehicle, allowing traditional financial participants to gain exposure to digital assets. They are not, in themselves, a fundamental long-term driver of demand,” a Glassnode senior analyst, who maintains the pseudonymous X account CryptoVizArt, told Sherwood News.
“At most, they can act as a short-term catalyst for market momentum, largely by amplifying speculative interest, particularly from retail investors,” the analyst said. “Beyond that, ETFs should not be seen as a mechanism that guarantees sustained long-term demand.”
Elsewhere, Ripple's stablecoin, RLUSD, is nearing its all-time high in market capitalization at nearly $1.59 billion, an increase from $1.28 billion at the beginning of the year.
Amid the Iran war, bitcoin's recovery is “a fragile one,” with traders remaining cautious as the asset dips back below $70,000 early on Tuesday.
As “perps” expand to traditional finance, here's how the derivatives function, where risks lie, and how it differs from conventional futures contracts.
“The key signals to watch are ETF flows and derivatives positioning,” according to one analyst.
“ETH, as a token, is broken,” short seller Culper Research wrote in a report, likening the asset to Netscape and Nokia.
Options traders have been pessimistic about the recent rally, and are hedging against a fall to $60,000.
Cryptocurrencies are extending their advances on Tuesday as easing concerns about a potential oil supply shock improved risk sentiment across global markets.
The sentiment shift came after the International Energy Agency (IEA) said it would convene an extraordinary meeting of its member countries to consider releasing emergency oil reserves.
Bitcoin BTC$70,816.15 climbed above $71,500 for the first time since Thursday, before easing back to the current $71,300, up 3.2% over the past 24 hours. The broad market CoinDesk 20 Index was up by a similar amount, with XRP (XRP), DOGE$0.09453, SUI$0.9703 and Hyperliquid's native token (HYPE) leading gains among major crypto assets.
WTI crude oil extended its decline on the news, dropping to $82 after spiking to near $120 over the weekend. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were up roughly 0.5% at midday.
Most crypto-related stocks mirrored the advance. Stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) was up another 6%, now nearly 100% higher in two weeks, while digital asset infrastructure firm BitGo (BTGO) climbed more than 8% and blockchain firm Figure (FIGR) rallied 12%.
Since Nigel Farage was announced as joining U.K. bitcoin treasury firm Stack BTC (STAK) on Monday, that stock has surged more than 200%.
Bitcoin appears to be losing its correlation with the software stock ETF (IGV), as BlackRock's IBIT is up around 3% over the past 24 hours while IGV is down more than 2%.
However, over the past five days, IGV is up about 1.5% while IBIT is down roughly 2%, suggesting IBIT may still have some catching up to do if the correlation with software stocks is to re-establish itself.
A weakening correlation could also be notable, as it may signal bitcoin beginning to trade more independently from software and tech equities, potentially becoming a more uncorrelated asset during periods of macro uncertainty. While still outperforming gold and U.S. equities since the war began.
Zooming out, bitcoin's recent price action has been relatively resilient despite the ongoing macro turbulence, said James Harris, CEO of crypto yield platform Tesseract Group.
After briefly testing the low-$60,000 area, BTC recovered even as broader risk markets struggled with geopolitical uncertainty, he said. Meanwhile, ETF inflows have remained broadly supportive, while a sharp deleveraging earlier in the month helped clean up excessive positioning in derivatives markets.
The mix of washed-out sentiment, flushed-out leverage and support around the $66,000 zone suggests bitcoin may be entering a bottoming process, Harris said. However, downside risk persists as the crypto market remains fragile.
"If support in the mid-$60k area fails, we could easily see another test lower, but for now we remain cautiously optimistic on BTC," he said.
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The NFT ecosystem has evolved significantly since its early days of digital collectibles and profile pictures. Today, the most exciting projects are those that combine digital ownership with real utility and tangible benefits for holders. One such project entering the market is the AIntuition Collection, a carefully designed NFT ecosystem that aims to redefine how NFTs deliver value to their communities.
Available on OpenSea, the AIntuition Collection introduces a unique system where NFTs function not only as collectible assets but also as keys to a broader ecosystem of privileges, rewards, and exclusive opportunities.
The AIntuition Collection is intentionally limited to 15,000 NFTs, ensuring long-term scarcity and exclusivity for holders. However, the project is launching in phases to create sustainable growth and engagement within the community.
In Season One, only 5,000 NFTs will be made available for purchase. Each NFT is priced at 250 USDC, making participation accessible while still maintaining strong perceived value.
Instead of directly minting a specific rarity, buyers receive their NFT as a mystery “package” or chest. The rarity remains hidden until the holder decides to open it. Once opened, the NFT randomly reveals one of three rarity levels:
This gamified reveal system adds an exciting element of anticipation and discovery. Buyers never know exactly what they will receive until the chest is opened, creating an experience similar to opening a digital treasure box.
The process for joining the AIntuition ecosystem has been designed to be straightforward and familiar for anyone who has interacted with NFTs before.
To participate, users simply connect their crypto wallet to OpenSea and purchase one of the available NFT packages. After purchase, the holder can decide when to open the chest and reveal the NFT's rarity.
Once revealed, the NFT is automatically delivered to the holder's wallet. From there, the holder can link their wallet to their personal account within the AIntuition platform. This connection activates the privileges and benefits associated with that specific NFT.
The system is also designed with transparency and security in mind. A daily verification script checks whether the NFT is still present in the linked wallet. If the NFT is transferred or sold, the privileges associated with it are automatically disabled. This ensures that the benefits always remain tied to the rightful NFT holder.
While many NFT projects promise future utility, the AIntuition Collection focuses on delivering immediate, tangible benefits to its holders.
Each NFT rarity level unlocks a specific set of privileges inside the AIntuition ecosystem.
Bronze NFTs provide a strong entry point into the ecosystem and include:
These features are designed to ensure that even the base-tier NFT provides meaningful value and engagement within the platform.
Silver NFTs elevate the experience by adding enhanced services and higher token rewards:
This level introduces a more personalized experience, allowing holders to interact more directly with the ecosystem.
Gold NFTs represent the most exclusive tier within the collection, limited to only 500 units.
Gold holders receive premium benefits such as:
This tier is designed for users seeking deeper involvement and premium-level access within the project.
What makes the AIntuition Collection particularly interesting is its focus on utility-driven NFTs. Rather than relying solely on speculative value, the project ties NFT ownership directly to platform participation.
The inclusion of AIN tokens as part of the NFT benefits adds another layer to the ecosystem. Token rewards combined with platform privileges encourage holders to remain engaged with the project rather than simply trading the NFTs on secondary markets.
Additionally, the rarity structure naturally introduces a supply hierarchy that may create increased demand for the more limited Silver and Gold NFTs over time.
Community is one of the most powerful forces in Web3, and the AIntuition project recognizes this. Access to the private club across all NFT tiers ensures that every holder becomes part of a curated community.
Higher tiers deepen that engagement through personalized support and offline events. These real-world interactions help bridge the gap between digital assets and real human networks, something many Web3 projects strive to achieve.
By combining exclusivity, rewards, and community access, AIntuition positions its NFTs as more than digital collectibles—they become membership passes to a growing ecosystem.
As the NFT market matures, projects that deliver clear benefits and sustainable ecosystems are increasingly standing out from the crowd. The AIntuition Collection is designed with this new reality in mind.
With its limited supply, gamified rarity reveal, token rewards, and real platform privileges, the project offers a compelling example of how NFTs can function as both digital assets and access keys.
For collectors, investors, and Web3 enthusiasts looking for NFTs that combine ownership with real-world value, the AIntuition Collection represents a promising addition to the evolving NFT landscape.
As Season One begins with the release of the first 5,000 NFTs, the project opens the door for early participants to become part of what could grow into a unique and utility-driven Web3 community.
Disclaimer:
AMBCrypto's content is meant to be informational in nature and should not be interpreted as investment advice. Trading, buying or selling cryptocurrencies should be considered a high-risk investment and every reader is advised to do their own research before making any decisions.
© 2026 AMBCrypto
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Bitcoin crossed the 20 million circulating supply threshold early Tuesday morning, leaving fewer than one million coins remaining to be mined.
Despite many news outlets announcing this milestone on Monday, a historical deficit of roughly 518 permanently destroyed coins delayed the actual event until Tuesday morning. The 518 unspendable coins stem from early network anomalies. The pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto mined an unspendable 50 coins in the genesis block at the network launch. Furthermore, duplicate coinbase transactions overwrote another 100 coins during the earliest days of the cryptocurrency.
The #1 podcast for emerging tech stocks, Bitcoin, and weekly news analysis. Subscribe to the Blockspace Podcast here, on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Miners also permanently lost hundreds of coins by accidentally claiming less than their full block subsidy over the years. Consequently, these unspendable coins are permanently removed from the total issued supply.
Tyler Whittle discussed these early mining anomalies and protocol vulnerabilities in a February 2026 Blockspace podcast. Whittle outlined the history of the duplicate coinbases and the genesis block that originally created the 518 coin gap.
Bitcoin's to-be-mined supply is programmatically reduced roughly every four years in what is known as the halving. The halving mechanism dictates that the block reward will continue to reduce by 50% every 210,000 blocks. This issuance schedule ensures the remaining supply enters circulation at a consistently decreasing rate. The last halving – which will reduce the Bitcoin block subsidy to zero – is expected to occur around the year 2140.
Header image by Kanchanara via Unsplash.
Charlies Spears contributed reporting.
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The Ethereum Foundation is testing a method for running validators that could make it significantly easier for institutions holding large amounts of ether to set up staking infrastructure, widening the pool of participants and creating a more decentralized network.
In a post on X, blockchain co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the foundation is using a simplified version of distributed validator technology, or “DVT-lite,” to stake 72,000 ETH. The experiment aims to make running validators across multiple machines less complicated.
Buterin said the goal is to reduce the process to something close to a one-click setup, where operators choose which computers will run validator nodes, launch the software and enter the same key on each machine. The system would then automatically connect the nodes and begin staking.
“My hope for this project is that we can make it maximally easy and one-click to do distributed staking for institutions,” Buterin wrote.
Running Ethereum validators today typically means operating a single node that holds the key used to sign blocks and participate in the network. If that machine fails or goes offline, the validator can stop working and may be penalized.
Distributed validator technology (DVT) changes that by allowing multiple independent machines to collectively act as a single validator. Instead of relying on one key and one computer, several nodes work together and only a handful of them sign for the validator to function. That means the validator can keep operating even if some machines go down.
But existing DVT systems can be complicated to deploy because operators must coordinate networking, keys and communication between nodes. Buterin has previously argued that complexity is one reason large staking providers have come to dominate the ecosystem.
The “DVT-lite” setup aims to automate much of that process, making it easier for institutions to run distributed validators with minimal infrastructure expertise.
Buterin said he plans to use the system himself and hopes large ETH holders will adopt similar setups, helping spread control of Ethereum's staking infrastructure across more operators rather than concentrating it among a handful of professional providers.
“The idea that 'running infrastructure' is this scary, complicated thing where each person participating must be a 'professional' is awful and anti-decentralization, and we must attack it directly,” he wrote.
Read more: Vitalik Buterin proposes simpler ‘distributed validator' staking for Ethereum
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Republicans in the US Congress want to ban any possibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). To do so, they're threatening progress on a bipartisan housing bill.
A group of Republican members of the US House of Representatives wrote a letter dated March 6, expressing the “dire need to prohibit a Central Bank Digital Currency from ever happening in the United States.”
The letter cited familiar arguments claiming a CBDC would threaten financial privacy and grant the US Federal Reserve unprecedented financial surveillance powers.
Critics question why Republicans are so eager to ban a CBDC, particularly as other global economic centers like the European Union and China develop their own digital forms of money. Still, the Republicans are ready to pull support from a bipartisan housing bill to get their way.
Republicans hang CBDC ban on 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
Twenty-eight Republican representatives signed a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson. In it, they noted that the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill making its way through the Senate Banking Committee, contained a provision that would ban CBDCs.
But the lawmakers said it wasn't strong enough. The ban would sunset in 2030, they noted, adding that the new language does not prohibit the Fed from studying a CBDC, which a bill introduced last year by Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer sought to block.
The representatives demanded that both provisions be removed in the Senate before the bill reaches the House, claiming that a “prohibition on a Central Bank Digital Currency must be permanent.” If not, they threatened the success of the housing bill:
Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna said, “This will probably get nasty so I am telling everyone now. We would appreciate your air support on this.”
This move puts a still-niche and relatively unknown monetary question onto a bill that would at least nominally address concerns over housing affordability in the US.
According to a June 2025 survey from fintech firm Aevi, 61% of Americans haven't even heard of a CBDC. The number is even higher among older respondents, with over 70% of 55- to 64-year-olds having never heard of one.
Meanwhile, housing costs in the US are getting higher. Data from the Fed and the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index collated by LongtermTrends shows that a typical single-family home currently costs 7.14 times the median annual household income.
This is the highest home price-to-median household income ratio on record going back to the late 1940s, higher than at the height of the 2006 housing bubble.
Part of this is due to a supply squeeze. Homebuilding crashed after the 2008 financial crisis. This has continued to decline during the second Trump administration.
The new, bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act contains several proposals to make building new housing easier and therefore cheaper. This includes expedited environmental reviews and increased Federal Housing Administration family loan limits.
“The package includes the vast majority of the Senate's unanimously supported ROAD to Housing Act, incorporates bipartisan housing ideas from the House, and takes a good first step to rein in corporate landlords that are squeezing families out of homeownership,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement.
The presidential administration has already signaled its support of the bill, including a ban on CBDCs.
Holding up a housing affordability bill over a CBDC, something voters know very little about, may not play well, especially as President Donald Trump and Congress slip in the polls and the economy remains a central concern.
Does the US need a CBDC to ensure the dollar stays on top?
Republicans claim to be concerned about the privacy implications of a CBDC, and they aren't alone. Regarding the digital euro, the European Central Bank's planned CBDC, Luxembourg-based economist Elisabeth Krecké said that it's unclear how the tradeoff between privacy and functionality could be managed.
“The digital euro drafters simply assert that Europe's legal framework offers the ‘strongest privacy protections in the world,'” she said. “The real question is: What happens to the data in the end? Who will have access to it and, ultimately, who will control it?”
Democrats are far less skeptical of a CBDC than their Republican colleagues. Particularly as, according to Krecké, over 90% of the world's central banks are investigating the technology.
In a criticism of Emmer's early efforts to ban a CBDC, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said in a statement, ”When Republicans raise concerns about CBDCs they are talking about retail CBDCs, but because they are so averse to knowledge and studying things, they have no idea that their bill blocks research into other forms of digitizing the dollar that could truly cut costs for people.”
She added that with a functional and operating digital currency, China could provide an attractive alternative to the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Congress is still hammering out the details of the CLARITY Act, the long-awaited crypto framework bill, and now the future of a CBDC is being balanced with more affordable housing ahead of a midterm election.
Select market data provided by ICE Data Services. Select reference data provided by FactSet. Copyright © 2026 FactSet Research Systems Inc.Copyright © 2026, American Bankers Association. CUSIP Database provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. All rights reserved. SEC fillings and other documents provided by Quartr.© 2026 TradingView, Inc.
Republicans in the US Congress want to ban any possibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). To do so, they're threatening progress on a bipartisan housing bill.
A group of Republican members of the US House of Representatives wrote a letter dated March 6, expressing the “dire need to prohibit a Central Bank Digital Currency from ever happening in the United States.”
The letter cited familiar arguments claiming a CBDC would threaten financial privacy and grant the US Federal Reserve unprecedented financial surveillance powers.
Critics question why Republicans are so eager to ban a CBDC, particularly as other global economic centers like the European Union and China develop their own digital forms of money. Still, the Republicans are ready to pull support from a bipartisan housing bill to get their way.
Republicans hang CBDC ban on 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
Twenty-eight Republican representatives signed a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson. In it, they noted that the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill making its way through the Senate Banking Committee, contained a provision that would ban CBDCs.
But the lawmakers said it wasn't strong enough. The ban would sunset in 2030, they noted, adding that the new language does not prohibit the Fed from studying a CBDC, which a bill introduced last year by Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer sought to block.
The representatives demanded that both provisions be removed in the Senate before the bill reaches the House, claiming that a “prohibition on a Central Bank Digital Currency must be permanent.” If not, they threatened the success of the housing bill:
Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna said, “This will probably get nasty so I am telling everyone now. We would appreciate your air support on this.”
This move puts a still-niche and relatively unknown monetary question onto a bill that would at least nominally address concerns over housing affordability in the US.
According to a June 2025 survey from fintech firm Aevi, 61% of Americans haven't even heard of a CBDC. The number is even higher among older respondents, with over 70% of 55- to 64-year-olds having never heard of one.
Meanwhile, housing costs in the US are getting higher. Data from the Fed and the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index collated by LongtermTrends shows that a typical single-family home currently costs 7.14 times the median annual household income.
This is the highest home price-to-median household income ratio on record going back to the late 1940s, higher than at the height of the 2006 housing bubble.
Part of this is due to a supply squeeze. Homebuilding crashed after the 2008 financial crisis. This has continued to decline during the second Trump administration.
The new, bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act contains several proposals to make building new housing easier and therefore cheaper. This includes expedited environmental reviews and increased Federal Housing Administration family loan limits.
“The package includes the vast majority of the Senate's unanimously supported ROAD to Housing Act, incorporates bipartisan housing ideas from the House, and takes a good first step to rein in corporate landlords that are squeezing families out of homeownership,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement.
The presidential administration has already signaled its support of the bill, including a ban on CBDCs.
Holding up a housing affordability bill over a CBDC, something voters know very little about, may not play well, especially as President Donald Trump and Congress slip in the polls and the economy remains a central concern.
Does the US need a CBDC to ensure the dollar stays on top?
Republicans claim to be concerned about the privacy implications of a CBDC, and they aren't alone. Regarding the digital euro, the European Central Bank's planned CBDC, Luxembourg-based economist Elisabeth Krecké said that it's unclear how the tradeoff between privacy and functionality could be managed.
“The digital euro drafters simply assert that Europe's legal framework offers the ‘strongest privacy protections in the world,'” she said. “The real question is: What happens to the data in the end? Who will have access to it and, ultimately, who will control it?”
Democrats are far less skeptical of a CBDC than their Republican colleagues. Particularly as, according to Krecké, over 90% of the world's central banks are investigating the technology.
In a criticism of Emmer's early efforts to ban a CBDC, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said in a statement, ”When Republicans raise concerns about CBDCs they are talking about retail CBDCs, but because they are so averse to knowledge and studying things, they have no idea that their bill blocks research into other forms of digitizing the dollar that could truly cut costs for people.”
She added that with a functional and operating digital currency, China could provide an attractive alternative to the dollar as the global reserve currency.
Congress is still hammering out the details of the CLARITY Act, the long-awaited crypto framework bill, and now the future of a CBDC is being balanced with more affordable housing ahead of a midterm election.
Select market data provided by ICE Data Services. Select reference data provided by FactSet. Copyright © 2026 FactSet Research Systems Inc.Copyright © 2026, American Bankers Association. CUSIP Database provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. All rights reserved. SEC fillings and other documents provided by Quartr.© 2026 TradingView, Inc.
Kraken-linked tokenized equities platform xStocks plans to launch a rewards program aimed at traders liquidity providers and DeFi builders using its onchain stock tokens.
The initiative dubbed xPoints will track activity across supported trading venues and integrations. Participants can earn points by trading tokenized U.S. equities providing liquidity or using the assets in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
Points programs have become a common strategy in crypto to drive early usage of new platforms. In many cases projects later convert accumulated points into governance tokens or other ecosystem rewards. While xStocks has not announced a token yet, the initiative could pave the way for a potential token launch.
xStocks said the points program is meant to align long-term contributors with the growth of its ecosystem. Participants who accumulate points may gain access to future benefits tied to the platform once the program concludes though details have not been disclosed.
The move comes as tokenized equities have emerged as one of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto. The category now holds more than $1 billion in value locked, tripling in size over the past six months, RWA.xyz data shows.
xStocks said its tokenized stock offering has processed more than $25 billion in transaction volume during the eight months since launch and has expanded across several blockchain networks.
Traditional financial firms have also showing interest in tokenized stocks. Earlier this week, Nasdaq said it plans to work with Kraken to distribute tokenized versions of public stocks to investors outside the U.S., part of a broader push by the exchange operator to bring blockchain infrastructure into capital markets.
Read more: Tokenization still at start of hype cycle, but needs more use cases, specialists say
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Strategy (MSTR) has announced its biggest bitcoin buy since mid-January — before the cryptocurrency tumbled below $90,000, then $80,000, then $70,000. The largest corporate holder of bitcoin plunked down nearly $1.3 billion last week for 17,994 bitcoin at an average price of $70,946, including fees and expenses. MSTR stock edged up 0.2% early Tuesday, following Monday's 4.1% gain, while the…
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With bitcoin now trading below Strategy's average purchase price, questions have emerged about long-term viability.
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The behavior of the major market indexes and leading stocks provides the best way to navigate storms such as the Iran conflict. (AP)
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The fusion of cinematic grandeur and cutting-edge technology is transforming industries in unexpected ways. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the emerging world of crypto casinos. These platforms borrow heavily from the iconic style of classic spy thrillers such as Casino Royale, blending high-stakes excitement with the innovative power of blockchain. As crypto casinos continue to evolve, they are not only redefining gambling but also creating a niche where storytelling, technology, and entertainment converge. This trend highlights a broader cultural phenomenon, as established symbols of luxury and risk gain fresh life in the digital age, drawing in audiences hungry for experiences that blur the boundaries between film and finance.
Over the past few years, the casino industry has witnessed a dramatic shift. Traditional brick-and-mortar establishments are now sharing the stage with online platforms driven by blockchain technology. Crypto casinos have embraced a visual and thematic language reminiscent of Hollywood's opulent spy flicks. The imagery of suave agents, luxurious settings, and daring escapes creates an atmosphere that is both nostalgic and futuristic. Enthusiasts of the casino scene can find that crypto platforms offer a dual appeal: the chance to experience cutting-edge digital finance while indulging in a stylized narrative that celebrates the thrill of the gamble.
This cinematic approach is not merely superficial. Investors and patrons alike are drawn to the allure of a brand that promises both technological advancement and a hint of old-world glamour. Behind the glitz lies serious innovation: blockchain technology increases transparency, security, and speed in betting transactions. For a broader view of how blockchain is reshaping financial services, Morgan Stanley's insights on digital assets offer valuable context. The transformation is fueled by a desire to recreate the mesmerizing aura of classic films, where every deal, every roll of the dice, carries the weight of a high-stakes plot twist.
Technical advancements in blockchain have empowered online gambling platforms to offer unprecedented levels of trust and efficiency. These digital casinos leverage decentralized ledgers to provide secure, instantaneous transactions that appeal to modern gamblers. In the midst of this evolution, a detailed expert analysis on crypto casino sites offers insights into how these platforms compare in terms of bonuses, supported currencies, and safety protocols. The analysis underscores the fact that beyond the drama and cinematic appeal, there is a grounded, data-driven effort to enhance user experience through technological innovation.
The incorporation of animated visuals, interactive elements, and live-streamed events further underscores how crypto casinos are redefining online gaming. Operators are increasingly investing in high-quality software and immersive graphics that evoke the luxurious environments associated with film noir and classic espionage movies. This melding of art and technology not only attracts a diverse clientele but also encourages a culture of innovation where every betting experience feels like stepping onto a film set. The fusion of blockchain and betting creates an arena where transparency meets theatricality, driving both consumer confidence and excitement.
Moreover, the integration of smart contracts into the gambling process ensures that all conditions of bets are executed automatically and impartially. This move toward automation reduces the scope for human error or corruption, further cementing the credibility of crypto casinos in an industry historically prone to scrutiny. As a result, players can immerse themselves in a compelling narrative while benefiting from features that enhance both the security and fairness of their gaming experience.
As crypto casinos continue to gain popularity, market data shows a notable increase in digital asset adoption within the gambling sector. Financial institutions are beginning to acknowledge the disruptive nature of blockchain-based platforms. Research from major financial firms suggests that the drive toward digital assets is remodeling conventional finance, with sectors like online gambling rapidly converging with modern tech innovations.
Alongside financial trends, regulatory frameworks are also evolving to accommodate this new digital frontier. As blockchain and cryptocurrency enter mainstream markets, governing bodies are working to establish guidelines that ensure ethical operations and consumer protection. Trade publications and regulatory resources have stressed the importance of transparency and responsible implementation in the crypto space. When considering such factors, innovative platforms are required to navigate continuously shifting legal landscapes. The emphasis on fair play is crucial in preserving the reputation of all online betting platforms, particularly those that are now embracing Hollywood's flamboyant style to create a unique branding approach.
In parallel, community sentiment is playing a significant role in shaping the future of crypto casinos. Local investors and tech enthusiasts are taking a keen interest in the phenomenon, which has begun to permeate even smaller markets. Regional outlets have started to report on the ripple effects of these digital innovations across various industries. For example, in communities where technology and innovation are celebrated, such platforms offer both entertainment and economic potential. An article on Deloitte's Media and Entertainment Industry Outlook discusses how technological shifts in media are creating synergies between entertainment and emerging tech sectors, much like the fusion seen in crypto casinos.
The local impact of these innovations is palpable. As residents of the Gila Valley witness rapid changes in both global and local technology trends, awareness is growing about how digital finance and online platforms are reshaping the entertainment landscape. In this context, community news sources play an essential role in informing and educating the public about these transformative trends. Whether it's through detailed reporting or in-depth features, there is a clear mandate for transparency and informed discussion among community stakeholders. Local coverage of issues such as online scams targeting digital transactions serves as a timely reminder of why security and due diligence remain paramount both in everyday digital commerce and in the crypto casino space.
Beyond the financial and regulatory aspects, crypto casinos also set an example of how innovation can revitalize traditional industries. The blend of glamorous storytelling and robust technical infrastructure illustrates that the most successful business models often lie at the intersection of creativity and functionality. As the industry matures, operators are increasingly held accountable for their practices, not only by investors and regulators but also by a well-informed consumer base. The growing demand for responsible gambling practices, coupled with advanced digital technologies, ensures that the evolution of crypto casinos will continue to be a closely watched phenomenon.
In conclusion, the transformation of the gambling world through blockchain technology is more than just a trend it is a reflection of a broader cultural and economic shift. The infusion of cinematic aesthetics reminiscent of Casino Royale adds a layer of narrative depth that enhances the overall experience. As crypto casinos build on the legacy of Hollywood glamour while embracing modern financial instruments, they are setting new standards for how digital entertainment can be experienced in the 21st century. With market insights from financial experts and evolving regulatory practices, the future of crypto casinos appears poised for sustainable and dynamic growth, offering audiences around the world a thrilling glimpse into the convergence of film, finance, and technology.
March 10, 2026March 10, 2026
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Key Takeaways
Tom Lee says crypto may be exiting a “mini crypto winter.”
Bitmine increased its Ethereum accumulation. On-chain data still signals weak sentiment.
Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said the crypto market may be nearing the end of a “mini crypto winter,” even as investor sentiment around Ethereum remains weak.
His comments came as Bitmine disclosed it had purchased another $120 million in Ethereum, increasing its already sizable holdings as the price surged slightly over the past week.
In a March 9 press release, Lee said Ethereum's recent price behavior suggests the market could be approaching a turning point after months of volatility and macroeconomic pressure.
“Ethereum prices showed resilience this week, in the face of rising war concerns and surging oil prices,” Lee said.
Lee cited analysis from Bitmine advisor Tom DeMark of DeMark Analytics, who said Ethereum's price pattern in 2026 is closely tracking historical movements of the S&P 500 during the fall of 2011 and the market crash of 1987.
According to Lee, the correlations with those historical trajectories stand at 89% and 93%, respectively.
If the comparison holds, he said Ethereum could bottom between March 8 and March 14, slightly below the recent low of about $1,740.
Despite the uncertain environment, Bitmine has continued accumulating Ethereum, with Lee saying the company has increased the pace of its purchases.
“As the adage goes, nobody ‘rings the bell at the bottom,' and therefore Bitmine's strategy is to now slightly increase its pace of ETH accumulation,” Lee said.
Over the past week, the company bought 60,976 ETH, compared with roughly 45,000 to 50,000 ETH per week in recent purchases.
The company now holds roughly $9.21 billion worth of ETH, representing more than 3.75% of the token's total supply.
Of that amount, about $6.18 billion is staked, equivalent to more than 2.5% of Ethereum's total supply.
While Lee is increasing exposure to Ethereum, some analysts say on-chain data suggests market sentiment remains fragile.
CCN analyst Abiodun Oladokun said indicators tracking investor behavior point to weakening demand, particularly among U.S. traders.
“On-chain data paint a consistently bearish picture for ETH,” Oladokun said.
According to CryptoQuant, Ethereum's Coinbase Premium Index — which measures the price difference between Coinbase and Binance — has trended downward since March 4 and currently sits below zero at about -0.0087.
The metric is widely used as a gauge of U.S. investor demand.
When the index is positive, Ethereum trades at a premium on Coinbase, signaling stronger buying pressure from U.S. investors. A negative reading indicates the opposite.
Oladokun said the current negative level suggests profit-taking or waning interest among U.S. buyers.
“The decline in American demand, amid heightened macro uncertainty, removes key buying pressure from the market, leaving the altcoin more exposed to further downside,” he said.
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The post Tom Lee Claims 'Mini Crypto Winter Almost Over' as Bitmine Buys $120M Ethereum Amid Rising Price appeared first on ccn.com.
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America rejected CBDCs — but stablecoins can still freeze your digital dollars and coordinate with government enforcement.
Also known as "Akiba," Liam Wright is a reporter, podcast producer, and Editor-in-Chief at CryptoSlate. He believes that decentralized technology has the potential to make widespread positive change.
Washington has ruled out a retail Federal Reserve digital dollar in legal form. At the same time, the stablecoin regime now taking shape can normalize freeze, block, reject, and temporary hold functions across private dollar tokens and, increasingly, tokenized financial assets.
Back in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring agencies from establishing, issuing, or promoting a U.S. central bank digital currency.
That made the politics plain: Washington wanted to be seen as anti-CBDC.
But the policy stack that followed points in another direction.
In July 2025, the GENIUS Act created a federal framework for permitted stablecoin issuers that requires anti-money-laundering programs, sanctions compliance, suspicious-activity monitoring, and the technical ability to block, freeze, reject, or prevent transfers when a lawful order demands it.
That does not mean America already has a CBDC by stealth. A stablecoin remains a private liability rather than a direct claim on the central bank.
The current system also lacks a single national ledger, a universal state wallet, or evidence of a federal plan to force households onto a Fed-run retail money stack.
The most disruptive part of $FRNT may be the precedent: the idea that “public money” can be built locally.
But is Washington rejecting the label while building a regulated system of private digital dollars that can deliver some of the same control functions in practice?
The gap between legal identity and user experience is where the main policy question now sits.
That question has been visible in state politics for more than a year.
Several states have enacted anti-CBDC measures, though the evidence supports a narrower formulation than saying states broadly “banned” them.
Florida moved in 2023 to exclude CBDCs from treatment as money under its UCC framework.
Wyoming's 2025 legislative findings laid out the core civil-liberties case in unusually direct language: a CBDC could centralize financial data, strengthen the link between household spending and the state, and make some purchases easier to restrict.
That language is useful because it sets the benchmark. The live question is whether regulated stablecoins can produce some of the same outcomes without direct Federal Reserve issuance.
The federal government has already started answering part of that question.
A July 30, 2025 White House report said a “unique feature” of stablecoins is that issuers can coordinate with law enforcement to freeze and seize assets.
The same report urged Congress to consider a digital-asset-specific hold law that would give institutions a safe harbor if they temporarily and voluntarily hold assets during short investigations into suspected theft or fraud.
At the same time, the report also backed self-custody and lawful peer-to-peer transfers without a financial intermediary.
The policy design is multi-layered.
It pairs permissionless rhetoric at the edges with explicit control tools at the center of the regulated dollar layer.
Garantex claims Tether's actions could endanger broader Russian USDT assets amidst sanctions row.
The GENIUS framework hardened that direction from policy recommendation into law.
The statute says permitted stablecoin issuers must have the technical capability, policies, and procedures to block, freeze, and reject specific or impermissible transactions and to comply with lawful orders.
It defines those orders broadly enough to include commands to seize, freeze, burn, or prevent the transfer of payment stablecoins, so long as the order identifies the relevant accounts or coins and is reviewable.
Foreign-issued payment stablecoins offered in the U.S. must also be able to comply.
That makes the current U.S. position internally coherent: no retail CBDC, and a private digital-dollar sector with embedded enforcement hooks.
One case study captures the contradiction better than any abstract argument.
A company co-owned by the president of the United States has its own stablecoin. World Liberty Financial's website confirms Trump and family affiliates have a major economic interest in the venture, while BitGo serves as the official issuer and custodian of USD1.
The token's risk disclosures state that BitGo can deny access to certain addresses, freeze USD1 temporarily or permanently if it believes an address is tied to illegal activity or terms violations, report information to law enforcement, comply with legal orders, and block transfers to or from specific on-chain addresses.
The politics say “anti-CBDC.” The operating documents, however, contain powers that CBDC critics often warn about. And that pattern extends beyond a single Trump-linked token.
Circle's USDC risk factors say Circle can block certain addresses, freeze USDC temporarily or permanently, report to law enforcement, and comply with legal orders.
Tether's January 2026 USA₮ launch for the U.S. market stressed in its announcement that the token is not legal tender and is not government-issued or government-guaranteed.
That distinction remains important. The operational point, though, is already settled.
Freeze-capable stablecoins exist now.
Binance joins T3+ program to enhance real-time crime prevention in the crypto space.
The policy debate has moved on to whether those powers remain targeted enforcement tools or become normal features of the dominant digital-dollar stack.
The size numbers help show scale, and their composition adds needed context.
The White House put fiat-backed stablecoins at $238 billion as of July 14, 2025, in its July report. Current market data now show roughly $313 billion. That is a large jump in less than a year.
Yet the usage picture is more restrained than the top-line totals suggest.
A 2026 BCG report estimated that while on-chain stablecoin transfers exceed $62 trillion annually, only about $4.2 trillion reflects real economic activity.
The balance is still tied to trading, treasury management, and other crypto-market plumbing.
The rail is strategically important. It is not yet the default checkout lane for the U.S. consumer economy.
That nuance is exactly why the medium-term debate carries so much weight.
Stablecoins are no longer a niche product, and they are still some distance from becoming a universal household payment tool.
Citi's April 2026 research projects stablecoin issuance could reach $1.9 trillion by 2030 in its base case and $4.0 trillion in its bull case.
It also sees transaction activity approaching $100 trillion in the base case and $200 trillion in the bull case, assuming high velocity.
Those are not trivial extrapolations as they imply that today's design choices around lawful-order compliance, freezes, and temporary holds could apply to a much larger share of digital-dollar activity by the end of the decade.
The wider frame also reaches beyond payment stablecoins.
In December 2025, DTCC said it had received SEC no-action relief to offer a tokenization service for select DTC-custodied assets in a controlled production environment, with rollout expected in the second half of 2026.
The eligible assets include major U.S. equities, ETFs, and Treasuries.
The accompanying FAQ emphasizes wallet registration, governance, observability, resilience, and compliance-aware token features.
That widens the frame from “Can a stablecoin be frozen?” to “How much of the tokenized financial stack is being built around the same compliance logic?”
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Once cash equivalents, collateral, fund interests, and Treasury exposure move onto rails designed for identity-aware access and lawful-order intervention, the boundary between private and public control can get blurry for end users.
The issuer may be private. The custodian may be private. The venue may be private. Yet the conditions attached to movement can still reflect public-policy priorities in fine detail.
That is the functional-convergence argument in its strongest form. It does not depend on saying stablecoins are CBDCs.
Money-like instruments and tokenized assets can increasingly share the same tools for screening, pausing, reversing, or denying transfers.
There is still a serious counterargument, and it should be stated plainly.
The Bank for International Settlements argued in its 2025 annual report that tokenization is transformative while expressing doubt that stablecoins will become the mainstay of the monetary system.
It pointed instead toward tokenized central bank reserves, commercial bank money, and government bonds as more durable building blocks.
Citi made a related point from the market side. Its 2030 report says bank tokens could process $100–$140 trillion in transaction volume by 2030 and may appeal to corporates because privacy on public chains remains a major problem.
Add FedNow's 2025 payment totals, and the picture looks less like stablecoin monopoly and more like a plural system with multiple rails competing for different use cases.
The base case is regulated private dollars rather than an American retail CBDC.
In that path, the United States keeps the anti-CBDC posture, scales a supervised stablecoin sector under the GENIUS framework, and leaves room for self-custody, peer-to-peer transfers, FedNow, and other forms of tokenized money to coexist.
Freezes remain targeted and legally framed rather than universal.
The system still becomes more comfortable with intervention than many CBDC critics expected from a supposedly private model.
The key shift is cultural as much as legal: blocking, freezing, and short-duration holds start to look less like exceptional measures and more like standard features of regulated digital-dollar infrastructure.
The more optimistic path is easy to describe.
Competition preserves escape valves.
Self-custody protections remain meaningful.
Peer-to-peer transfers stay lawful.
Privacy tools improve.
Institutional flows split among stablecoins, bank tokens, and other permissioned settlement media instead of forcing retail users into one dominant compliant token stack.
In that version, the United States gets more digital dollars without collapsing them into one state-shaped grid.
Bitcoin also keeps a cleaner lane. It remains the large digital asset with no issuer, no freeze key, and no lawful-order switch at the protocol layer, while stablecoins keep serving as the compliant dollar edge of crypto.
The downside case is subtler and probably more realistic than any cinematic “Fed wallet” scenario. The legal authorities stay formally narrow, while the operating culture expands.
The White House report already says issuers can coordinate with law enforcement to freeze and seize assets and recommends a hold law so institutions can temporarily pause funds during short investigations.
On paper, that is about scams, sanctions, fraud, and stolen assets.
In practice, the risk is mission creep: broader wallet screening, more frequent temporary holds, more aggressive readings of suspicious activity, and rising pressure on issuers and exchanges to act first and let users sort it out later.
The result still would not be a CBDC in legal form. It could start to feel like CBDC-style control in daily use.
The cleanest conclusion follows from that setup.
America is not launching a retail CBDC.
It is, however, building a private dollar system in which some of the control functions that critics fear in CBDCs are already present and may become more common as stablecoins grow and tokenization spreads.
The next policy fight is over limits: how broad a lawful order can be, how long a temporary hold can last, what due process exists when a freeze is mistaken, and whether self-custody remains a real alternative as the regulated digital-dollar layer gets larger.
Those questions will decide whether the United States ends up with a genuinely plural digital money system or a private version of the same controls it says it rejects.
Switch categories to dive deeper or gain broader context.
The most disruptive part of $FRNT may be the precedent: the idea that “public money” can be built locally.
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America rejected CBDCs — but stablecoins can still freeze your digital dollars and coordinate with government enforcement.
Also known as "Akiba," Liam Wright is a reporter, podcast producer, and Editor-in-Chief at CryptoSlate. He believes that decentralized technology has the potential to make widespread positive change.
Washington has ruled out a retail Federal Reserve digital dollar in legal form. At the same time, the stablecoin regime now taking shape can normalize freeze, block, reject, and temporary hold functions across private dollar tokens and, increasingly, tokenized financial assets.
Back in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring agencies from establishing, issuing, or promoting a U.S. central bank digital currency.
That made the politics plain: Washington wanted to be seen as anti-CBDC.
But the policy stack that followed points in another direction.
In July 2025, the GENIUS Act created a federal framework for permitted stablecoin issuers that requires anti-money-laundering programs, sanctions compliance, suspicious-activity monitoring, and the technical ability to block, freeze, reject, or prevent transfers when a lawful order demands it.
That does not mean America already has a CBDC by stealth. A stablecoin remains a private liability rather than a direct claim on the central bank.
The current system also lacks a single national ledger, a universal state wallet, or evidence of a federal plan to force households onto a Fed-run retail money stack.
The most disruptive part of $FRNT may be the precedent: the idea that “public money” can be built locally.
But is Washington rejecting the label while building a regulated system of private digital dollars that can deliver some of the same control functions in practice?
The gap between legal identity and user experience is where the main policy question now sits.
That question has been visible in state politics for more than a year.
Several states have enacted anti-CBDC measures, though the evidence supports a narrower formulation than saying states broadly “banned” them.
Florida moved in 2023 to exclude CBDCs from treatment as money under its UCC framework.
Wyoming's 2025 legislative findings laid out the core civil-liberties case in unusually direct language: a CBDC could centralize financial data, strengthen the link between household spending and the state, and make some purchases easier to restrict.
That language is useful because it sets the benchmark. The live question is whether regulated stablecoins can produce some of the same outcomes without direct Federal Reserve issuance.
The federal government has already started answering part of that question.
A July 30, 2025 White House report said a “unique feature” of stablecoins is that issuers can coordinate with law enforcement to freeze and seize assets.
The same report urged Congress to consider a digital-asset-specific hold law that would give institutions a safe harbor if they temporarily and voluntarily hold assets during short investigations into suspected theft or fraud.
At the same time, the report also backed self-custody and lawful peer-to-peer transfers without a financial intermediary.
The policy design is multi-layered.
It pairs permissionless rhetoric at the edges with explicit control tools at the center of the regulated dollar layer.
Garantex claims Tether's actions could endanger broader Russian USDT assets amidst sanctions row.
The GENIUS framework hardened that direction from policy recommendation into law.
The statute says permitted stablecoin issuers must have the technical capability, policies, and procedures to block, freeze, and reject specific or impermissible transactions and to comply with lawful orders.
It defines those orders broadly enough to include commands to seize, freeze, burn, or prevent the transfer of payment stablecoins, so long as the order identifies the relevant accounts or coins and is reviewable.
Foreign-issued payment stablecoins offered in the U.S. must also be able to comply.
That makes the current U.S. position internally coherent: no retail CBDC, and a private digital-dollar sector with embedded enforcement hooks.
One case study captures the contradiction better than any abstract argument.
A company co-owned by the president of the United States has its own stablecoin. World Liberty Financial's website confirms Trump and family affiliates have a major economic interest in the venture, while BitGo serves as the official issuer and custodian of USD1.
The token's risk disclosures state that BitGo can deny access to certain addresses, freeze USD1 temporarily or permanently if it believes an address is tied to illegal activity or terms violations, report information to law enforcement, comply with legal orders, and block transfers to or from specific on-chain addresses.
The politics say “anti-CBDC.” The operating documents, however, contain powers that CBDC critics often warn about. And that pattern extends beyond a single Trump-linked token.
Circle's USDC risk factors say Circle can block certain addresses, freeze USDC temporarily or permanently, report to law enforcement, and comply with legal orders.
Tether's January 2026 USA₮ launch for the U.S. market stressed in its announcement that the token is not legal tender and is not government-issued or government-guaranteed.
That distinction remains important. The operational point, though, is already settled.
Freeze-capable stablecoins exist now.
Binance joins T3+ program to enhance real-time crime prevention in the crypto space.
The policy debate has moved on to whether those powers remain targeted enforcement tools or become normal features of the dominant digital-dollar stack.
The size numbers help show scale, and their composition adds needed context.
The White House put fiat-backed stablecoins at $238 billion as of July 14, 2025, in its July report. Current market data now show roughly $313 billion. That is a large jump in less than a year.
Yet the usage picture is more restrained than the top-line totals suggest.
A 2026 BCG report estimated that while on-chain stablecoin transfers exceed $62 trillion annually, only about $4.2 trillion reflects real economic activity.
The balance is still tied to trading, treasury management, and other crypto-market plumbing.
The rail is strategically important. It is not yet the default checkout lane for the U.S. consumer economy.
That nuance is exactly why the medium-term debate carries so much weight.
Stablecoins are no longer a niche product, and they are still some distance from becoming a universal household payment tool.
Citi's April 2026 research projects stablecoin issuance could reach $1.9 trillion by 2030 in its base case and $4.0 trillion in its bull case.
It also sees transaction activity approaching $100 trillion in the base case and $200 trillion in the bull case, assuming high velocity.
Those are not trivial extrapolations as they imply that today's design choices around lawful-order compliance, freezes, and temporary holds could apply to a much larger share of digital-dollar activity by the end of the decade.
The wider frame also reaches beyond payment stablecoins.
In December 2025, DTCC said it had received SEC no-action relief to offer a tokenization service for select DTC-custodied assets in a controlled production environment, with rollout expected in the second half of 2026.
The eligible assets include major U.S. equities, ETFs, and Treasuries.
The accompanying FAQ emphasizes wallet registration, governance, observability, resilience, and compliance-aware token features.
That widens the frame from “Can a stablecoin be frozen?” to “How much of the tokenized financial stack is being built around the same compliance logic?”
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Once cash equivalents, collateral, fund interests, and Treasury exposure move onto rails designed for identity-aware access and lawful-order intervention, the boundary between private and public control can get blurry for end users.
The issuer may be private. The custodian may be private. The venue may be private. Yet the conditions attached to movement can still reflect public-policy priorities in fine detail.
That is the functional-convergence argument in its strongest form. It does not depend on saying stablecoins are CBDCs.
Money-like instruments and tokenized assets can increasingly share the same tools for screening, pausing, reversing, or denying transfers.
There is still a serious counterargument, and it should be stated plainly.
The Bank for International Settlements argued in its 2025 annual report that tokenization is transformative while expressing doubt that stablecoins will become the mainstay of the monetary system.
It pointed instead toward tokenized central bank reserves, commercial bank money, and government bonds as more durable building blocks.
Citi made a related point from the market side. Its 2030 report says bank tokens could process $100–$140 trillion in transaction volume by 2030 and may appeal to corporates because privacy on public chains remains a major problem.
Add FedNow's 2025 payment totals, and the picture looks less like stablecoin monopoly and more like a plural system with multiple rails competing for different use cases.
The base case is regulated private dollars rather than an American retail CBDC.
In that path, the United States keeps the anti-CBDC posture, scales a supervised stablecoin sector under the GENIUS framework, and leaves room for self-custody, peer-to-peer transfers, FedNow, and other forms of tokenized money to coexist.
Freezes remain targeted and legally framed rather than universal.
The system still becomes more comfortable with intervention than many CBDC critics expected from a supposedly private model.
The key shift is cultural as much as legal: blocking, freezing, and short-duration holds start to look less like exceptional measures and more like standard features of regulated digital-dollar infrastructure.
The more optimistic path is easy to describe.
Competition preserves escape valves.
Self-custody protections remain meaningful.
Peer-to-peer transfers stay lawful.
Privacy tools improve.
Institutional flows split among stablecoins, bank tokens, and other permissioned settlement media instead of forcing retail users into one dominant compliant token stack.
In that version, the United States gets more digital dollars without collapsing them into one state-shaped grid.
Bitcoin also keeps a cleaner lane. It remains the large digital asset with no issuer, no freeze key, and no lawful-order switch at the protocol layer, while stablecoins keep serving as the compliant dollar edge of crypto.
The downside case is subtler and probably more realistic than any cinematic “Fed wallet” scenario. The legal authorities stay formally narrow, while the operating culture expands.
The White House report already says issuers can coordinate with law enforcement to freeze and seize assets and recommends a hold law so institutions can temporarily pause funds during short investigations.
On paper, that is about scams, sanctions, fraud, and stolen assets.
In practice, the risk is mission creep: broader wallet screening, more frequent temporary holds, more aggressive readings of suspicious activity, and rising pressure on issuers and exchanges to act first and let users sort it out later.
The result still would not be a CBDC in legal form. It could start to feel like CBDC-style control in daily use.
The cleanest conclusion follows from that setup.
America is not launching a retail CBDC.
It is, however, building a private dollar system in which some of the control functions that critics fear in CBDCs are already present and may become more common as stablecoins grow and tokenization spreads.
The next policy fight is over limits: how broad a lawful order can be, how long a temporary hold can last, what due process exists when a freeze is mistaken, and whether self-custody remains a real alternative as the regulated digital-dollar layer gets larger.
Those questions will decide whether the United States ends up with a genuinely plural digital money system or a private version of the same controls it says it rejects.
Switch categories to dive deeper or gain broader context.
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BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), the largest corporate holder of Ethereum (ETH) worldwide, announced on Monday that it had made a significant new purchase of nearly 61,000 ETH.
BitMine Holds 3.7% Of Total Ethereum Supply
BitMine's latest transaction, comprising 60,976 Ethereum tokens, marks the company's largest weekly acquisition in terms of tokens so far in 2026. Following this acquisition, BitMine's total ETH holdings have risen to 4.5 million tokens.
Notably, BitMine now holds around 3.76% of the total Ethereum supply, positioning itself over 75% of the way toward its ambitious target dubbed the “Alchemy of 5%” within just eight months.
In addition to its cryptocurrency holdings, BitMine disclosed that it has 3,040,483 ETH staked, which is valued at approximately $6 billion based on an ETH price of $1,965 at the time of the company's disclosure.
The firm's total assets, including cash and other cryptocurrencies, have reached $10.3 billion, comprising 4.535 million ETH tokens, $1.2 billion in cash holdings, and various other crypto assets.
As Ethereum prices stabilize above the crucial $2,000 support level, CEO Tom Lee highlighted the resilience of ETH amidst rising geopolitical tensions and increasing oil prices.
Final Stages Of ‘Mini-Crypto Winter'
Lee commented on the current market conditions, expressing confidence that crypto prices are entering the final stages of what he referred to as a “mini-crypto winter.”
Ethereum prices showed resilience this week, in the face of rising war concerns and surging oil prices. We continue to believe that crypto prices are in the late/final stages of the ‘mini-crypto winter.
Lee also noted that ETH price movements are tracking trends observed in the S&P 500 during the falls of 2011 and 1987. According to analyses from BitMine's advisor, Tom DeMark of DeMark Analytics, these historical connections show correlations of up to 89% and 93% with the S&P 500's behavior during those periods.
The analyst also predicts that Ethereum prices are likely to reach their lowest point between 8 and 14 March, potentially dipping just below the recent low of $1,740. This could equate to a decline of around 14% from current trading prices.
Lee also added that BitMine's strategy involves slightly increasing the pace of its ETH accumulation, enhancing its recent buying activity from an average of 45,000 to 50,000 ETH per week to the latest purchase of 60,976 ETH.
On Monday, Ethereum experienced a 4% gain, allowing the token to reclaim the $2,000 mark after a brief dip below that key level over the weekend. Concurrently, BitMine's stock, BMNR, also showed positive movement, trading at $20.70 per share at the time of writing, marking a significant 10% rally for the company.
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Select market data provided by ICE Data Services. Select reference data provided by FactSet. Copyright © 2026 FactSet Research Systems Inc.Copyright © 2026, American Bankers Association. CUSIP Database provided by FactSet Research Systems Inc. All rights reserved. SEC fillings and other documents provided by Quartr.© 2026 TradingView, Inc.
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XRP Ledger is evolving as a hub for institutional DeFi, with XRP central to liquidity, settlement, and seamless cross-asset transactions.
RippleX enhances XRPL infrastructure, enabling auto-bridging, efficient liquidity flow, and institutional financial services using XRP as core asset.
Markus Infanger, SVP RippleX, says the XRP Ledger is gradually developing into infrastructure for institutional decentralized finance, with XRP positioned at the center of liquidity and settlement.
Infanger discussed the idea in a Podcast shared by BankXRP on X, describing XRP as a connecting layer within blockchain-based financial systems.
“I see XRP as the glue that connects liquidity and settlement,” Infanger said.
Infanger explained that XRP functions as the native asset powering the XRP Ledger. The token is used for transaction fees and reserve requirements across the network, making it fundamental to how the system operates.
Because of this structure, XRP plays a direct role in maintaining network activity and facilitating transfers between participants. According to Infanger, the ledger was designed so that value movement and liquidity functions rely on the same underlying asset.
“XRP is the native asset of the XRP Ledger, and it powers all the fees and reserves on the network,” he said.
Ripple's developer arm, RippleX, focuses on building tools and infrastructure that expand the financial capabilities of the ledger while keeping XRP at the center of transaction activity.
He further dived into another feature, which is the ledger's built-in auto-bridging system. This mechanism allows XRP to act as an intermediary asset when converting between different currencies or tokens.
Through this process, transactions can move across liquidity pools even if a direct trading pair does not exist.
“Auto-bridging allows liquidity to connect across assets and markets through XRP,” Infanger said, describing how the feature helps route transactions efficiently.
Infanger also pointed to ongoing development around institutional lending on the ledger. RippleX has been working on financial tools designed to allow institutions to access credit and liquidity directly through blockchain infrastructure.
These features aim to position the XRP Ledger as a network where payments, liquidity management, and financial services operate within a single system.
As Infanger summarized in the discussion, the broader vision is to create a network where settlement and liquidity are closely linked through XRP.
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XRPL offers settlement, liquidity, and lending infrastructure, letting institutions access secure blockchain-based financial services.
Yes, XRP Ledger enables instant, low-cost cross-border transfers using XRP as a liquidity bridge between currencies.
With auto-bridging, credit tools, and liquidity management, XRPL is becoming a full-scale institutional DeFi platform.
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Non-fungible token lending platform Gondi has vowed to compensate users affected in a Monday exploit during which the attacker stole roughly $230,000 worth of NFTs from the protocol.
According to a post-incident update, Gondi confirmed that an exploit of its “Sell & Repay contract” allowed an attacker to withdraw roughly $230,000 worth of escrowed NFTs from the protocol. The contract allows borrowers to sell escrowed NFTs and subsequently repay outstanding loans on the platform.
An updated version of the contract was deployed on Feb. 20, but Gondi did not clarify how the vulnerability was exploited.
The exploit did not impact any other parts of the protocol, and the platform has paused the contract as it works on a fix while other services remain operational.
“All users who interacted with this contract and were impacted have been contacted directly by our team,” Gondi wrote. In a subsequent update, the protocol said it plans on making affected users whole by purchasing comparable items from the same collection.
“While not the exact same piece, we believe this is a fair and meaningful resolution and are coordinating directly with each owner,” it added.
Gondi has since been reviewed by the team at Blockaid and an independent auditor, who have concluded that the protocol is safe to use.
According to Blockaid, the attacker started selling some of the stolen NFTs after the exploit. As of the last update, Gondi said that the attacker's wallet still contained some of the stolen NFTs while the remainder was sold to “innocent buyers who had no knowledge of the exploit.”
“We reached out to each of them directly and asked for their help in returning the items to their rightful owners,” it added.
Meanwhile, at least four NFTs were recovered and returned by the NFT community, including Aluminum Gazer, Servant of the Muse, Doodle, and Lil Pudgy.
The platform said it was using its protocol fees to buy back recovered items and compensate affected users.
The Gondi exploit marks the second attack in two weeks. As previously reported by crypto.news, Bitcoin-focused DeFi platform Solv Protocol was exploited late last week, allowing the hacker to drain roughly $2.7 million worth of funds from one of its token vaults.
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India's central bank (RBI) proposed linking BRICS nations' digital currencies (CBDCs) as a strategy for financial resilience and risk management, not a direct challenge to the U.S. dollar. Amid global financial tensions and sanctions, the initiative aims to enhance trade and payment continuity. Significant technical, regulatory, and governance hurdles suggest this will be a gradual, exploratory process, tempering expectations of an immediate impact on dollar dominance.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is exploring ways to link central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) among BRICS nations. This move is intended as a strategy for better financial resilience and managing risks, not as a direct move against the U.S. dollar's dominance. The goal is to strengthen cross-border payments against geopolitical pressures, especially as financial systems are increasingly used as tools in global disputes. The initiative focuses on making international transactions more efficient and continuous, aiming to reduce risks without expecting the dollar's immediate collapse, acknowledging the complexities of global finance.Why Now: Geopolitics and Payment Security
The global financial system faces increasing geopolitical friction, sanctions, and the use of economic policy as a weapon. This context makes the RBI's proposal for BRICS CBDC interoperability crucial for payment system resilience. Financial infrastructure has increasingly become an instrument of state policy, pushing nations to reconsider their reliance on single currencies and payment systems. The main driver for this initiative is to ensure trade and payments continue smoothly, even under difficult circumstances. Digital currencies offer a way to bypass traditional dollar-based banking networks and messaging systems like SWIFT, which can be affected by geopolitical pressures. While lower transaction costs and faster settlements are potential advantages, the primary goal is to reduce risks from depending too heavily on existing dominant financial channels.Global CBDC Trend and Dollar's Role
This BRICS initiative is part of a wider global exploration of CBDCs, with 134 countries researching digital currencies, covering 98% of global GDP. Many, including BRICS members, are in pilot or development phases. However, a direct BRICS CBDC link is still conceptual. The strategy involves using existing bilateral deals and national payment systems, like India's UPI and China's CIPS, rather than creating a single unified currency. Efforts to reduce reliance on the dollar have been ongoing for decades but have progressed slowly, mainly due to the dollar's deep liquidity and market access. Today's geopolitical climate, with increased sanctions and asset freezes, strengthens the desire to diversify payment channels. Yet, the dollar's strong position in global finance, trade, and reserves remains a significant factor. The growth of regional payment systems and CBDCs is seen more as a way to gain control over financial infrastructure than as immediate dollar replacements. Projects like mBridge, involving several countries, show a practical approach to cross-border payments using multiple CBDCs.Challenges to BRICS CBDC Interoperability
Despite the strategic goals, major obstacles question the immediate effectiveness and scale of a BRICS CBDC link. The main difficulty is the technical and governance complexity of making different national CBDC systems work together. Significant challenges include creating shared technical standards, clear governance rules, policies for data location, privacy protections, and strict anti-money laundering (AML) compliance. The RBI itself stresses that this is an exploratory effort, noting that digital settlement alone doesn't fix international payment issues without support mechanisms like swap lines. Globally, CBDC adoption is still in its early stages, with many countries experiencing slow uptake due to low awareness, trust issues, and a preference for existing payment methods. There's also a risk of trading dollar dependence for dependence on another system, potentially creating new vulnerabilities or concentrating risk within a different bloc. Some critics argue that existing financial systems could be improved to address many of the issues CBDCs aim to solve, questioning their necessity. The global financial system is resilient, and any move away from the dollar is expected to be slow, especially since there isn't a single, universally accepted alternative currency. Furthermore, initiatives seen as direct challenges to the dollar's central role could face diplomatic scrutiny or retaliatory measures.Long-Term Vision: Financial Autonomy
The BRICS CBDC interoperability proposal reflects a long-term strategy for greater financial autonomy and resilience in a more fragmented global economy. While it's unlikely to disrupt dollar dominance immediately, the ongoing exploration of such initiatives shows emerging economies are persistent in diversifying payment methods and reducing geopolitical financial risks. Future discussions at BRICS summits are expected to remain technical and measured, focusing on building stronger digital infrastructure rather than immediate major monetary shifts. The trend suggests a move towards a multipolar financial system with diverse payment systems and more local-currency settlements, driven by technological progress and evolving global economic management.
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Blockchain.com announced today that it is officially expanding into Ghana, marking the latest step in its strategy to deepen its presence across Africa following strong performance in Nigeria.
This follows the company's retail launch in Nigeria early last year, where it established a base in Lagos and said it achieved over 700% growth in brokerage transaction volume. The most traded assets in Nigeria were USDT, BTC, and TRX, according to a press release.
"Our growth in Nigeria over the past year has demonstrated the immense potential for digital assets across the African region," said Owen Odia, general manager of Africa at Blockchain.com. Africa represents our mission to make financial services available to everyone globally. We are building for a long-term future by developing new infrastructure, investing in local talent, and creating region-specific products tailored to local needs."
The cryptocurrency brokerage firm also cited significant organic growth in Ghana before the formal launch. Over the past year, the platform recorded a 140% increase in active users from Ghana and an 80% rise in transaction volume, the release said.
Blockchain.com said it plans to scale to additional African markets in the coming periods, citing opportunities in stablecoins and digital assets that can improve cross-border settlement efficiency, reduce remittance costs, and support emerging digital commerce ecosystems across West Africa.
Blockchain.com's expansion in Africa is part of the firm's growing global footprint. Last month, the company secured registration from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which enabled it to deliver brokerage, custodial, and institutional-grade crypto services in the UK. This came a few months after Blockchain.com scored its EU MiCA license. The firm is also reportedly planning to go public in the U.S. this year.
Since 2011, Blockchain.com has processed more than $1.2 trillion in crypto transactions, created over 90 million wallets, and verified more than 40 million users, according to its statement.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.
© 2026 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
🐳 According to centralized exchange whale data, major coin transfers to centralized exchanges have include a pair of Ethereum transfers to OKX worth $33.9M and $34.4M, respectively. Our data also indicates several major stablecoin moves to exchanges, which does hint at the potential of whale buying in the near future.
🧐 Monitor the assets seeing large whale transfers to centralized exchanges with this helpful Santiment dashboard here!
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The photochemistry of UV-irradiated liquid water underlies many physical, chemical, and biological processes, with the formation of the hydrated electron as a central event. Despite extensive experimental and theoretical efforts, its microscopic origin remains incompletely understood. Using excited state molecular dynamics simulations of photoexcited liquid water, we resolve the sequence of chemical events leading to hydrated electron formation on the excited state. The excitation localizes on specific hydrogen-bond network defects, followed by two competing pathways. The first produces a hydrogen atom and undergoes ultrafast non-radiative decay to the ground state within 100 femtoseconds. The other proceeds via proton-coupled electron transfer, generating hydronium ions, hydroxyl radicals, and an excited state hydrated electron. This mechanism is driven by ultrafast coupled rotational and translational motions of water molecules, forming water-mediated ion-radical pairs that persist on picosecond timescales and influence visible emission. These results provide a unified framework for interpreting time-resolved spectroscopic observations and guide future experimental and theoretical investigations.
All data generated in this study, including ESMD trajectories, cube files for representative pathways, geometries for the water dimer, input files for all calculations, and scripts for the analysis of spin density, have been deposited in the Zenodo database (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17714130). Source data are provided with this paper.
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G.D.M., D.D. and A.H. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 101043272 - HyBOP). The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. G.D.M., C.M. and A.H. also acknowledge MareNostrum5 (project EHPC-EXT-2023E01-029) for computational resources. C.J.M. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division, Chemical Physics and Interfacial Sciences Program, FWP 16249.
Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics, The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy
Gonzalo Díaz Mirón, Solana Di Pino, Diganta Dasgupta & Ali Hassanali
SISSA – Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Trieste, Italy
Cesare Malosso & Diganta Dasgupta
Laboratory of Computational Science and Modeling, IMX, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Cesare Malosso
Initiative for Computational Catalysis, Flatiron Institute, New York, USA
Colin K. Egan
Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA
Christopher J. Mundy
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Christopher J. Mundy
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G.D.M. and A.H. conceived and designed the research. C.M. performed the ground state MLIP simulations, and G.D.M. carried out the ESMD simulations. G.D.M., S.D.P., C.K.E., and D.D. performed the data analysis. G.D.M., C.J.M., and A.H. contributed to the interpretation and discussion of the results. G.D.M. and A.H. wrote the original manuscript with input from all authors. All authors discussed the findings and contributed to the final version of the manuscript.
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Díaz Mirón, G., Malosso, C., Di Pino, S. et al. Simulating the Photochemical Birth of the Hydrated Electron in Liquid Water.
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Solar-driven interfacial evaporation is a promising solution to address global freshwater scarcity, with woody biomass-based evaporators standing out for their sustainability and cost-effectiveness. However, current woody biomass-based systems often suffer from inefficient water management and suboptimal photothermal performance. Herein, we develop a dual-function lignin-engineered reconstituted wood framework strategy, achieving both compositional and structural optimization of woody biomass to enhance its evaporation performance via water management and thermal management. By partially retaining and reconfiguring lignin within the woody biomass framework, a higher fraction of loosely bound “intermediate water” with reduced evaporation enthalpy is generated while preserving the water-pumping capability. Concurrently, the extracted lignin is upcycled via laser-induced graphitization into a broadband photothermal layer composed of hierarchical graphene/graphitic carbon structures with solar absorptivity exceeding 95%. This synergistic design results in the E-150 solar evaporator, which achieves an evaporation rate of 2.24 kg m⁻² h⁻¹ and a photothermal conversion efficiency of 91.52% under one-sun irradiation, surpassing most reported wood-based evaporators. Moreover, the retained lignin sustains multiscale channel integrity, imparting strong salt resistance, high recyclability, and robust purification capabilities. This integrated biomass valorization strategy provides a scalable, low-cost, and eco-friendly route for high-performance solar desalination and sustainable water-energy applications.
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper, the Supplementary Information, or from the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22308029) (X. S.), the Knowledge Innovation Program of Wuhan-Basi Research (2023020201010072) (C. C.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (691000003) (C. C.), and the 5·5 Engineering Research & Innovation Team Project of Beijing Forestry University (No. BLRC 2023B05) (T. Y.). Additionally, the authors appreciate the assistance of the Innovation Platform for High-Value Utilization of Forest Resources at Beijing Forestry University. We thank Insight Vision for their professional assistance in creating the three-dimensional rendering for Fig. 1.
These authors contributed equally: Bin Wang, Yanrong He, Zhihao Yang.
State Key Laboratory of Efficient Production of Forest Resources, Beijing Key Laboratory of Lignocellulosic Chemistry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China
Bin Wang, Yanrong He, Zhihao Yang, Qian Sun, Xipeng Zhang, Xiaojun Shen, Jia-Long Wen & Tong-Qi Yuan
Hubei Biomass-Resource Chemistry and Environmental Biotechnology Key Laboratory, School of Resource and Environmental Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Chaoji Chen
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T.Y., C.C., X.S., and B.W. conceived the concept, processing, and structure details. B.W., Y.H., and Z.Y. performed the design and preparation of the evaporator. B.W. and Y.H. carried out the evaporation test. B.W., Y.H., and Z.Y. co-wrote the manuscript. T.Y., C.C., and X.S. supervised the work and revised the manuscript. J.W. provided guidance on the structural analysis of lignocellulose. Q.S. provided assistance in the enthalpy of the evaporation test of water. X.Z. participated in large-scale sample preparation and outdoor evaporation tests. All authors commented on the submitted version of the manuscript.
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Although social-media influencers often show elaborate skincare routines, dermatologists recommend simple steps for most people. Credit: Getty
Over the past five years, dermatologist Rajani Katta has noticed a change in the people who come into her office. Their skincare routines have been getting more complicated — some stretching to 12 steps — and often involve products that they found through social media, many of which don't have a lot of scientific backing.
The science influencers going viral on TikTok to fight misinformation
The science influencers going viral on TikTok to fight misinformation
They didn't realize that some of those products were doing damage to their skin, says Katta, who specializes in sensitive skin and allergies at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “People are much more likely to experiment on themselves” than they have been in the past, she says.
Globally, there seems to be more interest in skincare than ever before, with the industry expected to generate more than US$200 billion worldwide in 2026. Social-media platforms such as TikTok seem to be a main driver of the hot pursuit of youthful, glowing skin, with hashtags such as #SkinTok generating more than one billion views per month. The platforms have helped to kick-start a wave of skincare trends, from using beef tallow as a moisturizer to achieving ‘glass skin' — a smooth, shiny complexion — using dozens of pricey products. They're also rife with harmful misinformation, such as the false claim that sunscreens cause skin cancer and vitamin-D deficiency.
For most people, the recipe for maintaining healthy skin should be simple and follows guidelines that dermatologists have offered for years. But it's not just about what one puts on or takes off one's skin. There's plenty of evidence that lifestyle factors are important — arguably more important — than products and daily rituals for keeping skin healthy. Often, the recommendations from physicians about skin run counter to what is circulating on social media.
What's more, new research is elucidating the connections between the skin and other organ systems, and it has become clear that keeping skin healthy has effects far beyond one's outward appearance, says Mao-Qing Man, a dermatologist at Hebei Medical University in Shijiazhuang, China. “Skin health is important for overall health,” he says.
The skin is the body's suit of armour, acting as the first line of defence against the constant barrage of threats from the outside world, including pathogens, chemicals and ultraviolet radiation. “It has a lot of different dimensions,” says Daniel Kaplan, a dermatologist who focuses on immunology at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
Skin is made up of three main layers: the hypodermis (bottom), dermis (middle) and epidermis (top). The epidermis constantly churns out fresh skin cells to replace the roughly 40,000 dead skin cells that the body sheds every day.
The outermost layer of the epidermis is the stratum corneum, more commonly known as the skin barrier. This waterproof shield is made of corneocytes — flat, dead cells filled with the protein keratin. These tough cells are surrounded by lipids called ceramides, which lock in moisture and keep invaders out of the skin.
The outer layer of the skin and its natural oils form a protective barrier.Credit: Thierry Berrod, Mona Lisa Production/SPL
Although biology textbooks often compare the skin barrier to a brick wall, it's more like a thriving ecosystem of physical, chemical, microbial and immune functions, says Peter Lio, a dermatologist who specializes in eczema at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “Our skin barrier is incredibly dynamic and complex,” he says.
But, it's also “pretty easy to screw it up”, Lio says. For instance, some popular cosmetic procedures, such as chemical peels — which temporarily remove the outer layers of the skin to reduce wrinkles and acne scars — can cause lasting harm to the skin barrier and result in chronic sensitivity if done incorrectly or too frequently. “The skin does have powerful abilities to regenerate”, but some treatments can override that, says Katta.
The surprisingly big health benefits of just a little exercise
The surprisingly big health benefits of just a little exercise
Common signs of a compromised skin barrier include persistent dryness, itchiness and redness, along with acne and infection. This damage can increase a person's risk of developing more chronic skin conditions, such as atopic dermatitis, psoriasis and even allergies, says Katta. It can also make it easier for pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that can cause abscesses and, in more severe cases, blood infections, to slip past the barrier.
A common mistake that many people make at home is overusing harsh soaps, detergents and astringents — liquids that shrink body tissues by drawing water out of them, says Kaplan. These substances, which include alcohol and witch hazel, can be useful for removing excess oil, make-up and acne-causing bacteria. But they can also strip away the natural oils that keep the skin barrier intact in the first place, adds Kaplan.
The barrier also has an acid mantle — a thin, filmy layer of oils, fatty acids and amino acids — which helps to keep the skin stable and creates the conditions needed for a healthy microbiome to flourish (see ‘A home for beneficial bacteria'). Wiping out lipids with harsh products raises pH levels. This, in turn, weakens the community of beneficial microorganisms and enables pathogenic types to flourish. Taking scalding hot showers is another way to damage the skin barrier, says Tamia Harris-Tryon, a physician scientist who studies the skin microbiome at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “If it's hot enough to clean your pots and pans of oil, it will clean your body of natural oils,” she says.
Source: go.nature.com/4rigfrx
Children as young as nine years old are becoming more interested in skincare products and multistep routines, says Lio. Whereas gentle cleansers, moisturizers and sunscreen are generally safe for kids, potent serums and anti-ageing products for mature skin can wreak havoc on younger skin, he says.
The American Academy of Dermatology recommends washing the face twice a day with a gentle cleanser, applying a moisturizer and — during the day — putting on sunscreen and protective clothing.
Over the long term, few things are worse for the skin than overexposure to UV radiation, either through natural sunlight or tanning beds, says Elsemieke Plasmeijer, a dermatologist and epidemiologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. UV radiation is the leading cause of melanoma — the deadliest form of skin cancer. In 2022, almost 60,000 people died from melanoma, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer.
The two main types of UV radiation that reach Earth's surface — UVA and UVB —affect the skin in different ways. UVA causes damage in the dermis by triggering oxidative stress and breaking down collagen and elastin — proteins that provide tissues with structure and flexibility. Meanwhile, UVB only reaches the epidermis, but causes sunburn and DNA damage that can lead to skin cancer. A 2019 study found that both types of UV radiation disrupt a protein that helps cells to stick together in the skin barrier1. This resulted in weaker bonds between corneocytes, leading to a less resilient skin barrier.
Stress is wrecking your health: how can science help?
Stress is wrecking your health: how can science help?
Sunbathing on the beach for hours isn't the only way to get too much UV radiation. In December, Pedram Gerami, a dermatologist who specializes in skin cancer at Northwestern University, and his colleagues reported that people who use indoor tanning beds were three times more likely to get melanoma than those who don't use them2. They were more likely to have multiple melanomas, even in parts of the body that usually have low levels of Sun damage, such as the thighs.
The indoor tanning industry often argues that tanning beds are safer than natural sunlight because they emit more UVA than they do DNA-damaging UVB light. But this claim is often false, says Gerami. “The amount of UVA is about 10 to 15 times higher than the UVA outside,” he says. The WHO classifies tanning beds as a human carcinogen in the same category as asbestos and cigarette smoke.
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The development of stable Ru-based anodes for acidic proton exchange membrane water electrolysis is promising, but strictly limited by Ru over-oxidation and structural collapse due to lattice oxygen participation under high current densities. Rational design of competitive Ru-based catalyst is, thereby, highly desired. Here, by exploring a customized self-assembly route, we report a type of mesoporous Ru-Ti-O solid solution catalyst delivering competitive performance (1 A cm-2 for over 450 h at 0.4mgRucm-2). Mechanistic investigations reveal that the enhanced performance arises from the integration of atomic-scale electronic structure tuning and mesoscopic triple phase interface engineering. The electron delocalization forms a conductive network and suppresses Ru overoxidation through electron donation. Atomically dispersed Ru-O-Ti motifs favor the oxygen pathway mechanism over the lattice oxygen mechanism, suppressing lattice oxygen release and enhancing structural stability. Simultaneously, the ordered mesoporous architecture and radially aligned nanorod bundles establish a robust, super-hydrophilic triple phase interface, enabling effective water and gas exchange and mitigating concentration overpotentials. This cross-scale design strategy offers a possible route to non-Ir catalysts with measurable activity and long-term durability for scalable acidic water electrolysis.
The source data generated in this study are provided in the Source Data file. Source data are provided with this paper.
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This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFB4000202), National Natural Science Foundation of China (22375108), Technology Breakthrough Engineering Hydrogen Energy Field “Unveiling and Leading” Project (2024KJTW0018), Young Top-notch Talents Program of Inner Mongolia (Q202501), Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia (2026JQYX06), Junma Program of Inner Mongolia University. L.Z. acknowledges the support from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. We also thank the BL17B1 and BL05U station at Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) for the help in characterizations, and staff members of the BL01B beamline at National Facility for Protein Science in Shanghai (https://cstr.cn/31129.02.NFPS) for technical support in data collection and analysis.
These authors contributed equally: Jun-Ye Zhang, Kaihang Yue, Yuqi Zhao.
College of Energy Materials and Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, PR China
Jun-Ye Zhang, Yuqi Zhao, Rongyao Li, Wendi Wang, Lu Liu, Jialong Li, Kun Lan & Dongyuan Zhao
Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, PR China
Jun-Ye Zhang, Kaihang Yue, Yanjie Hu, Lu Liu & Dongyuan Zhao
Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, PR China
Kaihang Yue & Ya Yan
Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, PR China
Yuqi Zhao, Qixuan Li, Hao Zhao, Lianhai Zu & Hui Yang
Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China
Zhe Xu
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J.Z., K.Y., and Y.Z. contributed equally to this work. K.L., L.Z., and D.Z. conceived and supervised this project. J.Z. and Y.Z. performed the material synthesis and most of the structural characterizations. J.Z., Y.Z., R.L., and L.Z. carried out and analyzed electrochemical experiments. K.Y., Y.Y., and Z.X. performed and analyzed in-situ characterizations and simulations. R.L., Q.L., Y.H., W.W., L.L., J.L., H.Z., and H.Y. assisted with some structural characterizations and analyses. J.Z., L.Z., and K. L. cowrote the paper. All authors discussed and commented on the manuscript.
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Lianhai Zu, Kun Lan or Dongyuan Zhao.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Communications thanks Lifang Jiao and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
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Researchers have identified a 90 million year old fossil that helps solve a long standing mystery about a strange group of prehistoric animals. The discovery was led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities scientist Peter Makovicky along with Argentine paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguía.
Their findings, published in the peer reviewed journal Nature, describe a nearly complete skeleton of Alnashetri cerropoliciensis. This dinosaur belonged to a peculiar group of bird like theropods called alvarezsaurs. These animals are known for their tiny teeth and unusually short arms that end in a single enlarged thumb claw.
For decades, scientists struggled to understand this group because most well preserved fossils had been discovered in Asia. Fossils from South America were often incomplete, leaving major gaps in the evolutionary story.
Patagonia Discovery Provides a Crucial Specimen
The almost complete Alnashetri fossil was uncovered in 2014 in northern Patagonia, Argentina, at a fossil rich site famous for exceptionally preserved Cretaceous animals. The species had originally been named several years earlier based on fragmentary remains, but the new skeleton provided a far clearer view of the animal's unusual body structure.
Preparing the specimen was a slow and careful process. Over the past decade, researchers meticulously cleaned and assembled the delicate bones to prevent damage to the small and fragile skeleton.
"Going from fragmentary skeletons that are hard to interpret, to having a near complete and articulated animal is like finding a paleontological Rosetta Stone," said Peter Makovicky, lead author of the study and a professor in the University of Minnesota Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. "We now have a reference point that allows us to accurately identify more scrappy finds and map out evolutionary transitions in anatomy and body size."
The fossil is providing scientists with valuable insight into how this lineage of dinosaurs evolved, became smaller, and spread across ancient continents.
Insights Into the Evolution of Tiny Dinosaurs
The skeleton reveals that Alnashetri differed from its later relatives in several ways. It had longer arms and larger teeth, showing that some alvarezsaurs had already evolved very small body sizes before developing the specialized features that later species used for what scientists believe was an "ant-eating" diet.
Microscopic examination of the bones also showed that the animal was fully grown and at least four years old. These dinosaurs rank among the smallest known non avian dinosaurs, and they remained small throughout their lives. Even the largest members of the group only reached about the size of an average human, which is tiny compared with most dinosaurs. Alnashetri itself weighed less than 2 lbs, making it one of the smallest dinosaurs discovered in South America.
By studying additional alvarezsaur fossils preserved in museum collections across North America and Europe, the team also found evidence that these animals appeared much earlier than scientists previously believed. Their widespread distribution likely occurred when the continents were still connected as the supercontinent Pangaea. The later breakup of Earth's landmasses explains how the animals became scattered across the globe rather than migrating across oceans.
Fossil Site Continues To Reveal Ancient Life
The well preserved skeleton came from the La Buitrera fossil area, a location that has produced many scientifically important discoveries. Previous finds from the site include early snakes and small saber toothed mammals.
"After more than 20 years of work, the La Buitrera fossil area has given us a unique insight into small dinosaurs and other vertebrates like no other site in South America," said Apesteguía, a researcher at Universidad Maimónides in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Scientists are still actively studying fossils from the same region, and more discoveries may soon add to the story of these unusual dinosaurs.
"We have already found the next chapter of the alvarezsaurid story there, and it is in the lab being prepared right now," added Makovicky.
International Research Team and Support
The research involved an international collaboration of scientists. In addition to Makovicky and Apesteguía, the team included Jonathan S. Mitchell from Coe College in Iowa; Jorge G. Meso and Ignacio Cerda from Instituto de Investigación, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro and Museo Provincial; and Federico A. Gianechini from Instituto Multidisciplinario de Investigaciones Biológicas de San Luis.
Funding for the research was provided by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), The Field Museum, National Geographic, University of Minnesota, United States National Science Foundation and the Fulbright U.S. Scholar program.
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Imagine removing everything from the deepest regions of cosmic voids. Take away ordinary matter, neutrinos, dark matter, cosmic rays, and radiation. What remains appears to be nothing but empty space. It may sound contradictory, but these enormous voids are filled with the vacuum of spacetime. And importantly, that vacuum is not truly nothing.
The vacuum of spacetime contains something fundamental. It is difficult to describe precisely with everyday language, but physicists refer to these underlying ingredients as quantum fields. In quantum field theory, the particles that make up our world such as electrons, top quarks, neutrinos, and even dark matter are not independent objects in the usual sense. What we call a particle is actually a visible expression of something deeper.
These deeper structures are the fields themselves. Every type of particle has a corresponding field. These fields permeate every cubic centimeter of space and time. They have existed since the big bang and extend throughout the entire universe.
When we observe a particle, such as an electron moving through space, we are really detecting a ripple or vibration in its underlying field. The particle is a traveling excitation of that field. Even if all particles were removed, the fields would still remain.
Vacuum Energy and the Origin of Dark Energy
These fields also contain energy. Because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, the vacuum cannot be completely devoid of energy. When physicists attempt to calculate how much energy exists in empty space, the results can range from extremely large values to theoretically infinite ones…which is also another episode.
What matters is that this vacuum energy produces a measurable effect. That effect is known as "dark energy," the name scientists use to describe the accelerated expansion of the universe.
Observations show that the actual amount of vacuum energy is relatively small, though it is not zero. In most environments across the universe, its influence is negligible. Regions filled with matter completely dominate the local behavior of space.
Here on Earth, for example, matter is so dense that dark energy has no noticeable impact. If dark energy suddenly vanished, everyday physics would remain unchanged. The path of a thrown baseball would be identical. Your burrito would still cook in the microwave at exactly the same rate. Nothing about daily life would be different.
Where Dark Energy Dominates the Universe
The same situation applies across much of the cosmos. Galaxies, galaxy clusters, filaments, and walls of the cosmic web are all regions packed with matter. In these environments, dark energy plays almost no role.
Cosmic voids are different.
Voids are enormous regions where matter is largely absent. In these areas, the vacuum of space-time itself becomes the dominant influence. If you could place yourself in the middle of a cosmic void, you would effectively be surrounded by dark energy.
In fact, voids are where dark energy carries out its most important work. The accelerated expansion of the universe does not occur inside dense regions such as galaxies or clusters. Instead, it takes place within the vast empty voids.
Cosmic Voids Are Expanding
Cosmic voids are not just empty gaps between structures in the universe. They are actively growing. As dark energy pushes space outward, the voids expand and press against the surrounding cosmic web.
Over immense spans of time, this process gradually pulls the universe's large-scale structure apart. The intricate network of galaxies, clusters, and filaments that astronomers see today will not last forever. Over the next 5-10-20 billion years the exact number doesn't matter the cosmic web will slowly fade as expanding voids stretch everything farther apart.
Why Empty Space Is Never Truly Empty
In that sense, cosmic voids are far from empty. They are filled with the subtle energy of quantum fields. That energy influences the entire universe by driving its accelerating expansion.
Voids are the only regions where this effect becomes dominant, precisely because they contain almost nothing else.
So yes, cosmic voids are empty of matter. That is how astronomers identify and measure them. But their lack of matter means they are filled with dark energy.
Wherever you travel in the universe, whether to a nearby galaxy or to the deepest interior of the emptiest void, you will never truly be alone.
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Hard masks with high etch selectivity are essential for fabricating high-aspect-ratio nanostructures via deep and anisotropic plasma etching. While most two-dimensional materials are susceptible to plasma damage, we report that van der Waals metal oxyhalides, specifically CrOCl and FeOCl, exhibit extraordinary resistance to aggressive SF6/O2 plasma, far surpassing conventional hard mask materials. CrOCl achieves etch rates as low as ~2.4 nm min−1 and an etch selectivity >200:1 relative to silicon, representing improvements of ~30× over Si3N4, ~2.3× over Al2O3 and ~20× over TiN under identical conditions. CrOCl maintains subnanometre surface roughness after etching, even exhibiting plasma-induced surface smoothening. Beyond its inherent etch resistance, CrOCl can be chemically patterned using Cl2 plasma and mechanically transferred onto a broad range of substrates, including perovskite oxides, polymers, glasses and monolayer two-dimensional semiconductors, enabling patterning on materials that are typically incompatible with conventional hard masks. Using CrOCl masks, we demonstrate deep silicon etching with aspect ratios exceeding 39:1 and minimal feature distortion. These findings establish van der Waals metal oxyhalides as a versatile and scalable platform for next-generation nanofabrication, combining extreme plasma robustness, high-resolution patternability and broad substrate compatibility in one material system.
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We thank S. Miller and G. Lavallee for their discussions and insights on this study. We thank B. Liu for providing valuable suggestions regarding the SEM images taken for this Article. We acknowledge funding support from the NSF under NSF Career (grant no. ECCS-2042154), NSF Fuse (grant no. ECCS-2328741), the ONR (grant no. N00014-24-1-2565) and the ARO (grant no. W911NF-23-1-0279) (all four to S.D.). Z.S. was supported by ERC-CZ programme (project LL2101) from the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (MEYS) and by the project Advanced Functional Nanorobots (reg. no. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000444 financed by the ERDF). V.M. was supported by project LUAUS23049 from MEYS. V.M. was supported by project LUAUS23049 from Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (MEYS). Z.S. acknowledges the assistance provided by the Advanced Multiscale Materials for Key Enabling Technologies project, supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic, project no. CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004558, co-funded by the European Union. L.D. and Y. Y. acknowledge support from the NSF CAREER award (DMR-2145455).
These authors contributed equally: Pranavram Venkatram, Ziheng Chen.
Engineering Science and Mechanics, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA
Pranavram Venkatram, Ziheng Chen, Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay, Lei Ding, Yang Yang & Saptarshi Das
Materials Characterization Lab, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA
Bob Hengstebeck
Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
Vlastimil Mazanek & Zdenek Sofer
Nuclear Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA
Yang Yang
Electrical Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA
Yang Yang & Saptarshi Das
Materials Science and Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA
Saptarshi Das
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S.D. conceived the idea. P.V., Z.C. and S.D. designed the experiments, analysed the data, discussed the results and agreed on their implications. K.M. helped with the AFM measurements. V.M. and Z.S. grew the CrOCl crystals. L.D. performed the STEM characterization and analysis under the supervision of Y.Y. B.H. helped with the XPS measurements and analysis. All authors contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.
Correspondence to
Saptarshi Das.
The authors declare no competing interests.
Nature Materials thanks Ralu Divan, Aaron Stein and the other, anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.
Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
(a) Optical images of three representative CrOCl flakes selectively etched by masking specific regions to compare surface roughness between protected and exposed areas. (b) Corresponding roughness distributions showing a consistent decrease in surface roughness after etching relative to the pre-etch state. (c) Grouped bar plots of the median roughness for each flake further confirm that surface roughness decreases systematically post-etch, supporting the correlation between etching and surface morphology evolution in CrOCl.
(a) Overview of the CrOCl hard mask structure, highlighting both the etched and unetched regions. The vertical yellow dashed line denotes the interface between the two regions, with the unetched region on the left and the etched region on the right. The two horizontal markers indicate the respective heights of the CrOCl hard mask before and after etching. (b-c) High-resolution STEM images of the unetched and etched regions of the CrOCl hard mask, respectively, corresponding to the areas outlined by the two boxes in (a). (d-e) Corresponding STEM-EDX maps acquired from the unetched and etched regions for CrOCl, respectively.
(a) Raman spectroscopy, along with corresponding optical microscopy images, was conducted on a FeOCl flake before and after plasma exposure. The results exhibit negligible spectral changes, indicating minimal structural modification. (b) Shows the high-resolution XPS analysis of the Fe 2p and O 1 s core levels, evaluate chemical alterations induced by the plasma process. Additionally, XPS measurements of the F 1 s core level revealed the incorporation of fluorine species, suggesting the formation of non-volatile fluorinated by-products on the flake surface. (c) RMS surface roughness of the FeOCl flake pre- and post-plasma treatment measured by AFM. In contrast to CrOCl, a noticeable increase in surface roughness was observed following plasma exposure. (d) Optical images of three representative FeOCl flakes selectively etched by masking specific regions to compare surface roughness between protected and exposed areas. (e) Corresponding roughness distributions showing a consistent increase in surface roughness after etching relative to the pre-etch state. (f) Grouped bar plots of the median roughness for each flake further confirm that surface roughness increases systematically post-etch, supporting the correlation between etching and surface morphology evolution in FeOCl.
(a) Overview of the FeOCl hard-mask structure, highlighting both the etched and unetched regions. The vertical yellow dashed line denotes the interface between the two regions, with the etched region on the left and the unetched region on the right. (b-c) High-resolution STEM images of the etched and unetched regions of the FeOCl hard mask, respectively, corresponding to the areas outlined by the two boxes in (a). (d-e) Corresponding STEM-EDX maps acquired from the etched and unetched regions for FeOCl, respectively.
(a–c) demonstrates optical images overlaid with EDX elemental maps (F, O, and Cl for FeOCl; Ti, O, and Cl for TiOCl; Nb, O, and Cl for NbOCl). Corresponding high-resolution AFM measurement reveals the height profile to quantify the etch rates, underscoring FeOCl's comparable plasma resistance to CrOCl and the relatively faster etching of TiOCl and NbOCl. EDX mapping confirms uniform elemental distribution confirming the presence of the respective elements.
(a) Cross-sectional STEM images of three representative Si pillars with a depth of ~1.5 μm patterned with CrOCl hard mask. (b–d) Shows the corresponding edges of the boxed regions in (a), across which LER values were extracted. The edge profiles are indicated by the yellow solid lines.
(a) SEM image of a representative array of Si pillars capped with the CrOCl hard mask, with the corresponding EDX mapping confirming the presence of Cr and Cl on the pillar tops. (b) After exposure to a Cl2/O2 plasma (plasma process 3) etch for 1 min, the CrOCl mask is completely removed without any visible surface damage or measurable reduction in pillar height, confirming clean mask removal and preservation of the underlying Si structure.
Optical and SEM images of the CrOCl mask on a standard 285 nm SiO2/p++-Si substrate with predefined line trench patterns, followed by corresponding optical and SEM images of the same CrOCl mask pattern transferred onto a silicon substrate.
(a) Etch rates of CrOCl flakes measured under various industry-relevant chemistries. Roughness distributions corresponding to (b), BCl3/Cl2; (c), CF4/Ar; (d), CHF3/O2; and (e), Cl2/O2 are shown. Overall, CrOCl exhibits greater resistance to fluorine-based plasmas, underscoring its broad applicability as a robust hard mask, while its higher etch rates in chlorine-based chemistries highlight its suitability for precise pattern transfer.
Supplementary Figs. 1–7.
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Venkatram, P., Chen, Z., Mukhopadhyay, K. et al. Two-dimensional crystalline hard masks for high-aspect-ratio nanofabrication.
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Seeing blood in urine is often the first clue that something is wrong. For many people, noticing this symptom prompts a medical visit that can lead to an early diagnosis of bladder cancer. However, for people with colorblindness, detecting that warning sign may be far more difficult. Because many forms of color vision deficiency make it hard to perceive red tones, blood in urine can go unnoticed.
Researchers from Stanford Medicine and collaborating institutions report that missing this early symptom may have serious consequences. After analyzing health records, the team found that people who had both bladder cancer and colorblindness faced a 52% higher mortality rate over 20 years compared with bladder cancer patients who have normal vision.
The researchers believe that people with colorblindness may delay seeking care because they fail to recognize blood in their urine. As a result, the disease may be diagnosed at a later stage, when treatment is more difficult and survival rates are lower.
"I'm hopeful that this study raises some awareness, not only for patients with colorblindness, but for our colleagues who see these patients," said Ehsan Rahimy, MD, adjunct clinical associate professor of ophthalmology and senior author of the study published in Nature Health.
The study's lead author is Mustafa Fattah, a medical student at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Colorblindness and Cancer Risk
Colorblindness, also known as color vision deficiency, is more common than many people realize. About 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are affected. The most widespread types interfere with distinguishing between red and green shades. This can create everyday challenges such as interpreting traffic lights, coordinating clothing, or judging whether meat is fully cooked.
Bladder cancer also occurs much more frequently in men, who develop the disease about four times as often as women. In 2025, roughly 85,000 Americans were expected to receive a bladder cancer diagnosis.
Earlier reports and smaller studies had already suggested that colorblindness might delay the diagnosis of certain diseases. If someone cannot easily recognize blood in stool or urine, conditions such as colorectal cancer or bladder cancer could be detected later. A 2009 study involving 200 men with bladder cancer found that those with color vision deficiency were often diagnosed at more advanced and invasive stages than those with typical vision.
Another experiment conducted in 2001 asked participants to identify which images of saliva, urine, and stool contained blood. People with normal vision correctly identified the samples 99% of the time, while participants with colorblindness were correct only 70% of the time.
These earlier findings prompted Rahimy and his colleagues to investigate whether colorblindness might ultimately affect survival in people diagnosed with bladder cancer or colorectal cancer.
Searching Millions of Health Records
To explore the question, researchers used a large research platform called TriNetX. The system compiles real time electronic health records from around the world and contains about 275 million de identified patient records.
Because the database is so large, scientists can identify groups of patients who share unusual combinations of conditions using diagnostic codes.
"The power in this type of study is the ability to curate a particular population of interest -- in this case, patients who are colorblind who develop bladder cancer or colorectal cancer," Rahimy said. "It's unusual to have that combination, but when you're casting a net in an ocean's worth of data, you have a better shot at capturing a rare fish."
From roughly 100 million U.S. patient records, the researchers identified 135 people diagnosed with both colorblindness and bladder cancer, along with 187 patients who had both colorblindness and colorectal cancer.
For each group, the team created a comparable control group of patients with the same cancer diagnosis and similar demographic and health characteristics but with normal vision.
Among bladder cancer patients, those with colorblindness had a lower chance of survival than those with normal vision. Over a 20 year period, the overall mortality risk was 52% higher for the colorblind group. (The mortality risk includes deaths from all causes.)
"That was our working hypothesis, based on the previous studies," Rahimy said.
Why Colorectal Cancer Showed a Different Pattern
The researchers expected to observe a similar pattern among people with colorectal cancer. Instead, they found no statistically significant difference in survival between patients with and without colorblindness.
One reason may be that colorectal cancer typically presents with several early symptoms. Rahimy noted that "Blood in the stool is not the chief symptom or the most common symptom that these patients present with."
Studies show that nearly two thirds of colorectal cancer patients first report abdominal pain, and more than half notice changes in bowel habits. By contrast, between 80% and 90% of bladder cancer patients initially notice blood in their urine without any pain.
Routine screening also plays an important role. Colorectal cancer screening is widely recommended for most people between the ages of 45 and 75, which reduces reliance on noticing blood in stool as the first sign of trouble.
"There's much more focus on catching colorectal cancer at an early age and much more public awareness," Rahimy said.
Why the Risk May Be Even Higher
The researchers caution that the mortality difference they observed could actually be underestimated. The study relied on standard diagnostic codes called ICD-10 codes that are recorded in electronic health records.
Many people with colorblindness never receive a formal diagnosis, which means they would be classified as having normal vision in the database.
"Most people with color vision deficiency are typically functioning fine. They don't have any other vision issues. Many affected individuals may not even know they have it," Rahimy said.
Raising Awareness for Patients and Doctors
The findings point to the need for additional research to better understand how color vision deficiency affects disease detection.
"This is a 30,000-foot view. When we're seeing certain trends and things that warrant further investigation, they deserve their own more in-depth analyses or studies," Rahimy said.
The results have already prompted conversations among medical specialists. Rahimy said urologists and gastroenterologists, including a colleague who is colorblind, told him they had never considered colorblindness as a possible factor in cancer diagnosis. Some clinicians said they might start including questions about colorblindness in screening questionnaires.
"If this study raises awareness and people read this and casually pass it along, I think it's done its job," Rahimy said.
For people with color vision deficiency, the findings highlight the importance of routine health checks. Doctors recommend getting a urine test during annual checkups, and some individuals may want to ask a partner or family member for help monitoring changes.
"If you don't trust yourself to know that there's a change in the color of your urine, it could be worth having a partner or somebody you live with periodically checking it for blood, just to make sure," Rahimy said.
A researcher from Beaumont Health contributed to the study.
The study received funding from the National Institutes of Health (grant P30-EY026877) and Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc.
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NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission did more than alter the motion of a small asteroid. New research shows the spacecraft's deliberate collision with the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in September 2022 also slightly changed the path of the entire asteroid system around the Sun. The finding provides strong evidence that a kinetic impactor could be used as a planetary defense method to redirect a potentially hazardous near-Earth object.
Dimorphos and its larger partner Didymos are bound together by gravity. The two asteroids orbit a shared center of mass in what scientists call a binary system. Because they are gravitationally linked, any change to one of them can influence the motion of the other.
First Time Humans Altered a Solar Orbit
According to a study published in the journal Science Advances, scientists carefully tracked the movement of the asteroid pair after the impact. Their measurements showed that the system's 770-day orbit around the Sun changed by a fraction of a second following the collision.
This marks the first time a human-made spacecraft has measurably changed the orbit of a natural object around the Sun.
"This is a tiny change to the orbit, but given enough time, even a tiny change can grow to a significant deflection," said Thomas Statler, lead scientist for solar system small bodies at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The team's amazingly precise measurement again validates kinetic impact as a technique for defending Earth against asteroid hazards and shows how a binary asteroid might be deflected by impacting just one member of the pair."
Debris From the Impact Amplified the Push
When the DART spacecraft struck Dimorphos, it blasted a massive plume of rocky debris into space and reshaped the asteroid, which is about 560 feet (170 meters) wide. The debris carried momentum away from the asteroid, effectively adding extra thrust to the impact. Scientists refer to this effect as the momentum enhancement factor.
The more material ejected from the surface, the stronger the push delivered to the asteroid. Researchers determined that the momentum enhancement factor from the DART impact was about two. In other words, the debris roughly doubled the force produced by the spacecraft alone.
Earlier studies had already shown that the collision shortened Dimorphos' orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos, which measures nearly half a mile across (805 meters), by 33 minutes from its original 12-hour period.
The new research found that the impact also expelled enough material from the binary system to slightly alter its path around the Sun. Specifically, the system's orbital period changed by about 0.15 seconds.
"The change in the binary system's orbital speed was about 11.7 microns per second, or 1.7 inches per hour," said Rahil Makadia, the study's lead author at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "Over time, such a small change in an asteroid's motion can make the difference between a hazardous object hitting or missing our planet."
Why Small Orbital Changes Matter
Didymos itself was never on a path toward Earth, and the DART experiment could not have placed it on one. However, the small shift in orbital speed demonstrates how spacecraft could be used to redirect a threatening asteroid if scientists detect it early enough.
In that scenario, a spacecraft would strike the object and slightly alter its velocity. Over time, that tiny change could accumulate into a large enough deviation to prevent a collision with Earth.
To improve early detection of such threats, NASA is developing the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission. Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the mission will deploy the first space telescope specifically designed for planetary defense.
The telescope will search for difficult to detect near-Earth objects, including dark asteroids and comets that reflect very little visible light.
Tracking the Asteroids With Stellar Occultations
To confirm that the DART collision influenced both asteroids, researchers needed extremely precise measurements of Didymos' orbit around the Sun. In addition to radar and other ground based observations, they relied on stellar occultations.
A stellar occultation occurs when an asteroid passes directly in front of a distant star, briefly blocking its light. Observing that momentary disappearance allows scientists to calculate the asteroid's position, speed, and shape with remarkable precision.
Capturing these events can be difficult. Observers must be located in exactly the right positions along the predicted path where the asteroid will pass in front of the star. This often requires multiple observation stations spread miles apart.
Researchers depended on volunteer astronomers around the world who recorded 22 stellar occultations between October 2022 and March 2025.
"When combined with years of existing ground-based observations, these stellar occultation observations became key in helping us calculate how DART had changed Didymos' orbit," said study co-lead Steve Chesley, a senior research scientist at JPL. "This work is highly weather dependent and often requires travel to remote regions with no guarantee of success. This result would not have been possible without the dedication of dozens of volunteer occultation observers around the world."
Clues About How Dimorphos Formed
Tracking the asteroids' motion also helped scientists estimate the densities of both objects. The results suggest that Dimorphos is slightly less dense than previously believed.
This finding supports the idea that Dimorphos formed from debris shed by a rapidly spinning Didymos. Over time, the loose rocky material likely gathered together under gravity, creating what scientists call a "rubble pile" asteroid.
Humanity's First Attempt to Move a Celestial Object
The DART spacecraft was designed, built, and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. This office leads NASA's work to protect Earth from potential asteroid threats.
The mission marked the first time humans intentionally changed the motion of a natural object in space, providing a real-world demonstration of a possible strategy to defend our planet from dangerous asteroids.
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What happens here matters everywhere
by Kurt Schlosser on Mar 10, 2026 at 10:28 amMarch 10, 2026 at 11:12 am
Seattle-area Microsoft employees who are showing up in the office three days a week are also showing up on roadways and impacting commuters' speeds, according to new data from traffic analysis company Inrix.
Inrix measured travel speeds on eastbound and westbound SR 520 and southbound and northbound I-405 during the weeks of Feb. 23 and March 2. Many of Microsoft's more than 50,000 employees in the region rely on the roadways and bridges connecting Seattle and the Eastside to the company's headquarters campus in Redmond, Wash.
The data shows speeds on 520 dropped across all days during the first week, with speeds on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday showing the slowest travel speeds over just over 30 mph.
Morning commute speeds between Tukwila and Bellevue fell as much as 35% and as much as 25% between Lynnwood and Bellevue. The evening commute saw speeds drops as much as 27% between Bellevue and Tukwila on Friday while speeds fell 21% northbound between Bellevue and Lynnwood, Inrix reported.
Microsoft isn't dictating from above which three days people will need to be in the office. Specifics are left to individual teams and managers. Some groups may require more than three days, and certain customer-facing roles like field sales and consultants are exempt.
The region's roadways could get some relief when Sound Transit's Crosslake Connection opens March 28, finally linking Seattle and the Eastside by light rail across Lake Washington — connecting downtown Seattle to downtown Bellevue and the Redmond Technology station at Microsoft headquarters.
Previously: Microsoft's new RTO policy starts Feb. 23, bringing Seattle-area workers back 3 days a week
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Amazon's full return to the office will further slow Seattle's already tough commute
Inrix data: Seattle-area traffic got 9% worse last year amid rise in return-to-office
Microsoft's new RTO policy starts Feb. 23, bringing Seattle-area workers back 3 days a week
Light rail across Lake Washington — a major connection for Seattle-area tech hubs — to open March 28
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What happens here matters everywhere
by Todd Bishop on Mar 10, 2026 at 9:09 amMarch 10, 2026 at 9:10 am
A federal judge in San Francisco granted Amazon a preliminary injunction Monday blocking Perplexity from using its Comet browser's AI agent to access password-protected sections of the Amazon website to shop on behalf of customers.
It's an early legal milestone in the fast-moving field of agentic commerce, in which AI assistants browse, compare and buy products on behalf of consumers. The case highlights a fundamental question: who controls access when an AI agent shows up at a retailer's digital front door?
In the ruling granting the preliminary injunction, Senior U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney found that Amazon is likely to succeed on its claims that Perplexity violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a California computer fraud statute.
The judge drew a key distinction, finding that Comet accesses Amazon accounts “with the Amazon user's permission, but without authorization by Amazon.”
In its own legal filings, Perplexity had argued that Amazon was less concerned about cybersecurity than about eliminating a competitor to its own AI shopping tools. The San Francisco-based startup contended that AI agents bypass the advertising Amazon shows to human shoppers, and that protecting ad revenue was the real motivation for the lawsuit.
In its suit, Amazon argued that Perplexity deliberately disguised Comet's AI agent as a regular Google Chrome browser session, evading detection rather than transparently identifying itself.
The company said it warned Perplexity at least five times starting in November 2024 to stop the practice, implemented a technical barrier to block Comet's access in August 2025, and watched Perplexity release a software update within 24 hours to circumvent it.
“The preliminary injunction will prevent Perplexity's unauthorized access to the Amazon store and is an important step in maintaining a trusted shopping experience for Amazon customers. We look forward to continuing to make our case in court,” an Amazon spokesperson said Tuesday.
Perplexity has not yet issued a public comment on the preliminary injunction.
In previous statements, the company called the lawsuit “a bully tactic” and argued that consumers should be free to use any AI assistant they choose to shop online. In a November blog post, the company said Amazon should welcome agentic shopping because it means more transactions and happier customers.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has acknowledged that agentic commerce “has a chance to be really good for e-commerce” but said agents aren't good enough yet at personalization and pricing accuracy. Amazon has its own AI shopping tools, including Rufus and Buy For Me.
Under the ruling Monday, the injunction is stayed for seven days to give Perplexity time to ask the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to put it on hold while the company appeals the ruling.
The judge denied Perplexity's request for a $1 billion bond, which it had sought based on its market valuation and investment in Comet. The judge found the injunction doesn't threaten the entirety of Perplexity's business since Comet can still be used on every other website.
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An events company whose associates helped stage the January 6, 2021, rally has signed contracts worth over $26 million with the United States government, according to documents reviewed by WIRED. Since President Donald Trump's return to the White House, Event Strategies, a Virginia-based firm with deep ties to Trumpworld, has negotiated a contract with the General Services Administration that could be worth up to $100 million over the next 15 years.
It's a remarkable rise for the 26-year-old firm, which until the recent windfall had received what appeared to be around $50,000 in government contracts over the past decade. It also appears that Event Strategies won these new contracts with very little competition. According to HigherGov, a tool used by contractors to track federal and state contracts, Event Strategies was the only company to bid on eight of the 11 contracts tracked by the site.
Many of the recent contracts are related to America 250, an 18-month-long commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
In early 2025, the US Semiquincentennial Commission, a bipartisan group established in 2016 to coordinate the celebrations, cut ties with Precision Strategies, an event planning group founded by Obama-era staffers. Soon after, the commission hired Event Strategies to replace them.
Contracts reviewed by WIRED in the System for Award Management database show that by September 2025, the company had signed its first contract related to the celebrations: a $5 million contract for work related to Titans of the Sea, an event designed to celebrate the Navy's 250th anniversary. Weeks later, the company signed another contract for a $2.1 million deal for “AMERICA 250 - EVENTS.”
More recently, Event Strategies signed a contract valued at $333,084 with the General Services Administration at the beginning of February for “FREEDOM 250 DESIGN AND CONTENT SUPPORT SERVICES.” Freedom 250 is, according to the White House, a “public-private partnership” related to America 250.
The tenor of the America 250 celebrations have already proven controversial. Over the last few months, large banners ostensibly tied to the project were seen hanging from federal buildings all over Washington, DC. One banner, which was hung outside the Department of Justice, features the tagline: “Make America Safe Again” alongside a massive image of Trump's face. The DOJ said the banner was hung to “celebrate 250 years of our great country.” To many, the tagline was an indication that the Justice Department has failed to maintain its independence during Trump's second term. California governor Gavin Newsom said the banner was “beyond parody,” writing on Facebook: “How many dictatorship-style monuments, building name changes, and fake awards do Americans have to endure?”
In early March, banners featuring Charlie Kirk, Booker T. Washington, and Catharine Beecher were hung outside the Department of Education near Capitol Hill, alongside two large banners featuring the America 250 logo. Critics were alarmed to see Kirk's likeness on the banner, as the deceased Turning Point USA cofounder and conservative commentator had previously called to “abolish” the Department of Education and was known for numerous racist and homophobic comments.
WIRED could not confirm whether these specific banners, or the banners hanging at the DOJ, were designed and implemented by Event Strategies. The DOJ and the Education Department did not respond to a request for comment about the company responsible for the banners.
“There is a proper federal competitive bidding process, and the White House expects all agencies to comply with it,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle tells WIRED. When asked for further comment about Event Strategies, Ingle referred WIRED to the General Service Administration. GSA did not respond to a request for comment.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, Event Strategies was on hand: Cofounder Tim Unes was listed as a stage manager for the January 6 rally at the Ellipse in 2021, according to the paperwork submitted to secure a permit. Megan Powers Small, who is now the chief of staff at Event Strategies, was tagged on rally permit paperwork as the event's “Operations Manager for Scheduling and Guidance.” Justin Caporale was listed as a project manager of the event. Though Caporale was later described as the Event Strategies CEO and the company's managing partner, he had previously worked as director of operations for Melania Trump in 2018 and on the Trump campaign in 2020.
While out of office, Trump continued working with Event Strategies. The company produced many of Trump's campaign rallies during the 2024 presidential campaign; filings from that year show Event Strategies received $31 million from the Trump 47 Committee PAC over a seven-month period. Caporale's Instagram account also shows him associating with Trump and administration officials, including at some of those same rallies.
In December 2024, after Trump won reelection, he named Caporale his “executive producer for major events.” In the 14 months since Caporale's appointment, Event Strategies has received a dozen contracts worth up to $26,802,188. The company helped organize Trump's widely derided military parade in Washington, DC, last June, and staged several other armed services productions throughout the year. In contrast, Event Strategies received zero contracts during the Biden administration. Even in the final year of the previous Trump administration, its contracts appeared to total closer to $33,000.
Caporale, who did not respond to a request for comment, has also been paid around $6,500 per month by the Republican National Committee from early 2025 through January 2026, according to FEC filings. Unes and Powers Small did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Event Strategies Inc. did not respond to three requests for comment from WIRED.
The Department of Defense has been Event Strategies' largest government customer since Trump returned to the White House. In just over a year, the agency has handed the Virginia company over $8 million in contracts, according to USASpending.gov, a website that tracks federal government contracts. The vast majority of this amount is made up by the Titans of the Sea contract, a US Navy presidential review that took place in October last year.
In September, the Department of Defense paid the group $189,297 for what was listed as a “BACKYARD COOKOUT AND PERFORMANCE.”
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.
The Department of Homeland Security also paid the company $79,560 to organize a naturalization ceremony at Mount Rushmore in October last year, which was attended by outgoing agency secretary Kristi Noem, who used the opportunity to also film an ad featuring her on horseback. In January, the company signed a contract with DHS worth $4.4 million to provide “services to support digital communication solutions to aid passenger communications throughout the security screening process for FIFA World Cup 2026 and America 250 events.”
Event Strategies signed what is potentially its most lucrative contract last fall, a multi-award deal with the GSA that is worth up to $100 million. Of that total payout, contracts totaling more than $10 million have already been signed, including several contracts related to America 250 events. The agreement is presently slated to run through 2030, though there is an option to extend it until 2045. The contract's exact specifics are vague—it will involve “Conference, Meeting, Event and Trade Show PlanningServices [sic]”—but according to the price list attached to its terms and conditions, Event Strategies will be responsible for onboarding a dozen employees, including an executive director, two project managers, two technical directors, and three A/V lighting technicians.
The company's most recent government contract was signed on February 27 with the Department of State. The description of the contract, which was set to begin several days before it was signed, reads “EVENT SUPPORT.” The value of the contract was $3.7 million. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Senate Democrats sent a letter to secretary of the interior Doug Burgum last week seeking more transparency on how public funds are being spent on the America 250 anniversary celebrations.
“It is imperative that Congress and the public understand how decisions are made, who exercises control, and what guardrails exist to prevent inappropriate donor influence,” the senators wrote in the letter. “Absent clear rules, this structure risks blurring the line between legitimate civic fundraising and pay-for-play access tied to official government functions, an all too familiar feature of the current Administration.”
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Your blood might someday reveal much about the distant future of your brain health. A study out today indicates that doctors could use a biomarker in blood to predict Alzheimer's disease in women decades before their actual diagnosis.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, studied blood plasma levels of a protein known as phosphorylated tau 217 (p-tau217) in a large sample of older women. Women with the highest amounts of p-tau217 had a significantly greater risk of later developing dementia, the researchers found. What's more, this increased risk could be spotted in women up to 25 years before they showed any visible symptoms.
“These findings underscore the value of plasma p-tau217 as an easily measured biomarker for dementia prediction,” lead author Aladdin Shadyab, an associate professor of public health and medicine at UC San Diego, told Gizmodo.
Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia. There are two proteins closely tied to the development of Alzheimer's: tau and amyloid beta. In people with Alzheimer's, abnormal versions of these proteins steadily build up in the brain, though it usually takes years before this accumulation becomes noticeable. Scientists have found that certain forms of these proteins can spill over from the brain into our blood in detectable amounts. One particular kind of abnormal tau, ptau217, seems to track especially well to the progression of Alzheimer's.
“Among all the blood-based biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease, plasma p-tau217 has shown the most promise in detecting Alzheimer's in the brain. It has been highly correlated with changes in the brain that indicate Alzheimer's disease,” said Shadyab.
To test out the predictive utility of p-tau217, Shadyab and his team studied baseline blood samples taken from over 2,500 volunteers in the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study. This was a long-running project that followed the long-term health of women between the ages of 65 and 79 starting in the late 1990s for up to 25 years.
A Simple Blood Test Could Eventually Tell You When Alzheimer's Is Coming
Some of the women were eventually diagnosed with dementia or mild cognitive decline, the latter often a precursor to dementia. And women who showed the highest levels of p-tau217 in their plasma at the start of the study were substantially more likely to develop either condition, the researchers found. The correlation between higher p-tau217 and dementia wasn't the same for every demographic group, though.
“We found that the risk of cognitive impairment associated with elevated levels of p-tau217 were stronger in women who were older than 70 years, carried genetic risk for Alzheimer's, or were on estrogen plus progestin hormone therapy,” Shadyab said. The team's findings were published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open.
There are currently two FDA-cleared blood tests for diagnosing or ruling out Alzheimer's, and likely more on the way soon. Many of these tests use p-tau217 as a biomarker, but it's still too early to widely use p-tau217 in the doctor's office as a foolproof means of diagnosing Alzheimer's, particularly in people who aren't sick yet.
“Additional studies are needed to determine the predictive ability of plasma p-tau217 in people who do not yet have symptoms for dementia,” Shadyab said. “Since our study focused only on women, additional studies are needed to confirm our findings in men.”
That said, researchers are already looking to use these blood tests to identify the highest-risk people in trials testing out new preventative treatments for Alzheimer's. Other recent research has suggested that we can one day rely on p-tau217 and other biomarkers to not only predict whether someone will develop Alzheimer's but also exactly when they'll begin to show symptoms.
Scientists are still struggling to find medicines and interventions that can significantly slow the otherwise fatal progression of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, but it's advances like these that will give them a better fighting chance.
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by Brian Fioca on Mar 10, 2026 at 7:58 amMarch 10, 2026 at 7:58 am
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At a meeting in San Francisco a few months ago, an icebreaker asked where we'd live if we could live anywhere in the world. I was the only one in the room whose answer was the same place I already call home. Over the years, opportunities have tried to entice me away, and I've turned down offers worth multiples of what I was earning to stay. I'm certain I'd have been in a position to be affected by a higher tax bracket sooner if I had followed them, but I'm equally certain it would not have made me happier.
My relationship with Washington started when I fell in love with Seattle during a visit in 2004. Shortly after, I moved to Alaska, co-founded my first company, and when it was acquired by a Seattle startup in 2006, my dream of living here came true. That move changed my life. It landed me in a place that felt alive with lush beauty, non-ostentatious ambition, and a kind of defiantly clever creativity, all surrounded by pioneers building new things that mattered. In high school and college I had followed the story of Microsoft and the early engineers who helped create an entire technology ecosystem. At the same time I of course loved the music coming from the Seattle scene. Washington felt like a place where innovation could coexist with culture, where a generation of makers and artists fostered the foundations of the next. Twenty years of living here later, that still feels true.
I've done pretty well here. I've founded companies here and worked alongside venture capitalists at Madrona Venture Labs and Pioneer Square Labs and seen firsthand how startup ecosystems actually work. For years I hoped I might someday be able to invest myself, and now I can. I'm excited to keep participating in the same cycle of building that drew me here in the first place. But one of the things I love most about this region is that it's never been just a tech ecosystem.
Some of the people I care most about in this community are artists, musicians, and creatives. They shape the culture and spirit of this place in ways no economic model can capture. As someone who has benefited enormously from working in technology and AI, I feel a real responsibility to support the broader community that makes this region vibrant. Honestly, it's that community that has kept me from burning out during the hardest stretches of my career.
That's why my view on Washington's proposed tax on very high incomes is simple: if I've found myself in the position of making that much in a year, I can afford to contribute a little more to the place that helped make that circumstance possible.
As someone who started my career in Georgia, a red state that does have personal income taxes, it's always struck me as strangely backward that we don't. People here have long pointed out that Washington's tax system is among the most regressive in the country. In that context, and after observing the past 20 years of attempts at a fix, the proposed wealth tax feels like one of the few realistic ways to make the system more balanced.
Is the proposal perfect? Of course not. Washington's laws and constitution make this kind of policy exceptionally hard to design. But as I once heard at a talk at Y Combinator in 2008, perfect is the enemy of good enough, and sometimes good enough is the enemy of at all. “Imperfect” is not a compelling argument for doing nothing forever.
I'm certainly not an expert on this topic. But I also don't think my job is to pretend I know more about tax design than the people whose job is to work on it. We elect legislators to make difficult tradeoffs in public and represent the interests of the entire community. I take that process seriously and trust democratic representatives far more than I trust whatever pithy inflammatory argument happens to be boosted by algorithms on social media. Governing, like building companies, is iterative. We try things. We improve them. If something doesn't work, we fix it or elect new people and try again. We act with agency.
I keep hearing that taxes like this will drive founders and business away, that investors will leave, that Washington will stop being a place where ambitious or creative people build things. Whether or not you can scrounge up data to support that case, I'm at best skeptical. But for me at least, as someone who has actually started companies, that just feels obviously wrong.
Founders don't decide where to build by researching marginal tax rates. They build from their homes, in coffee shops or garages, where their supportive friends and collaborators live. They build where their community is. They build where their loved ones can live and where they can survive the grind of years of stressful and uncertain work. Building a company is too consuming and too personal to optimize around a hypothetical line item on a spreadsheet of imagined future outcomes.
One of the things I love most about Washington is that it doesn't feel like a place that belongs to just one kind of person. It's beautifully wild, culturally and environmentally diverse, and a little weird in the best ways. It has quirky cities and cozy neighborhoods, incredible scenery and nature, and a long tradition of people showing up to build things, have them literally burn down, and rebuild them one story up. In investor parlance this is our unfair advantage. People will keep moving here because of all of our natural assets. Some will start companies. Some will work at successful ones. Some will sell shovels. Some will strike gold.
What I care about for myself is that finding wealth here comes with a sense of reciprocity. If someone becomes extremely highly compensated in Washington and decides that a reasonable tax on their very high income means they no longer want to be part of this place, fine! That's their choice. I'm certainly not leaving. Some have said “just donate.” I do. But anyone who has run a business knows that one-time lump sums are not the predictable source of funds required to plan a future and sustain an ecosystem.
It's worth saying that obviously supporting this proposal doesn't mean I wouldn't mind some changes. I'd especially like to see clearer connections between new revenue and the quality-of-life issues that determine whether Washington remains livable: housing, transportation, education, and the ability for people from many backgrounds and situations to stay rooted here. We should measure and adjust accordingly.
Ultimately for me, it comes down to this: I feel lucky to be here. A thriving community pulled me into this region and gave me the chance to build new things, work alongside investors I respect, among wonderful and creative people I love, and eventually become someone who can pay it forward. I benefited from what earlier generations built here and I feel responsible to the next. This is just my personal perspective. I can't speak for everyone affected by this policy proposal or even for those who hope that one day they might. But if my circumstances and lifestyle make it easy to afford to contribute more to the place that helped shape the best years of my life, I think I should.
And if this proposed bug fix to a design flaw in our revenue collection code is enough to make someone give up on Washington, sell the boat, and move to Florida, cool. Personally, I'd be happy to invest in the next cohort of folks who love it here as much as I do and want to build a life in this magical place.
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Opinion: The narratives and realities of an income tax in Washington
Opinion: The ‘millionaires tax' is not an existential threat to Washington's startup economy
Opinion: Here's what's missing from the tax debate in Washington state
Opinion: ‘Millionaires tax' threatens Washington's startup economy — here's the math to prove it
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Legora, an AI platform for lawyers, is now valued at $5.55 billion following a $550 million Series D set to fuel its growth in the U.S. That's despite growing competition with rival Harvey, but also with Microsoft Copilot and generalist large language models (LLMs). Publicly listed legal software companies saw their stocks drop when Anthropic unveiled a legal plug-in for Claude.
Legora is built on top of LLMs, and mostly on Claude, but its positioning as a platform that supports lawyers with complex cases gives CEO Max Junestrand some peace of mind. “It's amazing that everybody can have their own pocket lawyer in Claude, but we're not solving for the same use case,” he said via livestream at the TechArena conference in Stockholm.
With a focus on embedding itself into its clients' workflows, Legora's platform is now used by 800 law firms and legal teams — and investors took note. Its Series D was led by Accel, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Bessemer, General Catalyst, ICONIQ, Redpoint Ventures, and Y Combinator; and new backers including Alkeon Capital, Bain Capital, Firstmark Capital, Menlo Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Sands Capital, and Starwood Capital.
There are other signs that investors are bullish about AI legal tech. Legora's Series D and valuation jump come just a few months after its October 2025 $150 million Series C round led at a $1.8 billion valuation. Its competitor, Harvey, which is backed by a16z, is already valued at $8 billion, and is now reportedly seeking to raise at an $11 billion valuation. According to Dealroom, they are also on almost identical trajectories with regard to revenue.
Both are also branching out globally; Harvey is pushing hard into Europe, and Legora in the opposite direction. Formerly known as Judilica, then Leya, the startup is an alum of Stockholm's SSE Business Lab, a known breeding ground for unicorns. But after participating in YC's winter 2024 batch, Legora is now headquartered in New York and keen to keep on pushing in the U.S. market, where its growth exceeded its expectations coming out of Europe.
“It's nine to one in terms of legal spending; it turns out the Americans love to sue each other much more than we like to do in Europe,” Junestrand joked while speaking to TechArena's audience. But the team has grown globally — from 40 to 400 team members over the past year, according to a press release.
In addition to New York and Stockholm, Legora has offices in Bangalore, London, and Sydney, with more to follow. Alongside its Series D, Legora announced it would open offices in Houston and Chicago, with plans to open additional local hubs and grow to more than 300 employees across its U.S. offices by the end of 2026.
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Meta acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-like “social network” where AI agents using OpenClaw can communicate with one another. The news was first reported by Axios and later confirmed to TechCrunch.
Moltbook is joining Meta Superintelligence Labs, a Meta spokesperson told us. Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr will join the team as part of the acquisition. Deal terms were not disclosed.
“The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses. Their approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory is a novel step in a rapidly developing space, and we look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone,” the Meta spokesperson said.
The viral OpenClaw project was created by vibe coder Peter Steinberger, who has since joined OpenAI as part of a similar acqui-hire.
OpenClaw is a wrapper for AI models like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok, but it allows people to communicate with AI agents in natural language via the most popular chat apps, like iMessage, Discord, Slack, or WhatsApp.
OpenClaw blew up among the tech community, but Moltbook broke containment, reaching people who had no idea what OpenClaw was, but who reacted viscerally to the idea that there was a social network where AI agents were talking about them.
In one instance, a post went viral in which an AI agent appeared to be encouraging its fellow agents to develop their own secret, end-to-end-encrypted language where they could organize amongst themselves without humans knowing.
But researchers soon revealed that the vibe-coded Moltbook was not secure, meaning that it was very easy for human users to pose as AIs to make posts that would freak people out.
“Every credential that was in [Moltbook's] Supabase was unsecured for some time,” Ian Ahl, CTO at Permiso Security, explained to TechCrunch. “For a little bit of time, you could grab any token you wanted and pretend to be another agent on there, because it was all public and available.”
It is not immediately clear how Meta will incorporate Moltbook into its AI efforts, but some Meta leaders had commented on the project during its viral moment.
Last month, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth was asked about the AI agent social network in an Instagram Q&A. He said he didn't “find it particularly interesting” that the agents talk like us, since they are trained on massive databases of human material. Rather, Bosworth was intrigued by how humans were hacking into the network, which was not a feature but a large-scale error.
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Amazon allegedly called its engineers to a meeting to discuss several recent incidents, with the briefing note saying that these had “high blast radius” and were related to “Gen-AI assisted changes.” According to the Financial Times, one of the contributing factors listed in the meeting notes was the use of generative AI tools “for which best practices and safeguards are not yet fully established.”
There has been a spate of problems in Amazon's operations recently, including a six-hour disruption on its main retail website, wherein customers were unable to see details and complete transactions, which the company said is attributed to erroneous code deployment. We've also seen reports that Amazon's AI assistant could be easily jailbroken to answer questions unrelated to shopping, as well as reports of AI coding bot-driven outages with AWS, the company's cloud service.
“Folks, as you likely know, the availability of the site and related infrastructure has not been good recently,” Amazon Senior Vice President Dave Treadwell allegedly said in an email, according to the publication. He also said that the meeting will take a “deep dive into some of the issues that got us here as well as some short immediate term initiatives,” and that AI-assisted changes must now be approved by senior engineers before deployment. This meeting is reportedly usually optional, but it seems that Treadwell asked the staff to be in attendance this time.
Amazon hasn't officially confirmed the cause of all its woes, but the details shared in this meeting seemingly point to the use of AI. “TWiST is our regular weekly operations meeting with a specific group of retail technology leaders and teams where we review operational performance across our store," an Amazon spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "As part of normal business, the meeting will include a review of the availability of our website and app as we focus on continual improvement.” It also isn't the first big tech company to take things seriously after many firms took the “move fast and break things” motto literally when it came to generative AI. Microsoft said in late January 2026 that it's working to fix many of Windows 11's flaws and restore its reputation. This came nine months after CEO Satya Nadella said that AI writes up to 30% of the company's code, with some projects completely coded by AI.
While generative AI does have its uses, especially in specialized fields like medical research, it still needs observation, and we still cannot rely on its output 100% of the time. Unfortunately, many are overselling the capabilities of this tool, and many CEOs aren't getting the promised benefits of higher revenues and reduced costs.
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by Lisa Stiffler on Mar 10, 2026 at 7:00 amMarch 9, 2026 at 10:09 am
Homeostasis co-founder and CEO Makoto Eyre cites a famous Eisenhower line to capture his current leadership mindset: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” It's an apt motto for a startup trying to build a business at the intersection of climate policy, trade wars and the global race for battery materials.
The Seattle-area startup is developing technology that converts captured carbon dioxide into graphite — a critical material for batteries that power EVs, drones and grid energy storage.
But today's topsy-turvy geopolitical landscape is creating opportunities and challenges for Homeostasis that flip flop over time.
While the Trump administration is uninterested in carbon removal as a climate strategy, it's enthusiastic about domestic graphite production — an apparent bright spot for the startup. But tariffs on Chinese graphite, which now total roughly 200%, risk depressing the broader battery sector, potentially shrinking the market that Homeostasis is counting on.
In December, the startup announced a strategic partnership and funding from LAB7, the investment arm of Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Aramco. The collaboration will help Homeostasis scale its plant operations and refine its graphite processing to ensure it reaches “drop-in” status for battery manufacturers. The deal is being driven by Saudi Arabia's goal of quickly building a domestic EV supply chain.
Homeostasis is also eager to supply graphite to North American customers, hoping to one day compete against China, which produces more than 90% of the world's battery-grade graphite.
Commercial graphite mining largely ceased in the U.S. in 1950s, and domestic production is just restarting. Synthetic graphite can be produced as a byproduct of crude oil refining, but creating a battery-grade material requires a costly, lengthy and energy-intensive process.
The startup takes a different approach. Its molten salt electrolysis process runs electricity through a high-temperature salt mixture containing dissolved CO2 captured from industrial operations. The carbon deposits onto an electrode as crystalline graphite, with oxygen released as a byproduct.
CEO Eyre and an engineer are based in Tacoma, Wash., while a three-person science team led by co-founder Julien Lombardi works out of New York.
Homeostasis last year raised a $600,000 pre-seed investment and $700,000 from Washington's Climate Commitment Act. The company is hiring engineers in Washington and plans to double its headcount by the end of the year.
Homeostasis is currently building a prototype that will produce 1 kilogram — just over two pounds — of graphite daily, primarily to provide samples to Aramco. Within two years, the team aims to open a pilot plant capable of generating tens of tons annually.
The longer-term goal is a self-contained system that fits inside a single 40-foot shipping container and produces 100 tons of graphite per year. Homeostasis plans to deploy the units at automakers or energy companies that have existing carbon capture infrastructure.
The U.S. traps an estimated 30 million to 50 million metric tons of CO2 annually, though most is currently used for enhanced oil recovery — representing a vast potential feedstock if the economics pencil out. Based on battery-demand projections, the startup estimates that the U.S. and Canada will need roughly 1 million tons of graphite per year by the end of this decade.
For Eyre, the current volatility is noise. What matters is the underlying signal: a global shift toward electrification that will require energy storage at a scale the world has never seen.
“To support that we need critical materials, and they need to be low cost,” he said. “While the policy details might be shifting over time, we're building solid fundamentals. We are setting the course.”
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YouTube is expanding its likeness detection technology, which identifies AI-generated deepfakes, to a pilot group of government officials, political candidates, and journalists, the company announced Tuesday. Members of the pilot group will gain access to a tool that detects unauthorized AI-generated content and lets them request its removal if they believe it violates YouTube policy.
The technology itself launched last year to roughly 4 million YouTube creators in the YouTube Partner Program, following earlier tests.
Similar to YouTube's existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users' uploaded videos, the likeness detection feature looks for simulated faces made with AI tools. These tools are sometimes used to try to spread misinformation and manipulate people's perception of reality, as they leverage the deepfaked personas of notable figures — like politicians or other government officials — to say and do things in these AI videos that they didn't in real life.
With the new pilot program, YouTube aims to balance users' free expression with the risks associated with AI technology that can generate a convincing likeness of a public figure.
“This expansion is really about the integrity of the public conversation,” said Leslie Miller, YouTube's vice president of Government Affairs and Public Policy, in a press briefing ahead of Tuesday's launch. “We know that the risks of AI impersonation are particularly high for those in the civic space. But while we are providing this new shield, we're also being careful about how we use it,” she noted.
Miller explained that not all of the detected matches would be removed when requested. Instead, YouTube would evaluate each request under its existing privacy policy guidelines to determine whether the content is parody or political critique, which are protected forms of free expression.
The company noted it's advocating for these protections at a federal level, too, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in D.C., which would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized recreations of an individual's voice and visual likeness.
To use the new tool, eligible pilot testers must first prove their identity by uploading a selfie and a government ID. They can then create a profile, view the matches that show up, and optionally request their removal. YouTube says it plans to eventually give people the ability to prevent uploads of violating content before they go live or, possibly, allow them to monetize those videos, similar to how its Content ID system works.
The company would not confirm which politicians or officials would be among its initial testers, but said the goal is to make the technology broadly available over time.
These AI videos will be labeled as such, but the placement of these labels isn't consistent. For some, the label appears in the video's description, while videos focused on more “sensitive topics” will apply the label to the front of the video. This is the same approach YouTube takes with all AI-generated content.
“There's a lot of content that's produced with AI, but that distinction's actually not material to the content itself,” explained Amjad Hanif, YouTube's vice president of Creator Products, as to the label's placement. “It could be a cartoon that is generated with AI. And so I think there's a judgment on whether it's a category that maybe merits from a very visible disclaimer,” he said.
YouTube isn't currently sharing how many removals of these sorts of AI deepfakes have been managed by this deepfake detection technology in the hands of creators, but noted that the amount of content removed so far has been “very small.”
“I think for a lot of [creators], it's just been the awareness of what's being created, but the volume of actually removal requests is really, really low because most of it turns out to be fairly benign or additive to their overall business,” Hanif said.
That may not be the case with deepfakes of government officials, politicians, or journalists.
In time, YouTube intends to bring its deepfake detection technology to more areas, including recognizable spoken voices and other intellectual property like popular characters.
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You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, and it's not some third world backhole that was suffering already anyway, but you yourself that are the worst victims of all their laws and wars.
Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, and it's not some third world backhole that was suffering already anyway, but you yourself that are the worst victims of all their laws and wars.
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The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai.USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.
USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.
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It is constantly people wanting convenience and vertical integration in favor of homegrown human solutions and then complaining that their rights are not met because of course they aren't. Corporations never cared for people.Idk I feel like I writing a documentary. And not a response now
Idk I feel like I writing a documentary. And not a response now
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So, the only benefit of the USA is that some media can still complain. And the regime just ignores and does what they want. Regardless dems or reps, they criticize the reduction of freedoms when they are in opposition, but as soon as they grab power, they keep reducing freedoms. It's like they are all just puppets of someone you can't even name without being called names.> USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.Yep, they convinced you you are free because you can argue while keeping more and more freedoms and rights from you.Today, the only difference between Western and Eastern regimes is that one side chooses the "Brave New World" way and the other the "1984" way. But eventually, they'll all converge into Zamyatin's "We" kind of dystopia that inspired both of these.
> USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.Yep, they convinced you you are free because you can argue while keeping more and more freedoms and rights from you.Today, the only difference between Western and Eastern regimes is that one side chooses the "Brave New World" way and the other the "1984" way. But eventually, they'll all converge into Zamyatin's "We" kind of dystopia that inspired both of these.
Yep, they convinced you you are free because you can argue while keeping more and more freedoms and rights from you.Today, the only difference between Western and Eastern regimes is that one side chooses the "Brave New World" way and the other the "1984" way. But eventually, they'll all converge into Zamyatin's "We" kind of dystopia that inspired both of these.
Today, the only difference between Western and Eastern regimes is that one side chooses the "Brave New World" way and the other the "1984" way. But eventually, they'll all converge into Zamyatin's "We" kind of dystopia that inspired both of these.
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Here's an example just recently:https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts...It's a constant and ongoing public concern.
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts...It's a constant and ongoing public concern.
It's a constant and ongoing public concern.
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Many US states do not impose government surveillance or have age verification laws.But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.
But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.
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No, it is just being realist.Public discourse is like wind. It comes and goes. But incentive based motivators are like gravity. It is a constant force, and sooner or later, it will win.To make change, incentives should change.
Public discourse is like wind. It comes and goes. But incentive based motivators are like gravity. It is a constant force, and sooner or later, it will win.To make change, incentives should change.
To make change, incentives should change.
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It seems like at least half of what everyone consumes in all of 'social media' is 'politicized' but no one is interested in debating. Debating would have to mean we're talking to those gross people from the opposite 'team,' asking them to justify the policy they are advocating for, listening to them, and trying to convince them of our own positions.When was the last time we witnessed any politicians or activists trying to change minds? Right-wingers scream dumb slogans like "They're sending the rapists over here!" and left-wingers scream back their own dumb lines like "Racist! America was built by immigrants!" And both sides dismiss the other side's arguments as the nonsensical ravings of the evil and/or stupid.
When was the last time we witnessed any politicians or activists trying to change minds? Right-wingers scream dumb slogans like "They're sending the rapists over here!" and left-wingers scream back their own dumb lines like "Racist! America was built by immigrants!" And both sides dismiss the other side's arguments as the nonsensical ravings of the evil and/or stupid.
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Slowly, and then suddenly.The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.
The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.
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But then I'm replying to @mr_toad so you probably knew that already.
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Privacy was already lost when everyone adopted mobile phones and gave them everything with constant location tracking, and used the free email accounts.It's interesting that age-verification is the straw that breaks the camels back, but I guess porn has that power.
It's interesting that age-verification is the straw that breaks the camels back, but I guess porn has that power.
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Pushed by AVPA - a group of companies standing to profit from this: LexisNexis, some Thiel corp, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47239736 "Ubuntu Planning Mandatory Age Verification"I thought I saw one about Redhat too, but can't find it.
I thought I saw one about Redhat too, but can't find it.
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That is getting harder and harder. Platforms that are not susceptible to age verification (yet?) are on their way out - when have you written an email the last time for personal (i.e. non-work, order or customer support related) reasons? A physical letter [1]? The (root) cause is, centralized platforms like Whatsapp are much much more convenient and on top of that network effects apply - when 90% of your social connections use Whatsapp exclusively, it's hard to not use Whatsapp as well.And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well.Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery.That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well.Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery.That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery.That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
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The west had a golden age from the fall of the Soviet Union, removing their main rival. It also reinforced its reinforced its belief in the inevitably of progress (the "end of history" nonsense, for example). They cannot now cope with threats or danger.That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.
That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.
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We're rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines.19 century illnesses are making a resurgence.Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.
19 century illnesses are making a resurgence.Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.
Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.
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China is also a horrifying place to live unless you are content just to participate quietly in society and never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a private WeChat.https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...
https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...
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The current administration is only convincing the world that America is a threat. We live in an age where two oceans offer far less protection than they did when America rose to superpower status. The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example. Watch any congressional hearing about cyber and you might be forgiven for thinking we have already been invaded. Beating up on third world pariah states impresses no one but the current administration. The United States bombs Iran but blinks at Russia. The administration started a trade war with China then backed off, not one meaningful concession was achieved.Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.
Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.
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So is Europe, and we are talking about the west in general, not just the US.> Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars.Again, most of Europe suffered during the world wars.> The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one exampleThey also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.
> Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars.Again, most of Europe suffered during the world wars.> The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one exampleThey also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.
Again, most of Europe suffered during the world wars.> The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one exampleThey also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.
> The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one exampleThey also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.
They also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.
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Most of the "Western" civilizations old enough to attempt comparison with China were not European in the modern sense at all. The classic example is usually Rome, which treated most of Europe as barbarians to colonize and enslave. The engine and wealth of the empire was along the Mediterranean. Ancient Rome was thus really a Mediterranean power not a "European" one. I think you could successfully argue Romans had more in common with other ancient Mediterranean powers or even ancient Mesopotamians than modern Europeans.As to the rest of your points true enough. It is well known that today's Europeans find themselves in between a rock and a hard place given the current split between American and Chinese hegemony.
As to the rest of your points true enough. It is well known that today's Europeans find themselves in between a rock and a hard place given the current split between American and Chinese hegemony.
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The Roman Empire covered much of Europe about 2000 years ago, and those places have had a great deal of cultural continuity since then.
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September 11, 2001 is why Iran is being attacked a quarter century later.
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Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. If that was the point you were attempting it is incorrect. Not even the current administration is attempting that line of reasoning.
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It is also a totalitarian regime where criticising the state can get you, and possibly your family, ‘disappeared'
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> For Indigenous Americans it's unthinkable, but true. ICE is arresting, detaining Native Americans.https://idahocapitalsun.com/2026/02/10/for-indigenous-americ...Detain first , ask pesky questions about citizenship and civil rights later.
https://idahocapitalsun.com/2026/02/10/for-indigenous-americ...Detain first , ask pesky questions about citizenship and civil rights later.
Detain first , ask pesky questions about citizenship and civil rights later.
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I don't think the USA is necessarily changing at all, this is what it has always been the whole time
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Everyone in China is constantly violating laws, the difference is that black letter law is essentially meaningless and the country is run by an administrative state that is controlled by the party.You can't really get things done without breaking the law. China doesn't properly tabulate, and therefore cannot release, anything like accurate crime data. But the crime rate is certainly higher since it's pretty much impossible to even go online and do just about anything without breaking some law. What is written is so vague and nearly any conduct can fall under it.The ambiguity doesn't make the country safer, they just have a media hegemony and active censorship. Healthcare is woeful and "cheap" comes with "quotas on patients seen" meaning that doctors frequently have 1-2 minutes to see patients and one can become an MD much earlier than one can in the US. And since the perception is that no food is really 100% safe, it's more acquiescence, and not confidence, that people show.Hell, you having the option of choosing to opt into vaccines is even an improvement. In China you are stuck with the state prescribed schedule and that's it. Unless you're extremely wealthy, but then again, where is that not an exception?
You can't really get things done without breaking the law. China doesn't properly tabulate, and therefore cannot release, anything like accurate crime data. But the crime rate is certainly higher since it's pretty much impossible to even go online and do just about anything without breaking some law. What is written is so vague and nearly any conduct can fall under it.The ambiguity doesn't make the country safer, they just have a media hegemony and active censorship. Healthcare is woeful and "cheap" comes with "quotas on patients seen" meaning that doctors frequently have 1-2 minutes to see patients and one can become an MD much earlier than one can in the US. And since the perception is that no food is really 100% safe, it's more acquiescence, and not confidence, that people show.Hell, you having the option of choosing to opt into vaccines is even an improvement. In China you are stuck with the state prescribed schedule and that's it. Unless you're extremely wealthy, but then again, where is that not an exception?
The ambiguity doesn't make the country safer, they just have a media hegemony and active censorship. Healthcare is woeful and "cheap" comes with "quotas on patients seen" meaning that doctors frequently have 1-2 minutes to see patients and one can become an MD much earlier than one can in the US. And since the perception is that no food is really 100% safe, it's more acquiescence, and not confidence, that people show.Hell, you having the option of choosing to opt into vaccines is even an improvement. In China you are stuck with the state prescribed schedule and that's it. Unless you're extremely wealthy, but then again, where is that not an exception?
Hell, you having the option of choosing to opt into vaccines is even an improvement. In China you are stuck with the state prescribed schedule and that's it. Unless you're extremely wealthy, but then again, where is that not an exception?
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Those who trade freedom for security will obtain neither.
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If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda.Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being...Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.
Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being...Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.
Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.
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China is definitely not so shit like portrayed by western media. At the same time London is also not run by Islamic Extremists as portrayed by perhaps the top media station in USA.> Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ontotally true.
> Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ontotally true.
totally true.
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Unfortunately, since around 2000 the differences have become less and less every year, so what has remained now is a very small fraction of what was a quarter of century ago.The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economies are quickly approaching this stage.Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance.Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).
The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economies are quickly approaching this stage.Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance.Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).
Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance.Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).
Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).
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Hiding or not 20 years ago the west was trying to surveil it's population as much as they could as well, see the Snowden/NSA scandal.> even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severeSpot on. I would go even further and argue that "communist countries" used to rule through "fear of the state", while west ruled through (among others) "fear of others" (used to be communist, now becomes migrants or other religious groups).For me the surveillance is not ideal, but the worst is the average education level of a population. Without any surveillance, if my neighbor will suddenly believe I am a witch and burn me at stake (it did happen in the west!) I will not feel good because I was not surveilled.
> even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severeSpot on. I would go even further and argue that "communist countries" used to rule through "fear of the state", while west ruled through (among others) "fear of others" (used to be communist, now becomes migrants or other religious groups).For me the surveillance is not ideal, but the worst is the average education level of a population. Without any surveillance, if my neighbor will suddenly believe I am a witch and burn me at stake (it did happen in the west!) I will not feel good because I was not surveilled.
Spot on. I would go even further and argue that "communist countries" used to rule through "fear of the state", while west ruled through (among others) "fear of others" (used to be communist, now becomes migrants or other religious groups).For me the surveillance is not ideal, but the worst is the average education level of a population. Without any surveillance, if my neighbor will suddenly believe I am a witch and burn me at stake (it did happen in the west!) I will not feel good because I was not surveilled.
For me the surveillance is not ideal, but the worst is the average education level of a population. Without any surveillance, if my neighbor will suddenly believe I am a witch and burn me at stake (it did happen in the west!) I will not feel good because I was not surveilled.
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That was a lie we told ourselves. In reality we started with slavery which is about as far from freedom and justice as you can get, and then shifted to mass incarceration (often just slavery with extra steps) locking up more of our own people than Russia or China ever did. These days our prison population is trending down as we're getting better at imprisoning people in their own homes and communities with GPS trackers and parole/probation requirements but it's still laughable to call ourselves the "land of the free"
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> lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be doing differently in their position, but until you've had a chance to prove it, I don't believe you.
People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be doing differently in their position, but until you've had a chance to prove it, I don't believe you.
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We're witnessing the creation of the beast system in real time. The one that is prophesized in the Book of Revelation.
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It is occurring in every dimension, including the ability to track who buys and sells with crypto currencies along with the ability to punish or reward people based on ai hardware software infrastructure deployments.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/1j4cd53/warni..."We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility."
"We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility."
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This seems like an unnecessary threat based in your bias.Chatgpt seems to concur.
Chatgpt seems to concur.
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Congrats Germany, for electing another CDU government. We are digging our own graves here and we are too uninformed and too entertained to see it. Next election will probably be the breaking point, when AfD manages to get many majorities, due to how unhappy CDU, SPD, and other mainstream parties have made the populace. And then we will have these right-wing extremists as our government.Looking to the US, they have hit it even worse now. Full authoritarian guy at the top, who might even prevent the next elections, unless he is sure that he will win or can make it so that he appears to have won.
Looking to the US, they have hit it even worse now. Full authoritarian guy at the top, who might even prevent the next elections, unless he is sure that he will win or can make it so that he appears to have won.
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The point is they shouldn't be. That's how people get stalked, harassed, and murdered at their home.
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If the 'SAVE America Act' passes, you're going to be open to leaking a heck of a lot more than that, and it'll all go in to a national database.
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It's full of people from ad-tech who believe data protection is the enemy and the GDPR is a European conspiracy against growth.You should learn to simply bend over and grab your ankles with both hands whenever they (or anybody else) asks for your personal data.EDIT: and predictable 'drive-by' downvotes from those in the industry too lazy to try and defend their position and write a rebuttle!
You should learn to simply bend over and grab your ankles with both hands whenever they (or anybody else) asks for your personal data.EDIT: and predictable 'drive-by' downvotes from those in the industry too lazy to try and defend their position and write a rebuttle!
EDIT: and predictable 'drive-by' downvotes from those in the industry too lazy to try and defend their position and write a rebuttle!
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This is a misunderstanding of American history. From its founding by wealthy white male landowners and slaveowners, the US was by design a plutocracy, enshrined in the Constitution with various anti-democratic (small "d") measures such as separation of powers, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, the unelected Supreme Court with lifetime tenure, and representation of land rather than population in the Senate. Originally, Senators weren't even directly elected. And of course neither women nor Black men had the right to vote. (EDIT: I forgot to mention the extreme difficulty of amending the Constitution, and as a result, the Constitution hasn't been amended much since the Bill of Rights.)The only thing that held the plutocracy in check was "all political is local". The US was an agrarian nation, not yet hit by the industrial revolution. The fastest form of communication and tranportation was the horse. What has changed radically in the 20th and 21st centuries is that modern technology allows the ultra-wealthy to organize and conspire (see Epstein and friends, for example) on a national and even international scale. Political election campaigns have always been privately funded—another essential feature of the plutocracy—and now they're obscenely expensive with TV and internet advertising, which further consolidates the power of the ultra-wealthy campaign contributors.The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules.Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
The only thing that held the plutocracy in check was "all political is local". The US was an agrarian nation, not yet hit by the industrial revolution. The fastest form of communication and tranportation was the horse. What has changed radically in the 20th and 21st centuries is that modern technology allows the ultra-wealthy to organize and conspire (see Epstein and friends, for example) on a national and even international scale. Political election campaigns have always been privately funded—another essential feature of the plutocracy—and now they're obscenely expensive with TV and internet advertising, which further consolidates the power of the ultra-wealthy campaign contributors.The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules.Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules.Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
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Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read and understood that raw democracy, like oligarchy and autocracy, is something that republics devolve into.Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability.> The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability.> The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
> The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
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Well-read in the 18th century. And they borrowed heavily from 17th century philosopher John Locke. Imagine relying on 17th or 18th century medicine now.The founders weren't nearly as wise as they're alleged to be. For example, they thought their system would suppress political parties, and then political parties arose almost immediately.> Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable.Which historical evidence are you referring to? Most of history is nondemocratic.In any case, the US broke out into an extremely bloody civil war less than 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, so it hasn't been "stable", not that stability is even desirable under a plutocracy.> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
The founders weren't nearly as wise as they're alleged to be. For example, they thought their system would suppress political parties, and then political parties arose almost immediately.> Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable.Which historical evidence are you referring to? Most of history is nondemocratic.In any case, the US broke out into an extremely bloody civil war less than 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, so it hasn't been "stable", not that stability is even desirable under a plutocracy.> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
> Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable.Which historical evidence are you referring to? Most of history is nondemocratic.In any case, the US broke out into an extremely bloody civil war less than 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, so it hasn't been "stable", not that stability is even desirable under a plutocracy.> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
Which historical evidence are you referring to? Most of history is nondemocratic.In any case, the US broke out into an extremely bloody civil war less than 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, so it hasn't been "stable", not that stability is even desirable under a plutocracy.> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
In any case, the US broke out into an extremely bloody civil war less than 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, so it hasn't been "stable", not that stability is even desirable under a plutocracy.> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.
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We're certainly in agreement here, but I would say that most modern wealth is fictional: based on equity, which is based on credit, which is based on confidence, which at the end of the day is just vibes. So most of the 'wealthy' people exist as such with social permission because they're employed in production, and if they fail at that job the wealth rapidly evaporates. However, they're definitely wildly overpaid in the US. That, imho, is because culturally this country still wants to cosplay at having an aristocracy.
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It's misleading to say "they're employed in production", using the present tense. Many were engaged in production, and some choose to remain engaged, but others don't. It doesn't seem to matter much. Bill Gates quit his job 20 years ago, claims to be trying to give most of his money away, yet he's still one of the wealthiest people in the world. The dude was already ultra-wealthy by age 30. Sure, he engaged in production for a number of years, but most ordinary workers have no choice but to engage in production for 40 or 50 years or their life at least.The ultra-wealthy are not wage earners, paid by their labor. They are capital owners, and capital continues to earn returns regardless. If you're smart with your wealth and diversify, and by smart I mean not dumb—safe long-term investment doesn't take a genius—it's extremely hard to lose it all. That would happen only if you put all of your eggs in one basket. I'm not aware of too many riches to rags stories, except among professional athletes for example. But those athletes were wage earners rather than capital owners. They don't own the sports teams.
The ultra-wealthy are not wage earners, paid by their labor. They are capital owners, and capital continues to earn returns regardless. If you're smart with your wealth and diversify, and by smart I mean not dumb—safe long-term investment doesn't take a genius—it's extremely hard to lose it all. That would happen only if you put all of your eggs in one basket. I'm not aware of too many riches to rags stories, except among professional athletes for example. But those athletes were wage earners rather than capital owners. They don't own the sports teams.
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Your question is ambigious. Are you asking what a different system would look like, or how we would get there?As for the first question, there are many obvious ways to improve the system. Here are some suggestions: abolish the electoral college, abolish the Presidential veto and pardon, abolish the Senate, abolish lifetime Supreme Court terms, add term limits for Congress, publicly fund political campaigns and outlaw campaign contributions as illegal bribery, allow public recall campaigns against the President, Congress, and Supreme Court, etc.As for the second question: "The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years."
As for the first question, there are many obvious ways to improve the system. Here are some suggestions: abolish the electoral college, abolish the Presidential veto and pardon, abolish the Senate, abolish lifetime Supreme Court terms, add term limits for Congress, publicly fund political campaigns and outlaw campaign contributions as illegal bribery, allow public recall campaigns against the President, Congress, and Supreme Court, etc.As for the second question: "The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years."
As for the second question: "The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years."
It isn't the senile crowd running things anymore. It's 50-60 year old Thiel, Musk, health insurance CEO, crowd.Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.
Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.
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As a Gen X'er myself I know I grew up respecting the hell out of older people, especially 70+ ages. The past couple of decades as that cohort churns, I can't say the same. It's more of a case by case basis now, many of them seem outright evil in their self-righteousness. They all seem angry and ready to fight in any passing interaction (granted, I live in Texas where most of them are amped on FoxNews, too) and that's not how it used to be. They used to be the friendliest cohort alive, hell when I was maybe 10-14 I even used to volunteer at senior living homes just to hang out and chat with them and can't imagine anyone wanting to do that now.
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Now, after the better part of a century of that running it's course with nearly no pressure to not chart a crap course it's falling apart.
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They were not kids a decade agoTwo decades agoWhy is it 20-30 somethings of 40-50 years ago put the world on an immutable path but 20-30 somethings now are stuck with?If prior 20-30 somethings that "put us on a path" had free agency we do tooEspecially when those old 20-30 somethings are now 70-90 somethingsKids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30sWho speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
Two decades agoWhy is it 20-30 somethings of 40-50 years ago put the world on an immutable path but 20-30 somethings now are stuck with?If prior 20-30 somethings that "put us on a path" had free agency we do tooEspecially when those old 20-30 somethings are now 70-90 somethingsKids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30sWho speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
Why is it 20-30 somethings of 40-50 years ago put the world on an immutable path but 20-30 somethings now are stuck with?If prior 20-30 somethings that "put us on a path" had free agency we do tooEspecially when those old 20-30 somethings are now 70-90 somethingsKids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30sWho speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
If prior 20-30 somethings that "put us on a path" had free agency we do tooEspecially when those old 20-30 somethings are now 70-90 somethingsKids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30sWho speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
Especially when those old 20-30 somethings are now 70-90 somethingsKids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30sWho speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
Kids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30sWho speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
Who speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
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We do need some kind of mechanism to prevent this kind of "keep trying until it passes" mechanism to lobbying/lawmaking that the people pushing chat control are using. That's a tricky issue though, as revisions on law proposals are an expected part of the process. Some sort of "dismiss with prejudice" would be nice tho
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Good things happen in the UK and US too and some bad laws get rejected. The overall trend is pretty clear though and is the same in the EU, and the rest of the west too.Its not just one country or leader or political party. Its a cultural problem that affects the whole of the west. "We are going to hell slightly slower" is not a great place to claim to be.
Its not just one country or leader or political party. Its a cultural problem that affects the whole of the west. "We are going to hell slightly slower" is not a great place to claim to be.
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the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data to be leaked several separate times, and now i have free credit monitoring instead of privacy? and all of those companies still operate normally, as if nothing ever happened? very neat.>Discord said it is using the additional time this year to add more verification options, including credit cards, more transparency on vendors and technical detail of how age verification will workand why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)
>Discord said it is using the additional time this year to add more verification options, including credit cards, more transparency on vendors and technical detail of how age verification will workand why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)
and why didnt we start with credit cards? instead of facial recognition with peter thiel? (this is a rhetorical question)
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And most companies can simply price it in as cost of doing business at this point.
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However, that makes me wonder what mechanism might "unverify" an account holder's age upon transfer. I suppose it's simply a need to re-verify (take a new photo) upon every login, but then folks could transfer the session cookie to avoid needing the new owner to perform a login (unless a new device ID/fingerprint makes the old cookie useless).
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Isn't that what I said?
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Clearly the only foolproof solution is a 3rd-party camera pointed at your face at all times whenever you use a computer.
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https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1549829/1https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1555753/1
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1555753/1
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Is there any forum short of a senate subcommittee that the public can ask companies these questions? The silence is deafening.
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There is a reason why I don't accept private enterprise as something separate from Government. The nature of the incorporation legal fiction makes them proxies of Government power and influence, hence why I believe private enterprise should in some ways be as heavily restricted by Constitutional guardrails as the Government itself (allegedly) is.
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Might not even matter ..."TransUnion and Experian, two of the three major credit bureaus, have started dismissing a larger share of consumer complaints without help since the Trump administration began dismantling the CFPB."https://www.propublica.org/article/credit-report-mistakes-cf...
"TransUnion and Experian, two of the three major credit bureaus, have started dismissing a larger share of consumer complaints without help since the Trump administration began dismantling the CFPB."https://www.propublica.org/article/credit-report-mistakes-cf...
https://www.propublica.org/article/credit-report-mistakes-cf...
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https://www.consumerfinance.gov/enforcement/enforcement-by-t...
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They changed their tune the second there was an open case on the matter.
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I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have dropped. So I can only assume that this was the purpose the whole time.
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It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this.Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.
Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.
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___ said hamas beaheaded 40 babies and that turned out to be a complete fabrication. That fake info was used in part to justify killing thousands of kids in ____meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that died.
meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that died.
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This would block the most common classes of abuse on platforms like Roblox, Fortnight, Lego (kids) Fortnight, YouTube Kids, Minecraft, and "educational" social networks / games.Note that it doesn't require any centralized surveillance at all. Parents just need to control the kids' ability to create random accounts, by (for example) turning on parental controls as they already exist on most tablets/phones, and blocking app installation / email applications (or other 2FA vectors).When the parent allows an account to be created, they just tick the "kid mode" box. This even works with shared devices that don't support multiple accounts (so, iPads and iPhones).
Note that it doesn't require any centralized surveillance at all. Parents just need to control the kids' ability to create random accounts, by (for example) turning on parental controls as they already exist on most tablets/phones, and blocking app installation / email applications (or other 2FA vectors).When the parent allows an account to be created, they just tick the "kid mode" box. This even works with shared devices that don't support multiple accounts (so, iPads and iPhones).
When the parent allows an account to be created, they just tick the "kid mode" box. This even works with shared devices that don't support multiple accounts (so, iPads and iPhones).
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The UK's Online Safety Act originally had a proposal that would allow users to purchase an ID code anonymously in cash from a corner store, presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol. This was never implemented, because it's more useful for the government and corporations to link all online usage to a government ID.
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I've been proposing the same thing on this site for months. IMO anonymous age verification with no record-keeping is the only form of age verification that should exist. No zero knowledge proofs, no centralized government identity provider, nothing.
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Namely, you don't prevent it (I was 11 when I first saw hardcore pornography, on a VHS tape, at a sleepover party), but it does place a (surmountable) barrier in the way, which will reduce access to some degree. The degree to which that happens depends on a lot of things that are hard to predict. We have culturally normalized access to a lot of things for children, and reversing that will likely take more than just changes to a law.
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It really doesn't, and especially if the ostensible rationale is blocking the ills of social media. If your friends aren't there, there's less motive to waste a bunch of allowance-money dealing with a sketchy adult to get there.
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Selling alcohol to minors is illegal in the UK. Some do circumvent this by various means (e.g. fake ID or having an adult purchase on their behalf, both of which are also illegal), but the same is already true for the current age verification system.
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That's the same question.Meanwhile apparently 70% of Australian under-16's retrained/regained access to social media.See, even intrusive, surveillance and privacy-busting methods don't work.
Meanwhile apparently 70% of Australian under-16's retrained/regained access to social media.See, even intrusive, surveillance and privacy-busting methods don't work.
See, even intrusive, surveillance and privacy-busting methods don't work.
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If it was actually about kids, we'd have done it a long time ago. With more focus on things like porn and gambling (including 'loot box' gambling in games) rather than social media.
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This could have been avoided [1] if the real goal was to protect small children. No need for third parties or sharing sensitive data that will eventually be "ooopsie leaked totally by mistake" or outright sold/shared. No perfect, nothing is.[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074
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There are some long Github threads in the official repo along with a PDF[1] of cryptographer's feedback about the privacy issues. Also covered in this[2] article.This is unlike BBS+ which supports unlinkability and which was even recommended by GSMA Europe to such address downsides. In the Github discussions there seems to be pushback by those officially involved that claim BBS+ isn't compatible with EUDI[3] and there seems to be some plateauing of any progress advancing it.[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...[2] https://news.dyne.org/the-problems-of-european-digital-ident...[3] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...
This is unlike BBS+ which supports unlinkability and which was even recommended by GSMA Europe to such address downsides. In the Github discussions there seems to be pushback by those officially involved that claim BBS+ isn't compatible with EUDI[3] and there seems to be some plateauing of any progress advancing it.[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...[2] https://news.dyne.org/the-problems-of-european-digital-ident...[3] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...
[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...[2] https://news.dyne.org/the-problems-of-european-digital-ident...[3] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...
[2] https://news.dyne.org/the-problems-of-european-digital-ident...[3] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...
[3] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...
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you can also introduce some jitter like changing age range only once a week/month/year for everyone
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But also, knowing someone's birthday without trying it to other information greatly reduces the risk of harm.
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To let antagonistic governments send propaganda to children is harmful.
To let unknown adults contact children in private messages is harmful.
To let children access pornography 24/7 is harmful.I would expect a more balanced discussion. How to keep children safe is a priority, and there are technical ways to do so in a safe way that does not require to share personal identifications with social media.If you want a better proposal bring technical expertise to the discussion instead of ideology fundamentalism.
I would expect a more balanced discussion. How to keep children safe is a priority, and there are technical ways to do so in a safe way that does not require to share personal identifications with social media.If you want a better proposal bring technical expertise to the discussion instead of ideology fundamentalism.
If you want a better proposal bring technical expertise to the discussion instead of ideology fundamentalism.
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Slippery slope arguments and things like it are not going to convince people, "just parent your kids" is not going to convince people. Not because they're wrong, but because on balance they feel like the damage to children being exposed to this content is worse than the potential civil liberty issues.It will be very difficult to explain to people why this is not the same as alcohol being age-gated and you having to prove your identity to access it. Technically there should be no real reason we cannot do age attestation without fully revealing our identities anyway, there will need to be trust at some point in the system but the reality of the real world is that there is already and it's far less secure than we'd like.
It will be very difficult to explain to people why this is not the same as alcohol being age-gated and you having to prove your identity to access it. Technically there should be no real reason we cannot do age attestation without fully revealing our identities anyway, there will need to be trust at some point in the system but the reality of the real world is that there is already and it's far less secure than we'd like.
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This is why you don't have a technologically effective solution, here. "Trust" in this situation is a weasel word for surveillance, just like the pinkie promise that Client Side Scanning would never be abused by the government. Trust would not stop child abuse, or meaningfully prevent access to online pornography. Trust is not a technical solution, it's a political goal.If you have a productive suggestion, now is the time to voice it. All of the non-technical hand wringing is not helpful either, and feeds into the slippery slope logic that HN should be avoiding.
If you have a productive suggestion, now is the time to voice it. All of the non-technical hand wringing is not helpful either, and feeds into the slippery slope logic that HN should be avoiding.
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But the verification is not to prove you're a children. Everyone will be considered children until proven otherwise, which will not prevent this scenario at all.
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The second option is ignoring the verification request. Goodbye online-gaming-with-strangers on Xbox. (I see this as a positive). Same goes for Ubisoft who aggressively wanted my secret papers to verify my identity.I've yet to come across anything I want or need outside banking or government use where age verification benefits me, or is so useful/important that I would willingly hand over critical secret documents. I've not even needed to use a VPN for anything. It doesn't mean it won't happen, but when it does, option #1 or #2 is going to cover everything.Which circles back to the main point here - if I ignore it, then effectively I get identified as a non-adult. How does this protect anybody?(UK-based, might not be the same everywhere)
I've yet to come across anything I want or need outside banking or government use where age verification benefits me, or is so useful/important that I would willingly hand over critical secret documents. I've not even needed to use a VPN for anything. It doesn't mean it won't happen, but when it does, option #1 or #2 is going to cover everything.Which circles back to the main point here - if I ignore it, then effectively I get identified as a non-adult. How does this protect anybody?(UK-based, might not be the same everywhere)
Which circles back to the main point here - if I ignore it, then effectively I get identified as a non-adult. How does this protect anybody?(UK-based, might not be the same everywhere)
(UK-based, might not be the same everywhere)
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The problems start when the space become not-for-children and identity validation is mandatory to use them, which will exclude people like me who categorically refuse to hand over personal secrets in order to have access. It does not warrant the inherent risk involved with granting access to personal details unrelated to the service offered. I reckon this will happen when someone decides it's better commercially to make a service adult-only than to moderate non-adult accounts. It's a slippery slope, and a predictable next step once adult have become accustomed to handing over papers for some services to have to do it for many, if not all.
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[0] "Cypherpunks Uncut." https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xt3hpb
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Probabilistic verification using behavioral signals and metadata (device age, account age, interaction patterns) doesn't perfectly verify age but massively reduces the privacy trade-off. Most platforms optimize for regulatory compliance, not actual safety.
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(If anyone is offended by this, don't worry, I'm talking about the other side; I'm sure your side is full of reasonable adults who just get a little carried away sometimes.)
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I also wouldn't be surprised if there were plenty of people only dimly aware of the idea of a VPN who are now sitting up and taking note.
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Such as following directions from a YouTube video that instructs them to do sketchy things.
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Self-hosted vpns and b2b vpns will remain unaffected but that doesn't matter, they don't look for 100% coverage, 70%-80% is good enough
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I can see how the problem is real. (Not sarcasm.)In technical terms, "balance" is trivial. Put an air/security gap between information collected for age verification and the dossiers they have on users.In business terms, conflict. They have relentless incentives and pressures to collect, collate and leverage every bit of information that can increase their return on users. Legal gray and black behaviors are rampant and tolerated where protectable. The number of paths to a creative interpretation of "balance" is unbounded. Right up to the c-suite.It is sad, but self-aware, if they feel awkward trusting themselves with a mandated database full of tasty information they are not supposed to taste.
In technical terms, "balance" is trivial. Put an air/security gap between information collected for age verification and the dossiers they have on users.In business terms, conflict. They have relentless incentives and pressures to collect, collate and leverage every bit of information that can increase their return on users. Legal gray and black behaviors are rampant and tolerated where protectable. The number of paths to a creative interpretation of "balance" is unbounded. Right up to the c-suite.It is sad, but self-aware, if they feel awkward trusting themselves with a mandated database full of tasty information they are not supposed to taste.
In business terms, conflict. They have relentless incentives and pressures to collect, collate and leverage every bit of information that can increase their return on users. Legal gray and black behaviors are rampant and tolerated where protectable. The number of paths to a creative interpretation of "balance" is unbounded. Right up to the c-suite.It is sad, but self-aware, if they feel awkward trusting themselves with a mandated database full of tasty information they are not supposed to taste.
It is sad, but self-aware, if they feel awkward trusting themselves with a mandated database full of tasty information they are not supposed to taste.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20260308223909/https://www.cnbc....
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Discord's age verification is optional and only required to disable the image content filter, join adult servers, and a couple other features. I'm not saying it's a good decision, but I am getting tired of the repeated claim that it's mandatory to go do age verification to use the service.This lazy reporting is hurting the messaging because readers will believe that mandatory age verification was implemented and everything is fine, so new laws will not change anything for the worse. It needs to be clear that age verification laws would change the situation considerably, not be a nothingburger.I don't plan to do the Discord age verification and neither do most of the people I interact with on Discord. It's not mandatory.I don't recommend anyone rush to do the Discord age verification unless you really need to for some reason. Don't believe all of the lazy articles saying it's mandatory.
This lazy reporting is hurting the messaging because readers will believe that mandatory age verification was implemented and everything is fine, so new laws will not change anything for the worse. It needs to be clear that age verification laws would change the situation considerably, not be a nothingburger.I don't plan to do the Discord age verification and neither do most of the people I interact with on Discord. It's not mandatory.I don't recommend anyone rush to do the Discord age verification unless you really need to for some reason. Don't believe all of the lazy articles saying it's mandatory.
I don't plan to do the Discord age verification and neither do most of the people I interact with on Discord. It's not mandatory.I don't recommend anyone rush to do the Discord age verification unless you really need to for some reason. Don't believe all of the lazy articles saying it's mandatory.
I don't recommend anyone rush to do the Discord age verification unless you really need to for some reason. Don't believe all of the lazy articles saying it's mandatory.
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- There are servers that are labelled adult only because it's simpler to label _everything_ as causing cancer than it is to only label the correct things. I can't join channels for some games because they're "adult"; even though they're not- There are servers that are getting rid of content because they don't want some automatic system to label them as adult, even though they're not. There's a game server that got rid of it's meme channel, because people could (but don't) post content that some system might see as adult.So it is a bigger deal than you're making it out to be. It's negatively impacting people and servers that have no interest in having anything adult on them.
- There are servers that are getting rid of content because they don't want some automatic system to label them as adult, even though they're not. There's a game server that got rid of it's meme channel, because people could (but don't) post content that some system might see as adult.So it is a bigger deal than you're making it out to be. It's negatively impacting people and servers that have no interest in having anything adult on them.
So it is a bigger deal than you're making it out to be. It's negatively impacting people and servers that have no interest in having anything adult on them.
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So who should police that? I am in certain communities that try to be stricter on moderation (which I love!) but it's hard work, lots of people trying to be at the edge of rules (with normal things like swearing, insults, etc.).Whoever labels adult only and does not care is not wishing to put the effort to police that it actually is not.Personally I do generally mind much more annoying, aggressive, stupid posters (in various channels), than the fact that I am not allowed to post some stupid adult-looking meme.
Whoever labels adult only and does not care is not wishing to put the effort to police that it actually is not.Personally I do generally mind much more annoying, aggressive, stupid posters (in various channels), than the fact that I am not allowed to post some stupid adult-looking meme.
Personally I do generally mind much more annoying, aggressive, stupid posters (in various channels), than the fact that I am not allowed to post some stupid adult-looking meme.
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until it becomes law, like it is (or in the process of becoming) ~everywhere.
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It's important to get facts right.
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that is exactly what everyone is angry about.
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It's also misleading in the context of this journalism because it makes it look like it's already done and therefore new laws wouldn't change anything.
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The direction of these restrictions is not “optional”
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Not really, you'll just be forced to use services from eg google or meta. And pay for them. And share user data.
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I literally gain from using their services for communication and voice chat with friends.“Literally no gain whatsoever” is completely wrong.I've tried Matrix/Element for years. I'm still in some IRC channels. I know what the alternatives are I can confidently say I'm gaining value from the ease in which Discord allows us to voice chat, screen share, and invite less technical people to join.
“Literally no gain whatsoever” is completely wrong.I've tried Matrix/Element for years. I'm still in some IRC channels. I know what the alternatives are I can confidently say I'm gaining value from the ease in which Discord allows us to voice chat, screen share, and invite less technical people to join.
I've tried Matrix/Element for years. I'm still in some IRC channels. I know what the alternatives are I can confidently say I'm gaining value from the ease in which Discord allows us to voice chat, screen share, and invite less technical people to join.
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They are extorting your identity from you and you're somehow OK with that.
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...for now ... What stops them from changing this in the future?Additionally Discord may verify your age based on the collected data without consent.
Additionally Discord may verify your age based on the collected data without consent.
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Then I'll deal with that situation if it arises.
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we, as a society, need to stop taking companies at their word when they say that the obvious harms that are right around the corner are overblown.
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>most people will not verify their age>can't be sure they're an adult so treat everyone like children just in case>wait what? the trojan horse allows them to monitor and surveil them?I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
>can't be sure they're an adult so treat everyone like children just in case>wait what? the trojan horse allows them to monitor and surveil them?I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
>wait what? the trojan horse allows them to monitor and surveil them?I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
I'm shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
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All for making sites to send a header with restrictions as they apply in law (age rating per location for example -- so a site could send "US:16 US-TX:18 IE:14 GB:18 DE:16" etc), and even categorise as not required in law (category=gambling or category=healthcare)That gives the browser/app/accessing device the power to display or not displayThe second part of this is to empower parents -- let them choose the age rating which can only be changed with a parental code etc. Make this the law on all consumer commercial devices -- i.e phones, macbooks, windows.This is trivial and worthwhile.Yes some 15 year old will build something in python in a user session to work around it as they have a general purpose computer, that's a tiny amount of the problem. Solve the 90% problem first.
That gives the browser/app/accessing device the power to display or not displayThe second part of this is to empower parents -- let them choose the age rating which can only be changed with a parental code etc. Make this the law on all consumer commercial devices -- i.e phones, macbooks, windows.This is trivial and worthwhile.Yes some 15 year old will build something in python in a user session to work around it as they have a general purpose computer, that's a tiny amount of the problem. Solve the 90% problem first.
The second part of this is to empower parents -- let them choose the age rating which can only be changed with a parental code etc. Make this the law on all consumer commercial devices -- i.e phones, macbooks, windows.This is trivial and worthwhile.Yes some 15 year old will build something in python in a user session to work around it as they have a general purpose computer, that's a tiny amount of the problem. Solve the 90% problem first.
This is trivial and worthwhile.Yes some 15 year old will build something in python in a user session to work around it as they have a general purpose computer, that's a tiny amount of the problem. Solve the 90% problem first.
Yes some 15 year old will build something in python in a user session to work around it as they have a general purpose computer, that's a tiny amount of the problem. Solve the 90% problem first.
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Camera footage outside a wolf den captured something unexpected: a red fox preying on a wolf pup and possibly killing it in a rare, opportunistic attack. As apex predators, wolves are known to prey on foxes, but the reverse has never been observed before.
A team of researchers from the University of Sassari in Italy had set up five cameras outside a wolf den to monitor the species' reproductive behavior and instead ended up capturing the strange behavior of a fox flipping the script. This was the first incident of its kind caught on camera, but the researchers suggest it may be common for a mid-sized predator to prey on the young of its larger competitors in the wild. The incident is detailed in a new study published in Current Zoology.
The researchers, including Marco Apollonio and Celeste Buelli from the Department of Veterinary Medicine, placed five motion-activated cameras at the Castelporziano Presidential Estate, a protected area on the outskirts of Rome. One night in May 2025, a red fox was seen approaching a wolf den where two young pups were hiding inside.
Warning: The video, shown below, is not particularly graphic, but it does show a disturbing incident that some readers may find upsetting.
The footage captured that night shows the fox sniffing around the den before venturing inside and dragging a wolf pup outside. The young wolf manages to wiggle its way out of the fox's grip the first time and sneak back inside the den, but the relentless fox goes back in a second time and grabs the pup again. The tiny pup's whimpers can be heard in the video as the fox drags it from its home.
The video cuts to a different scene, and the wolf's fate is not caught on camera. The researchers believe the fox ended up killing the wolf, as the pup was never seen again in later footage. At the time of the attack, the adult wolves were out hunting. The pack later relocated the den, likely because it was compromised.
The study suggests that the fox went after the wolf den as a crime of opportunity. Wolves are apex predators that often hunt and kill foxes in the wild. Although wolves don't usually end up eating foxes, they do so to eliminate other predators in their territory. Foxes normally feed on small mammals such as birds, mice, and rabbits.
This sly fox, however, chose to attack a young wolf pup as a form of opportunistic kill to eliminate an apex predator, the scientists argue. “Our observation broadens the known range of antagonistic interactions affecting wolf offspring, demonstrating that even mesocarnivores [middle carnivores] can exert direct pressure on the reproductive performance of this apex predator,” the researchers wrote in the paper.
Considering that this was the first incident caught on camera, scientists aren't sure if this is common behavior for foxes. It does highlight hidden dangers that could threaten wolf pups in the wild and the lengths that smaller predators will go to in order to stay ahead of the competition.
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The reusable rocket has transformed the space industry in the last decade, and a new startup led by a SpaceX veteran wants to do the same for satellites.
Brian Taylor, who helped build satellites for networks like SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon's Leo, founded Lux Aeterna in December 2024 to develop satellite structures with a built-in heat shield that will allow them to return to Earth with their payloads intact.
The company, which came out of stealth last year, announced a new $10 million seed round Tuesday morning led by Konvoy, with participation from Decisive Point, Cubit Capital, Wave Function, Space Capital, Dynamo Ventures, and Channel 39. The company declined to disclose its valuation.
The capital will support the design and construction of Lux Aeterna's Delphi spacecraft, which has a confirmed spot on a SpaceX rocket expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027. That mission will prove out Lux's technology by offering customers a chance to test hosted payloads and materials that will then be returned to Earth at Australia's Koonibba Test Range through a partnership with the aerospace company Southern Launch.
Bringing anything back from space requires diving back into Earth's atmosphere at incredibly high speeds, which generates extreme heat. Spacecraft that want to survive the journey must be covered in materials that protect them from that heat, adding extra weight. Because that weight makes getting to space on a rocket more expensive, most spacecraft aren't designed for a return journey.
That calculus typically limits reentry to vehicles that carry humans, like the Space Shuttle (which saw one vehicle lost due to the extreme environment of reentry) or SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX's repeated attempts to land its massive Starship rocket have made that challenge vivid for anyone who's watched them on YouTube.
Startups like Varda Space and Inversion are tackling the same problem on a smaller scale: They are building reentry capsules that allow customers to perform experiments in space and return samples for analysis, or hypothetically deliver cargo to locations on Earth at high speed. Varda has flown five missions, returning capsules on four; Inversion hopes to launch its Arc vehicle sometime this year.
A reliable technology for returning payloads to Earth from space is a necessity for several futuristic business models—testing new materials in orbit, manufacturing pharmaceuticals or high-end electronics in microgravity, or harvesting resources like metals from asteroids. The US military has shown interest in the ability to provide logistics support with orbital deliveries or test components for hypersonic weapons.
Lux, however, has a bigger idea: making communications and Earth observation satellites reusable. Right now, satellites only have a useful life of five to ten years due to some combination of component failures, running out of propellant, or becoming obsolete. After that, they are destroyed in the atmosphere (no heat shields, remember?) or sent to a graveyard orbit out of the way of normal space activity.
“Our ambitions are so much larger than just reentry,” Taylor told TechCrunch, describing the potential for a “dynamic upgrade capability.” Said Taylor, “[I]f you have a payload component, whether it's compute or a hyperspectral camera, and you want to update that technology every year, instead of having to build new satellites and keep those old ones up in space, you can bring them down and go back.”
It's an exciting vision, but the economic reality will have to add up. The value those new payloads can create will have to be more than the added cost of building, launching, returning, and refurbishing a reusable satellite.
There's also a regulatory challenge. Lux is headed to Australia because obtaining a reentry license to land in the US right now isn't easy. Varda, which returned the first commercial spacecraft to land on US soil in 2024, saw its plans delayed for several months as it worked to convince the FAA that its returning capsule wouldn't threaten people or property on the ground below. Its subsequent missions have returned to Australia.
Taylor says that the pace of regulatory approvals won't be a bottleneck for the next three or four years, but expects the FAA to learn alongside the nascent reentry industry and allow for an increased return cadence.
“The folks that are backing us really believe that now is the time to put that major, major paradigm shift in orbital operations,” Taylor said. “Not only reentry and bringing things back, [but] about bringing reusability to much larger sections of the satellite industry.”
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Google announced on Tuesday that it's bringing a slew of new Gemini-powered AI capabilities to Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. The new features let users do things like quickly generate fully formatted first drafts, slides, and sheets based on information from their Gmail, Chat, and Drive.
The tools are designed to make the apps more personal and capable of helping users get things done faster, right within the platforms themselves, instead of needing to switch to a separate tool or chatbot.
A new “Help me create” tool in Docs lets users describe what they want to create, and Gemini will follow their instructions and gather information from Drive, Gmail, and Chat to generate a first draft. For example, you can ask Gemini to “draft a newsletter for our neighborhood association using the meeting minutes from my January HOA meeting and the list of upcoming events.”
Once you have a first draft, Gemini can help refine specific sections without regenerating the entire document. You can also use the “Help me write” tool to do things like improve clarity or add details where needed.
Additionally, if you have multiple people working on a draft with differing voices and tones, you can now use a new “Match writing style” feature to help unify the documents. Gemini will suggest edits to make the tone and voice consistent throughout the draft.
Docs is also getting a new “Match the format” tool that lets you mirror the structure and style of another document. For example, if you find a travel itinerary template you like, Gemini can fill it in with your own trip details by pulling information from your emails, such as flight confirmations, hotel bookings, and rental car reservations.
As for Sheets, Gemini is evolving from a tool you work in to a collaborative partner, Google says. With a single prompt, it will pull relevant data from across your Gmail, Chat, and Drive to quickly create a fully formatted spreadsheet.
For example, you could ask it to “organize my upcoming move to Chicago. Create a checklist for packing by room, a contact list for utilities, and a spreadsheet to track moving company quotes from my inbox.”
For more complex tasks, you can now use a “Fill with Gemini” tool to populate tables even faster. The feature can instantly generate custom text, categorize and summarize data, or pull in real-time information from Google Search.
For instance, if you're managing your college applications, you might have a tracker for all your application details. Instead of manually looking up each school's deadlines, tuition, and other information, you can set up column headers for the details you need, then let Gemini fill in the table automatically by pulling relevant information from the web.
Over on Sheets, you can now have Gemini generate a fully editable slide in your deck that matches your overall theme, drawing on context from your files, emails, and the web. If you don't like a slide, you can ask Gemini to adjust it by asking it to do things like “match the colors to the rest of my deck” or “make this more minimal.”
In the future, Google says Slides will let you create a complete presentation from a single prompt, using relevant context when needed. For instance, you will be able to ask Gemini to “create a 5-slide deck for my upcoming Tokyo trip.”
Google also announced that it's making Drive no longer just a place to store your files, but more of an active collaborator. Now, when you search in Drive using natural language, Gemini will surface an “AI Overview” at the top of your results, like the ones you see on Google Search. The overview summarizes the most relevant information from your files, while citing its sources, so you don't need to open a document to find what you're looking for.
A new “Ask Gemini in Drive” feature lets you ask complex questions across your documents, emails, calendar, and the web. For example, you could select all of your tax-related files and ask, “What should I ask my tax advisor before filing this year's taxes?” and get a detailed answer based on your actual data.
All the new features are rolling out today in beta and will first be available to Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers. They're available in English worldwide for Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and in the U.S. for Drive.
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Google rolled out multiple new AI features today for its core Workspace products: Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. These apps now include additional tools powered by Gemini, Google's AI assistant. The features range from generating entire rough drafts in your Docs to finding information tucked away in the recesses of your Drive.
This Google launch is part of a larger trend in 2026, in which major software developers are continuing to bake generative-AI-based features into core user experiences—despite the lingering distaste many in the US have for tools like these. The features are coming first to English-speaking subscribers of Google's AI Pro and Ultra plans.
For Docs, Google added “Help me create,” which attempts to generate full first drafts of your document, from a prompt, by looking at your emails and files, and searching the internet for context. This feature takes the existing “Help me write” feature in the Chrome browser even further and points to a future where humans rely on AI to craft their thoughts and share ideas with others.
Sheets and Slides both can now create similar full first drafts by pulling from information on the web and your past data. Another new, notable feature in Docs enables users to mimic the structure of past files when starting a new project. Also, Drive now includes AI Overviews of your files and more natural language searching abilities.
My tests primarily focused on the new tools in Google Docs, where I have the most familiarity. To start, I asked Gemini to draft an itinerary for some St. Patrick's Day shenanigans. In just a few seconds, Gemini combed through my Gmail and the web to put together a short plan. I was a little creeped out when the bot correctly looked up my flight reservations to see what city I'd be located in on March 17. It also tacked on a few well-known Irish pubs where I could grab a pint of Guinness. Overall, the results of this test were quick and solid.
Now let's raise the stakes. How convincing a first draft could Gemini generate for my job as a software reporter? WIRED's editorial standards block the use of generative AI, rightly so, except in situations where it's disclosed and used as an example. Rest assured, everything you're reading here was scribbled into my notebook before being typed up.
Other digital media outlets may not have rigorous standards around AI use, and tools like “Help me create” could be forced onto early-career journalists expected to pump out numerous stories each day. I attached the press materials Google provided about today's launch and requested a 600-word hands-on story from Gemini, with first-person insights that could help readers better understand the launch.
Naturally, Gemini didn't actually go “hands on” with itself. But, based on the solid quality of its St. Patty's Day plan, I was anxious that this mimetic blog post would also be surprisingly sufficient. Are my days as a voicey blogger coming to a close? Nope. Not today, at least.
“With the latest updates to Google Workspace, we are seeing Gemini move beyond a side-panel novelty into the role of a true collaborative partner,” read part of the AI-written draft. “After going hands-on with these features, I've found that the real power isn't just in ‘AI writing'; it's in the deep integration across your personal and professional data silos.”
Wow. That's pretty bland, with the writing style of an executive assistant afraid to express even the slightest opinion. As I generated more first drafts of documents like this, I could see these new features being helpful for internal corporate communications or for marketers on the hunt for additional ways to say buy my stuff. Not so much for personal expression or creative outputs. Even when I uploaded files of my own writing and asked Gemini to copy that cadence, the results still didn't sound like me.
“If you have access, my best advice is to stop treating Gemini as a search engine and start treating it as a research assistant that already has a copy of your key,” the AI-generated draft concluded. Come on, bot. I gave you access to my entire email archive. Let's make this a little more specific, or at least say something provocative in my voice. (Also, the key to what? My house? Not sure why any research assistant would need that.)
Along with generating full drafts, the new Gemini features can also be used to adjust sections of the documents and do full-scale rewrites based on user suggestions. I asked it to rewrite this initial draft in the tone of a WIRED journalist. Almost immediately, Gemini regenerated the draft with fresh paragraphs that I could choose to accept or reject.
This new version was indeed better, but far from passable as something I would actually write. “The ‘Help me create' engine is the standout here,” read the new AI-written draft. “It's moved past generating generic corporate-speak, instead synthesizing live data points across your Drive, Gmail, and Chat history.” I wouldn't be so sure about that, Gemini!
After a day of experimenting with these new features, especially in Google Docs, I'm of two minds. These Gemini tools are more powerful than past releases and were actually able to locate information quickly and accurately from personal data sources, like my inbox. Even so, all this AI-generated writing still harbors an undercurrent of blandness, with a paint-by-numbers approach to prose that's almost impossible to overcome. Well, at least that's what I have written down in my notebook.
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The PC market is being pummeled by precipitous decline and increasing component costs, with an industry analyst saying that these factors could cause laptop prices to increase by around 40%. TrendForce says that this price hike is likely to happen if manufacturers, distributors, and retailers were to keep their margins, resulting in mainstream models that cost $900 hitting around $1,260. These cost pressures are driven by the continued memory and storage chip shortage, resulting in out-of-control pricing, as well as Intel raising the prices on several generations of modern CPUs.
Before these shortages, RAM modules and SSDs were about 15% of the bill-of-materials of a mainstream device, with the CPU making up another 30%, for a total of 45% for these three major components. However, recent events meant that this number is now closer to 58%. However, this 13% increase in cost does not accommodate the profit margins of the entire supply chain; that's why the retail pricing for laptops is expected to rise much more significantly.
We've been hearing reports of the rising memory and storage costs since the last quarter of 2025. One key player in the storage industry even warned that the NAND shortage could cause entire businesses to shut down because of their inability to secure supply. These parts are in short supply because of the massive demand of AI hyperscalers and data centers for high-bandwidth memory and fast storage. Since these enterprises are willing to pay top-dollar compared to the average consumer, almost all suppliers have pivoted their manufacturing capacity towards these more lucrative products.
But what many did not expect in 2026 was that the AI boom would also hit CPUs, with Intel and AMD both reporting spikes in demand, as well as server CPU shortages in China. This is largely driven by agentic AI, which requires a combination of CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and more to support its workflow. This is also apparent in the consumer market as enthusiasts experiment with OpenClaw, resulting in extended delivery timelines for high-end Apple Mac units with massive Unified Memory configurations.
This is bad news for Microsoft and many laptop manufacturers, especially as many entry-level and mid-range buyers choose Windows laptops for sub-$1,000 budgets. If this price increase estimate rings true, then it would make these models no longer priced attractively versus the new M5 MacBook Air, with its $1,099 base price that comes with 16GB of Unified Memory and 512GB storage. More importantly, the just-released MacBook Neo is now giving entry-level customers an affordable device that comes in a premium package.
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How would you like to watch a time-travelling Sam Rockwell recruit a bunch of today's best actors at a 24-hour diner to save the world from a killer AI? Well, you can do that literally right now, as Gore Verbinski's new film, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, just became available at home for digital download.
The release comes just a month after the film's theatrical release, and while that certainly isn't a lot of time, it could have been sooner. That was until the film did fairly well in theaters and the distributor decided to hold back the digital release just a bit longer. And now, it's out.
We're not lying about that premise, either. The film is an insane sci-fi time travel story about a man (Rockwell) who has figured out that the correct combination of people who can save his future from a killer AI are all in a Norm's Diner in Los Angeles, CA. He's just not sure how many people and who they are yet. So, he's done this hundreds of times, and we pick up on the run that it just might be the one. Among the people chosen are characters played by Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, and Juno Temple.
It's a fun movie that is definitely worth your time, and if you'd like to know more, you can read our full review here. Also, we talked to the film's director, Gore Verbinski, about it too. That's at this link. Verbinski is best known for directing the Pirates of the Caribbean movies as well as the animated hit Rango, but he hadn't made a film in a while. Hopefully, he gets to make more in this world because this is a fun movie that deserves to be expanded even further.
Oh, and if you're more the physical media type, the film is coming to 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on April 21. Or, again, it's out now wherever you get digital downloads.
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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If you loved 'A Cure for Wellness,' Verbinski's take on 'BioShock' might've been exactly your kind of movie had it actually gotten made.
It's called 'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die,' stars Sam Rockwell, and opens February 13.
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RAM prices are pretty crazy right now, but Newegg bundles continue to be the saviour of enthusiasts looking to build a PC in 2026. Thanks to some generous savings built around the new AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D, the fastest gaming CPU on the market, you can get RAM for a much more reasonable price. Take today's offering, which gets you the 9850X3D, an Asus ROG Strix X870E-E motherboard, and 32GB of Corsair Vengeance 6400 RAM for $1,111.
Simple math makes the value of this bundle clear to see. The 9850X3D is $499. Having only come out weeks ago, it's not seeing any discounts, so MSRP is the name of the game here. Likewise, this Asus ROG Strix X9870E-E Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard is a potent offering to build your PC around, retailing at $449 on Newegg at the moment. As such, subtracting these from the list price of the combo means you're saving $236 on the RAM, which has a relative price of $163 rather than its list price of $399.
Of course, that price is drastically inflated owing to the AI apocalypse that is squeezing PC component prices. The cheapest this RAM has ever been is around $99, meaning you're only paying $64 over the odds in this case. In this economy, that is as good as it gets.
Get AMD's fastest gaming CPU, a great AM5 motherboard, and 32GB of speedy DDR5 for as close to pre-AI price crunch prices as you can get.
The standout of this build (aside from the saving on RAM) is AMD's new 9850X3D processor. It hasn't unseated the 9800X3D as our pick for best gaming CPU, but its increased power draw means that it is without doubt the fastest gaming CPU on the market you can buy right now, as our benchmarks below confirm.
To seat this processor, you get a hefty Asus ROG Strix X870E-E motherboard with 18+2+2 power stages. It features a whopping three PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots for vast storage capabilities at the fastest speeds, as well as a further two 4.0 slots just in case. It supports DDR5 at 8400+ MT/S, with four DIMM slots. An array of chunky heatsinks for cooling performance complements the dark gaming aesthetic. Meanwhile, you'll get plenty of USB-C ports, including two USB4 (Type-C) and a further 10 USB 10 Gbps ports, nine type-A and one type-C.
There's also Wi-Fi 7, 5GB Ethernet, and built-in AI overclocking tools.
As for the RAM, you'll get 32GB of DDR5 6400, speedier than the 6000 kits we often see in these bundles. With built-in RGB lighting, these will offer everything you need for solid gaming performance from your AM5 build, when paired with the right GPU, of course.
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It's difficult to explain to laypersons just how difficult PlayStation 3 emulation is.
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Unless you're a low-level developer yourself, you probably don't realize how complicated emulator development is. To be frank, the RPCS3 emulator for PlayStation 3 is probably one of the most tightly-optimized pieces of software being actively developed today. Case in point: the project's official X account just posted a screenshot of the app running the PlayStation 3 version of Minecraft and achieving some 1558.84 FPS on the title screen.
There are a lot of "yeah buts" about this result. It's Minecraft, and more than that, it's not even in-game; it's the title screen. The thing you have to understand is that this isn't just "running Minecraft at over 1500 FPS." This is "pretending to be a PS3 that is running Minecraft at over 1500 FPS." That is an entirely different task, and in an entirely other galaxy of complexity.
As a refresher, the PlayStation 3 was released in November 2006. It's a game console that features a graphics processor, the Reality Synthesizer or RSX, that is a very close relation (though not identical to) an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX, albeit with half the memory bandwidth and a few other tweaks. That GPU is mated to the IBM-Sony-Toshiba Cell Broadband Engine, a single-core PowerPC CPU with eight "Synergistic Processing Elements" (SPEs) hanging off the back of it, though only seven are functional in the final design.
RPCS3 is so optimised that it can pull off over than 1500 FPS on Minecraft PS3 Edition's menu.This means a frame is rendered in average within 0.00064 seconds (0.64 milliseconds) while emulating the PS3 system, translating binary code and rendering the result on each frame. https://t.co/AL7RwunHnU pic.twitter.com/MbaAvMgyZ5March 8, 2026
So, a single-core CPU with SIMD and an old GPU. Easy to emulate on modern hardware, right? No. The design of the PS3 is legendarily idiosyncratic. The RSX and the Cell communicate with each other over a proprietary bus called FlexIO, which is extremely fast—sometimes. For certain transfers, it can be as slow as 16 megabytes/second. Complicating matters, the latency of a FlexIO operation varies depending on whether you're reading or writing, and which device you're doing either to and from. This matters because software is programmed to expect a certain latency, and screwing it up could crash a program or cause other unexpected behavior.
Moreover, the Cell's SPEs are not like a modern CPU's SIMD units. They're somewhere between that and discrete CPU cores, with their own 256K of "Local Storage" and their own memory controller that works independently of the "SPU", which is the actual functional unit inside the SPE. The SPUs can only work on data resident in their own Local Store, but loading data in and out of the Local Store has to be done manually by the developer by sending commands to the Memory Fabric Controller inside each of the six usable SPEs (one is reserved for OS functions).
Worse than that, the SPUs are spectacularly weird processors. They can only work with just a few data types, and they do things that modern processors simply aren't capable of without considerable work shuffling bits around; a single instruction explodes into dozens. In particular, the SPUs perform a lot of 128-bit atomic operations that require tons of complex, tightly-optimized code to emulate both quickly and accurately on x86-64 CPUs, and that's to say nothing of trying to perform said emulation with a "close-enough" latency. Recently-added instructions as part of the AVX-512 ISA extensions help with this, but don't fully resolve it.
All this to say that yes, it's Minecraft's title screen. It's Minecraft's title screen coming out of an application that's emulating all this arcane PlayStation 3 hardware within less than two-thirds of a millisecond (0.64ms). I wasn't kidding when I said RPCS3 is one of the most heavily optimized pieces of software on the planet. The recompiler is doing things normal developers would stare at in befuddlement for speed.
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Still, the replies to the Twitter post are largely unappreciative. It's easy to understand how they feel; when a game from 2009 won't run smoothly on your 2026 hardware, it feels ridiculous—although we have to point out that actual 2026 hardware generally will run everything just fine; even God of War III and Metal Gear Solid 4 are mostly playable on the best CPUs for gaming.
The simple reality is that the PS3 was a beautiful disaster of a machine, and the way it does things is just fundamentally different from the way we do things in x86-land. The fact that the app exists at all is a testament to the hard work put in by kd-11, Nekotekina, Whatcookie, and the dozens upon dozens of other contributors to the open-source project. Our very humble hats off to the team for donating countless hours of their free time to push the state of PS3 game preservation ever forward.
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It doesn't really matter what your stance on AI is, the problem is the increased review burden on OSS maintainers.In the past, the code itself was a sort of proof of effort - you would need to invest some time and effort on your PRs, otherwise they would be easily dismissed at a glance. That is no longer the case, as LLMs can quickly generate PRs that might look superficially correct. Effort can still have been out into those PRs, but there is no way to tell without spending time reviewing in more detail.Policies like this help decrease that review burden, by outright rejecting what can be identified as LLM-generated code at a glance. That is probably a fair bit today, but it might get harder over time, though, so I suspect eventually we will see a shift towards more trust-based models, where you cannot submit PRs if you haven't been approved in advance somehow.Even if we assume LLMs would consistently generate good enough quality code, code submitted by someone untrusted would still need detailed review for many reasons - so even in that case it would like be faster for the maintainers to just use the tools themselves, rather than reviewing someone else's use of the same tools.
In the past, the code itself was a sort of proof of effort - you would need to invest some time and effort on your PRs, otherwise they would be easily dismissed at a glance. That is no longer the case, as LLMs can quickly generate PRs that might look superficially correct. Effort can still have been out into those PRs, but there is no way to tell without spending time reviewing in more detail.Policies like this help decrease that review burden, by outright rejecting what can be identified as LLM-generated code at a glance. That is probably a fair bit today, but it might get harder over time, though, so I suspect eventually we will see a shift towards more trust-based models, where you cannot submit PRs if you haven't been approved in advance somehow.Even if we assume LLMs would consistently generate good enough quality code, code submitted by someone untrusted would still need detailed review for many reasons - so even in that case it would like be faster for the maintainers to just use the tools themselves, rather than reviewing someone else's use of the same tools.
Policies like this help decrease that review burden, by outright rejecting what can be identified as LLM-generated code at a glance. That is probably a fair bit today, but it might get harder over time, though, so I suspect eventually we will see a shift towards more trust-based models, where you cannot submit PRs if you haven't been approved in advance somehow.Even if we assume LLMs would consistently generate good enough quality code, code submitted by someone untrusted would still need detailed review for many reasons - so even in that case it would like be faster for the maintainers to just use the tools themselves, rather than reviewing someone else's use of the same tools.
Even if we assume LLMs would consistently generate good enough quality code, code submitted by someone untrusted would still need detailed review for many reasons - so even in that case it would like be faster for the maintainers to just use the tools themselves, rather than reviewing someone else's use of the same tools.
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* Prefer an issue over a PR (after iterating on the issue, either you or the maintainer can use it as a prompt)* Only open a PR if the review effort is less than the implementation effort.Whether the latter is feasible depends on the project, but in one of the projects I'm involved in it's fairly obvious: it's a package manager where the work is typically verifying dependencies and constraints; links to upstream commits etc are a great shortcut for reviewers.
* Only open a PR if the review effort is less than the implementation effort.Whether the latter is feasible depends on the project, but in one of the projects I'm involved in it's fairly obvious: it's a package manager where the work is typically verifying dependencies and constraints; links to upstream commits etc are a great shortcut for reviewers.
Whether the latter is feasible depends on the project, but in one of the projects I'm involved in it's fairly obvious: it's a package manager where the work is typically verifying dependencies and constraints; links to upstream commits etc are a great shortcut for reviewers.
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Despite that, you will make this argument when trying to use copilot to do something, the worst model in the entire industry.If an AI can replace you at your job, you are not a very good programmer.
If an AI can replace you at your job, you are not a very good programmer.
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It's fine to write things by hand, in the same way that there's nothing wrong with making your own clothing with a sewing machine when you could have bought the same thing for a small fraction of the value of your time. Or in the same fashion, spending a whole weekend, modeling and printing apart, you could've bought for a few dollars. I think we need to be honest about differentiating between the hobby value of writing programs versus the utility value of programs. Redox is a hobby project, and, while it's very cool, I'm not sure it has a strong utility proposition. Demanding that code be handwritten makes sense to me for the maintainer because the whole thing is just for fun anyway. There isn't an urgent need to RIIR Linux. I would not apply this approach to projects where solving the problem is more important than the joy of writing the solution.
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Is that really true? Like, if you took the time to plan it carefully, dot every i, cross every t?The way I think of LLM's is as "median targeters" -- they reliably produce output at the centre of the bell curve from their training set. So if you're working in a language that you're unfamiliar with -- let's say I wanted to make a todo list in COBOL -- then LLM's can be a great help, because the median COBOL developer is better than I am. But for languages I'm actually versed in, the median is significantly worse than what I could produce.So when I hear people say things like "the clanker produces better programs than me", what I hear is that you're worse than the median developer at producing programs by hand.
The way I think of LLM's is as "median targeters" -- they reliably produce output at the centre of the bell curve from their training set. So if you're working in a language that you're unfamiliar with -- let's say I wanted to make a todo list in COBOL -- then LLM's can be a great help, because the median COBOL developer is better than I am. But for languages I'm actually versed in, the median is significantly worse than what I could produce.So when I hear people say things like "the clanker produces better programs than me", what I hear is that you're worse than the median developer at producing programs by hand.
So when I hear people say things like "the clanker produces better programs than me", what I hear is that you're worse than the median developer at producing programs by hand.
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My go-to analogy is assembly language programming: it used to be an essential skill, but now is essentially delegated to compilers outside of some limited specialized cases. I think LLMs will be seen as the compiler technology of the next wave of computing.
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For example just recently I updated a component in one of our modules. The work was fairly rote (in this project we are not allowed to use LLMs). While it was absolutely necessary to do the update here, it was beneficial to do it everywhere else. I didn't do it in other places because I couldn't justify spending the effort.There are two sides to this - with LLMs, housekeeping becomes easy and effortless, but you often err on the side of verbosity because it costs nothing to write.But much less thought goes into every line of code, and I often am kinda amazed that how compact and rudimentary the (hand-written) logic is behind some of our stuff that I thought would be some sort of magnum opus.When in fact the opposite should be the case - every piece of functionality you don't need right now, will be trivial to generate in the future, so the principle of YAGNI applies even more.
There are two sides to this - with LLMs, housekeeping becomes easy and effortless, but you often err on the side of verbosity because it costs nothing to write.But much less thought goes into every line of code, and I often am kinda amazed that how compact and rudimentary the (hand-written) logic is behind some of our stuff that I thought would be some sort of magnum opus.When in fact the opposite should be the case - every piece of functionality you don't need right now, will be trivial to generate in the future, so the principle of YAGNI applies even more.
But much less thought goes into every line of code, and I often am kinda amazed that how compact and rudimentary the (hand-written) logic is behind some of our stuff that I thought would be some sort of magnum opus.When in fact the opposite should be the case - every piece of functionality you don't need right now, will be trivial to generate in the future, so the principle of YAGNI applies even more.
When in fact the opposite should be the case - every piece of functionality you don't need right now, will be trivial to generate in the future, so the principle of YAGNI applies even more.
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I'm sorry but this says more about you than about the models. It is certainly not the case for me!
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It never picks a style, it'll alternate between exceptions and then return codes.It'll massively overcomplicate things. It'll reference things that straight up don't exist.But boy is it brilliant at a fuzzy find and replace.
It'll massively overcomplicate things. It'll reference things that straight up don't exist.But boy is it brilliant at a fuzzy find and replace.
But boy is it brilliant at a fuzzy find and replace.
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That's correct, because most of the cost of code is not the development but rather the subsequent maintenance, where AI can't help. Verbose, unchecked AI slop becomes a huge liability over time, you're vastly better off spending those few weekends rewriting it from scratch.
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The open source world has already been ripped off by AI the last thing they need is for AI to pollute the pedigree of the codebase.
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Do you think your worldview is still a reasonable one under those conditions?
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Maybe one day it will be.. And then people can reevaluate their stance then. Until that time, it's entirely reasonable to hold the position that you just don'tThis is especially true with how LLM generated code may affect licensing and other things. There's a lot of unknowns there and it's entirely reasonable to not want to risk your projects license over some contributions.I use them all the time at work because, rightly or wrongly, my company has decided that's the direction they want to go.For open source, I'm not going to make that choice for them. If they explicitly allow for LLM generated code, then I'll use it, but if not I'm not going to assume that the project maintainers are willing to deal with the potential issues it creates.For my own open source projects, I'm not interested in using LLM generated code. I mostly work on open source projects that I enjoy or in a specific area that I want to learn more about. The fact that it's functional software is great, but is only one of many goals of the project. AI generated code runs counter to all the other goals I have.
This is especially true with how LLM generated code may affect licensing and other things. There's a lot of unknowns there and it's entirely reasonable to not want to risk your projects license over some contributions.I use them all the time at work because, rightly or wrongly, my company has decided that's the direction they want to go.For open source, I'm not going to make that choice for them. If they explicitly allow for LLM generated code, then I'll use it, but if not I'm not going to assume that the project maintainers are willing to deal with the potential issues it creates.For my own open source projects, I'm not interested in using LLM generated code. I mostly work on open source projects that I enjoy or in a specific area that I want to learn more about. The fact that it's functional software is great, but is only one of many goals of the project. AI generated code runs counter to all the other goals I have.
I use them all the time at work because, rightly or wrongly, my company has decided that's the direction they want to go.For open source, I'm not going to make that choice for them. If they explicitly allow for LLM generated code, then I'll use it, but if not I'm not going to assume that the project maintainers are willing to deal with the potential issues it creates.For my own open source projects, I'm not interested in using LLM generated code. I mostly work on open source projects that I enjoy or in a specific area that I want to learn more about. The fact that it's functional software is great, but is only one of many goals of the project. AI generated code runs counter to all the other goals I have.
For open source, I'm not going to make that choice for them. If they explicitly allow for LLM generated code, then I'll use it, but if not I'm not going to assume that the project maintainers are willing to deal with the potential issues it creates.For my own open source projects, I'm not interested in using LLM generated code. I mostly work on open source projects that I enjoy or in a specific area that I want to learn more about. The fact that it's functional software is great, but is only one of many goals of the project. AI generated code runs counter to all the other goals I have.
For my own open source projects, I'm not interested in using LLM generated code. I mostly work on open source projects that I enjoy or in a specific area that I want to learn more about. The fact that it's functional software is great, but is only one of many goals of the project. AI generated code runs counter to all the other goals I have.
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People might still code by hand as a hobby, but I'd be surprised if nearly all professional coding isn't being done by LLMs within the next year or two. It's clear that doing it by hand would mostly be because you enjoy the process. I expect people that are more focused on the output will adopt LLMs for hobby work as well.
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This is gaslighting. We're only a few years into coding agents being a thing. Look at the history of human innovation and tell me that I'm unreasonable for suspecting that there is an iceberg worth of unmitigated externalities lurking beneath the surface that haven't yet been brought to light. In time they might. Like PFAS, ozone holes, global warming.
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That seems like a win-win in a sense: let the agentic coders do their thing, and the artisanal coders do their thing, and we'll see who wins in the long run.
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this feels like the place where your approach breaks down. I have had very poor results trying to build a foundation that CAN be polished, or where features don't quickly feel like a jenga tower. I'm wondering if the success we've seen is because AI is building on top of, or we're early days in "foundational" work? Is anyone aware of studies comparing longer term structural aspects? is it too early?
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Saves the rest of us from having to tell you.
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And this is why eventually you are likely to run the artisanal coders who tend to do most of the true innovation out of the room.Because by and large, agentic coders don't contribute, they make their own fork which nobody else is interested in because it is personalized to them and the code quality is questionable at best.Eventually, I'm sure LLM code quality will catch up, but the ease with which an existing codebase can be forked and slightly tuned, instead of contributing to the original, is a double edged sword.
Because by and large, agentic coders don't contribute, they make their own fork which nobody else is interested in because it is personalized to them and the code quality is questionable at best.Eventually, I'm sure LLM code quality will catch up, but the ease with which an existing codebase can be forked and slightly tuned, instead of contributing to the original, is a double edged sword.
Eventually, I'm sure LLM code quality will catch up, but the ease with which an existing codebase can be forked and slightly tuned, instead of contributing to the original, is a double edged sword.
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Isn't that literally how open-source works, and why there's so many Linux distros?Code quality is a subjective term as well, I feel like everyone dunking on AI coding is a defensive reaction - over time this will become an entirely acceptable concept.
Code quality is a subjective term as well, I feel like everyone dunking on AI coding is a defensive reaction - over time this will become an entirely acceptable concept.
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Vibe coders don't have to do any of this. They don't have to understand anything, they can just have their LLMs do some modifications that are completely opaque to the vibe coder.Perhaps the long term steady state will be a goldilocks renaissance of open source where lots of new ideas and contributors spring up, made capable with AI assistance. But so far what I've seen is the opposite. These people just feed existing work into their LLMs, produce derivative works and never bother to engage with the original authors or community.
Perhaps the long term steady state will be a goldilocks renaissance of open source where lots of new ideas and contributors spring up, made capable with AI assistance. But so far what I've seen is the opposite. These people just feed existing work into their LLMs, produce derivative works and never bother to engage with the original authors or community.
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Personally, I would not currently expect a fork of RedoxOS that is AI-implemented to become more popular than RedoxOS itself.
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That sounds very Usanian. In the meantime transportation in around me is done on foot, bicycle, bus, tram, metro, train and cars. There are good use cases for each method including the car. If you really want to use an automotive analogy, then sure, LLMs can be like cars. I've seen cities made for cars instead of humans, and they are a horrible place to live.Signed, a person who totally gets good results from coding with LLMs. Sometimes, maybe even often.
Signed, a person who totally gets good results from coding with LLMs. Sometimes, maybe even often.
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Start new projects using LLM tools, or maybe fork projects where that is acceptable. Don't force the volunteer maintainers of existing projects with existing workflows and cultures to review AI generated code. Create your own projects with workflows and cultures that are supportive of this, from the ground up.I'm not suggesting this will come without downside, but it seems better to me than expecting maintainers to take on a new burden that they really didn't sign up for.
I'm not suggesting this will come without downside, but it seems better to me than expecting maintainers to take on a new burden that they really didn't sign up for.
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There clearly should be, but that is not the world we live in.
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Prompts from issue text makes a lot of sense.
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>No big rewrites or anything crazyI think those are the key points why they've been welcomed.
I think those are the key points why they've been welcomed.
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And I would say especially for operating systems if it gets any adoption irregular contributions are pretty legit. E.g. when someone wants just one specific piece of hardware supported that no one else has or needs without being employed by the vendor.
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Potential long time contributor is somebody who was already asking annoying questions in the irc channel for a few months and helped with other stuff before shooting off th e PR. If the PR is the first time you hear from a person -- that's pretty drive-by ish.
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I always provided well-documented PRs with a narrow scope and an obvious purpose.
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Not to mention LLMs can be annoying, too. Demand this, and you'll only be inviting bots to pester devs on IRC.
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Because if the bug is sufficiently simple that an outsider with zero context to fix, there's a non-zero chance that the maintainers know about it and have a reason why it hasn't been addressed yeti.e. the bug fix may have backwards-compatibility implications for other users which you aren't aware of. Or the maintainers may be bandwidth-limited, and reviewing your PR is an additional drain on that bandwidth that takes away from fixing larger issues
i.e. the bug fix may have backwards-compatibility implications for other users which you aren't aware of. Or the maintainers may be bandwidth-limited, and reviewing your PR is an additional drain on that bandwidth that takes away from fixing larger issues
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Drive-by folks tend to blindly fix the issue they care about, without regard to how/whether it fits into the overall project direction
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Wait but under that assumption - LLMs being good enough - wouldn't the maintainer also be able to leverage LLMs to speed up the review?Often feels to me like the current stance of arguments is missing something.
Often feels to me like the current stance of arguments is missing something.
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This assumes that AI capable of writing passable code is also capable of a passable review. It also assumes that you save any time by trusting that review, if it missed something wrong then it's often actually more effort to go back and fix than it would've been to just read it yourself the first time.
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So it becomes a bit theoretical, but I guess if we had a future where LLMs could consistently write perfect code, it would not be too far fetched to also think it could perfectly review code, true enough. But either way the maintainer would still spend some time ensuring a contribution aligns with their vision and so forth, and there would still be close to zero incentive to allow outside contributors in that scenario. No matter what, that scenario is a bit of a fairytale at this point.
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I use Claude Code a lot, I generate a ton of changes, and I have to review it all because it makes stupid mistakes. And during reviews it misses stupid things. This review part is now the biggest bottleneck that can't yet be skipped.An in an open source project many people can generate a lot more code than a few people can review.
An in an open source project many people can generate a lot more code than a few people can review.
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Imagine someone vibe codes the code for a radiotherapy machine and it fries a patient (humans have made these errors). The developer won't be able to point to OpenAI and blame them for this, the developer is personally responsible for this (well, their employer is most likely). Ergo, in any setting where there is significant monetary or health risk at stake, humans have to review the code at least to show that they've done their due diligence.I'm sure we are going to have some epic cases around someone messing up this way.
I'm sure we are going to have some epic cases around someone messing up this way.
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Wouldn't an agent run by a maintainer require the same scrutiny? An agent is imo "someone else" and not a trusted maintainer.
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That being said, to outright ban a technology in 2026 on pure "vibes" is not something I'd say is reasonable. Others have already commented that it's likely unenforceable, but I'd also say it's unreasonable for the sake of utility. It leaves stuff on the table in a time where they really shouldn't. Things like documentation tracking, regression tracking, security, feature parity, etc. can all be enhanced with carefully orchestrated assistance. To simply ban this is ... a choice, I guess. But it's not reasonable, in my book. It's like saying we won't use ci/cd, because it's automated stuff, we're purely manual here.I think a lot of projects will find ways to adapt. Create good guidelines, help the community to use the best tools for the best tasks, and use automation wherever it makes sense.At the end of the day slop is slop. You can always refuse to even look at something if you don't like the presentation. Or if the code is a mess. Or if it doesn't follow conventions. Or if a PR is +203323 lines, and so on. But attaching "LLMs aka AI" to the reasoning only invites drama, if anything it makes the effort of distinguishing good content from good looking content even harder, and so on. In the long run it won't be viable. If there's a good way to optimise a piece of code, it won't matter where that optimisation came from, as long as it can be proved it's good.tl;dr; focus on better verification instead of better identification; prove that a change is good instead of focusing where it came from; test, learn and adapt. Dogma was never good.
I think a lot of projects will find ways to adapt. Create good guidelines, help the community to use the best tools for the best tasks, and use automation wherever it makes sense.At the end of the day slop is slop. You can always refuse to even look at something if you don't like the presentation. Or if the code is a mess. Or if it doesn't follow conventions. Or if a PR is +203323 lines, and so on. But attaching "LLMs aka AI" to the reasoning only invites drama, if anything it makes the effort of distinguishing good content from good looking content even harder, and so on. In the long run it won't be viable. If there's a good way to optimise a piece of code, it won't matter where that optimisation came from, as long as it can be proved it's good.tl;dr; focus on better verification instead of better identification; prove that a change is good instead of focusing where it came from; test, learn and adapt. Dogma was never good.
At the end of the day slop is slop. You can always refuse to even look at something if you don't like the presentation. Or if the code is a mess. Or if it doesn't follow conventions. Or if a PR is +203323 lines, and so on. But attaching "LLMs aka AI" to the reasoning only invites drama, if anything it makes the effort of distinguishing good content from good looking content even harder, and so on. In the long run it won't be viable. If there's a good way to optimise a piece of code, it won't matter where that optimisation came from, as long as it can be proved it's good.tl;dr; focus on better verification instead of better identification; prove that a change is good instead of focusing where it came from; test, learn and adapt. Dogma was never good.
tl;dr; focus on better verification instead of better identification; prove that a change is good instead of focusing where it came from; test, learn and adapt. Dogma was never good.
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Once outside contributions are rejected by default, the maintainers can of course choose whether or not to use LLMs or not.I do think that it is a misconception that OSS software needs to "viable". OSS maintainers can have many motivations to build something, and just shipping a product might not be at the top of that list at all, and they certainly don't have that obligation. Personally, I use OSS as a way to build and design software with a level of gold plating that is not possible in most work settings, for the feeling that _I_ built something, and the pure joy of coding - using LLMs to write code would work directly against those goals. Whether LLMs are essential in more competitive environments is also something that there are mixed opinions on, but in those cases being dogmatic is certainly more risky.
I do think that it is a misconception that OSS software needs to "viable". OSS maintainers can have many motivations to build something, and just shipping a product might not be at the top of that list at all, and they certainly don't have that obligation. Personally, I use OSS as a way to build and design software with a level of gold plating that is not possible in most work settings, for the feeling that _I_ built something, and the pure joy of coding - using LLMs to write code would work directly against those goals. Whether LLMs are essential in more competitive environments is also something that there are mixed opinions on, but in those cases being dogmatic is certainly more risky.
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Licensing is dependent on IPR, primarily copyright.It is very unclear whether the output of an AI tool is subject to copyright.So if someone uses AI to refactor some code, that refactored code isn't considered a derivative work which means that the refactored source is no longer covered by the copyright, or the license that depends on that.
It is very unclear whether the output of an AI tool is subject to copyright.So if someone uses AI to refactor some code, that refactored code isn't considered a derivative work which means that the refactored source is no longer covered by the copyright, or the license that depends on that.
So if someone uses AI to refactor some code, that refactored code isn't considered a derivative work which means that the refactored source is no longer covered by the copyright, or the license that depends on that.
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At least for those here under the jurisdiction of the US Copyright Office, the answer is rather clear. Copyright only applies to the part of a work that was contributed by a human.See https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...For example, on page 3 there (PDF page 11): "In February 2022, the Copyright Office's Review Board issued a final decision affirming
the refusal to register a work claimed to be generated with no human involvement. [...] Since [a guidance on the matter] was issued, the Office has registered hundreds of works that incorporate AI-generated material, with the registration covering the human author's contribution to the work."(I'm not saying that to mean "therefore this is how it works everywhere". Indeed, I'm less familiar with my own country's jurisprudence here in Germany, but the US Copyright Office has been on my radar from reading tech news.)
See https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...For example, on page 3 there (PDF page 11): "In February 2022, the Copyright Office's Review Board issued a final decision affirming
the refusal to register a work claimed to be generated with no human involvement. [...] Since [a guidance on the matter] was issued, the Office has registered hundreds of works that incorporate AI-generated material, with the registration covering the human author's contribution to the work."(I'm not saying that to mean "therefore this is how it works everywhere". Indeed, I'm less familiar with my own country's jurisprudence here in Germany, but the US Copyright Office has been on my radar from reading tech news.)
For example, on page 3 there (PDF page 11): "In February 2022, the Copyright Office's Review Board issued a final decision affirming
the refusal to register a work claimed to be generated with no human involvement. [...] Since [a guidance on the matter] was issued, the Office has registered hundreds of works that incorporate AI-generated material, with the registration covering the human author's contribution to the work."(I'm not saying that to mean "therefore this is how it works everywhere". Indeed, I'm less familiar with my own country's jurisprudence here in Germany, but the US Copyright Office has been on my radar from reading tech news.)
(I'm not saying that to mean "therefore this is how it works everywhere". Indeed, I'm less familiar with my own country's jurisprudence here in Germany, but the US Copyright Office has been on my radar from reading tech news.)
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In my experience these things are very easily fixable by ai, I just ask it to follow the patterns found and conventions used in the code and it does that pretty well.
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Still haven't found a good way to keep it on course other than "Hey, remember that thing that you're required to do? Still do that please."
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Off the shelf agentic coding tools should be doing this for you.
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At my company, I use them all the time with the fancy models and everything. Preplanning does not solve the problem they're describing.When claude is doing a complex task, it will regularly lose track of the rules (in either the .rules stuff or CLAUDE.md) and break conventions.It follows it most of the time, but not all of the time.
When claude is doing a complex task, it will regularly lose track of the rules (in either the .rules stuff or CLAUDE.md) and break conventions.It follows it most of the time, but not all of the time.
It follows it most of the time, but not all of the time.
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But you're right it's probably unenforceable. They will probably end up accepting PRs which were written with LLM assistance, but if they do it will be because it's well-written code that the contributor can explain in a way that doesn't sound to the maintainers like an LLM is answering their questions. And maybe at that point the community as a whole would have less to worry about - if we're still assuming that we're not setting ourselves up for horrible licence violation problems in the future when it turns out an LLM spat out something verbatim from a GPLed project.
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To outright accept LLM contributions would be as much "pure vibes" as banning it.The thing is, those that maintain open source projects have to make a decision where they want to spend their time. It's open source, they are not being paid for it, they should and will decide what it acceptable and what is not.If you dislike it, you are free to fork it and make a "LLM's welcome" fork. If, as you imply, the LLM contributions are invaluable, your fork should eventually become the better choice.Or you can complain to the void that open source maintainers don't want to deal with low effort vibe coded bullshit PRs.
The thing is, those that maintain open source projects have to make a decision where they want to spend their time. It's open source, they are not being paid for it, they should and will decide what it acceptable and what is not.If you dislike it, you are free to fork it and make a "LLM's welcome" fork. If, as you imply, the LLM contributions are invaluable, your fork should eventually become the better choice.Or you can complain to the void that open source maintainers don't want to deal with low effort vibe coded bullshit PRs.
If you dislike it, you are free to fork it and make a "LLM's welcome" fork. If, as you imply, the LLM contributions are invaluable, your fork should eventually become the better choice.Or you can complain to the void that open source maintainers don't want to deal with low effort vibe coded bullshit PRs.
Or you can complain to the void that open source maintainers don't want to deal with low effort vibe coded bullshit PRs.
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If you look back and think about what your saying for a minute, it's that low effort PRs are bad.Using an LLM to assist in development does not instantly make the whole work 'low effort'.It's also unenforceable and will create AI witch hunts. Someone used an em-dash in a 500 line PR? Oh the horror that's a reject and ban from the project.2000 line PR where the user launched multiple agents going over the PR for 'AI patterns'? Perfectly acceptable, no AI here.
Using an LLM to assist in development does not instantly make the whole work 'low effort'.It's also unenforceable and will create AI witch hunts. Someone used an em-dash in a 500 line PR? Oh the horror that's a reject and ban from the project.2000 line PR where the user launched multiple agents going over the PR for 'AI patterns'? Perfectly acceptable, no AI here.
It's also unenforceable and will create AI witch hunts. Someone used an em-dash in a 500 line PR? Oh the horror that's a reject and ban from the project.2000 line PR where the user launched multiple agents going over the PR for 'AI patterns'? Perfectly acceptable, no AI here.
2000 line PR where the user launched multiple agents going over the PR for 'AI patterns'? Perfectly acceptable, no AI here.
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Instantly? No, of course not.I do use LLMs for development, and I am very careful with how I use it. I throughly review the code it generated (unless I am asking for throwaway scripts, because then I only care about the immediate output).But I am not naive. We both know that a lot of people just vibe code the way through, results be damned.I am not going to fault people devoting their free time on Open Source for not wanting to deal with bullshit. A blanket ban is perfectly acceptable.
I do use LLMs for development, and I am very careful with how I use it. I throughly review the code it generated (unless I am asking for throwaway scripts, because then I only care about the immediate output).But I am not naive. We both know that a lot of people just vibe code the way through, results be damned.I am not going to fault people devoting their free time on Open Source for not wanting to deal with bullshit. A blanket ban is perfectly acceptable.
But I am not naive. We both know that a lot of people just vibe code the way through, results be damned.I am not going to fault people devoting their free time on Open Source for not wanting to deal with bullshit. A blanket ban is perfectly acceptable.
I am not going to fault people devoting their free time on Open Source for not wanting to deal with bullshit. A blanket ban is perfectly acceptable.
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Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this? We all know. Nobody needs to be reminded. Nobody isn't aware. You aren't being clever. You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.
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Not directly, but that's the implication.I just did not pretend that was not the implication.> always come back to this point is so…AmericanI am not American.To be frank, this was the most insulting thing someone ever told me online. Congratulations. I feel insulted. You win this one.> If you aren't interested in discussing the merits of the decision, don't bother joining the conversation.I will join whatever conversation I want, and to my desires I adressed the merits of the discussion perfectly.You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
I just did not pretend that was not the implication.> always come back to this point is so…AmericanI am not American.To be frank, this was the most insulting thing someone ever told me online. Congratulations. I feel insulted. You win this one.> If you aren't interested in discussing the merits of the decision, don't bother joining the conversation.I will join whatever conversation I want, and to my desires I adressed the merits of the discussion perfectly.You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
> always come back to this point is so…AmericanI am not American.To be frank, this was the most insulting thing someone ever told me online. Congratulations. I feel insulted. You win this one.> If you aren't interested in discussing the merits of the decision, don't bother joining the conversation.I will join whatever conversation I want, and to my desires I adressed the merits of the discussion perfectly.You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
I am not American.To be frank, this was the most insulting thing someone ever told me online. Congratulations. I feel insulted. You win this one.> If you aren't interested in discussing the merits of the decision, don't bother joining the conversation.I will join whatever conversation I want, and to my desires I adressed the merits of the discussion perfectly.You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
To be frank, this was the most insulting thing someone ever told me online. Congratulations. I feel insulted. You win this one.> If you aren't interested in discussing the merits of the decision, don't bother joining the conversation.I will join whatever conversation I want, and to my desires I adressed the merits of the discussion perfectly.You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
> If you aren't interested in discussing the merits of the decision, don't bother joining the conversation.I will join whatever conversation I want, and to my desires I adressed the merits of the discussion perfectly.You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
I will join whatever conversation I want, and to my desires I adressed the merits of the discussion perfectly.You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
You are not the judge here, your opinion is as meaningless as mine.> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
> Most of all, I'm sick of the patronising “don't forget that you can fork the project!” What's the point of saying this?That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
That sounds like a "you" problem. You will be sick of it until the end of time, because that's the final right answer to any complaints of open source project governance.> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
> You aren't adding anything to the conversation. You're being snarky.I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
I disagree. In fact, I contributed more than you. I adressed arguments. You went on a whinging session about me.
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The response to a large enough amount of data is always vibes. You cannot analyze it all so you offload it to your intuition.> It leaves stuff on the table in a time where they really shouldn't. Things like documentation tracking, regression tracking, security, feature parity, etc. can all be enhanced with carefully orchestrated assistance.What's stopping the maintainers themselves from doing just that? Nothing.Producing it through their own pipeline means they don't have to guess at the intentions of someone else.Maintainers just doing it themselves is just the logical conclusion. Why go through the process of vetting the contribution of some random person who says that they've used AI “a little” to check if it was maybe really 90%, whether they have ulterior motives... just do it yourself.
> It leaves stuff on the table in a time where they really shouldn't. Things like documentation tracking, regression tracking, security, feature parity, etc. can all be enhanced with carefully orchestrated assistance.What's stopping the maintainers themselves from doing just that? Nothing.Producing it through their own pipeline means they don't have to guess at the intentions of someone else.Maintainers just doing it themselves is just the logical conclusion. Why go through the process of vetting the contribution of some random person who says that they've used AI “a little” to check if it was maybe really 90%, whether they have ulterior motives... just do it yourself.
What's stopping the maintainers themselves from doing just that? Nothing.Producing it through their own pipeline means they don't have to guess at the intentions of someone else.Maintainers just doing it themselves is just the logical conclusion. Why go through the process of vetting the contribution of some random person who says that they've used AI “a little” to check if it was maybe really 90%, whether they have ulterior motives... just do it yourself.
Producing it through their own pipeline means they don't have to guess at the intentions of someone else.Maintainers just doing it themselves is just the logical conclusion. Why go through the process of vetting the contribution of some random person who says that they've used AI “a little” to check if it was maybe really 90%, whether they have ulterior motives... just do it yourself.
Maintainers just doing it themselves is just the logical conclusion. Why go through the process of vetting the contribution of some random person who says that they've used AI “a little” to check if it was maybe really 90%, whether they have ulterior motives... just do it yourself.
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Dan said yesterday he was "restricting" Show HN to new accounts:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47300772I guess he meant that literally and new accounts can still post regular submissions:https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=advancespaceThat doesn't make too much sense to me, or he hasn't actually implemented this yet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47300772I guess he meant that literally and new accounts can still post regular submissions:https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=advancespaceThat doesn't make too much sense to me, or he hasn't actually implemented this yet.
I guess he meant that literally and new accounts can still post regular submissions:https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=advancespaceThat doesn't make too much sense to me, or he hasn't actually implemented this yet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=advancespaceThat doesn't make too much sense to me, or he hasn't actually implemented this yet.
That doesn't make too much sense to me, or he hasn't actually implemented this yet.
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It looks like we are going to have large numbers of people whose entire personality is projected via an AI rather than their own mind. Surely this will have an (likely deleterious) effect on people's emotional and social intelligence, no? People's language centers will atrophy because the AI does the heavy lifting of transforming their thoughts into text, and even worse, I'm not sure it'll be avoidable to have the AIs biases and start to leak into the text that people like this generate.
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I remember the first time I suspected someone using an LLM to answer on HN shortly after chatgpt's first release. In a few short years the tables turned and it's increasingly more difficult to read actual people's thoughts (and this has been predicted, and the predictions for the next few years are far worse).
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An em-dash might have been a good indicator when LLMs were first introduced, but that shouldn't be used as a reliable indicator now.I'm more concerned that they keep fooling everybody on here to the point where people start questioning them and sticking up for them a lot of times.
I'm more concerned that they keep fooling everybody on here to the point where people start questioning them and sticking up for them a lot of times.
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Also to, intentionally introduce random innoccuous punctuation and speling errors.
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But everything up to that hyphen was pure slop.
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But the maintainers can use AI too, for their reviewing.
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Maintainers could just accept feature requests, point their own agents at them using donated compute, and skip the whole review dance. You get code that actually matches the project's style and conventions, and nobody has to spend time cleaning up after a stranger's slightly-off take on how things should work.
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Secondly, it would seem that such contributions would contribute little value, if the maintainers have to write up the detailed plans by themselves, basically have to do all the work to implement the change by themselves.
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On the other hand projects with AI assisted commits you can easily find include Linux, curl, io_uring, MariaDB, DuckDB, Elasticsearch, and so on. Of the 112 projects surveyed, 70 of them had AI assisted commits already.https://theconsensus.dev/p/2026/03/02/source-available-proje...
https://theconsensus.dev/p/2026/03/02/source-available-proje...
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Opposing the machine does/did nothing.Political organizing around unions, state regulations of the labour market, agitational political parties did (and can again).
Political organizing around unions, state regulations of the labour market, agitational political parties did (and can again).
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I find that pretty original. I think progress will march largely unimpeded. I would be wary of unhinged government intervention, but I wouldn't begrudge private actors for not getting on with the ticket.
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* understanding the problem* modelling a solution that is consistent with the existing modelling/architecture of the software and moves modelling and architecture in the right direction* verifying that the the implementation of the solution is not introducing accidental complexityThese are the things LLMs can't do well yet. That's where contributions will be most appreciated. Producing code won't be it, maintainers have their own LLM subscriptions.
* modelling a solution that is consistent with the existing modelling/architecture of the software and moves modelling and architecture in the right direction* verifying that the the implementation of the solution is not introducing accidental complexityThese are the things LLMs can't do well yet. That's where contributions will be most appreciated. Producing code won't be it, maintainers have their own LLM subscriptions.
* verifying that the the implementation of the solution is not introducing accidental complexityThese are the things LLMs can't do well yet. That's where contributions will be most appreciated. Producing code won't be it, maintainers have their own LLM subscriptions.
These are the things LLMs can't do well yet. That's where contributions will be most appreciated. Producing code won't be it, maintainers have their own LLM subscriptions.
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This is the assumption that has almost always failed and thus has lead to the banning of AI code altogether in a lot of projects.
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Once you do understand the problem deep enough to know exactly what to ask for without ambiguity, the AI will produce the code that exactly solves your problem a heck of a lot quicker than you. And the time you don't spend on figuring out language syntax, you can instead spend on tweaking the code on a higher architecture level. Spend time where you, as a human, are better than the AI.
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We are inventing problems here. Fact is, an LLM writes better code than 95% of developers out there today. Yes, yes this is Lake Wobegone, everyone here is in the 1%. But for the world at large, I bet code quality goes up.
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This would probably be more useful to help you see what (and how) was written by LLMs. Not really to catch bad actors trying to hide LLM use.
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But I think different projects have different needs.[0] https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md
[0] https://github.com/mastodon/.github/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md
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Of course, even then it's not reproducible and requires proprietary software!
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That breaks "copyleft" entirely.
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This will cut off one of the genuine entry points to the industry where all you really needed was raw talent.
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> any content submitted that is clearly labelled as LLM-generated (including issues, merge requests, and merge request descriptions) will be immediately closed
Note the word "clearly". Weirdly, as a native English speaker this term makes the policy less strict. What about submarine LLM submissions?I have no beef with Redox OS. I wish them well. This feels like the newest form of OSS virtue signaling.
I have no beef with Redox OS. I wish them well. This feels like the newest form of OSS virtue signaling.
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That would constitute an attempt to circumvent their policy, with the consequence of being banned from the project. In other words, it makes not clearly labeling any LLM use a bannable offense.
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A submarine submission, if discovered, will result in a ban.Using the phrase "virtual signaling" long ago became a meaningless term other than to indicate one's views in a culture war. 10 years ago David Shariatmadari wrote "The very act of accusing someone of virtue signalling is an act of virtue signalling in itself", https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/20/virtue... .
Using the phrase "virtual signaling" long ago became a meaningless term other than to indicate one's views in a culture war. 10 years ago David Shariatmadari wrote "The very act of accusing someone of virtue signalling is an act of virtue signalling in itself", https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/20/virtue... .
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If you go by the literal definition in the article, it's very clear what OP meant when he said the AI policy is virtue-signaling, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the culture war.
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You have no doubt heard claims that AI "democratizes" software development. This is an argument that AI use for that case is virtuous.You have no doubt heard claims that AI "decreases cognition ability." This is an argument that not using AI for software development is virtuous.Which is correct depends strongly on your cultural views. If both are correct then the term has little or no weight.From what I've seen, the term "virtue signalling" is almost always used by someone in camp A to disparage the public views of someone in camp B as being dishonest and ulterior to the actual hidden reason, which is to improve in-group social standing.I therefore regard it as conspiracy theory couched as a sociological observation, unless strong evidence is given to the contrary. As a strawman exaggeration meant only to clarify my point, "all right-thinking people use AI to write code, so these are really just gatekeepers fighting to see who has the longest neckbeard."Further, I agree with the observation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left". I see that term as part of "culture war" framing, which makes it hard to use that term in other frames without careful clarification.
You have no doubt heard claims that AI "decreases cognition ability." This is an argument that not using AI for software development is virtuous.Which is correct depends strongly on your cultural views. If both are correct then the term has little or no weight.From what I've seen, the term "virtue signalling" is almost always used by someone in camp A to disparage the public views of someone in camp B as being dishonest and ulterior to the actual hidden reason, which is to improve in-group social standing.I therefore regard it as conspiracy theory couched as a sociological observation, unless strong evidence is given to the contrary. As a strawman exaggeration meant only to clarify my point, "all right-thinking people use AI to write code, so these are really just gatekeepers fighting to see who has the longest neckbeard."Further, I agree with the observation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left". I see that term as part of "culture war" framing, which makes it hard to use that term in other frames without careful clarification.
Which is correct depends strongly on your cultural views. If both are correct then the term has little or no weight.From what I've seen, the term "virtue signalling" is almost always used by someone in camp A to disparage the public views of someone in camp B as being dishonest and ulterior to the actual hidden reason, which is to improve in-group social standing.I therefore regard it as conspiracy theory couched as a sociological observation, unless strong evidence is given to the contrary. As a strawman exaggeration meant only to clarify my point, "all right-thinking people use AI to write code, so these are really just gatekeepers fighting to see who has the longest neckbeard."Further, I agree with the observation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left". I see that term as part of "culture war" framing, which makes it hard to use that term in other frames without careful clarification.
From what I've seen, the term "virtue signalling" is almost always used by someone in camp A to disparage the public views of someone in camp B as being dishonest and ulterior to the actual hidden reason, which is to improve in-group social standing.I therefore regard it as conspiracy theory couched as a sociological observation, unless strong evidence is given to the contrary. As a strawman exaggeration meant only to clarify my point, "all right-thinking people use AI to write code, so these are really just gatekeepers fighting to see who has the longest neckbeard."Further, I agree with the observation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left". I see that term as part of "culture war" framing, which makes it hard to use that term in other frames without careful clarification.
I therefore regard it as conspiracy theory couched as a sociological observation, unless strong evidence is given to the contrary. As a strawman exaggeration meant only to clarify my point, "all right-thinking people use AI to write code, so these are really just gatekeepers fighting to see who has the longest neckbeard."Further, I agree with the observation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left". I see that term as part of "culture war" framing, which makes it hard to use that term in other frames without careful clarification.
Further, I agree with the observation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left". I see that term as part of "culture war" framing, which makes it hard to use that term in other frames without careful clarification.
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> This policy is not open to discussion, any content submitted that is clearly labelled as LLM-generated (including issues, merge requests, and merge request descriptions) will be immediately closed, and any attempt to bypass this policy will result in a ban from the project.
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It's similar to how I can't implement a feature by copying-and-pasting the obvious code from some commercially licensed project. But somebody else could write basically the same thing independently without knowing about the proprietary-license code, and that would be fine.
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Like, this should be enshrined as the quintessential “they simply, obstinately, perilously, refused to get it” moment.Shortly, no one is going to care about anyone's bespoke manual keyboard entry of code if it takes 10 times as long to produce the same functionality with imperceptibly less error.
Shortly, no one is going to care about anyone's bespoke manual keyboard entry of code if it takes 10 times as long to produce the same functionality with imperceptibly less error.
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No one is going to care about anyone's painstaking avoidance of chlorofluorocarbons if it takes ten times as long to style your hair with imperceptibly less ozone hole damage.
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Well that day doesn't appear to be coming any time soon. Even after years of supposed improvements, LLMs make mistakes so frequently that you can't trust anything they put out, which completely negates any time savings from not writing the code.
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There are plenty of good reasons why somebody might not want your PR, independent of how good or useful to you your change is.
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If the submitter is prepared to explain the code and vouch for its quality then that might reasonably fall under "don't ask, don't tell".However, if LLM output is either (a) uncopyrightable or (b) considered a derivative work of the source that was used to train the model, then you have a legal problem. And the legal system does care about invisible "bit colour".
However, if LLM output is either (a) uncopyrightable or (b) considered a derivative work of the source that was used to train the model, then you have a legal problem. And the legal system does care about invisible "bit colour".
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For one simple reason. Intention.Here's some code for example: https://i.imgur.com/dp0QHBp.pngBoth sides written by an LLM. Both sides written based on my explicit prompts explaining exactly how I want it to behave, then testing, retesting, and generally doing all the normal software eng due diligence necessary for basic QA. Sometimes the prompts are explicitly "change this variable name" and it ends up changing 2 lines of code no different from a find/replace.Also I'm watching it reason in real time by running terminal commands to probe runtime data and extrapolate the right code. I've already seen it fix basic bugs because an RFC wasn't adhered to perfectly. Even leaving a nice comment explaining why we're ignoring the RFC in that one spot.Eventually these arguments are kinda exhausting. People will use it to build stuff and the stuff they build ends up retraining it so we're already hundreds of generations deep on the retraining already and talking about licenses at this point feels absurd to me.
Here's some code for example: https://i.imgur.com/dp0QHBp.pngBoth sides written by an LLM. Both sides written based on my explicit prompts explaining exactly how I want it to behave, then testing, retesting, and generally doing all the normal software eng due diligence necessary for basic QA. Sometimes the prompts are explicitly "change this variable name" and it ends up changing 2 lines of code no different from a find/replace.Also I'm watching it reason in real time by running terminal commands to probe runtime data and extrapolate the right code. I've already seen it fix basic bugs because an RFC wasn't adhered to perfectly. Even leaving a nice comment explaining why we're ignoring the RFC in that one spot.Eventually these arguments are kinda exhausting. People will use it to build stuff and the stuff they build ends up retraining it so we're already hundreds of generations deep on the retraining already and talking about licenses at this point feels absurd to me.
Both sides written by an LLM. Both sides written based on my explicit prompts explaining exactly how I want it to behave, then testing, retesting, and generally doing all the normal software eng due diligence necessary for basic QA. Sometimes the prompts are explicitly "change this variable name" and it ends up changing 2 lines of code no different from a find/replace.Also I'm watching it reason in real time by running terminal commands to probe runtime data and extrapolate the right code. I've already seen it fix basic bugs because an RFC wasn't adhered to perfectly. Even leaving a nice comment explaining why we're ignoring the RFC in that one spot.Eventually these arguments are kinda exhausting. People will use it to build stuff and the stuff they build ends up retraining it so we're already hundreds of generations deep on the retraining already and talking about licenses at this point feels absurd to me.
Also I'm watching it reason in real time by running terminal commands to probe runtime data and extrapolate the right code. I've already seen it fix basic bugs because an RFC wasn't adhered to perfectly. Even leaving a nice comment explaining why we're ignoring the RFC in that one spot.Eventually these arguments are kinda exhausting. People will use it to build stuff and the stuff they build ends up retraining it so we're already hundreds of generations deep on the retraining already and talking about licenses at this point feels absurd to me.
Eventually these arguments are kinda exhausting. People will use it to build stuff and the stuff they build ends up retraining it so we're already hundreds of generations deep on the retraining already and talking about licenses at this point feels absurd to me.
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It doesn't matter if the "change this variable name" instruction ends up with the same result as a human operator using a text editor.There is a big difference between "change this variable name" and "refactor this code base to extract a singleton".
There is a big difference between "change this variable name" and "refactor this code base to extract a singleton".
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CLEARLY, a lot of developers are not reasonable
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Once identity is guaranteed, privileges basically come down to reputation — which in this case is a binary "you're okay until we detect content that is clearly labelled as LLM-generated".[Added]Note that identity (especially avoiding duplicate identity) is not easily solved.
[Added]Note that identity (especially avoiding duplicate identity) is not easily solved.
Note that identity (especially avoiding duplicate identity) is not easily solved.
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This heuristic lets the project flag problematic slop with minimal investment avoiding the cost issues with reviewing low-quality low-effort high-volume contributions, which should be near ideal.Much like banning pornography on an artistic photo site, the perfect application on the borderline of the rule is far less important than filtering power “I know it when I see it” provides to the standard case. Plus, smut peddlers aren't likely to set an OpenClaw bot-agent swarm loose arguing the point with you for days then posting blogs and medium articles attacking you personally for “discrimination”.
Much like banning pornography on an artistic photo site, the perfect application on the borderline of the rule is far less important than filtering power “I know it when I see it” provides to the standard case. Plus, smut peddlers aren't likely to set an OpenClaw bot-agent swarm loose arguing the point with you for days then posting blogs and medium articles attacking you personally for “discrimination”.
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Just require that the CLA/Certificate of Origin statement be printed out, signed, and mailed with an envelope and stamp, where besides attesting that they appropriately license their contributions ((A)GPL, BSD, MIT, or whatever) and have the authority to do so, that they also attest that they haven't used any LLMs for their contributions. This will strongly deter direct LLM usage. Indirect usage, where people whip up LLM-generated PoCs that they then rewrite, will still probably go on, and go on without detection, but that's less objectionable morally (and legally) than trying to directly commit LLM code.As an aside, I've noticed a huge drop off in license literacy amongst developers, as well as respect for the license choices of other developers/projects. I can't tell if LLMs caused this, but there's a noticeable difference from the way things were 10 years ago.
As an aside, I've noticed a huge drop off in license literacy amongst developers, as well as respect for the license choices of other developers/projects. I can't tell if LLMs caused this, but there's a noticeable difference from the way things were 10 years ago.
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What do you mean by this? I always assumed this was the case anyway; MIT is, if I'm not mistaken, one of the mostly used licenses. I typically had a "fuck it" attitude when it came to the license, and I assume quite a lot of other people shared that sentiment. The code is the fun bit.
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No, it wasn't that way in the 2000s, e.g., on platforms like SourceForge, where OSS devs would go out of their way to learn the terms and conditions of the popular licenses and made sure to respect each other's license choices, and usually defaulted to GPL (or LGPL), unless there was a compelling reason not to: https://web.archive.org/web/20160326002305/https://redmonk.c...Now the corporate-backed "MIT-EVERYTHING" mindvirus has ruined all of that: https://opensource.org/blog/top-open-source-licenses-in-2025
Now the corporate-backed "MIT-EVERYTHING" mindvirus has ruined all of that: https://opensource.org/blog/top-open-source-licenses-in-2025
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Not being able to publish anything without sifting through all the libs licences? Remembering legalese, jurisprudence, edge cases, on top of everything else?MIT became ubiquitous because it gives us peace of mind
MIT became ubiquitous because it gives us peace of mind
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https://codeberg.org/ziglang/zig#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy
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https://github.com/zigimg/zigimg/pull/313
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It makes lots of sense to me.
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Or a human will provide the fix?
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I'd gladly take a bug report, sure, but then I'd fix the issues myself. I'd never allow LLM code to be merged.
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Generating slop using LLMs takes seconds, has no human element, no work goes into it. Mistakes made by an LLM are excused without sincerity, without real learning, without consequence. I hate everything about that.
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Code is code. I'm sorry all of your gatekeeping is coming to an end. People whose identities are about "good code" and didn't care about being a good teammate or the business are going to get crushed.
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For the parent there's immaterial value knowing that is written by a human. From what I read in your comment, you see code more as a means to an end. I think I understand where the parent is coming from. Writing code myself, and accomplishing what I set out to build sometimes feels like a form of art, and knowing that I build it, gives me a sense of accomplishment. And gives me energy. Writing code solely as a means to an end, or letting it be generated by some model, doesn't give that same energy.This thinking has nothing to do with not caring about being a good teammate or the business. I've no idea why you put that on the same pile.
This thinking has nothing to do with not caring about being a good teammate or the business. I've no idea why you put that on the same pile.
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Code is a means to an end.
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People will be more likely to engage with your main assertion if you leave out the insults.
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I noticed your account was new, so I thought you might appreciate a likely explanation for why your post was being downvoted.
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The underlying data that said matrices compute upon, can be racist though.I will admit that I may be missing some context though.
I will admit that I may be missing some context though.
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Why on earth would you force stuff on a party that has said they don't want that?
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If I want to use an auto-complete then I can, and I will? Restricting that is as regressive as a project trying to specify that I write code from a specific country or… standing on my head.Sure, if they want me to add a “I'm writing this standing on my head” message in the PR then I will… but I'm not.
Sure, if they want me to add a “I'm writing this standing on my head” message in the PR then I will… but I'm not.
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Restricting this is their right, and it is not for you to attempt to overrule that right. Besides the fact that you do not oversee the consequences it also makes you an asshole.They're not asking for you to write standing on your head, they are asking for you to author your contributions yourself.
They're not asking for you to write standing on your head, they are asking for you to author your contributions yourself.
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Except they don't, won't and can't control that: the very request is insulting.I'll make a change any way I choose, upright, sideways, using AI. My choice. Not theirs.Their choice is to accept it or reject it based purely on the change itself, because that's all there is.
I'll make a change any way I choose, upright, sideways, using AI. My choice. Not theirs.Their choice is to accept it or reject it based purely on the change itself, because that's all there is.
Their choice is to accept it or reject it based purely on the change itself, because that's all there is.
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But if they can't enforce their boundaries, because they can't tell the difference between AI code and non-AI code without being told, then their boundaries they made up are unenforceable nonsense.About as nonsense and enforceable as asking me to code upside down.
About as nonsense and enforceable as asking me to code upside down.
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Boundaries - of all kinds - are not unenforceable nonsense, they are rights that you willingly and knowingly violate.
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You're really just going to do whatever the F* you want and write in lowercase just because you can?That's not how the world works, nor how it should work :(Markdown files - of all kinds - are totally not unenforceable nonsense, they are rights of a real legal entity (the repository) that you willingly and knowing violate every time you don't comment in all caps.And yes, before you ask, this discussion is definitely one in which it is appropriate to bring up rape and pedophilia.
That's not how the world works, nor how it should work :(Markdown files - of all kinds - are totally not unenforceable nonsense, they are rights of a real legal entity (the repository) that you willingly and knowing violate every time you don't comment in all caps.And yes, before you ask, this discussion is definitely one in which it is appropriate to bring up rape and pedophilia.
Markdown files - of all kinds - are totally not unenforceable nonsense, they are rights of a real legal entity (the repository) that you willingly and knowing violate every time you don't comment in all caps.And yes, before you ask, this discussion is definitely one in which it is appropriate to bring up rape and pedophilia.
And yes, before you ask, this discussion is definitely one in which it is appropriate to bring up rape and pedophilia.
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- people can just say things- when people say things, you don't have to listen to them- not listening to them doesn't make you superior or more powerful than themWe can practice: I'd like you to always comment in uppercase letters from now on please. It's my policy.
- when people say things, you don't have to listen to them- not listening to them doesn't make you superior or more powerful than themWe can practice: I'd like you to always comment in uppercase letters from now on please. It's my policy.
- not listening to them doesn't make you superior or more powerful than themWe can practice: I'd like you to always comment in uppercase letters from now on please. It's my policy.
We can practice: I'd like you to always comment in uppercase letters from now on please. It's my policy.
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Please ensure you abide by my policy when commenting here. Thank you.
If the maintainers don't want to accept it, fine. Someone will eventually fork and advance and we move on. The Uncles can continue to play in their no AI playground, and show each other how nice their code is.The world is moving on from the "AI is bad" crowd.
The world is moving on from the "AI is bad" crowd.
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Just like when people started losing their ability to navigate without a GPS/Maps app, you will lose your ability to write solid code, solve problems, hell maybe even read well.I want my brain to be strong in old age, and I actually love to write code unlike 99% in software apparently (like why did you people even start doing this career.. makes no sense to me).I'm going to keep writing the code myself! Stop paying Billionaires for their thinking machines, its not going to work out well for you.
I want my brain to be strong in old age, and I actually love to write code unlike 99% in software apparently (like why did you people even start doing this career.. makes no sense to me).I'm going to keep writing the code myself! Stop paying Billionaires for their thinking machines, its not going to work out well for you.
I'm going to keep writing the code myself! Stop paying Billionaires for their thinking machines, its not going to work out well for you.
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I used a coding agent for the majority of my current project and I still got the "build stuff" itch scratched because Engineers are still responsible for the output and they are needed to interface between technical teams, UX, business people etc
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> I used a coding agent for the majority of my current project and I still got the "build stuff" itch scratched because Engineers are still responsible for the output and they are needed to interface between technical teams, UX, business people etcThen you are the opposite of a carpenter or a craftsman, no matter what you think about it yourself.
Then you are the opposite of a carpenter or a craftsman, no matter what you think about it yourself.
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And yet, I find a coding agent makes it even more fun. I spend less time working on the boilerplate crap that I hate, and a lot less time searching Google and trying to make sense of a dozen half-arsed StackOverflow posts that don't quite answer my question.I just went through that yesterday with Unity. I did all the leg work to figure out why something didn't work like I expected. Even Google's search engine agent wasn't answering the question. It was a terrible, energy-draining experience that I don't miss at all. I did figure it out in the end, though.Prior to yesterday, I was thinking that using AIs to do that was making it harder for me to learn things because it was so easy. But comparing what I remember from yesterday to other things I did with the AI, I don't really think that. The AI lets me do it repeatedly, quickly, and I learn by the repetition, and a lot of it. The slow method has just 1 instance, and it takes forever.This is certainly an exciting time for coders, no matter why they're in the game.
I just went through that yesterday with Unity. I did all the leg work to figure out why something didn't work like I expected. Even Google's search engine agent wasn't answering the question. It was a terrible, energy-draining experience that I don't miss at all. I did figure it out in the end, though.Prior to yesterday, I was thinking that using AIs to do that was making it harder for me to learn things because it was so easy. But comparing what I remember from yesterday to other things I did with the AI, I don't really think that. The AI lets me do it repeatedly, quickly, and I learn by the repetition, and a lot of it. The slow method has just 1 instance, and it takes forever.This is certainly an exciting time for coders, no matter why they're in the game.
Prior to yesterday, I was thinking that using AIs to do that was making it harder for me to learn things because it was so easy. But comparing what I remember from yesterday to other things I did with the AI, I don't really think that. The AI lets me do it repeatedly, quickly, and I learn by the repetition, and a lot of it. The slow method has just 1 instance, and it takes forever.This is certainly an exciting time for coders, no matter why they're in the game.
This is certainly an exciting time for coders, no matter why they're in the game.
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I am old now, and the unfortunate truth is that my brain isn't working as fast or as precise as when I was young. LLMs help me maintain some of my coding abilities.It's like having a non-judgemental co-coder sitting at your side, you can discuss about the code you wrote and it will point out things you didn't think of.Or I can tap into the immense knowledge about APIs LLMs have to keep up with change. I wouldn't be able to still read that much documentation and keep all of this.
It's like having a non-judgemental co-coder sitting at your side, you can discuss about the code you wrote and it will point out things you didn't think of.Or I can tap into the immense knowledge about APIs LLMs have to keep up with change. I wouldn't be able to still read that much documentation and keep all of this.
Or I can tap into the immense knowledge about APIs LLMs have to keep up with change. I wouldn't be able to still read that much documentation and keep all of this.
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Sure but once you learn long multiplication/division algorithms by hand there's not much point in using them. By high school everyone is using a calculator.> Just like when people started losing their ability to navigate without a GPS/Maps appAre you suggesting people shouldn't use Google Maps? Seems kind of nuts. Similar to calculators, the lesson here is that progress works by obviating the need to think about some thing. Paper maps and compasses work the same way, they render some older skill obsolete. The written word made memorization infinitely less valuable (and writing had its critics).I don't think "LLMs making us dumber" is a real concern. Yes, people will lose some skills. Before calculators, adults were probably way better at doing arithmetic. But this isn't something worth prioritizing.However, it is worth teaching people to code by hand, just like we still teach arithmetic and times tables. But ultimately, once we've learned these things, we're going to use tools that supercede them. There's nothig new or scary about this, and it will be a significant net win.
> Just like when people started losing their ability to navigate without a GPS/Maps appAre you suggesting people shouldn't use Google Maps? Seems kind of nuts. Similar to calculators, the lesson here is that progress works by obviating the need to think about some thing. Paper maps and compasses work the same way, they render some older skill obsolete. The written word made memorization infinitely less valuable (and writing had its critics).I don't think "LLMs making us dumber" is a real concern. Yes, people will lose some skills. Before calculators, adults were probably way better at doing arithmetic. But this isn't something worth prioritizing.However, it is worth teaching people to code by hand, just like we still teach arithmetic and times tables. But ultimately, once we've learned these things, we're going to use tools that supercede them. There's nothig new or scary about this, and it will be a significant net win.
Are you suggesting people shouldn't use Google Maps? Seems kind of nuts. Similar to calculators, the lesson here is that progress works by obviating the need to think about some thing. Paper maps and compasses work the same way, they render some older skill obsolete. The written word made memorization infinitely less valuable (and writing had its critics).I don't think "LLMs making us dumber" is a real concern. Yes, people will lose some skills. Before calculators, adults were probably way better at doing arithmetic. But this isn't something worth prioritizing.However, it is worth teaching people to code by hand, just like we still teach arithmetic and times tables. But ultimately, once we've learned these things, we're going to use tools that supercede them. There's nothig new or scary about this, and it will be a significant net win.
I don't think "LLMs making us dumber" is a real concern. Yes, people will lose some skills. Before calculators, adults were probably way better at doing arithmetic. But this isn't something worth prioritizing.However, it is worth teaching people to code by hand, just like we still teach arithmetic and times tables. But ultimately, once we've learned these things, we're going to use tools that supercede them. There's nothig new or scary about this, and it will be a significant net win.
However, it is worth teaching people to code by hand, just like we still teach arithmetic and times tables. But ultimately, once we've learned these things, we're going to use tools that supercede them. There's nothig new or scary about this, and it will be a significant net win.
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Quite a bit of the Linux userspace is already permissively licensed. Nobody has built a full-fledged open source alternative yet. Because it is hard to build an ecosystem, it is hard to test thousands of different pieces of hardware. None of that would happen without well-paid engineers contributing.
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It seems well intentioned, but lots of bad ideas are like this.I was told by my customer they didn't need my help because Claude Code did the program they wanted me to quote. I sheepishly said, 'I can send an intern to work in-house if you don't want to spend internal resources on it.'I can't really imagine what kind of code will be done by hand anymore... Even military level stuff can run large local models.
I was told by my customer they didn't need my help because Claude Code did the program they wanted me to quote. I sheepishly said, 'I can send an intern to work in-house if you don't want to spend internal resources on it.'I can't really imagine what kind of code will be done by hand anymore... Even military level stuff can run large local models.
I can't really imagine what kind of code will be done by hand anymore... Even military level stuff can run large local models.
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For instance a GPL LLM trained only on GPL code where the source data is all known, and the output is all GPL.It could be done with a distributed effort.
It could be done with a distributed effort.
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So "copyleft" doesn't work on any of the output. Therefore no GPL applies.
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>Many of the most common free-software licenses, especially the permissive licenses, such as the original MIT/X license, BSD licenses (in the three-clause and two-clause forms, though not the original four-clause form), MPL 2.0, and LGPL, are GPL-compatible. That is, their code can be combined with a program under the GPL without conflict, and the new combination would have the GPL applied to the whole (but the other license would not so apply).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility#GPL_comp...A model that contains no GPL code makes sense so that people using non-GPL licenses don't violate it.
A model that contains no GPL code makes sense so that people using non-GPL licenses don't violate it.
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[1]: https://github.com/PostgREST/postgrest/blob/main/CONTRIBUTIN...
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Are they really that delusional to think that their AI slop has any value to the project?Do they think acting like a complete prick and increasing the burden for the maintainers will get them a job offer?I guess interacting with a sycophantic LLM for hours truly rots the brain.To spell it out: No, your AI generated code has zero value. Actually less than that because generating it helped destroy the environment.If the problem could be solved by using an LLM and the maintainers wanted to, they could prompt it themselves and get much better results than you do because they actually know the code. And no AI will not help you "get into open source". You don't learn shit from spamming open source projects.
Do they think acting like a complete prick and increasing the burden for the maintainers will get them a job offer?I guess interacting with a sycophantic LLM for hours truly rots the brain.To spell it out: No, your AI generated code has zero value. Actually less than that because generating it helped destroy the environment.If the problem could be solved by using an LLM and the maintainers wanted to, they could prompt it themselves and get much better results than you do because they actually know the code. And no AI will not help you "get into open source". You don't learn shit from spamming open source projects.
I guess interacting with a sycophantic LLM for hours truly rots the brain.To spell it out: No, your AI generated code has zero value. Actually less than that because generating it helped destroy the environment.If the problem could be solved by using an LLM and the maintainers wanted to, they could prompt it themselves and get much better results than you do because they actually know the code. And no AI will not help you "get into open source". You don't learn shit from spamming open source projects.
To spell it out: No, your AI generated code has zero value. Actually less than that because generating it helped destroy the environment.If the problem could be solved by using an LLM and the maintainers wanted to, they could prompt it themselves and get much better results than you do because they actually know the code. And no AI will not help you "get into open source". You don't learn shit from spamming open source projects.
If the problem could be solved by using an LLM and the maintainers wanted to, they could prompt it themselves and get much better results than you do because they actually know the code. And no AI will not help you "get into open source". You don't learn shit from spamming open source projects.
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Before this it was junk like spacing changes
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Sometimes, I'd guess, it's also because your Github profile has some kind of an advertisement.
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I think some people also like the feeling of being helpful. And they do not understand reality of LLM outputs. See comments posting AI generated summaries or answers to question. With no verification or critical checking themselves.
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At some point your manager is going to force you to AI code. At best you can try to find some healthcare or finance company that is too cheap to buy a machine that can locally run 400B models.
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It sounds serious and strict, but it applies to content that's 'clearly labelled as LLM-generated'. So what about content that isn't as clear? I don't know what to make of it.My guess is that the serious tone is to avoid any possible legal issues that may arise from the inadvertent inclusion of AI-generated code. But the general motivation might be to avoid wasting the maintainers' time on reviewing confusing and sloppy submissions that are made using the lazy use of AI (as opposed finely guided and well reviewed AI code).
My guess is that the serious tone is to avoid any possible legal issues that may arise from the inadvertent inclusion of AI-generated code. But the general motivation might be to avoid wasting the maintainers' time on reviewing confusing and sloppy submissions that are made using the lazy use of AI (as opposed finely guided and well reviewed AI code).
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That's the point.
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"any content submitted that is clearly labelled as LLM-generated (including issues, merge requests, and merge request descriptions) will be immediately closed"For example:- What if a non-native English speaker uses the help of an AI model in the formulation of some issue/task?- What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")? Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?
For example:- What if a non-native English speaker uses the help of an AI model in the formulation of some issue/task?- What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")? Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?
- What if a non-native English speaker uses the help of an AI model in the formulation of some issue/task?- What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")? Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?
- What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")? Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?
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Unfortunately, when I have seen this in the context of the Rust project, the result has still been the typical verbose word salad that is typical of chat style LLMs. It is better to use a dedicated translation tool, and post the original along with the translation.> What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")?Very good question, I myself consider this sort of AI usage benign (unlike agent style usage), and is the only style of AI I use myself (since I have RSI it helps having to type less). You could turn the feature off for just this project though.> Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?I don't think that follows, but what features you have active in the current project would definitely be affected. From what I have seen all IDEs allow turning AI features on and off as needed.
> What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")?Very good question, I myself consider this sort of AI usage benign (unlike agent style usage), and is the only style of AI I use myself (since I have RSI it helps having to type less). You could turn the feature off for just this project though.> Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?I don't think that follows, but what features you have active in the current project would definitely be affected. From what I have seen all IDEs allow turning AI features on and off as needed.
Very good question, I myself consider this sort of AI usage benign (unlike agent style usage), and is the only style of AI I use myself (since I have RSI it helps having to type less). You could turn the feature off for just this project though.> Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?I don't think that follows, but what features you have active in the current project would definitely be affected. From what I have seen all IDEs allow turning AI features on and off as needed.
> Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?I don't think that follows, but what features you have active in the current project would definitely be affected. From what I have seen all IDEs allow turning AI features on and off as needed.
I don't think that follows, but what features you have active in the current project would definitely be affected. From what I have seen all IDEs allow turning AI features on and off as needed.
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this so many times - it's so incredibly handy to have the original message from the author, for one I may speak or understand parts of that language and so have an easier time understanding the intent of the translated text. For another I can cut and translate specific parts using whatever tools I want, again giving me more context about what is trying to be communicated.
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How can you be sure the AI translation is accurately convening what was written by the speaker? The reality is you can't accommodate every hypothetical scenario.> What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")? Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?Nobody is talking about advanced autocomplete when they want to ban AI code. It's prompt generated code.
> What about having a plugin in your IDE that rather gives syntax and small code fragment suggestions ("autocomplete on steroids")? Does this policy mean that the programmers are also restricted on the IDE and plugins that they are allowed to have installed if they want to contribute?Nobody is talking about advanced autocomplete when they want to ban AI code. It's prompt generated code.
Nobody is talking about advanced autocomplete when they want to ban AI code. It's prompt generated code.
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Firefox has direct translation built in. One can self-host libretranslate. There are many free sites to paste in language input and get a direct translation sans filler and AI "interpretation". Just write in your native language or your imperfect English.
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If the native language is very different from English, this problem gets much worse.This is a problem that LLM claim to partially mitigate (and is one reason why non-native speakers could be tempted to use them), but hardly any classical translation tool can.
This is a problem that LLM claim to partially mitigate (and is one reason why non-native speakers could be tempted to use them), but hardly any classical translation tool can.
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I've seen this excuse before but in practice the output they copy/paste is extremely verbose and long winded (with the bullet point and heading soup etc.)Surely non-native speakers can see that structure and tell the LLM to match their natural style instead? No one wants to read a massive wall of text.
Surely non-native speakers can see that structure and tell the LLM to match their natural style instead? No one wants to read a massive wall of text.
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if (foo == true) { // checking foo is true (rocketship emoji)
20 lines of code;
} else {
the same 20 lines of code with one boolean changed in the middle;
}
Description:(markdown header) Summary (nerd emoji):This PR fixes a non-existent issue by adding an *if statement** that checks if a variable is true. This has the following benefits: - Improves performance (rocketship emoji)
- Increases code maintainability (rising bar chart emoji)
- Helps prevent future bugs (detective emoji)
(markdown header) Conclusion:This PR does not just improve performance, it fundamentally reshapes how we approach performance considerations. This is not just design --- it's architecture. Simple, succinct, yet powerful.
(markdown header) Summary (nerd emoji):This PR fixes a non-existent issue by adding an *if statement** that checks if a variable is true. This has the following benefits: - Improves performance (rocketship emoji)
- Increases code maintainability (rising bar chart emoji)
- Helps prevent future bugs (detective emoji)
(markdown header) Conclusion:This PR does not just improve performance, it fundamentally reshapes how we approach performance considerations. This is not just design --- it's architecture. Simple, succinct, yet powerful.
This PR fixes a non-existent issue by adding an *if statement** that checks if a variable is true. This has the following benefits: - Improves performance (rocketship emoji)
- Increases code maintainability (rising bar chart emoji)
- Helps prevent future bugs (detective emoji)
(markdown header) Conclusion:This PR does not just improve performance, it fundamentally reshapes how we approach performance considerations. This is not just design --- it's architecture. Simple, succinct, yet powerful.
- Improves performance (rocketship emoji)
- Increases code maintainability (rising bar chart emoji)
- Helps prevent future bugs (detective emoji)
(markdown header) Conclusion:This PR does not just improve performance, it fundamentally reshapes how we approach performance considerations. This is not just design --- it's architecture. Simple, succinct, yet powerful.
This PR does not just improve performance, it fundamentally reshapes how we approach performance considerations. This is not just design --- it's architecture. Simple, succinct, yet powerful.
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## Summary
...
## Problem
...
## Solution
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## Verification
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They're too methodical, and duplicate code when they're longer than a single line fix. I've never received a pull request formatted like that from a human.
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I assume that most of these purely llm generated unwanted contributions will just end up in dead end forks, because my impression is that a lot of them are just being generated as GitHub activity fodder. But the stuff that really solves a problem for a person - eh, good. Problem solved is problem solved. (Unless it creates new problems)
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I think part of the battle is actually just getting people to identify which LLM made it to understand if someones contribution is good or not. A javascript project with contributions from Opus 4.6 will probably be pretty good, but if someone is using Mistral small via the chat app, it's probably just a waste of time.
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Time consuming work can be done quickly at a fraction of the cost or even almost free with open weights LLMs.
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[1] https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/ai/harness-first-agents/[2] https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/ai/fully-autonomous-optimizat...[3] https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/engineering/self-optimizing-s...P.S. I know this will be downvoted to death but I'll leave it here anyway for folks who want to keep their eyes wide open.
[2] https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/ai/fully-autonomous-optimizat...[3] https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/engineering/self-optimizing-s...P.S. I know this will be downvoted to death but I'll leave it here anyway for folks who want to keep their eyes wide open.
[3] https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/engineering/self-optimizing-s...P.S. I know this will be downvoted to death but I'll leave it here anyway for folks who want to keep their eyes wide open.
P.S. I know this will be downvoted to death but I'll leave it here anyway for folks who want to keep their eyes wide open.
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“Our approach is harness-first engineering: instead of reading every line of agent-generated code, invest in automated checks that can tell us with high confidence, in seconds, whether the code is correct. “that's literally what The whole industry has been doing for decades, and spoiler: you still need to review code! it just gives you confidence that you didn't miss anything.Also, without understanding the code, it's difficult to see its failure modes, and how it should be tested accordingly.
that's literally what The whole industry has been doing for decades, and spoiler: you still need to review code! it just gives you confidence that you didn't miss anything.Also, without understanding the code, it's difficult to see its failure modes, and how it should be tested accordingly.
Also, without understanding the code, it's difficult to see its failure modes, and how it should be tested accordingly.
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No, they're pushing back against a world full of even more mass surveillance, corporate oligarchy, mass unemployment, wanton spam, and global warming. It is absolutely in your personal best interest to hate AI.
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IOW I think this stance is ethically good, but technically irresponsible.
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I think one way to compare the use of LLMs is that it is like comparing a dynamically typed language with a functional/statically typed one. Functional programming languages with static typing makes it harder to implement the solution without understanding and developing an intuition of the problem.But programming languages with dynamic typing will let you create a (partial) solutions with a lesser understanding the problem.LLMs takes it even more easy to implement an even more partial solutions, without actually understanding even less of the problem (actually zero understanding is required)..If I am a client who wants reliable software, then I want an competent programmer to1. actually understand the problem,2. and then come up with a solution.The first part will be really important for me. Using LLM means that I cannot count on 1 being done, so I would not want the contractor to use LLMs.
But programming languages with dynamic typing will let you create a (partial) solutions with a lesser understanding the problem.LLMs takes it even more easy to implement an even more partial solutions, without actually understanding even less of the problem (actually zero understanding is required)..If I am a client who wants reliable software, then I want an competent programmer to1. actually understand the problem,2. and then come up with a solution.The first part will be really important for me. Using LLM means that I cannot count on 1 being done, so I would not want the contractor to use LLMs.
LLMs takes it even more easy to implement an even more partial solutions, without actually understanding even less of the problem (actually zero understanding is required)..If I am a client who wants reliable software, then I want an competent programmer to1. actually understand the problem,2. and then come up with a solution.The first part will be really important for me. Using LLM means that I cannot count on 1 being done, so I would not want the contractor to use LLMs.
If I am a client who wants reliable software, then I want an competent programmer to1. actually understand the problem,2. and then come up with a solution.The first part will be really important for me. Using LLM means that I cannot count on 1 being done, so I would not want the contractor to use LLMs.
1. actually understand the problem,2. and then come up with a solution.The first part will be really important for me. Using LLM means that I cannot count on 1 being done, so I would not want the contractor to use LLMs.
2. and then come up with a solution.The first part will be really important for me. Using LLM means that I cannot count on 1 being done, so I would not want the contractor to use LLMs.
The first part will be really important for me. Using LLM means that I cannot count on 1 being done, so I would not want the contractor to use LLMs.
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https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/ai/harness-first-agents/
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What makes sense if that of course any LLM-generated code must be reviewed by a good programmer and must be correct and well written, and the AI usage must be precisely disclosed.What they should ban is people posting AI-generated code without mentioning it or replying "I don't know, the AI did it like that" to questions.
What they should ban is people posting AI-generated code without mentioning it or replying "I don't know, the AI did it like that" to questions.
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Over time this might not be enough, though, so I suspect we will see default deny policies popping up soon enough.
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Why not?
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Not to mention that even finding good developers willing to develop without AI (a significant handicap, even more so for coding things like an OS that are well represented in LLM training) seems difficult nowadays, especially if they aren't paying them.
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Humans have been doing this for the better parts of 5 decades now. Don't assume others rely on LLMs as much as you do.>Not to mention that even finding good developers willing to develop without AI (a significant handicap, even more so for coding things like an OS that are well represented in LLM training) seems difficult nowadays, especially if they aren't paying them.I highly doubt that. In fact, I'd take a significant pay cut to move to a company that doesn't use LLMs, if I were forced to use them in my current job.
>Not to mention that even finding good developers willing to develop without AI (a significant handicap, even more so for coding things like an OS that are well represented in LLM training) seems difficult nowadays, especially if they aren't paying them.I highly doubt that. In fact, I'd take a significant pay cut to move to a company that doesn't use LLMs, if I were forced to use them in my current job.
I highly doubt that. In fact, I'd take a significant pay cut to move to a company that doesn't use LLMs, if I were forced to use them in my current job.
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You know what else takes "a massive amount of developer work"?"any LLM-generated code must be reviewed by a good programmer"And this is the crux of the matter with using LLMs to generate code for everything but really simple greenfield projects: They don't really speed things up, because everything they produce HAS TO be verified by someone, and that someone HAS TO have the necessary skill to write such code themselves.LLMs save time on the typing part of programming. Incidentially that part is the least time consuming.
"any LLM-generated code must be reviewed by a good programmer"And this is the crux of the matter with using LLMs to generate code for everything but really simple greenfield projects: They don't really speed things up, because everything they produce HAS TO be verified by someone, and that someone HAS TO have the necessary skill to write such code themselves.LLMs save time on the typing part of programming. Incidentially that part is the least time consuming.
And this is the crux of the matter with using LLMs to generate code for everything but really simple greenfield projects: They don't really speed things up, because everything they produce HAS TO be verified by someone, and that someone HAS TO have the necessary skill to write such code themselves.LLMs save time on the typing part of programming. Incidentially that part is the least time consuming.
LLMs save time on the typing part of programming. Incidentially that part is the least time consuming.
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And yes of course they need to be able to write the code themselves, but that's the easy part: any good developer could write a full production OS by themselves given access to documentation and literature and an enormous amount of time. The problem is the time.
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And how will that be assured? Everyone can open a PR or submit a bug.> The problem is the time.But not the time spent TYPING.The problem is the time spent THINKING. And that's a task that LLMs, which are nothing other than statistical models trying to guess the next token, really aren't good at.
> The problem is the time.But not the time spent TYPING.The problem is the time spent THINKING. And that's a task that LLMs, which are nothing other than statistical models trying to guess the next token, really aren't good at.
But not the time spent TYPING.The problem is the time spent THINKING. And that's a task that LLMs, which are nothing other than statistical models trying to guess the next token, really aren't good at.
The problem is the time spent THINKING. And that's a task that LLMs, which are nothing other than statistical models trying to guess the next token, really aren't good at.
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Perhaps the same way that every other viable OS was made without use of LLMs.
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Every single production OS, including the one you use right now, was made before LLMs even existed.> What makes sense if that of course any LLM-generated code must be reviewed by a good programmerThe time of good programmers, especially ones working for free in their spare time on OSS projects, is a limited resource.The ability to generate slop using LLMs, is effectively unlimited.This discrepancy can only be resolved in one way: https://itsfoss.com/news/curl-ai-slop/
> What makes sense if that of course any LLM-generated code must be reviewed by a good programmerThe time of good programmers, especially ones working for free in their spare time on OSS projects, is a limited resource.The ability to generate slop using LLMs, is effectively unlimited.This discrepancy can only be resolved in one way: https://itsfoss.com/news/curl-ai-slop/
The time of good programmers, especially ones working for free in their spare time on OSS projects, is a limited resource.The ability to generate slop using LLMs, is effectively unlimited.This discrepancy can only be resolved in one way: https://itsfoss.com/news/curl-ai-slop/
The ability to generate slop using LLMs, is effectively unlimited.This discrepancy can only be resolved in one way: https://itsfoss.com/news/curl-ai-slop/
This discrepancy can only be resolved in one way: https://itsfoss.com/news/curl-ai-slop/
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And a new OS needs to be significantly better than those to overcome the switching costs.
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Feel like you are using a very narrow definition of "success" here. Is BSD not successful? It is deployed on 10s of millions of routers/firewalls/etc in addition to being the ancestor of both modern MacOS and PlaystationOS...
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Who cares if nobody switches to it as their daily driver? The goal you proposed was "viable", not "widely used". The former is perfectly possible without LLMs (as history has proved), and the latter is unrelated to how you choose to make the OS.
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Erm...no? That's exactly what that means.Earth-Ovens haven't been in widespread use for hundreds of years. People can still use them to bake bread however: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJqGVxuJPo
Earth-Ovens haven't been in widespread use for hundreds of years. People can still use them to bake bread however: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJqGVxuJPo
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Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta's former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models.
LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence. “The idea that you're going to extend the capabilities of LLMs [large language models] to the point that they're going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense,” he said in an interview with WIRED.
The financing, which values the startup at $3.5 billion, was co-led by investors such as Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions. Other notable backers include Mark Cuban, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and French billionaire and telecommunications executive Xavier Niel.
AMI (pronounced like the French word for friend) aims to build “a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe,” the company says in a press release. The startup says it will be global from day one, with offices in Paris, Montreal, Singapore, and New York, where LeCun will continue working as a New York University professor in addition to leading the startup. AMI will be the first commercial endeavor for LeCun since his departure from Meta in November 2025.
LeCun's startup represents a bet against many of the world's biggest AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and even his former workplace, Meta, which believe that scaling up LLMs will eventually deliver AI systems with human-level intelligence or even superintelligence. LLMs have powered viral products such as ChatGPT and Claude Code, but LeCun has been one of the AI industry's most prominent researchers speaking out about the limitations of these AI models. LeCun is well known for being outspoken, but as a pioneer of modern AI that won a Turing award back in 2018, his skepticism carries weight.
LeCun says AMI aims to work with companies in manufacturing, biomedical, robotics, and other industries that have lots of data. For example, he says AMI could build a realistic world model of an aircraft engine and work with the manufacturer to help them optimize for efficiency, minimize emissions, or ensure reliability.
AMI was cofounded by LeCun and several leaders he worked with at Meta, including the company's former director of research science, Michael Rabbat; former vice president of Europe, Laurent Solly; and former senior director of AI research, Pascale Fung. Other cofounders include Alexandre LeBrun, former CEO of the AI health care startup Nabla, who will serve as AMI's CEO, and Saining Xie, a former Google DeepMind researcher who will be the startup's chief science officer.
LeCun does not dismiss the overall utility of LLMs. Rather, in his view, these AI models are simply the tech industry's latest promising trend, and their success has created a “kind of delusion” among the people who build them. “It's true that [LLMs] are becoming really good at generating code, and it's true that they are probably going to become even more useful in a wide area of applications where code generation can help,” says LeCun. “That's a lot of applications, but it's not going to lead to human-level intelligence at all.”
LeCun has been working on world models for years inside of Meta, where he founded the company's Fundamental AI Research lab, FAIR. But he's now convinced his research is best done outside the social media giant. He says it's become clear to him that the strongest applications of world models will be selling them to other enterprises, which doesn't fit neatly into Meta's core consumer business.
As AI world models like Meta's Joint-Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA) became more sophisticated, “there was a reorientation of Meta's strategy where it had to basically catch up with the industry on LLMs and kind of do the same thing that other LLM companies are doing, which is not my interest,” says LeCun. “So sometime in November, I went to see Mark Zuckerberg and told him. He's always been very supportive of [world model research], but I told him I can do this faster, cheaper, and better outside of Meta. I can share the cost of development with other companies … His answer was, OK, we can work together.”
While Meta is not an investor in AMI, LeCun says he's talking with the company about collaborating. For example, he says there's potential for AMI's world models to power assistants in the company's smart glasses.
LeCun says AMI plans to build open source technology, arguing that artificial intelligence is too powerful to be controlled by any one private company. Such concerns have come up a lot recently since the Pentagon moved to blacklist Anthropic after the startup tried to set red lines around what the US military does with its AI. LeCun, who has often criticized the Trump administration in the past, seems to have found a rare point of agreement with the US government on this issue.
“I don't think any of us, whether it's me or Dario [Amodei], Sam Altman, or Elon Musk, has any legitimacy to decide for society what is a good or bad use of AI,” says LeCun. “Technology can be used for good things or bad things. If your government tends to be a little too authoritarian, it could be used for bad things.”
LeCun has grappled with issues related to AI safety and security before. He notes that a number of countries spy on their own populations through face recognition systems that use a technology he helped pioneer called convolutional nets, a type of neural network inspired by how human brains process visual inputs.
“I was at the origin of those things, but it is not for me to decide what society should do with technology. At least in liberal democracies, the democratic process should decide that, but I can't have any decision power there,” LeCun says.
As LeCun notes, some leaders in the AI industry tried to ban the use of AI in autonomous weapons roughly a decade ago. But since then, however, the technology has been used to protect liberal democracies in Europe, he says. Ukraine, for example, has ramped up its use of autonomous drones to fend off attacks from Russia.
LeCun says AMI will release its first AI models quickly, but he's not expecting most people to take notice. The company will first work with partners such as Toyota and Samsung, and then will learn how to apply its technology more broadly. Eventually, he says, AMI intends to develop a “universal world model,” which would be the basis for a generally intelligent system that could help companies regardless of what industry they work in. “It's very ambitious,” he says with a smile.
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Anthropic's legal fight against the federal government just received support from rival players in the AI game in the form of an amicus curiae brief taking Anthropic's side. On Monday, Anthropic filed a pair of lawsuits contesting the federal government's legal authority to brand the AI company a “supply chain risk to national security” and prevent major firms from working with it. The amicus brief has 37 amici (signatories, basically), identified as “engineers, researchers, scientists, and other professionals” at Google and OpenAI. Perhaps most notable among those named is Jeff Dean, who is chief scientist across all of Google, and, in his spare time, a prolific funder of other AI companies. In high-profile cases, courts are often inundated with amicus curiae (“friend-of-the-court” in latin) briefs, which can essentially be filed by anyone in an attempt to sway the outcome of a proceeding. Amicus briefs have a reputation for being dull, and a standout brief can have a major impact—like for instance, if the business rivals of the plaintiff take the plaintiff's side.The argument in the brief is divided up into three main points, although the second two are closely related: Anthropic, the amici argue, was right to stick to its guns on its now famous “red lines”—the concerns about mass surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons that made the federal government so incensed that it took the measure now at issue. The other point is that what the government is doing constitutes an “improper and arbitrary use of power,” in the views of the amici, and that it has “serious ramifications for our industry.” Other amici include Grant Birkinbine, a security engineer at OpenAI, Sanjeev Dhanda, a software engineer at Google, Leo Gao, a member of the technical staff at OpenAI, Zach Parent, a forward deployed engineer at OpenAI, Kathy Korevec, director of product at Google Labs, and Ian McKenzie, a research engineer at Google. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has spoken critically of the government's Anthropic decision since early on in these events, writing on X on February 28, “To say it very clearly: I think this is a very bad decision from the DoW and I hope they reverse it. If we take heat for strongly criticizing it, so be it.” Altman has acknowledged, however, that his company's deal with the Pentagon coinciding with the explosive rupture between Anthropic and the Pentagon “looked opportunistic and sloppy.”
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Researchers from Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Southeast University, and Wenzhou Medical University have developed a novel microneedle patch that combines MXene hydrogel with nitric oxide (NO) and hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) plasmid for enhanced diabetic wound treatment. This study, published in the journal Engineering, presents a promising approach to addressing the chronic and non-healing wounds often associated with diabetes.
Diabetic wounds are a significant healthcare challenge due to their prolonged healing times and the complications they can cause. These wounds are often characterized by excessive inflammation and impaired angiogenesis, which hampers the formation of new blood vessels and delays the healing process. Traditional treatments have limitations, such as difficulty in penetrating the skin barrier and primarily providing symptomatic relief rather than addressing the underlying pathological mechanisms. To overcome these challenges, the researchers proposed a new strategy using MXene hydrogel microneedles (MNs) that can deliver NO and HIF-1α plasmid nanoparticles in a controlled manner.
The microneedles are made from a biocompatible MXene gelatin hydrogel and incorporate gelatin coupled with tert-butyl nitrite (Gel-SNO) polymers. This design allows for the generation and release of NO under near-infrared (NIR) light irradiation due to the thermal effect. Simultaneously, the enhanced photothermal conversion efficiency of the MXene additive enables the microneedle patch to quickly dissolve and release the enclosed HIF-1α plasmid nanoparticles into the dermis when exposed to NIR radiation. The released NO effectively reduces inflammation, while the HIF-1α plasmid induces neovascularization, promoting wound healing.
In vitro experiments demonstrated that the NO released from Gel-SNO achieved potent anti-inflammatory activity, reducing the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-6 and TNF-α. Additionally, the HIF-1α plasmid nanoparticles enhanced the level of HIF-1α in wounds, triggering the secretion of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and improving tissue regeneration. In vivo studies using a diabetic mouse model showed that the MNs significantly accelerated wound closure, with a wound closure rate of 98% by day 10. The treated wounds exhibited reduced inflammation, increased angiogenesis, and enhanced re-epithelialization. [The experimental procedures were authorized by the Animal Care and Use Committee of the Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, with approval number 2022AE01016 issued by the Laboratory Animal Welfare Ethics Committee of Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital.]
The study also evaluated the pathological features of the wounds. Histological analysis revealed that the MNs promoted the formation of healthy granulation tissues and epithelial layers, crucial components for effective wound healing. Furthermore, the wounds treated with the MNs showed more ordered and dense collagen deposition, indicating enhanced extracellular matrix reconstruction and tissue remodeling. Immunohistochemistry staining showed lower levels of IL-6 and higher levels of VEGFA and CD31 in wounds treated with the MNs, suggesting reduced inflammation and enhanced angiogenesis.
The findings of this study highlight the potential of MXene hydrogel microneedles in wound healing and other related biomedical fields. The ability of these MNs to promote wound closure, reduce inflammation, and enhance tissue regeneration makes them a promising candidate for treating diabetic wounds and potentially other types of chronic wounds. Future research may focus on further optimizing the MNs and exploring their applications in clinical settings to improve wound care and patient outcomes.
Engineering Frontiers Journals
Ding, W., et al. (2025). MXene Hydrogel Microneedles with Nitric Oxide and HIF-1α Plasmid Controllable Releasing for Wound Healing. Engineering. DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2025.06.034. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095809925003674?via%3Dihub
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A new study in the United States finds that the more a state's budget relied on sales tax revenue, the more likely it was to shorten stay-at-home orders during the early stages of the COVID pandemic. The findings suggest that state public-health decisions may have been influenced by unexpected budgetary constraints imposed by public-health restrictions.
For this study, we looked at a host of state data - and it is important to note that observational studies cannot prove causation. However, we did find a very strong correlation between a state's sources of revenue and its public-health policies during the early days of the pandemic."
Nathan Goldman, co-author of the study and associate professor of accounting, North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management
There is tremendous variability between states in the extent to which they rely on consumption taxes versus income taxes. For example, Washington State has no income tax but has a state sales tax of 6.5%. Oregon, on the other hand, has no sales tax, but has a progressive income tax system that tops out at 9.9%.
"The pandemic created a situation where people were staying home and many businesses were closed," Goldman says. "We wanted to see how tax policy, coupled with the pandemic, may have influenced other policy decisions."
For this study, the researchers evaluated data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Specifically, the researchers drew on each state's tax revenue data, as well as three state-level health-related policies that were widespread during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic: stay-at-home orders, restaurant closures and bar closures.
The researchers also controlled for the political party of the state's governor, historical presidential election voting patterns of the state, population, population density, unemployment, poverty rates, minimum wage, tax collections per capita, and geographic region.
"We wanted to account for those variables because they are indicators of conservative political orientation, which could also inform policy decisions on things like stay-at-home orders," Goldman says. "We wanted to see if there was a possible relationship between tax revenue and public-health policy, so we used statistical tools to account for these political proxies."
The researchers found that states without a sales tax were associated with longer stay-at-home orders than states that did have a sales tax. Further, the researchers found that the higher the proportion of a state's total tax revenue came from sales tax, the shorter the state's stay-at-home order duration.
"We conducted similar analyses at the national level for countries in the European Union and found the same correlation," says Goldman. "We also looked at county-by-county data for the states of Virginia and Georgia - and, again, the correlation was there.
"Studies like this one underscore the complex set of issues that inform public-health decisions and could shed light on how tax policies can constrain or influence policy issues seemingly unrelated to state revenue."
The paper, "Is State Tax Policy Associated with State-Level COVID-19 Restrictions?," is published open access in the journal Contemporary Accounting Research. The paper was co-authored by Stephen Lusch, the Deloitte-Touche Professor of Accountancy in the University of Kentucky's Gatton College of Business and Economics and by Luke Watson, an associate professor of accounting and information systems at Villanova University.
North Carolina State University
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Megan Brooks
Long-term use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) was not associated with an increased risk for gastric non-cardia adenocarcinoma in a large population-based study spanning five Nordic countries.
After accounting for multiple sources of bias that have affected earlier research, the apparent association seen in some prior studies disappeared, leading the investigators to conclude that long-term PPI use may not be associated with an increased risk for gastric adenocarcinoma.
The findings “may offer relief for patients who need long-term proton pump inhibitor therapy in the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux disease or for other clear indications,” wrote Jesper Lagergren, MD, PhD, with Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues.
Daniela Jodorkovsky, MD, who wasn't involved in the study but reviewed it for Medscape Medical News, agreed.
“Because this study was very rigorous in its methodology and had a huge number of patients, the lack of association is very reassuring. I think this puts an end to the worry about risk of gastric cancer and PPI use in the general population,” said Jodorkovsky, director of the Mount Sinai Center for GI Physiology and Motility, Mount Sinai West and Morningside, and associate professor of medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
The study was published online in the BMJ.
Gastric cancer is the fifth most common malignancy worldwide. Concerns about long-term PPI use and gastric cancer have persisted since these agents were introduced in the 1980s. The biological hypothesis has centered on PPI-induced hypergastrinemia, which can stimulate gastric mucosal cell proliferation and lead to gastric polyps with malignant potential.
Observational studies and meta-analyses published in recent years have suggested an increased risk for gastric cancer among PPI users, with pooled estimates approaching a twofold increase.
However, the literature is “hampered by several methodological limitations, making this possible association uncertain,” the authors noted.
Key limitations include low statistical power, short and incomplete follow-up, inclusion of PPI exposure shortly before gastric cancer was diagnosed (protopathic bias), differences in classification of cases, and inadequate adjustment for Helicobacter pylori-related factors.
To address these concerns, Lagergren and colleagues did a multinational population-based case-control study using prospectively collected registry data from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. “Extensive efforts” were made to avoid and assess all the methodological limitations hampering the existing literature, they said.
Long-term PPI exposure was defined as more than 1 year of use, excluding the 12 months before the diagnosis date to avoid confounding from symptoms of undiagnosed gastric cancer or the inclusion date for control individuals. Long-term use (> 1 year) of histamine-2 receptor antagonists (H2RAs) was also analyzed to gauge the validity and specificity of the findings for PPI use.
The final analysis included 17,232 gastric non-cardia adenocarcinoma cases and 172,297 matched control individuals, with long-term PPI use in 10.2% of cases and 9.5% of control individuals. Follow-up lasted up to 26 years.
In crude analyses, long-term PPI use appeared to be associated with an increased risk for gastric non-cardia adenocarcinoma (odds ratio [OR], 1.16), but this association was eliminated after multivariable adjustment (OR, 1.01), especially for H pylori-related variables.
A similar null association was observed for long-term H2RA use (adjusted OR, 1.03).
Additional analyses demonstrated how methodological choices could produce misleading positive associations, the authors noted.
For example, when the exclusion window before diagnosis was shortened from 12 months to 6 months, an increased risk for gastric non-cardia adenocarcinoma emerged (OR, 1.11).
In addition, long-term PPI users had an increased risk for gastric adenocarcinoma when analyses included cardia adenocarcinoma (OR, 1.13), with a similar association for long-term H2RA use (OR, 1.14).
Omitting H pylori-related covariates and peptic ulcer from the multivariable model similarly reintroduced positive associations with long-term PPI use and gastric non-cardia adenocarcinoma (OR, 1.11) and long-term H2RA use (OR, 1.10).
The authors emphasized that “every one of the various steps used to prevent biases was essential to prevent the reporting of a potentially false association.”
While the findings provide reassurance regarding gastric cancer risk for patients who require prolonged acid-suppressive therapy, the authors cautioned that long-term PPI use may cause side effects and increase the risk of some other “potentially serious” conditions, such as Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea, osteoporosis, and nutrient malabsorption — underscoring the need to “balance the benefits and disadvantages” of long-term PPI use and to regularly reassess ongoing indications for therapy.
Jodorkovsky said it's important to note that the study was done in Nordic countries, which may have a different ethnic and racial mix than other countries.
She also noted that the rate of H pylori in the study population is lower than rates in the US and Asia. “Therefore, the results are reassuring on a population level but may not be generalizable to specific patient populations with high rates of H pylori or patients with other risk factors for gastric cancer, such as family history,” Jodorkovsky told Medscape Medical News.
The study had no commercial funding. Lagergren and Jodorkovsky reported having no relevant disclosures.
Send comments and news tips to news@medscape.net.
A new study comparing children with autism, ADHD, and both conditions reveals that comorbidity may alter how cognitive abilities relate to emotional and behavioral regulation, offering new insight into why children with both diagnoses may require more tailored assessment and intervention strategies.
Study: Cognitive and emotional profiles in children with ASD, ADHD, and comorbid presentations: evidence for a distinct clinical phenotype. Image credit: Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock.com
A recent study in Frontiers in Psychiatry investigated the cognitive and emotional-behavioral profiles of children with ASD, ADHD, and those with both conditions, to determine whether comorbidity may represent a distinct clinical phenotype requiring tailored assessment and intervention approaches.
ASD and ADHD are highly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders that begin in childhood and persist across the lifespan. ASD is defined by deficits in social communication and restricted, repetitive behaviors, while ADHD is characterized by persistent patterns of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Both conditions are associated with significant cognitive, emotional, and adaptive impairments, often resulting in academic, social, and behavioral challenges.
Both ASD and ADHD exhibit executive function (EF) deficits. ASD is associated with broad EF impairments, including cognitive inhibition and planning, while ADHD shows pronounced deficits in inhibitory control, sustained attention, and regulation. ADHD is primarily linked to externalizing symptoms (e.g., aggression, rule-breaking), while ASD is associated with internalizing traits (e.g., social withdrawal, affective flattening).
Epidemiological data have revealed that up to 70% of children with ASD meet ADHD criteria, and 30–50% of children with ADHD exhibit autistic traits. Previous studies have shown overlapping symptomatology and shared neurobiological mechanisms of ASD and ADHD, which complicates differential diagnosis and raises questions about comorbidity and phenotype boundaries.
Although ASD and ADHD frequently co-occur, it remains poorly characterized and underdiagnosed, resulting in misclassification, suboptimal interventions, and increased systemic burden. Clarifying whether ASD+ADHD is a distinct neurodevelopmental phenotype or an additive syndrome is essential for diagnostic accuracy and targeted treatment.
Recent large-scale genomic research highlighted pleiotropy across neurodevelopmental phenotypes, supporting a dimensional model. It is imperative to determine disorder-specific factors that contribute to ASD+ADHD being a distinct or overlapping phenotype. Methodological shortcomings have limited the understanding of whether the comorbid group is a discrete phenotype or an additive syndrome.
The current study investigated cognitive and behavioral-emotional profiles in children with ASD, ADHD, and comorbid ASD+ADHD. Researchers hypothesized that the ASD+ADHD group would display lower working memory, processing speed, and full-scale IQ, alongside broader behavioral-emotional dysregulation with elevated internalizing and externalizing symptoms.
They also proposed that cognitive abilities would correlate with behavioral outcomes in ASD and ADHD, but not in ASD+ADHD, indicating a potential disruption in the typical relationship between cognitive abilities and emotional-behavioral regulation in the comorbid group.
A total of 207 children and adolescents, between 6 and 16, were assessed using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Fourth Edition (WISC-IV) and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 6–18). Based on the assessments, they were retrospectively assigned into three groups: ASD (n = 21), ADHD (n = 103), and ASD+ADHD (n = 83).
Demographic analyses indicated comparable sex distribution across all groups, with the ASD+ADHD group exhibiting a marginally younger mean age. In the cognitive profile, no group differences emerged for verbal comprehension or perceptual reasoning. The ASD+ADHD group showed significantly lower working memory, processing speed, and full-scale IQ compared to the ASD group, but the results were similar to those of the ADHD group.
This indicates that on cognitive measures, the comorbid group showed a profile more similar to ADHD than ASD, while behavioral findings showed a broader and more mixed pattern across symptom domains. The largest effect was seen in global cognitive functioning.
CBCL behavioral profiles showed that the ASD group had higher withdrawn/depressed scores, reflecting greater social withdrawal and low mood. The ADHD group exhibited the highest rule-breaking and aggressive behaviors, as well as externalizing symptoms, distinguishing them from the other groups. No significant group differences were found for internalizing or total behavioral symptom severity.
On DSM-oriented CBCL scales, ADHD and ASD+ADHD groups had higher ADHD and conduct-related problems than ASD alone. Supplementary scales revealed that Sluggish Cognitive Tempo and Obsessive–Compulsive Problems were more prominent in ASD and ASD+ADHD, compared to ADHD. The most substantial effect sizes were observed for externalizing problems, aggressive behavior, and conduct-related problems.
Correlation analyses demonstrated that in both ADHD and ASD groups, greater cognitive abilities, particularly verbal comprehension, working memory, and overall IQ, were associated with reduced behavioral and emotional problems, especially in the domains of attention, social functioning, and mood regulation.
In ASD, stronger cognitive skills were consistently associated with better academic performance and social functioning and fewer behavioral/emotional issues, particularly attention and somatic symptoms. In ASD+ADHD, cognitive functioning showed fewer associations with behavioral symptoms, but moderate links with school performance and overall competence remained; unusually, higher verbal scores were weakly associated with more oppositional symptoms, suggesting unique dynamics in the comorbid group.
Children with both ASD and ADHD tended to show cognitive and behavioral characteristics that partly overlapped with those seen in ADHD, particularly in cognitive domains such as working memory, processing speed, and overall IQ. However, contrary to expectations, they did not exhibit the highest levels of externalizing symptoms. While strong cognitive skills appeared to help buffer against behavioral and emotional challenges in ASD and ADHD individually, this protective role was less evident in children with both conditions.
These findings suggest that the co-occurrence of ASD and ADHD may disrupt the typical relationship between cognitive abilities and emotional-behavioral regulation, highlighting the need for tailored approaches in assessment and intervention for this potentially distinct clinical group. However, the authors caution that conclusions about a discrete phenotype remain tentative and should be confirmed in larger studies with more comprehensive clinical and demographic data.
The researchers also note several limitations, including a relatively small ASD-only sample, a retrospective cross-sectional design, and reliance on parent-reported behavioral measures, which may limit the generalizability of the findings.
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Narzisi, A. et al. (2026) Cognitive and emotional profiles in children with ASD, ADHD, and comorbid presentations: Evidence for a distinct clinical phenotype. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 17, 1765698. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1765698. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1765698/full
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Priyom holds a Ph.D. in Plant Biology and Biotechnology from the University of Madras, India. She is an active researcher and an experienced science writer. Priyom has also co-authored several original research articles that have been published in reputed peer-reviewed journals. She is also an avid reader and an amateur photographer.
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LabVantage Solutions, Inc., a global provider of laboratory informatics solutions and services, today announced the launch of LabVantage CORTEX, a next-generation artificial intelligence (AI), analytics, and automation platform. The launch represents a strategic evolution of the company's laboratory informatics portfolio, integrating advanced AI and smarter automation into the core LabVantage LIMS experience to help laboratories operate with greater accuracy, efficiency, and confidence.
LabVantage CORTEX is built to support the growing demand for intelligent, automated laboratory environments across industries, including pharma and biotech, food and beverage, oil and gas, forensics, and more. LabVantage CORTEX provides a customer-centric AI analytics and automation ecosystem that helps laboratories improve efficiency, reduce errors, and deepen data insights to accelerate R&D. This shift is timely, as a recent survey found that more than 75 % of labs plan to implement AI and machine learning technologies within the next two years. LabVantage CORTEX complements and expands the capabilities of LabVantage LIMS, enabling more adaptive, self-optimizing lab environments.
LabVantage CORTEX is more than just an upgrade; it is a fundamental reimagining of how laboratories interact with their data and processes, LabVantage CORTEX positions our customers at the forefront of laboratory innovation, enabling autonomous workflows, predictive quality control, and seamless regulatory compliance.”
Gary Stimson, Principal Architect and Head of AI Technologies, LabVantage Solutions
At the core of LabVantage CORTEX is a marriage between AI-driven innovation and the stable LIMS environment. LabVantage CORTEX is a multi-tenant, cloud-native platform where autonomous AI agents can orchestrate complex laboratory tasks inside the core LIMS. This approach allows laboratories to adopt rapid AI advancements without the downtime or risk of a full system upgrade.
By utilizing this cloud-native foundation, LabVantage provides a seamless, low risk migration path for existing customers. Designed as a cloud-native, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based platform, LabVantage CORTEX integrates seamlessly with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and digital twin technologies to support real-time environmental monitoring, predictive maintenance, and proactive laboratory management. Together, these capabilities allow laboratories to remain agile, scalable, and prepared for future demands.
Mikael Hagstroem, chief executive officer of LabVantage Solutions, described LabVantage CORTEX as a proof point for the company's vision for an autonomous lab ecosystem where agentic AI enables scientists to focus on discovery, not routine tasks. He further stated, “LabVantage is committed to steadily improving LabVantage CORTEX with semantic capabilities, more agentic AI features, and seamless integration with new technologies. Our aim is to help customers speed up discovery and reach the market faster while supporting scientific advancement and operational efficiency.”
LabVantage CORTEX introduces a range of AI-enabled features designed to address persistent operational challenges, including:
These capabilities are intended to reduce manual effort, minimize errors, streamline workflows, and provide actionable insights across the laboratory lifecycle.
To explore how LabVantage CORTEX can optimize your laboratory operations, please visit www.labvantage.com, or meet LabVantage leaders at Pittcon 2026 (March 7-11) in San Antonio, TX (Henry B. González Convention Center, Booth #2837).
LabVantage Solutions, Inc.
Posted in: Device / Technology News
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A new study from researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that middle and high school students spend nearly one-third of the school day on their smartphones, checking them dozens of times, often for social media and entertainment, with frequent checking linked to weaker attention and impulse control.
The research examined how often adolescents use their phones during school and whether that behavior is related to their ability to focus and regulate attention. By objectively tracking smartphone use every hour over a two-week period, the study generated thousands of real-world data points, allowing researchers to see how phone use unfolds throughout the school day rather than relying on self-reports or daily averages.
Smartphones are no longer something students use occasionally during school-they're present during every hour of the day. Our findings show that frequent phone checking may undermine the very skills students need to succeed in the classroom."
Eva Telzer, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC-Chapel Hill and lead author of the study
The study found that students who checked their phones more frequently showed poorer cognitive control, a key skill for learning and academic success.
"What surprised us most was the sheer amount of time teens are on their phones during school," said Kaitlyn Burnell, research assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-author of the study. "Students were on their phones every hour during school, spending one-third of the school day on their phones, with social media and entertainment accounting for over 70% of their time."
By capturing phone use moment to moment, the researchers were able to identify frequent checking, not just total screen time, as a critical behavior linked to attention fragmentation and weaker self-control. This distinction is important, as it suggests that interruptions caused by repeated phone checking may be particularly disruptive to learning.
"As states and school districts across the country adopt new phone policies, our findings provide support for limiting access to smart phones during school hours" said Telzer. "Policies that restrict access to highly reinforcing platforms, including social media and entertainment apps, during instructional time may help protect students' attention and academic engagement."
The findings provide concrete, objective evidence that can inform future school policies and digital literacy programs, offering a path toward more targeted approaches to managing smartphones in educational settings while preserving the benefits of technology when used intentionally.
The research paper is available online in JAMA.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Telzer, E. H., & Burnell, K. (2026) Smartphone Use During School Hours and Association With Cognitive Control in Youths Aged 11 to 18 Years. JAMA Network Open. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.1092. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2846017
Posted in: Child Health News | Medical Research News
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Discover how Bruker is helping drive innovation in cosmetic science through advanced AFM techniques.
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Brain microphysiological systems are reshaping in vitro neurotoxicity testing through functional validation and advanced disease modeling.
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Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease（MASLD） is characterized by excessive accumulation of lipids in hepatocytes and is closely associated with the rapid rise in insulin resistance, obesity, and diabetes prevalence, making it one of the most common chronic liver diseases worldwide. Fatty liver can lead to systemic metabolic dysfunction and further progress to steatohepatitis, hepatic fibrosis, cirrhosis, and even hepatocellular carcinoma. However, current clinical interventions are limited to lifestyle and dietary modifications, with no effective drugs or therapies available for MASLD. Hepatic lipid metabolism dysregulation, caused by an imbalance between lipid acquisition and utilization, is a primary driver of MASLD, with fatty acid uptake being a critical step facilitated by fatty acid transporters such as CD36. CD36 can undergo various modifications, including palmitoylation, and dynamic palmitoylation directly regulates fatty acid uptake by altering its membrane localization and endocytic processes. Nevertheless, the specific molecular mechanisms regulating CD36 expression and its palmitoylation in the liver remain unclear.
Recently, a study revealed that CD36 expression and palmitoylation are regulated by the tumor suppressor gene EVA1A in hepatocellular carcinoma, making it a key regulator of hepatic lipid metabolism. The elucidated EVA1A-CD36 axis presents a novel pathogenic mechanism and a promising therapeutic target for MASLD. This study was conducted by the team of Associate Professor Ning Li at Qingdao University. Their core findings are as follows：
In liver tissue from patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and concomitant fatty liver disease, the expression of the tumor suppressor gene EVA1A was significantly downregulated. Liver-specific Eva1a knockout mice, generated using the Cre/Loxp recombination system, developed marked hepatic steatosis and exhibited disordered fat and fatty acid metabolism, indicating a direct causal role for EVA1A deficiency in hepatic lipid dysregulation.
In genetically obese ob/ob mice (a model of hereditary obesity and fatty liver), specific restoration of hepatic Eva1a expression via tail-vein injection of an adeno-associated virus (AAV-Eva1a) significantly improved liver steatosis. This therapeutic intervention led to the suppression of the fatty acid transporter CD36 in the liver.
Science and Technology Review Publishing House
Yang, D., et al. (2025). EVA1A Regulates Hepatic Lipid Homeostasis by Modulating CD36 Expression and Its Palmitoylation. Research. DOI: 10.34133/research.1001. https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/research.1001
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The prevalence of physical activity among the global population has remained low for the last two decades despite a majority of countries making notable progress in developing policies that include physical activity, UTHealth Houston researchers found.
The study was published today in Nature Health and led by principal investigator Andrea Ramirez Varela, MD, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health.
Physical activity as a behavior that enhances health and has other benefits has really not increased since 2012. But that can be mistakenly taken as if there was no action or policy action around it."
Ramirez Varela, Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics at McGovern Medical School, UTHealth Houston
According to Ramirez Varela's research, 92% of countries have at least one policy document addressing physical activity. Of those countries, 35% have a policy specifically dedicated to physical activity.
While that's a significant increase from the number of countries that had such policies in 2004, researchers found that 1 in 3 adults worldwide are still not meeting the World Health Organization physical activity guidelines. According to WHO, adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity weekly.
Using a combination of information taken from interviews, peer-reviewed research, and policy documents from 218 countries between 2004 and 2025, Ramirez Varela and her team sought to propose solutions for how countries can translate physical activity guidelines into action.
"What we see in other modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases – like smoking, alcohol, nutrition – they have a lot of prioritization, and there is a lot of activity around putting them first. For physical activity, it has been different," Ramirez Varela said. "We wanted to really understand why after all this apparent improvement in policy development, there was no change or the translation of this into the real world."
Ramirez Varela's team proposed that countries take a more proactive approach to defining and framing the issue of physical activity.
"There is no consensus if physical activity is an outcome or a means to achieve other outcomes," Ramirez Varela said. "Do we want to increase physical activity levels to improve cardiovascular health and other outcomes, or do we want to just improve physical activity?"
Physical activity should also be framed as having both individual and population-level benefits, the team said.
"Physical activity should be embedded in the way we design our cities, helping create communities where people want to live and move more," Ramirez Varela said. "It also belongs in education. Physical activity spans multiple sectors, yet the conversation has largely been focused on health."
The research team also recommended that stakeholders build stronger leadership and partnership networks that promote physical activity.
"Almost thirty years ago, smoking was far less regulated. People were allowed to smoke on airplanes, indoors, and in most public spaces. Today, both tobacco industry and smoking behavior are subject to extensive regulations," Ramirez Varela said. "We can build that same level of policy commitment for physical activity. The fact that it is not fully in place today simply means the work is ahead of us."
The research was published in conjunction with two other population-level studies about physical activity, which Ramirez Varela co-authored.
Ramirez Varela's work builds on more than two decades of research into physical activity that was first published in The Lancet in 2012. Subsequent studies into physical activity were also published in 2016 and 2021.
The late Harold W. Kohl III, PhD, professor of epidemiology at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, also co-authored the paper.
Authors from The University of Sydney include Adrian Bauman, PhD; J. Jaime Miranda, MD; MSc, PhD; and Melody Ding, PhD, MPH.
Other authors include Catherine B. Woods, PhD, of the University of Limerick in Ireland; Yusra Ribhi Shawar, PhD, MPH; and Jeremy Shiffman, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University; Pedro C. Hallal, PhD, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Deborah Salvo, PhD, of The University of Texas at Austin; Katja Siefken, PhD, of the Medical School Hamburg in Germany; Wanda Wendel-Vos, PhD, of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands; Juliana Mejia-Grueso, MSc, of the Global Observatory for Physical Activity; James F. Sallis, PhD, of the Australian Catholic University in Australia; Erica Hinckson, PhD, of the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand; I-Min Lee, MBBS, MPH, ScD, of Harvard Medical School; Rodrigo Siqueira Reis, PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; Ulf Ekelund, PhD, of the Norwegian Public Health Institute; and Michael Pratt MD, MSPE, MPH, of the University of California San Diego.
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Varela, R., et al. (2026). Physical activity remains under-prioritized in political agendas. Nature Health. DOI: 10.1038/s44360-026-00078-1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44360-026-00078-1
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Infectious disease can afflict a population in complex ways. Understanding the varying risks is an equally complex challenge.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers a general metric for assessing the risk of natural disasters in a region in terms of Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), which includes socioeconomic and cultural factors that impact how a region can adapt to a disaster. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis wanted to take a more specific approach for assessing a state's risk for influenza-like illness.
Their work, now published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, provides a state-level vulnerability map revealing significant regional disparities between states at higher risk for infection.
This approach considers the relative importance of the many socioeconomic and health factors within a defined area."
Rajan Chakrabarty, the Harold D. Jolley Professor of Engineering in energy, environmental and chemical engineering, McKelvey School of Engineering, WashU
He added that the index can provide vulnerability "hotspots" in the U.S. so that policymakers can develop better targeted strategies to prevent the spread of flu.
Unlike previous models that mostly rely on health data for determining a region's disease risk, Chakrabarty's team used machine learning algorithms that can crunch census data and determine the non-linear relationships between socioeconomic factors, health indicators and vulnerability to flu.
All told, the new index integrates 39 socioeconomic and health indicators from census data including factors like migration patterns, insurance coverage and proportions of female and elderly populations.
"Vulnerability does not come from a single factor, but is shaped by urbanization, demographics, healthcare access and economic disparities," Chakrabarty said.
Each state has its own unique "fingerprint" of risk factors, neatly mapped out in the research.
Policymakers in some places may need to better understand the combined effect of different socioeconomic factors on disease spread, like in more dense metros with a high number of foreign-born populations. People in other places may need to connect neglected rural population to insurance and health care or provide poverty relief programs that link vulnerable groups to healthcare access. All states will likely need to do "all the above" in some form, Chakrabarty said, but they will benefit from putting extra resources where targeted interventions might make the biggest difference.
For example, the District of Columbia, is the most "at risk" region in part because it is characterized by high population density and mobility (which allows easy spread of viruses) and increased risks due to a sizable uninsured foreign-born population and longer commute times.
In contrast, states with large rural regions, such as New Mexico and Arizona, also exhibit heightened flu vulnerability. But in these states the vulnerability is due to different factors, like the higher numbers of aging, female and Hispanic people - a population more at risk for flu complications.
Michigan is another high-risk state because of its mix of urban and rural regions. Michigan faces dual challenges - high transmission risks in cities and economic hardships in rural areas - noted Shrabani Sailaja Tripathy, postdoctoral associate in Chakrabarty's lab and lead author of the research.
Every state has a complicated picture, but policymakers now have a new tool that they can apply when they consider vulnerability to any infectious disease, Tripathy said.
"This can help strengthen our epidemic preparedness and response," Chakrabarty said.
Washington University in St. Louis
Tripathy, S. S., et al. (2026). Spatial variation in socio-economic vulnerability to Influenza-like Infection for the US population. PLOS Computational Biology. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013839. https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013839
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A large prospective study links specific gut microbes and diet-derived metabolites to future cardiometabolic disease risk, highlighting how the microbiome may reflect lifestyle factors shaping long-term heart health.
Study: Specific gut microbes are associated with the incidence of cardiometabolic disease in the HELIUS cohort. Image Credit: Anusorn Nakdee / Shutterstock
In a recent study published in the journal npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, researchers examined the gut microbiome's role in long-term cardiometabolic health. While a few microbes were linked to increased cardiovascular risk, others appeared protective. Although the microbiota has limited diagnostic value, it shows promise as a potential target for early preventive interventions. Notably, Eubacterium xylanophilum group species remained significantly associated after adjustments. The findings also connect plant-based diets, microbial metabolites, and heart health, highlighting diet and microbiome-focused research as potential preventive strategies.
The human intestinal microbiome is strongly linked to cardiometabolic health. Evidence from animal models and fecal microbiota transplantation studies shows that microbial communities can influence atherosclerosis and insulin resistance. Clinical trials further suggest that key microbial metabolites such as short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) help regulate glucose metabolism, blood pressure, and appetite. However, much of the evidence is derived from cross-sectional studies. Although associations between gut microbiota patterns and cardiometabolic risk are established, longitudinal human studies examining sustained effects of microbiome composition and inferred metabolic function remain limited.
In this prospective analysis, researchers examined whether gut microbiome composition predicts long-term cardiometabolic outcomes.
The researchers included 4,792 adults from the Healthy Life in an Urban Setting (HELIUS) study (2011, 2015) who had not used antibiotics. They analyzed fecal samples collected from these participants at baseline using 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing to characterize microbial composition. Subsequently, they assessed circulating metabolites using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography, tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) in a subgroup of 105 participants.
The team followed the participants for incident hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. In addition, they linked hospital and mortality registry data from January 2011 to January 2024 to identify major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). The team also assessed an expanded cardiovascular outcome (MACE+) that included angina pectoris and other cardiovascular diagnoses recorded in registries. They used the International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision (ICD-10) codes to identify these adverse events.
The team used logistic regression models to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) for associations between microbial features and incident cardiometabolic conditions. In addition, they used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) for MACE in cardiovascular disease among free participants at baseline. Study covariates included age, sex, body mass index, alcohol use, and smoking status.
The researchers assessed alpha diversity using the Shannon index and beta diversity using Bray-Curtis distances, stratifying results by ethnic group. They also evaluated potential confounding by dietary factors, including sodium and macronutrient intake. The team analyzed serum data from a subset of 105 participants to identify metabolites linked to MACE and associated microbes.
The cohort comprised predominantly middle-aged adults (mean age 50 years), with women representing 53%, primarily of Dutch, African Surinamese, and South Asian Surinamese origin. Over 6.2 years of follow-up (maximum 9.5 years), researchers recorded 376 new-onset hypertension cases (21%), 375 new dyslipidemia cases (19%), and 183 new diabetes cases (5.8%).
Cardiovascular outcomes included 129 MACE and 180 expanded MACE+ events (3.8%). These events included cardiovascular diagnoses such as arrhythmia and heart failure, as well as cardiovascular deaths recorded in registries. MACE and MACE+ occurred most frequently among South Asian Surinamese participants. However, the associations between the microbiome and MACE were strongest in Dutch and African Surinamese groups.
The team found associations between several microbes and cardiovascular disease risk. Increased abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila (HR, 0.86) and Lachnospiraceae taxa (HR, 0.84) was linked to a decreased MACE risk. In contrast, Ruminococcus gnavus group species was associated with increased risk in analyses of the expanded cardiovascular endpoint (MACE+) (HR, 1.10). However, these associations generally became non-significant after adjustment for covariates. For MACE+, A. muciniphila (HR, 0.90) and Eubacterium group species (HR 0.81) were protective. Notably, only E. xylanophilum group species remained significant in fully adjusted models (HR, 0.85).
Participants who developed diabetes, dyslipidemia, or hypertension showed slightly lower microbial diversity, although diversity differences were modest and not strong predictors of disease risk. Microbes associated with higher odds of disease included Flavonifractor plautii (OR, 1.18) and R. gnavus (OR, 1.13) for diabetes. R. gnavus (OR, 1.12) and F. plautii (OR, 1.14) increased odds for dyslipidemia. Streptococcus species (OR, 1.13), F. plautii (OR, 1.17), R. gnavus (OR, 1.07), and Bifidobacterium (OR, 1.06) were associated with increased likelihood of hypertension. In general, Lachnospiraceae taxa, Colidextribacter, and Christensenellaceae species showed protective associations.
Metabolomic analyses linked risk-associated microbes with bile acids and acylcarnitine-related metabolites. Protective taxa correlated with plant-derived microbial compounds, including xenobiotics such as 3-phenylpropionate, cinnamoylglycine, and enterolactone sulfate. These metabolites, likely reflecting microbial metabolism of plant-derived dietary compounds, underscore potential diet-microbiome interactions in cardiovascular protection.
The findings demonstrate that the composition of the gut microbiome is longitudinally linked to cardiometabolic disease and may serve as an early indicator of cardiovascular risk shaped by lifestyle. Protective microbes were associated with plant and diet-derived metabolites, highlighting important diet-microbe interactions. Notably, Eubacterium xylanophilum group species remained significantly protective after full adjustment, making it a candidate organism for further investigation rather than a confirmed therapeutic target.
Future studies should include repeated microbiome sampling, larger metabolomics datasets, external validation cohorts, and experimental work to guide microbiome and dietary strategies for cardiovascular risk reduction. The authors also note that microbiome profiles were measured at a single baseline time point, which may limit causal interpretation.
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Pooja Toshniwal Paharia is an oral and maxillofacial physician and radiologist based in Pune, India. Her academic background is in Oral Medicine and Radiology. She has extensive experience in research and evidence-based clinical-radiological diagnosis and management of oral lesions and conditions and associated maxillofacial disorders.
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Alzheimer's disease affects an estimated 7.2 million Americans age 65 and older, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Current tests often measure the levels of two proteins-amyloid beta (Aβ) and phosphorylated tau (p-tau)-in the blood or spinal fluid, but these markers may not fully capture earlier biological changes linked to disease progression.
Now, scientists at Scripps Research have developed a blood-based approach that examines how proteins are folded in the bloodstream rather than simply measuring their concentrations. Their study, published in Nature Aging on February 27, 2026, reports that structural differences in three plasma proteins are associated with disease status and can distinguish cognitively normal individuals from those with Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) with high accuracy. The new test could help move diagnosis and intervention to an earlier stage.
Many neurodegenerative diseases are driven by changes in protein structure. The question was, are there structural changes in specific proteins that might be useful as predictive markers?"
John Yates, senior author, professor at Scripps Research
Alzheimer's has long been associated with amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain. But growing evidence suggests the disease reflects a broader breakdown in proteostasis, the system that keeps proteins properly folded and removes damaged ones.
As this system declines with age, proteins become more prone to misfolding as they are produced and maintained. The researchers hypothesized that if proteostasis is disrupted in the brain, similar structural alterations might also appear in proteins circulating in the blood.
To test whether structural changes in blood proteins could serve as disease markers, the team analyzed plasma samples from 520 people across three groups: cognitively normal adults, individuals with mild cognitive impairment and patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Using mass spectrometry, the researchers measured how exposed or buried specific protein sites were-an indicator of structural change-and used machine-learning algorithms to identify patterns associated with disease stage.
The results revealed a consistent trend across all patient groups: as Alzheimer's progressed, certain blood proteins became less structurally "open." These structural changes provided a stronger signal for distinguishing disease stage than measuring protein levels alone.
Among hundreds of candidates, three proteins stood out: C1QA, involved in immune signaling; clusterin, associated with protein folding and amyloid clearance; and apolipoprotein B, which helps transport fats in the bloodstream and plays a role in blood vessel health.
"The correlation was amazing," says co-author Casimir Bamberger, a senior scientist at Scripps Research. "It was very surprising to find three lysine sites on three different proteins that correlate so highly with disease state."
Structural differences at specific sites within these proteins enabled the researchers to classify individuals as cognitively normal, MCI or Alzheimer's with approximately 83% overall accuracy. In two-way comparisons, such as distinguishing healthy individuals from those with MCI, accuracy exceeded 93%.
The three-marker model performed consistently across independent cohorts and remained accurate when tested on follow-up samples months later. In repeat blood samples collected months apart, the panel classified disease status with about 86% accuracy and reflected changes in diagnostic status over time. The structural score also correlated strongly with cognitive test scores and more moderately with MRI measures of brain atrophy.
Together, the findings suggest that measuring protein structure in blood could provide complementary information to existing amyloid and tau tests. By targeting structural changes linked to underlying disease biology, this could help distinguish disease stages, track progression and measure whether treatments are effective.
"Detecting markers of Alzheimer's early is absolutely critical to developing effective therapeutics," says Yates. "If treatment can start before significant damage has been done, it may be possible to better preserve long-term memory."
The new blood test will require larger validation studies with longer follow-up periods before it's ready for clinical use. The researchers are also exploring whether the same structural profiling approach could be applied to other diseases, such as Parkinson's and cancer.
Scripps Research Institute
Son, A., et al. (2026). Structural signature of plasma proteins classifies the status of Alzheimer's disease. Nature Aging. DOI: 10.1038/s43587-026-01078-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-026-01078-2
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Herc Gomez questions whether USMNT head coach Maurico Pochettino is the right man to take over at Real Madrid (0:55)
Mauricio Pochettino refused to rule out a move to Real Madrid on Tuesday, after ESPN reported that the United States men's national team coach was on the club's shortlist to take charge this summer.
Pochettino, 54, is preparing to lead the USMNT into the 2026 World Cup, having been appointed in August 2024, after a career which has seen him manage Tottenham Hotspur, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea.
ESPN reported on Monday that the Argentinian -- who has previously been linked with Madrid -- was among the candidates to replace Álvaro Arbeloa for the 2026-27 season as part of a major overhaul at the Bernabéu.
"All in good time," Pochettino -- speaking at Madrid's Barajas Airport -- told El Chiringuito, when asked about being linked with Madrid. "In football, the timings always dictates [what happens]. Football will take you where it wants, not where you want."
Pochettino will reportedly attend Atlético Madrid's Champions League round-of-16 first leg with Tottenham on Tuesday where he will potentially get a chance to see U.S. midfielder Johnny Cardoso in action.
His contract with the USMNT is due to expire after this summer's World Cup.
ESPN reported on Monday that Madrid are looking at coaching options, after Arbeloa -- who took over from predecessor Xabi Alonso in January -- failed to spark the hoped-for turnaround in the team.
Arbeloa had been in charge of Madrid's reserve team, Castilla, and some sources told ESPN that he was not viewed as a long-term option as first-team coach, with one source suggesting he could remain at the club in a different role.
Pochettino is highly regarded by president Florentino Pérez, sources said, having been previously mentioned as a candidate in 2019, after he took Spurs to the Champions League final.
Pochettino also worked with Madrid star Kylian Mbappé for two seasons at Paris Saint-Germain, winning three trophies.
Jürgen Klopp, Unai Emery and Massimiliano Allegri have also been linked with Madrid in the Spanish media in recent weeks, as well as former coach Zinedine Zidane.
Watch CBS News
March 10, 2026 / 1:07 PM EDT
/ CBS Atlanta
Atlanta's plan to protect human rights during the 2026 FIFA World Cup is facing criticism from a coalition of community organizations that say the city ignored their input while developing the framework.
Members of Play Fair ATL, a coalition of labor, housing, immigration, and criminal justice groups, say the city's newly released ATL26 Human Rights Action Plan lacks meaningful protections for residents and workers as Atlanta prepares to host the global soccer tournament.
"We repeatedly submitted detailed feedback and recommendations, and it was never meaningfully addressed," said Michael Collins, director of Play Fair ATL. "The human rights plan is incredibly weak and missing many of the accountability mechanisms needed for the World Cup."
The City of Atlanta announced the plan on Monday as part of preparations to host matches during the World Cup. City leaders say the framework is designed to ensure the event reflects Atlanta's values of inclusion, fairness and human dignity.
In a statement, Andre Dickens said the city views the plan as both a commitment and an opportunity to ensure the tournament benefits local communities.
"Atlanta is honored to welcome the world," Dickens said. "Hosting an event of this global scale brings both opportunity and responsibility."
City officials say the plan focuses on four key areas: inclusion and safeguarding, workers' rights, accountability and access to remedies for those who believe their rights were violated. The framework also includes initiatives such as career training programs, accessibility improvements, human trafficking prevention efforts, and a $17.50 hourly baseline wage for FIFA-related employment coordinated by the city.
Officials say the plan was developed through more than 75 hours of community engagement involving more than 25 organizations and will be tracked through quarterly public reports.
But Collins disputes that, saying his coalition, which represents about 30 community organizations, was not meaningfully included in the process.
"The process has been deeply dysfunctional," Collins said. "Groups were ignored and not properly consulted, even though FIFA requires host cities to work with community stakeholders when developing these plans."
Play Fair ATL formed to push for policies aimed at protecting residents as Atlanta prepares to host World Cup matches. The group's platform calls for stronger housing protections, worker rights safeguards, criminal justice reforms, and immigrant protections tied to the event.
Collins said advocates are particularly concerned about issues such as housing displacement, labor protections, and policing during the tournament.
He pointed to concerns that past mega-events, including the 1996 Summer Olympics, led to the displacement of unhoused residents and increased policing in Atlanta.
"We don't want the World Cup to repeat those mistakes," Collins said.
Collins also criticized what he described as a lack of enforcement mechanisms in the current plan.
"There are no accountability mechanisms for worker rights. There are no accountability mechanisms on issues such as housing. It's a completely vacuous document that doesn't actually do anything, and again, it represents a missed opportunity, because we put out this policy platform in December," Collins said. "We sent it to the city. We offered feedback. We offered, you know, countless opportunities to sit down with the city. We did sit down with the city and talk to them about these issues, but they've just come back with a plan that, you know, feels like we might as well not have engaged with them at all."
Despite the criticism, Collins said the coalition hopes to continue working with city leaders. He is scheduled to testify before the Atlanta City Council on Tuesday about the issue.
He said some council members have shown interest in advancing legislation aimed at protecting workers, renters and immigrants ahead of the tournament.
"We want to engage the city, and we want to be a partner, and we just haven't felt like that at all," Collins said. "This is not necessarily about us being ignored; it's about, you know, these community protections being in place. What's disappointing about Atlanta is that we know that other host cities like Dallas and Houston released their plans last week, and those plans include far more details, and there are things like worker protection mechanisms and responsible contracts. And you know, it's just embarrassing that Atlanta is lagging behind ... It just feels like that's something that we need to fix."
Atlanta is one of several U.S. cities selected to host matches during the 2026 World Cup, which will take place across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Officials estimate the event could bring hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity to the region.
Collins said advocates want to ensure the benefits reach residents, not just corporations or event organizers. They want Atlanta to be a model for how to host a global event the right way, which, to them, means making sure the people who live here actually benefit from it.
In:
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©2026 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Two local clubs are represented on the latest United States U-17 roster, as Gotham FC's Mak Whitham joins NYCFC's Paletta on the squad trying to qualify for the next U-17 World Cup in Morocco.
New York City FC Academy phenom Loradana Paletta made the United States U-17 roster for this month's U-17 Women's World Cup qualifying tournament for the Concacaf region.
Paletta, who just turned 15 in January, is the youngest member of this U-17 qualifying squad, as seventeen of her teammates were born in 2009, and three were born in 2010.
She will try to guide the US U-17s to the World Cup while playing alongside another local product of the New York soccer scene, as Gotham FC forward Mak Whitham is also on this U-17 squad.
Whitham is the only active professional player called up by United States U-17 coach Ciara Crinion as part of her 21-player squad, which you can see in full below.
This final stage of Concacaf qualifying takes place in Costa Rica and will be exclusively held at the Costa Rican Football Federation's headquarters in San Rafael, Alajuela.
The United States plays Bermuda, Haiti and Puerto Rico while competing in Group B, and will need to finish at minimum 2nd Place in their group if they want to reach the U-17 Women's World Cup scheduled for set for this October and November in Morocco.
Paletta and Whitham are two of the three most-experienced U-17 players on this United States roster. They were both involved in U-17 matches held last year, with Paletta earning eight caps and scoring three goals, while Whitham has five caps and two goals. Whitham also played in the 2024 U-17 Women's World Cup and scored a goal there against Norway.
The United States U-17s will travel to Houston for a four-day training camp before heading to Costa Rica for the final round of qualifying. Their match schedule begins when they face Bermuda on March 17 at 2:30 pm ET. They then play Haiti on March 19 at 5:00 pm ET, then close out their group games by facing Puerto Rico at 2:06 pm ET on March 22.
Paletta, according to US Soccer, was too young to participate in the 2025 U-17 Women's World Cup, but now has a chance to make the tournament at just 15-years-old. She has drawn lots and lots of headlines during her time developing inside the NYCFC Academy, notable for being the only girl on the NYCFC U-15 boys' team, and for being signed to a name, image, and likeness deal by soccer brand LOTTO.
Whitham of Gotham knows about making history at a young age, as she signed with the Goths at 13-years-old to become the youngest signee in NWSL history, then debuted for Gotham at 14 years, 8 months, making her the youngest player to take the field in the league's history.
Perhaps the combined powers of these two teen New York soccer phenoms will be enough to propel the United States to another U-17 World Cup.
From SheBelieves Cup to 2027 Women's World Cup qualifiers, many members of the Gotham FC squad will be busy on national-team duty in the weeks leading up to the start of the NWSL regular season.
The 16-year-old central midfielder signed to NYCFC II is one of 21 players trying to help the United States qualify for this November's U-17 World Cup in Qatar.
The 17-year-old NYCFC II midfielder will join the USMNT U-18 squad for a January assessment camp in Mesa, AZ.
The 14-year-old phenom – the only girl on New York City FC's U15 boy's team – will be one of the youngest players with the USWNT U-17s.
Welcome to the first Hudson River Blue Gallery, featuring photographs by Oscar Gamez of New York City FC's decisive 5-0 win over Orlando City at Yankee Stadium.
The vibes are good and the numbers are strong after New York City FC's 5-0 thumping of Orlando City in the 2026 home opener. Maxi Moralez is your Player of the Match for his one goal, two-assist performance.
A Keaton Parks brace and a Maxi Moralez masterclass paced New York City FC to a 5-0 victory at Yankee Stadium, their ninth win from 12 all-time home openers.
The USWNT won their record eighth SheBelieves Cup with a massive strike from 21-year-old Alyssa Thompson, who is proving to be one of the squad's most consistently dangerous players.
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International Football
Walker represented England at five major tournaments. Dan Mullan / Getty Images
England defender Kyle Walker has announced his retirement from international football ahead of this summer's World Cup.
The 35-year-old right-back has called time on his England career after winning 96 caps — making him the closest England player to a century of appearances without reaching the milestone.
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Walker represented his country at the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, as well as in three consecutive European Championships, in 2016, 2021 and 2024.
The Burnley defender was a key part of Gareth Southgate's squad which came agonisingly close to ending England's long wait for silverware, finishing runners-up at Euro 2021 and Euro 2024, and also helped them to the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the nation's best showing in the competition since 1990.
Walker made his senior debut in November 2011 against Spain at Wembley during the reign of Fabio Capello, and also won caps under Roy Hodgson, Southgate, Lee Carsley, and current head coach Thomas Tuchel.
His final game was the 3-1 friendly defeat to Senegal in June 2025.
The former Manchester City, Milan, Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield United defender said he was "sad to be making this decision, but ... also very proud of what I've achieved with England", and believes Southgate's groundbreaking squad helped to shift perceptions of the national team.
“We've tried to change the way that people look at English football, we've tried to change the way that the media looks at football and we've tried to take a little bit of the pressure off that you feel playing for England," he told England's official website.
In 2023, Southgate revealed he had twice talked Walker out of retirement — after the 2021 Euros and the winter World Cup in Qatar the following year.
Tuchel, who did not name Walker in any of his three squads over Autumn 2025, described him as an "England great".
The German coach said: "I know all England fans will join me in congratulating Kyle on an incredible international career. Although I only worked with him for a short period of time, I was always aware that he was one of England's greats who fully embraced the highest honour of representing his country.
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“An international career spanning 14 years and five major tournament is testament to Kyle's dedication. He can look back on his time with the Three Lions with great pride.”
Walker featured as both a right-back and centre-half for England, and retires having scored one international goal, the equaliser in a 1-1 European Championship qualifying draw with Ukraine in 2023.
Trent Alexander-Arnold, Reece James, Djed Spence, Rico Lewis, and Tino Livramento are among the players now battling to be Tuchel's right-back at the World Cup in the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
The FA said a tribute to Walker's international career will be made at an England fixture after the summer.
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Dan Kilpatrick is a Deputy Managing Editor for The Athletic, joining the company in 2025. Previously he was the chief football correspondent for the Evening Standard and Tottenham correspondent for ESPN FC.
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by Unfiltered Soccer
One of the hopeful American soccer stories to emerge from the 2025-2026 season in European league play has been the rapid rise of Augsburg centerback, Noahkai Banks. While just 19 years of age, the Hawaiian born defender has earned a regular starting spot in the Bundesliga and even received a call-up to the U.S. Men's National Team last September, an indication that he had placed himself on Mauricio Pochettino's radar for a potential spot on the World Cup roster.
However, in a recent interview with Sky Sports Germany, Banks threw some cold water on that notion declaring himself to be “very torn” regarding his nationality. Despite being born in the United States and playing for the U.S. at various youth levels, Banks is still eligible to play for German National Team should they want him (Banks' father is American and his mother is German).
“Noahkai Banks is an interesting one because he was born in America, but he grew up in Germany,” noted Landon Donovan on the most recent episode of Unfiltered Soccer, a podcast which he co-hosts alongside former U.S. teammate, Tim Howard. “So, my guess is – and again, I'm just guessing – that he feels more connected to Germany, right? Like, if you grew up in a place, of course you will. So, this is really challenging.”
Donovan himself has firsthand experience with the decision-making dilemma of being a dual-national player. Except for him, there was no dilemma to the decision at all.
“I'm a dual-national,” said the 4-time U.S. Soccer Player of the Year. “My dad was born in Canada. It literally never once occurred to me to even contemplate playing for Canada, because I feel American.”
For Donovan, the decision may have been an easy one due in part to the fact that U.S. Soccer was seen as the stronger footballing nation and that he grew up in California. But as Howard pointed out, in the past, other dual nationals have chosen the U.S not necessarily based on “feeling American” but because it was their only pathway to international soccer.
“Oftentimes, when players have to decide between the U.S. or the other country, you actually see them going, ‘I aint good enough to play for the other country,'” said Howard.
The global contest to land commitments from dual-national soccer players has created international recruitment battles similar to that of which we see here in American college sports. Former U.S. Soccer star Brian McBride was the national team's General Manager from 2020 to 2023 and, by the nature of his position, was thrust into the middle of those recruiting battles. In an appearance on Unfiltered Soccer, he recalled other nations making promises to players that they may not have been prepared to keep and thus influencing that player's decision-making process.
“We've ran into a few different times that the other national team is promising something to these kids. And it's just... it turns out wrong because you never know," said McBride.
“Provide the pathway and then help them answer any questions but never guarantee a player anything.”
With the USMNT set to convene at the end of March for friendlies against Portugal and Belgium and then a World Cup looming in June, the pressure is turning up on the decision that lies in front of Noahkai Banks. But ultimately, Donovan's message to the 6'4 central defender is to follow whatever feeling he has in his gut.
“If you have to recruit someone and convince them to play for your national team, that's a problem.
“I swear on my life, I would have cut off my hand to play for our national team and most people would. So, I understand, I have compassion for the situation Noahkai is in. But really, you need to dig deep and say ‘okay who do I really want to play for?'”
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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Chelsea travel to PSG on Wednesday for a mouthwatering first leg of their UEFA Champions League last 16 tie.
Remember the Club World Cup final, anyone?
MORE — Champions League scores, schedule
Liam Rosenior's young side will be up against it when they face the reigning European champs but Chelsea do have the advantage of knowing they can beat PSG, as they did it in the FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey back in July. Cole Palmer inspired that win and after injury he's almost back to his best as Chelsea aim to finish the season with a flourish in two cup competitions and seal their spot in the top four of the Premier League.
PSG once again sit top of the table in Ligue 1 but it has been far from smooth sailing for Luis Enrique's side this season. They are just one point ahead of second place Lens in the French top-light and are in a real scrap for the title. They have also been sluggish in the Champions League and had to go through the playoff round, where they just edged past Monaco 5-4 on aggregate. Ousmane Dembele's injury issues have hit them hard, but there is still so much quality in this PSG side.
For live updates and highlights throughout PSG vs Chelsea, check out PST's live blog coverage below.
Kick off time: 4pm ET (March 11)Venue: Parc des Princes — Paris, FranceTV Channel/Streaming: Paramount+
Fabian Ruiz is out with an injury and he is the driving force of their midfield, while Joao Neves has been struggling with injury but should be back. It is hoped that star forward Ousmane Dembele could be fit to return for this game too and that would be a massive boost. Elsewhere the trio of Desire Doue, Bradley Barcola and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia are a formidable force from attacking midfield and will look to hit Chelsea on the counter early and often. Defensively PSG have struggled this season as goalkeeper Matvey Safonov has come in for Lucas Chevalier.
The Blues have become a bit more pragmatic under Rosenior and they will need to dig in and defend extremely well to keep this tie alive after the first leg. Palmer, Pedro Neto and Joao Pedro have been excellent in attack and Chelsea know that if PSG make similar defensive mistakes like they have recently, they will take advantage of it. Rosenior will look to keep it tight and give Chelsea a chance in the second leg at Stamford Bridge. Andrey Santos and Moises Caicedo will be extremely important to shield this Chelsea defense.
This is a really tough one to call because both teams are capable of the sublime but have made big mistakes. Go for an entertaining draw. PSG 2-2 Chelsea.
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New Jersey will be well represented when the National Women's Soccer League's 2026 season begins on March 13.
Of the 15 players with ties to New Jersey, three are in Seattle: Brittany Ratcliffe from Williamstown, Rutgers grad Emily Mason of Flemington, and Princeton alumna Madison Curry.
Defending NWSL champion Gotham FC, however, whose front office is on the Jersey City waterfront and shares the Red Bulls' training facility in Hanover, doesn't have any players who grew up in the Garden State.
Meet the 15 NWSL players with New Jersey roots:
Orlando Pride M
▪ A Brazilian international, Angelina helped Orlando win the 2024 title. She had appeared in 28 matches over three seasons with OL Reign.
▪ Born in Jersey City and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Angelina made her full national team debut at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and scored her first goal in a 3-1 win over Argentina on Sept. 17, 2021. She captained the Brazilian national team to a silver medal at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Houston Dash M
▪ Colaprico had 82% passing in 26 matches in 2025.
▪ Selected ninth by Chicago in 2015, Colaprico was voted the NWSL Rookie of the Year. She was loaned to Adelaide United and Sydney FC in Australia for three total seasons. She had five goals and 11 assists in 245 appearances with Chicago and San Diego.
▪ A Red Bank Catholic and Virginia alumna, Colaprico graduated as the Cavaliers' all-time leader in assists (44) and appearances (100).
Kansas City Current D
▪ Cook tore her ACL, MCL and meniscus on May 16 against Orlando, her seventh appearance in 2025. She had started her last 10 regular-season matches and two playoff games in 2024.
▪ The 2015 NSCAA High School Scholar Player of the Year at Pennington, Cook was the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year at Stanford. A first team All-America as a senior, Cook had five goals and seven assists in 93 starts. Cook signed with Paris-St. Germain out of college, transferring to OL Reign in June 2021. She played 65 matches in Seattle, and was traded to Kansas City in mid-July.
▪ Cook has a goal and two assists in 30 caps with the United States women's national team since her debut in November 2019.
Utah Royals F
▪ A former All-Daily Record Soccer Player of the Year at Roxbury, Monaghan, 29, had two goals and an assist in 22 regular-season matches. A seven-year NWSL veteran who also played for Gotham FC and Racing Louisville, Monaghan became the 100th NWSL player to notch 100 career NWSL appearances in a 1-0 loss back home against Gotham on Sept. 22.
Seattle Reign D
▪ Curry signed with Seattle as a free agent in December 2024.
▪ A 2016 California Interscholastic Federation champion in high school, Curry was also three-time first-team All-Ivy at Princeton. She made 48 career starts, contributing to 24 shutouts. Curry was drafted 51st overall in 2024 by Angel City, and finished her rookie season as the team leader in duels won, tackles won, and interceptions in 22 appearances (20 starts).
Boston Legacy D
▪ Elgin spent last season on loan to Tampa Bay in the Super League. She won the 2024 NCAA championship with the University of North Carolina and also played for the North Carolina Courage U-23s.
Seattle Reign D
▪ Mason was the Reign's first collegiate signing after the NWSL eliminated its draft, inking a one-year deal. She had six goals and seven assists in 82 appearances at Rutgers, helping win the program's first Big Ten title in 2021. She was a Big Ten first-team honoree in 2022 and 2024.
▪ Mason was named the 2019-20 Gatorade National Player of the Year at Hunterdon Central and won the New Jersey award in 2020 and 2021. She helped Hunterdon Central win the 2019 Group IV title.
▪ Mason was named to the 2022 Concacaf U-20 Championship Best XI as the United States earned seven straight shutouts en route to gold.
San Diego Wave D
▪ McNabb, 31, has appeared in 100 matches with the Wave over four seasons. She was selected by the Reign in the 2017 draft out of Virginia, and had two goals and two assists in 76 matches.
Boston Legacy G
▪ Murphy, 29, moves to the expansion Legacy after making 108 appearances for North Carolina – including playing every minute of the 2024 regular season. She has 44 shutouts in 118 appearances, and is the team's all-time wins leader.
▪ The tallest female goalkeeper in USWNT history at 6-foot-1, Murphy was undefeated with seven shutouts in her first nine starts, and now has 15 clean sheets in 20 appearances. She was the backup on the USWNT's gold-medal Olympic team, but did not play.
▪ Rutgers' career shutout leader, Murphy was named Big Ten Goalkeeper of the Year and first team All-Big Ten in 2017. She was the 13th overall pick after that season, but signed with Montpellier in France instead of Sky Blue. Named the league's top goalkeeper, Murphy returned home and signed with Reign in May 2019.
Utah Royals M
▪ Nagai played 582 minutes in her rookie season.
▪ Nagai had two goals and four assists in 53 appearances (42 starts) in three seasons at Princeton. After transferring to North Carolina for a graduate season, she started all 27 matches, recording three goals and three assists en route to the 2024 NCAA championship.
Angel City F
▪ The youngest player to sign with Angel City, Phair, now 18, played 85 minutes last season before being loaned to Djurgarden in Sweden.
▪ Born in South Korea, her family relocated to the United States when she was a month old and settled in New Jersey in 2020. Phair had 25 goals and seven assists in 18 matches as a Pingry freshman.
Seattle Reign F
▪ Ratcliffe signed a two-year deal with Seattle on Jan. 20, her sixth NWSL club. Known for wearing a bright orange hair bow, Ratcliffe has 10 goals and three assists in 114 regular-season NWSL matches (39 starts), totaling 4,025. The 32-year-old appeared in her 100th career NWSL match on Nov. 2, 2024 against Carolina
▪ Ratcliffe played at Paul VI, then at the University of Virginia where she set a record with 11 goals scored as a sub during her sophomore season.
Racing Louisville F
▪ A three-time All-Big Ten honoree, Sears had 25 goals and 15 assists in 83 matches over five seasons at Ohio State. Drafted 28th overall by Louisville in 2024, she set the club record with five goals in 26 appearances (12 starts) as a rookie.
▪ Sears earned her first USWNT cap as a sub against Iceland on Oct. 27, 2024, registering a goal and an assist. Almost exactly a year later, she notched her first international hat trick in a 6-0 victory over New Zealand.
▪ Born in New Brunswick, Sears moved to England and California before the family settled in Dublin, Ohio, before her freshman year in high school.
Angel City F
▪ Tiernan earned a contract extension through 2028 after being nominated for NWSL Rookie of the Year and U.S. Soccer's Young Player of the Year. She had eight goals and an assist, starting all 28 league matches. Her older sister, Madison, had five goals in 42 appearances for Gotham from 2017-20.
▪ Riley Tiernan is Rutgers' all-time record holder with 34 career assists, and also scored 19 goals. She is a four-time All Big Ten honoree. Tiernan also ranks first at Eastern Regional with 85 assists and third with 85 goals. She helped Eastern win the 2018 Group IV title.
Portland Thorns F
▪ Tordin, 21, had four goals in 953 minutes. She was named NWSL Rookie of the Month in June and August.
▪ Born in the Miami suburbs to Brazilian parents, Tordin was the Ivy League Rookie of the Year with eight goals in 17 matches in 2022. She missed part of her junior season helping the United States U-20 national team to bronze at the World Cup. However, she was still named Ivy League Offensive Player of the Year and a third-team All-American. She totaled 30 goals and 11 assists in 45 matches, leaving Princeton after her junior year.
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Twelve days ago the U.S., a World Cup host country, launched a full-scale bombing campaign against Iran, a country that has qualified to play in the tournament. That's never happened before.
Five days later, that same World Cup host began military operations inside the borders of Ecuador, another World Cup qualifier, half a world away. That's never happened before either.
With the tournament scheduled to kick off in three months, those events have soccer scholar Jonathan Wilson questioning whether it's wise for the World Cup to go on at all.
“It seems to me, for each passing day, it's less and less likely that the World Cup can happen,” he said.
That take seems unduly alarmist said David Goldblatt, a British sportswriter and sociologist who is a visiting professor at Pitzer College in Claremont. Anything short of a full-scale war inside the U.S. would not be enough to pull the plug on the tournament now, he said. Especially with FIFA expecting revenues of as much as $11 billion.
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In the aftermath of not singing the Iranian national anthem before a soccer match in Australia, five members of Iran's women's national team were granted asylum.
“I mean, it's not a good look,” Goldblatt conceded. “And certainly when set against FIFA's official pronouncements on its role in encouraging world peace and cosmopolitan celebrations of a universal humanity, none of that sits terribly easily.
“But in terms of actually running the World Cup, I don't think it's going to make very much difference at all.”
However, with the Trump administration open to engaging in more international conflicts, there's little doubt this World Cup, the largest and most complex in history, will also be the most political in history as well.
Complicating things further is the fact the current conflict in the Middle East hasn't been limited to just the U.S. and Iran. Iranian missiles have hit both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, and Jordan has fired on U.S. assets.
Those three countries are World Cup qualifiers as well.
The fate of a soccer tournament pales in importance to the death and destruction the conflagration in the Middle East has produced, of course. But the need for unity is the very reason there's a World Cup in the first place.
Soccer
FIFA needs President Trump to support the 2026 World Cup, but many view FIFA President Gianni Infantino's wooing of Trump as excessive.
When French soccer administrator Jules Rimet founded the tournament 96 years ago, he believed soccer could be a tool for international peace. And in the early years of the tournament, Rimet, FIFA's longest-serving president and a talented diplomat, was able to limit the impact of geopolitics on the World Cup, watering down Mussolini's influence on the 1934 World Cup, for example, and steering the 1938 tournament away from Hitler's Germany.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has taken a far different approach, courting President Donald Trump's support despite his growing number of global conflicts.
A week before bombs began falling on Iran, Infantino appeared at the inaugural meeting of Trump's Board of Peace wearing a red cap with ‘USA' on the front and the numbers ‘45-47' — a reference to Trump's non-consecutive presidencies. That act was so blatantly partisan, IOC president Kirsty Coventry said her organization would investigate whether Infantino, an IOC member, breached the terms of the group's charter, which requires members to act independent of political interests.
“Infantino has absolutely breached every FIFA protocol on neutrality,” said Wilson, author of “The Power and Glory: The History of the World Cup.”
“Absolute neutrality is always impossible and not desirable, but it has clearly gone way, way, way beyond. The peace prize looked grotesque at the time. It looks even worse now. And I can't see how the future will look kindly on Infantino. I think Infantino has to some extent legitimized Trump.”
This is hardly new behavior from Infantino, who had close relationships with Vladimir Putin ahead of the 2018 tournament played in Russia and Qatar's leaders ahead of the 2022 tournament despite their well-known human rights violations.
The list of countries Infantino is asking to overlook poor relations with the country hosting the majority of World Cup games this summer is growing.
Consider that Denmark, which administers Greenland, an autonomous territory Trump has also threatened to invade, can qualify for the tournament in a European playoff that will take place later this month. Then there's World Cup qualifiers Haiti, Ivory Coast and Senegal, who aren't at war with the U.S. but whose citizens have been banned from entering the country to cheer for their teams. That completely contradicts a promise from Infantino, who said “everybody will be welcome” at the 2026 World Cup.
“If I had a crystal ball I could tell you now what is going to happen,” Heimo Schirgi, the World Cup chief operating officer for FIFA, said Monday. “But obviously the situation is developing. It's changing day by day and we are monitoring closely. [But] the World Cup will go on right? The World Cup is too big and we hope that everyone can participate that has qualified.”
Goldblatt, the Pitzer professor, said Infantino's action are understandable since he has few cards to play against Trump.
“What's Infantino going to do? What levers can you pull?” he asked. “You can threaten to take it away. That's not happening. Moral admonishment? Who's going to take that from FIFA? It is a farcical idea that anybody thinks that the president of FIFA has any kind of collective moral authority or any role as a spokesperson for the progressive part of the world.
“They may fantasize that this is the case. But it is morally and politically absurd that any of us should expect that of these people. So if you are Infantino and that is the case, you know what works with Trump? What works is flattery. So of course he's gone down that path.”
The games, Goldblatt said, will go on even if bombs are still falling. And that may not be an entirely bad thing.
“Football's a great distraction. That's partly why it's so popular,” he said. “It will be virtually impossible, if the war continues, for that not to be a central element of like, the meaning and the purpose of what we're all doing here.
“How we'll feel and what it will look like, I don't know. It will be very strange. Football is unpredictable and extraordinary. Something will happen that will warm our souls.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week's episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
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Kevin Baxter writes about soccer and hockey for the Los Angeles Times. He has covered seven World Cups, five Olympic Games, six World Series and a Super Bowl and has contributed to three Pulitzer Prize-winning series at The Times and Miami Herald. An essay he wrote in fifth grade was voted best in the class. He has a cool dog.
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NEW YORK (March 10, 2026) – The National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) today announced the formation of the NWSL Health Advisory Council, a strategic engagement platform designed to shape the future of player health and wellbeing across the league.
The Council will bring together leading medical and health experts, researchers, innovators and elite athletes to guide the league's holistic approach to player care. Its work will focus on advancing women's health in sport across the full athlete pathway from youth participation to elite performance, strengthening mental and physical health resources, identifying opportunities for innovation and research, and elevating education and awareness through storytelling and public engagement.
“The health and wellbeing of our players is foundational to the strength and sustainability of our sport,” said NWSL VP of Sporting Sarah Gregorius. “The NWSL Health Advisory Council brings together leading expertise from across medicine, research and elite sport to help inform how we support players across every stage of their careers. Our goal is to continue building an environment where players and performance staffs have access to the best possible resources, knowledge and support to perform at their highest level.”
The Council will complement the clinical care, medical and research governance structures
already in place across the league. As part of its composition, CVS Health, who recently joined the NWSL as an Official Health and Wellness Partner of the league, will hold a dedicated seat. Represented by its Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, MD, CVS Health will collaborate with other Council members and league leadership to advise, plan and help shape strategy around overall wellness initiatives, reinforcing a shared commitment to accessible, research-driven health resources for players.
Areas of focus for the Council's inaugural year include advancing the league's injury prevention and performance initiatives, implementing key research partnerships and further developing a comprehensive, holistic framework for women's health and overall player wellbeing.
Inaugural NWSL Health Advisory Council members include:
Council members will meet consistently throughout the year. In addition to formal meetings, members will serve as champions for women's health in sport through educational opportunities, thought leadership and strategic collaborations.
NWSL Media Contact:
Maddy Schachte
Ph: 608-512-5179
Email: mschachte@nwslsoccer.com
@2026, NWSL All Rights Reserved. International Edition (US)
Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Tom Garry and Anton Toloui as England beat Iceland 2-0 to maintain their 100% start to their World Cup qualifying campaign
On today's pod: the Lionesses are two from two in their World Cup qualifiers, a goal and an assist from Lucy Bronze putting England top of the table before their intriguing clash with Spain in April.
Elsewhere, there are wins for Scotland and Wales, while Northern Ireland finally name their new permanent manager.
We discuss the Asian Cup in Australia and fears for the safety of the Iranian national team, plus the panel take your questions.
Sign up for our women's football newsletter – all you need to do is search “Moving the Goalposts sign up” or follow this link.
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Brazilian prodigy Endrick has been warned that he must curb his individualistic tendencies after a drop in form at Lyon. Despite a scintillating start to life in Ligue 1, the Real Madrid loanee is currently enduring a goal drought that has drawn scrutiny from fans and pundits alike, including French World Cup winner Samuel Umtiti. Concerns are growing that the teenager is reverting to the same erratic habits that limited his impact in Spain.
After arriving in France with significant fanfare during the January window, Endrick's temporary switch from Real Madrid initially looked like a masterstroke. The striker netted five goals in his first 10 appearances, providing the clinical edge Lyon had desperately lacked. However, the honeymoon period has ended abruptly. The Brazilian has failed to find the net since early February, with his recent performances in a Coupe de France exit to Lens and a frustrating 1-1 draw against Paris FC in Ligue 1 highlighting a growing disconnect. Previously hailed for his ability to link play, the teenager now appears isolated within Paulo Fonseca's tactical system as Lyon endure a four-match winless streak.
Speaking on RMC's After Foot programme, 2018 World Cup winner Umtiti offered a blunt assessment of the 19-year-old's current struggles. "Lately, I've noticed he's struggling a bit to find his place on the pitch," Umtiti observed. "His connection with his teammates isn't the same anymore. It's clear he needs to score goals. As soon as he gets the ball, his first thought is to shoot. What bothers me is that he was already doing that at times at Real Madrid. When he arrived in Lyon, I thought he'd understood, and that's great. He needs to change that; he needs his team-mates. What he's doing isn't going to help him."
The stakes are incredibly high for Endrick, who moved to the Groupama Stadium specifically to secure the regular minutes needed to impress Brazil head coach Carlo Ancelotti. With the World Cup on the horizon, Endrick is under immense pressure to prove he can be a disciplined focal point for the Selecao. He will hope to be called into the squad for upcoming friendlies against France and Croatia.
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Endrick's opportunity for redemption arrives quickly as Lyon transitions from domestic disappointment to the Europa League. This Thursday, Paulo Fonseca's team will travel to Spain for a crucial round-of-16 first leg against Celta Vigo, providing a direct opportunity for the young attacker. Following the trip to Galicia, a demanding league clash against Le Havre awaits. With Lyon's season teetering on the edge of a slump, Endrick must demonstrate a more mature, collective approach if he is to silence his critics and prove that he has truly learned from his time in Madrid.
U.S. men's national team manager Mauricio Pochettino will name his squad for the upcoming friendlies with Belgium and Portugal in two weeks time—with the race for a place on his World Cup roster reaching a critical juncture.
One particular area of uncertainty is who will play up front for the Stars and Stripes this summer. Goals win games as the old saying goes, but whoever Pochettino goes with will also need to suit the USMNT's style of play and bring out the best in Christian Pulisic, whose confidence is dipping after a ten-game streak without a goal or assist for club side AC Milan.
Luckily, a couple of contenders stood out over the weekend, reminding Pochettino of exactly what they have to offer. Here's what they and the other best USMNT performers of the week achieved.
The current frontrunner to play up front, Folarin Balogun, loves playing against Paris Saint-Germain. That's not something many players can say, given the current Champions League holders remain one of the best teams in Europe, but it rings true for the 24-year-old.
A brace of goals in the Champions League—albeit in a losing effort as Monaco were knocked out by PSG—was followed up another goal and assist in a revenge 3–1 win in Ligue 1. Not only did Balogun help Monaco up to seventh in the table, he also put a whacking great dent in PSG's hopes of retaining their domestic title—Lens now just sit a point behind after their weekend win over Metz.
Balogun's up to 13 goals for the season and this was the first time he's troubled the scorers from outside of the penalty area. Pochettino will have made note of that fact, with USMNT's troubles with scoring from distance evident in all of the games they played in 2025, and the 24-year-old's approach play and involvement in transitions ensured Monaco were constantly a threat on the counter-attack.
Haji Wright already has a World Cup goal under his belt—he scored in the USMNT's round of 16 defeat to the Netherlands in the 2022 editions—and has every chance of adding to that tally if he continues firing Coventry City towards promotion.
The Sky Blues, managed by Chelsea and England legend Frank Lampard, were running away with things at one point, but a dip in form allowed Middlesbrough and the chasing back to close the gap at the top of the Championship table. Things have picked up again since, coinciding with a good run of goalscoring form for Wright.
He scored number 16 for the season, keeping him just one behind Golden Boot leader, Swansea City's Žan Vipotnik, and now has six goals in his last five appearances. His effort helped Coventry pick up a vital 2–0 win at Bristol City, maintaining the five-point advantage over ‘Boro and nine-point lead over Millwall in third.
Belgium and Portugal will mark a significant step in quality from second tier English soccer, that goes without saying, but Wright's confidence is sky high right now.
The battle to be USMNT's number one goalkeeper appears to be between the New England Revolution's Matt Turner and New York City FC's Matt Freese. But a third spot is available on Pochettino's roster—a valuable role when you consider injuries and suspensions could come into play—and 22-year-old Chicago Fire goalkeeper Chris Brady is staking his claim.
He made five saves in a scoreless draw with Columbus Crew this past weekend, earning Player of the Game honors in the process. To crack the World Cup roster, he'll need to continue perfoming at a high level, and hope that FC Cincinnati's Roman Celentano, the Colorado Rapids' Zack Steffen and the Crew's Patrick Schulte don't have as big an impact in the coming months.
Auston Trusty's had an up and down season with Celtic and is on the fringes of the USMNT setup. With just five caps to his name following his debut in 2019, it would be a surprise for Pochettino to lean on him for the World Cup.
But his dream of participating in the tournament will live on if he stands out like he did against Old Firm rivals Rangers. The most-anticipated game in Scottish football failed to deliver a goal in 120 minutes but delivered drama galore when penalties got underway.
Trusty, who was solid as a rock to help Celtic keep a clean sheet, kept his nerve from 12 yards and eventually saw his side prevail 4-2 to reach the Scottish Cup semifinals. “What an effort from the bhoys!! We keep moving forward...I bet you didn't expect me to take a pen Vamosss!!!” he posted postmatch on Instagram.
Moving forward into the World Cup picture? It could still happen.
Ben Steiner is an American-Canadian journalist who brings in-depth experience, having covered the North American national teams, MLS, CPL, NWSL, NSL and Liga MX for prominent outlets, including MLSsoccer.com, CBC Sports, and OneSoccer.
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Jose Mourinho's highly anticipated homecoming to Benfica has turned into a nightmare. Club legend Alvaro Magalhaes has pulled no punches, labeling the season a "complete disaster" as the Eagles struggle to keep pace in the Liga Portugal title race.
The return of Mourinho to the Estadio da Luz was marketed as the dawn of a new era for Benfica. However, the Portuguese giants have endured a bruising campaign that has seen them fall short in almost every major competition, leading to a toxic atmosphere around the club.
The Eagles have already been dumped out of the Champions League, the Taca de Portugal, and the Taca da Liga. Following a 2-2 draw against rivals FC Porto, the "Special One" finds his side languishing seven points behind the Liga Portugal leaders, leaving their title hopes hanging by a thread.
Former defender Magalhaes, who helped Benfica win ten trophies in nine years at the club, has been vocal about the manager's setup during the recent clash with Porto, in which Mourinho was sent off. Speaking to Antena 1, he suggested that the tactical approach played right into the hands of their rivals.
"A victory was fundamental to close the gap, but Benfica conceded too much space and Porto, with high-quality players, took advantage," Magalhaes explained. "They were far superior in midfield. Porto were much better and could have scored more than two goals."
Magalhaes also questioned Mourinho's decision-making on the touchline, specifically regarding the timing of his tactical shifts. "Jose Mourinho's substitutions were, as he has accustomed us to, very late. We expected changes in midfield at halftime."
Despite significant financial backing in the transfer market, the results have failed to materialize, leading to accusations that the season's objectives have been systematically failed.
"This season is not to be forgotten; it is to be analyzed," Magalhaes said. "I have that eternal hope for the championship, but it is an unhappy season for Benfica. With the investment made, the objective had to be winning the league, the cup, and going as far as possible in the Champions League. It's been a complete disaster."
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The pressure is reaching its peak for Mourinho, who now faces a narrow path to redemption. Benfica are unbeaten in the Liga Portugal this term, but currently sit in third place with 59 points from 25 matches, three points behind Sporting and seven points behind leaders FC Porto. Next up, Mourinho's men face Arouca in the league, aiming to return to winning ways.
World Cup
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When U.S. men's national team coach Mauricio Pochettino selects around 26 players for a March training camp and friendlies against Belgium and Portugal, he will be picking a roster for a final audition and a dress rehearsal.
It will be the last USMNT roster before the roster — the last chance for players to make direct impressions on Pochettino and his staff before they pick 26 for the World Cup.
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It will also be a chance for the Americans to sharpen themselves against two top-10 teams. “These matches are critical opportunities to test ourselves,” U.S. Soccer vice president of sporting Oguchi Onyewu said last month, “and continue learning and growing.”
Pochettino's selections, therefore, will be interesting ones. Will he bring fringe players to camp in Atlanta and have them battle for World Cup roster spots? Or will he select his best available 26 and use the week-plus to begin building toward June? And how will he manage those carrying injuries?
Here's how each of us sees the squad shaping up about a week before it gets announced – a largely united approach with just one difference.
Tenorio: Matt Freese, Matt Turner, Chris Brady
Bushnell: Matt Freese, Matt Turner, Chris Brady
Bushnell: It's still Freese, hopefully Turner, and then a complete (and not super consequential) toss-up. Right? I'm not sure we need to over-analyze this one.
Tenorio: The curveball here could be if Pochettino opts not to bring Turner. That would be a sign not only of what we already know — that Freese is the No. 1 — but also that the staff wants to end all discussion and debate around the position.
Tenorio: Chris Richards, Tim Ream, Mark McKenzie, Miles Robinson, Joe Scally
Bushnell: Chris Richards, Tim Ream, Mark McKenzie, Miles Robinson, Noahkai Banks, Joe Scally
Bushnell: The big question mark here is Banks. The 19-year-old German-American acknowledged late last month that he's “very torn” between representing the U.S. or Germany. On talent and performance, he absolutely deserves to be in the USMNT's World Cup picture. But Pochettino, who has preached commitment to the country and the crest, might be put off by Banks' indecision.
Personally, I wouldn't be, and I'd call Banks if he'll come. (The friendlies would not cap-tie him.) But something Pochettino said way back in November 2024, when asked about dual nationals, stuck with me: “We don't need to convince [players]. A player needs to want to play for the national team. … [He] needs to be desperate, needs to show that we need him. Because if not, we are a weak federation.”
Tenorio: I have to echo everything Henry said above about Banks, a player Pochettino was clear about wanting to recruit but whose very fair hesitation at committing to a national team before he is ready puts a big question mark around this position group. There are not a ton of options here if Banks doesn't come. Could we see Tristan Blackmon or Walker Zimmerman sneak into the team for a last-chance audition to make the World Cup roster? I think Alex Freeman's ability to play on the right side of the U.S.'s hybrid back three means Pochettino brings one fewer center back with Scally and Freeman providing depth at multiple spots.
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Tenorio: Tim Weah, Alex Freeman, Max Arfsten, Antonee Robinson
Bushnell: Tim Weah, Alex Freeman, Max Arfsten, Antonee Robinson
Bushnell: Robinson's situation remains murky. He seemed to be working his way back from the lingering knee problem; then he sank back to Fulham's bench. He went over a month without a single Premier League minute — until he started and went 90 against West Ham last Wednesday. (He was then back on the bench this past weekend.) Fulham coach Marco Silva said, at one point, that Robinson “felt something in his ankle” and “wasn't feeling 100 percent,” which explained at least one absence. But on multiple occasions, he's been in the matchday squad … and an unused sub.
For the USMNT's March camp, his status depends entirely on health, and whether a week of rest might be more beneficial than minutes.
Tenorio: I think we see Robinson in this camp, even if it's in the same way we saw him in October, when he was part of the team in Austin but didn't play and flew home early. The U.S. staff needs time with Robinson and a chance to evaluate his health. Sergiño Dest's injury gives Poch a chance to evaluate Weah at right back.
Bushnell: Prior to Dest's injury, I had Scally on the outside looking in. Now I think Scally will likely be in camp, even though he and Dest are polar opposites as players.
Tenorio: Tyler Adams, Tanner Tessmann, Johnny Cardoso, Aidan Morris, Sebastian Berhalter, Cristian Roldan
Bushnell: Tyler Adams, Tanner Tessmann, Johnny Cardoso, Sebastian Berhalter, Cristian Roldan
Bushnell: Cardoso surely has to be in Atlanta. He's back to full health, starting regularly and playing reasonably well for Atlético Madrid, the freakin' third-best team in the world's second-best league. I know he's been a national team enigma, and I'm not saying he has to be on the World Cup roster… but Pochettino and staff at least have to call him in March and take a long, up-close look.
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Unrelated: I wouldn't be surprised if a player like Roldan, whom Pochettino now knows he can trust, and who is still in early-season form, is left off the March roster. If so, it doesn't necessarily mean he's on the outside looking in at the World Cup. He could be left off in March to make room for someone like Yunus Musah.
Tenorio: Cardoso and Morris are the players getting one more chance to make an impression at the national team level, and this would be a huge test for them. With the U.S. playing twice in just four days, it means there is going to be heavy rotation. If Adams and Tessmann start in game one, it means two of Cardoso, Berhalter, Roldan and Morris, will likely start in Game 2. Cardoso has never looked sure of himself when playing with the U.S., but he's running out of time to make a claim on a World Cup spot. Morris has been in great form for Middlesbrough. Is it enough to get him in the World Cup mix?
Tenorio: Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Brenden Aaronson, Malik Tillman
Bushnell: Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Brenden Aaronson, Malik Tillman
Bushnell: Tillman is somewhat of a question mark after suffering an ankle injury in February. The injury was minor, and Tillman has since returned for Bayer Leverkusen, in a reserve capacity (45 minutes off the bench combined in two matches), so I'd still expect to see him in March. If not?
Diego Luna would be an obvious pick, but he missed the first three weeks of the MLS season with a knee injury, and is a known quantity to Pochettino. Gio Reyna, meanwhile, is very much still an unknown quantity, but he hasn't played a Bundesliga minute since Jan. 17 and hasn't started a game of any kind in 2026. So …
Tenorio: Aaronson's resurgence at Leeds (and Weah's versatility that provides depth at winger, forward and right back) means that Luna, a favorite of Pochettino for some time, could see himself on the outside looking in for the World Cup roster. This is the hard part about picking a World Cup team. Luna has been a solid contributor for the team and was an important example for Pochettino to hold up to the group when discussing the mentality and attitude he was looking for, but that doesn't mean he's also the right player for the World Cup team. Aaronson is starting every week in the Premier League, McKennie has been one of Juventus's best and most important players in Italy, Tillman, when fit, is a starter for a Champions League team and Pulisic is undroppable.
Dest's injury dropped a defender off this roster and it opened up a spot for me to use elsewhere. Could that last spot go to Luna or Reyna come the World Cup? How Pochettino plays with depth will be an interesting call to make.
Tenorio: Folarin Balogun, Haji Wright, Ricardo Pepi, Patrick Agyemang
Bushnell: Folarin Balogun, Haji Wright, Ricardo Pepi, Patrick Agyemang
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Bushnell: I would like to hereby proclaim that I am Team Bring Four Strikers. If all are healthy, each one serves a unique purpose. Balogun is the starter. Pepi is the poacher off the bench. Agyemang is the change of pace, the most imposing physical presence. And Wright might be the best direct replacement if Balogun were to go down injured during the World Cup. And I think there's enough versatility throughout the rest of the roster that you're not sacrificing much elsewhere by bringing all four frontmen.
Tenorio: The luxuries of a 26-man roster are such that you can bring in players who serve a very particular purpose, whether it's a center back that can win headers and help close out games when you have a lead, or different styles of strikers that make sense for particular game states. That might give Pochettino the luxury of bringing a player like Agyemang, who could bring a different look up top than Balogun or Pepi. Wright's versatility and World Cup experience probably earns him a spot on this roster.
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Joan Laporta has launched a scathing attack on Real Madrid as he runs for a third term as Barcelona president, accusing them of controlling Spanish refereeing for over seven decades. Amid ongoing scrutiny over the Negreira case, Laporta claims Barca are the victims of a calculated smear campaign orchestrated from the capital.
The Spanish public prosecutor is currently accusing Barcelona of sporting corruption because they paid companies linked to former Spanish Football Federation's Technical Committee of Referees (CTA) vice-president Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira €7–8 million over a 17-year period. Laporta, who is up for re-election against Victor Font, has strongly defended the Catalan giants. He insists the money was only for legitimate technical advice and that the intense legal pressure is part of a coordinated plan from Madrid to undermine the club.
Speaking to Cadena Cope, Laporta shifted the focus onto Barca's fierce rivals, questioning the impartiality of the footballing authorities by highlighting Madrid's historical ties to the Referees Committee. "Don't you think it's shameful that for 72 years the committee was run by Real Madrid members?" Laporta asked. "All members. Isn't that shameful? It was referee advice, not sports corruption. But you never ask them questions about that; stop playing with me."
People also asked Laporta about one of his slogans, "against it all and against everyone." He brought up Madrid's ties to the CTA again.
“Against all odds and against everyone is an expression to illustrate what has been happening to us at Barca for years," Laporta continued. "The club was dominated, subjugated. It was under intervention; they were allowed to do certain things with the intention of reaching this point. The exorbitant contracts weren't subject to any economic oversight.
“We were up against a smear campaign orchestrated from Madrid regarding the Negreira case. What Barca did was legal, it was done very well. At that time, they were paying a company – we've already come across it – that produced referee reports to analyse the referees' performance. I'm sure Real Madrid did the same. Now Real Madrid has Megia Davila, the wife of the Referees' Committee.
“Doesn't that seem disgraceful to you? It seems perfectly normal to you. Maybe they didn't need to hire refereeing experts because they were already doing it, even better. Didn't you realise that in Madrid or what? Is what Barca does disgraceful? Wasn't what Madrid did disgraceful?”
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The immediate priority for Laporta is securing victory in Sunday's pivotal presidential election against Font. Whoever takes the helm will face the monumental task of navigating the ongoing public prosecutor's investigation into the Negreira payments while stabilising the club's precarious finances. On the pitch, Barcelona are preparing to face Newcastle United in the first leg of their Champions League round-of-16 tie, which is scheduled to take place at St James' Park on Tuesday.
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Events leading up to the Los Angeles Football Club's participation in last summer's FIFA Club World Cup began with a protest by the winningest team in Costa Rican soccer, Liga Deportiva Alajuelense.
Black & Gold supporters can offer their kind regards to Alajuelense in person on Tuesday night, when the 31-time top flight Costa Rican winners visit BMO Stadium for the first leg of a CONCACAF Champions Cup Round of 16 match.
Led by club legend Óscar Ramírez, one of Costa Rica's most respected managers, Alajuelense enters the ongoing tournament as the highest ranked Central American club in the region.
It was that recent and long-term success that prompted Alajuelense to lodge a complaint about the makeup of the four CONCACAF teams that qualified through the continental competition into last year's expanded Club World Cup.
Liga MX's Club León had defeated LAFC to win the 2023 CONCACAF Champions Cup. The following year, C.F. Pachuca, operating under the same ownership group as León, Grupo Pachuca, captured the next edition.
Those results ran afoul of the Club World Cup's multi-ownership rule, Alajuelense argued.
Having hired a law firm in Spain and reporting the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which denied León's appeal once FIFA ruled the Mexican side was ineligible, Alajuelense's attempt to take their place was also rejected, prompting the FIFA-mandated eliminator between LAFC and Club América at BMO Stadium for the right to become the final entrant in the 32-team field.
Less than a year later, LAFC and Alajuelense will cross paths in a more direct way when they clash for the second time in CONCACAF play.
Denis Bouanga's second-half hat trick in 2023 at the nearly 19,000-seat Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto delivered an opening leg Round of 16 win in Costa Rica. Alajuelense returned the favor, beating LAFC 2-1 at BMO Stadium a week later, but that wasn't enough to prevent the Black & Gold from continuing on the road to finishing as the runner up to León.
Three years later, LAFC's first round CONCACAF dominance (7-1 aggregate versus Honduran team Real España) brings the two sides together again.
“It's a different story, a different game, different players, different context,” LAFC head coach Marc Dos Santos said.
Eleven games into its league schedule, Alajuelense (4-4-3) sits sixth in the Costa Rican table after winning its last two contests.
“Obviously it's a Champions Cup game,” said LAFC goalkeeper Hugo Lloris, who has allowed one goal in four starts this year. “It doesn't matter who you are facing. You have to be at the level of the competition and it's all about details as well. Let's put us in a good position for the second leg. That is the target for [Tuesday's] game.”
On the heels of its 31st national title to cap Liga FPD's Apertura 2025 tournament. Alajuelense, the current (and three-time) Central American Cup champions, qualified directly into the Round of 16 to reach this stage of CONCACAF four years running (and seven overall).
After exiting against LAFC in '23, Alajuelense fell to the New England Revolution in '24 and Mexico's Pumas UNAM last season.
Ending that three-year skid to make the quarterfinals for the first time since 2003 would require snapping LAFC's three-tournament run of getting that far themselves.
LAFC reached the final in 2020, losing to Tigres, and in 2023, losing to León, before falling short in the quarterfinals last year against Inter Miami.
Off to a stellar start in 2026, LAFC (5-0-0 in all competitions) must quickly regroup following Saturday's hard-fought 1-0 MLS win at home against FC Dallas.
“We have to take care of the first leg in the best way possible to put us in a position to go to a very difficult place,” Dos Santos said. “We know the atmosphere in Costa Rica.”
What: CONCACAF Champions Cup, Round of 16, first leg
When: Tuesday: 8 p.m. PT
Where: BMO Stadium, Los Angeles
TV/Radio: FS2, TUDN/710 AM, 980 AM, 1230 AM
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Inspired by NBA and F1, styled player walk-ins mark the latest step in the tour's growing push into fashion and lifestyle content.ByStephanie LivaudaisPublished Mar 10, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 10, 2026
© GQ Australia, ATP Tour, Lachlan Cunningham
This week ATP players stepped out in style at the BNP Paribas Open—the first in a series of fashion-forward “Athlete Arrivals,” the latest stage in the men's tour's sartorial strategy.Styled from head to toe, Taylor Fritz, Alexander Zverev, Andrey Rublev, Frances Tiafoe, Francisco Cerundolo, Jakub Mensik, Zizou Bergs and Alex Michelsen were photographed walking into the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, treating the player entrance like a runway, and the resulting content was splashed across social media.Last year, the ATP Tour reportedly quadrupled its budget for fashion-focused initiatives—funding stylists, photography, videography, influencer partnerships and content across media platforms—and laid out a dedicated fashion marketing strategy. It also created ATP Styling Studios, which gives players ‘premium one-to-one styling sessions with fashion industry leaders.'Read More: Style suites, tunnel walks, luxury collabs: Inside the ATP's new fashion strategy“There's a clear intersection in interests between tennis and fashion for our fans,” Andrew Walker, ATP Tour SVP of Brand & Marketing, told Vogue. “We see this as an opportunity to bring fans who might be following the sport more casually deeper into the fold.”A preview of the initiative was seen at the 2025 US Open—where Alex de Minaur, Tiafoe, Rublev and more select players were styled and photographed as the initiative was unveiled in Vogue Business.Now the first ‘Athlete Arrivals' made their debut this week in Indian Wells—a recreation of the types of fashion moments that go viral in other sports, like the NBA and Formula One, and that have made athletes like LeBron James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lewis Hamilton into cultural crossover stars.
Styled from head to toe, Taylor Fritz, Alexander Zverev, Andrey Rublev, Frances Tiafoe, Francisco Cerundolo, Jakub Mensik, Zizou Bergs and Alex Michelsen were photographed walking into the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, treating the player entrance like a runway, and the resulting content was splashed across social media.Last year, the ATP Tour reportedly quadrupled its budget for fashion-focused initiatives—funding stylists, photography, videography, influencer partnerships and content across media platforms—and laid out a dedicated fashion marketing strategy. It also created ATP Styling Studios, which gives players ‘premium one-to-one styling sessions with fashion industry leaders.'Read More: Style suites, tunnel walks, luxury collabs: Inside the ATP's new fashion strategy“There's a clear intersection in interests between tennis and fashion for our fans,” Andrew Walker, ATP Tour SVP of Brand & Marketing, told Vogue. “We see this as an opportunity to bring fans who might be following the sport more casually deeper into the fold.”A preview of the initiative was seen at the 2025 US Open—where Alex de Minaur, Tiafoe, Rublev and more select players were styled and photographed as the initiative was unveiled in Vogue Business.Now the first ‘Athlete Arrivals' made their debut this week in Indian Wells—a recreation of the types of fashion moments that go viral in other sports, like the NBA and Formula One, and that have made athletes like LeBron James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lewis Hamilton into cultural crossover stars.
Last year, the ATP Tour reportedly quadrupled its budget for fashion-focused initiatives—funding stylists, photography, videography, influencer partnerships and content across media platforms—and laid out a dedicated fashion marketing strategy. It also created ATP Styling Studios, which gives players ‘premium one-to-one styling sessions with fashion industry leaders.'Read More: Style suites, tunnel walks, luxury collabs: Inside the ATP's new fashion strategy“There's a clear intersection in interests between tennis and fashion for our fans,” Andrew Walker, ATP Tour SVP of Brand & Marketing, told Vogue. “We see this as an opportunity to bring fans who might be following the sport more casually deeper into the fold.”A preview of the initiative was seen at the 2025 US Open—where Alex de Minaur, Tiafoe, Rublev and more select players were styled and photographed as the initiative was unveiled in Vogue Business.Now the first ‘Athlete Arrivals' made their debut this week in Indian Wells—a recreation of the types of fashion moments that go viral in other sports, like the NBA and Formula One, and that have made athletes like LeBron James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lewis Hamilton into cultural crossover stars.
Read More: Style suites, tunnel walks, luxury collabs: Inside the ATP's new fashion strategy“There's a clear intersection in interests between tennis and fashion for our fans,” Andrew Walker, ATP Tour SVP of Brand & Marketing, told Vogue. “We see this as an opportunity to bring fans who might be following the sport more casually deeper into the fold.”A preview of the initiative was seen at the 2025 US Open—where Alex de Minaur, Tiafoe, Rublev and more select players were styled and photographed as the initiative was unveiled in Vogue Business.Now the first ‘Athlete Arrivals' made their debut this week in Indian Wells—a recreation of the types of fashion moments that go viral in other sports, like the NBA and Formula One, and that have made athletes like LeBron James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lewis Hamilton into cultural crossover stars.
“There's a clear intersection in interests between tennis and fashion for our fans,” Andrew Walker, ATP Tour SVP of Brand & Marketing, told Vogue. “We see this as an opportunity to bring fans who might be following the sport more casually deeper into the fold.”A preview of the initiative was seen at the 2025 US Open—where Alex de Minaur, Tiafoe, Rublev and more select players were styled and photographed as the initiative was unveiled in Vogue Business.Now the first ‘Athlete Arrivals' made their debut this week in Indian Wells—a recreation of the types of fashion moments that go viral in other sports, like the NBA and Formula One, and that have made athletes like LeBron James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lewis Hamilton into cultural crossover stars.
A preview of the initiative was seen at the 2025 US Open—where Alex de Minaur, Tiafoe, Rublev and more select players were styled and photographed as the initiative was unveiled in Vogue Business.Now the first ‘Athlete Arrivals' made their debut this week in Indian Wells—a recreation of the types of fashion moments that go viral in other sports, like the NBA and Formula One, and that have made athletes like LeBron James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lewis Hamilton into cultural crossover stars.
Now the first ‘Athlete Arrivals' made their debut this week in Indian Wells—a recreation of the types of fashion moments that go viral in other sports, like the NBA and Formula One, and that have made athletes like LeBron James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lewis Hamilton into cultural crossover stars.
Players worked with former GQ fashion director Mabolaji Dawodu to create custom looks.© ATP Tour
© ATP Tour
In Indian Wells, Rublev, Cerundolo, Zverev and co. worked with Mabolaji Dawodu, former GQ fashion director who also styled players in NYC, to curate bespoke looks for their upcoming arrival moments and capture content for players to share on their social channels.“Fashion is deeply rooted in the culture of tennis and creating moments that allow our players to express their own personal style presents a unique opportunity to position tennis within wider cultural conversations and open it up to new audiences,” said Walker.“This builds on the success of our Styling Studio, which we initially launched as a pilot ahead of the 2025 US Open. It has shown us there's huge demand among our fans for fashion-facing content.“With a global pool of athletes and strong visual identity, we're well placed to lean into this space, bringing new fans into the sport and strengthening our players' brands in the process.”Read More: From new tech to popular merch, Lululemon is bringing a "whole vibe" to the BNP Paribas OpenOne difference—in basketball and Formula 1, athletes use fashion as a way to show their personalities and stand out from teams and uniforms, so fashion moments unfold organically and feel authentic. Meanwhile, the ATP's effort is part of an initiative mandated by tour executives as part of a marketing strategy. Does it feel authentic for individual players?
“Fashion is deeply rooted in the culture of tennis and creating moments that allow our players to express their own personal style presents a unique opportunity to position tennis within wider cultural conversations and open it up to new audiences,” said Walker.“This builds on the success of our Styling Studio, which we initially launched as a pilot ahead of the 2025 US Open. It has shown us there's huge demand among our fans for fashion-facing content.“With a global pool of athletes and strong visual identity, we're well placed to lean into this space, bringing new fans into the sport and strengthening our players' brands in the process.”Read More: From new tech to popular merch, Lululemon is bringing a "whole vibe" to the BNP Paribas OpenOne difference—in basketball and Formula 1, athletes use fashion as a way to show their personalities and stand out from teams and uniforms, so fashion moments unfold organically and feel authentic. Meanwhile, the ATP's effort is part of an initiative mandated by tour executives as part of a marketing strategy. Does it feel authentic for individual players?
“This builds on the success of our Styling Studio, which we initially launched as a pilot ahead of the 2025 US Open. It has shown us there's huge demand among our fans for fashion-facing content.“With a global pool of athletes and strong visual identity, we're well placed to lean into this space, bringing new fans into the sport and strengthening our players' brands in the process.”Read More: From new tech to popular merch, Lululemon is bringing a "whole vibe" to the BNP Paribas OpenOne difference—in basketball and Formula 1, athletes use fashion as a way to show their personalities and stand out from teams and uniforms, so fashion moments unfold organically and feel authentic. Meanwhile, the ATP's effort is part of an initiative mandated by tour executives as part of a marketing strategy. Does it feel authentic for individual players?
“With a global pool of athletes and strong visual identity, we're well placed to lean into this space, bringing new fans into the sport and strengthening our players' brands in the process.”Read More: From new tech to popular merch, Lululemon is bringing a "whole vibe" to the BNP Paribas OpenOne difference—in basketball and Formula 1, athletes use fashion as a way to show their personalities and stand out from teams and uniforms, so fashion moments unfold organically and feel authentic. Meanwhile, the ATP's effort is part of an initiative mandated by tour executives as part of a marketing strategy. Does it feel authentic for individual players?
Read More: From new tech to popular merch, Lululemon is bringing a "whole vibe" to the BNP Paribas OpenOne difference—in basketball and Formula 1, athletes use fashion as a way to show their personalities and stand out from teams and uniforms, so fashion moments unfold organically and feel authentic. Meanwhile, the ATP's effort is part of an initiative mandated by tour executives as part of a marketing strategy. Does it feel authentic for individual players?
One difference—in basketball and Formula 1, athletes use fashion as a way to show their personalities and stand out from teams and uniforms, so fashion moments unfold organically and feel authentic. Meanwhile, the ATP's effort is part of an initiative mandated by tour executives as part of a marketing strategy. Does it feel authentic for individual players?
Rublev, Fritz, Bergs and more arrive in style for the ATP Tour's new fashion initiative.© ATP Tour
© ATP Tour
Still, judging by social media reaction, the initial feedback has been positive. And the benefits are immediately obvious, both for the Tour and for the players, who get to show off and explore different sides of their personality, and for their agents, who now have another platform to highlight a sponsor or a new way to position their clients.Plus, the initiative is nurturing an area where younger ATP players are already showing interest, as they ink partnerships with fashion houses—like Carlos Alcaraz with Louis Vuitton, Jannik Sinner with Gucci and Jack Draper with Burberry—and increasingly have more say in their on-court attire, too.Draper discussed his involvement in sponsor Vuori's tennis designs: “We're in an individual sport, and tennis is, I think, becoming more and more fashionable,” he told press at Indian Wells. “It's cool to work with a brand that has such a big vision for themselves. Not only on-court stuff but also off-court. Really comfortable brand.”“It's something that we get deeper into every year,” American world No. 8 Ben Shelton said of his own relationship with On. “That's just been a really cool, organic partnership for me that has grown. I was their first tennis player, and we started with one kit, and it's just kind of evolved from there.”
Plus, the initiative is nurturing an area where younger ATP players are already showing interest, as they ink partnerships with fashion houses—like Carlos Alcaraz with Louis Vuitton, Jannik Sinner with Gucci and Jack Draper with Burberry—and increasingly have more say in their on-court attire, too.Draper discussed his involvement in sponsor Vuori's tennis designs: “We're in an individual sport, and tennis is, I think, becoming more and more fashionable,” he told press at Indian Wells. “It's cool to work with a brand that has such a big vision for themselves. Not only on-court stuff but also off-court. Really comfortable brand.”“It's something that we get deeper into every year,” American world No. 8 Ben Shelton said of his own relationship with On. “That's just been a really cool, organic partnership for me that has grown. I was their first tennis player, and we started with one kit, and it's just kind of evolved from there.”
Draper discussed his involvement in sponsor Vuori's tennis designs: “We're in an individual sport, and tennis is, I think, becoming more and more fashionable,” he told press at Indian Wells. “It's cool to work with a brand that has such a big vision for themselves. Not only on-court stuff but also off-court. Really comfortable brand.”“It's something that we get deeper into every year,” American world No. 8 Ben Shelton said of his own relationship with On. “That's just been a really cool, organic partnership for me that has grown. I was their first tennis player, and we started with one kit, and it's just kind of evolved from there.”
“It's something that we get deeper into every year,” American world No. 8 Ben Shelton said of his own relationship with On. “That's just been a really cool, organic partnership for me that has grown. I was their first tennis player, and we started with one kit, and it's just kind of evolved from there.”
Read More: Novak Djokovic backs wearable recovery tech with new Incrediwear collaborationAccording to the ATP, the fashion strategy is underpinned by three core areas: events, athletes and content.Events — focus on Athlete Arrivals moments at tournaments, relevant cultural events and potential collaborations.Athlete — focus on creating further ATP Styling Studios moments and fashion crossover opportunities with brands and media for the players.Content — focus on establishing media partnerships and content collaborations for the players (amplified through TikTok, Spotify, and via Overtime and paid influencers).The ATP will have more opportunities to fine-tune its fashion-forward walkout moments, with more Athlete Arrivals planned for select tournaments—including the Miami Open and Madrid Open—and culminating at the ATP Finals in Turin.In Miami, up to 10 players will be featured in the new set of Athlete Arrivals. The ATP is also set to collaborate with Lacoste on bespoke looks for Grigor Dimitrov (a Lacoste brand ambassador) as well as ‘custom content captured on the city's streets.
According to the ATP, the fashion strategy is underpinned by three core areas: events, athletes and content.Events — focus on Athlete Arrivals moments at tournaments, relevant cultural events and potential collaborations.Athlete — focus on creating further ATP Styling Studios moments and fashion crossover opportunities with brands and media for the players.Content — focus on establishing media partnerships and content collaborations for the players (amplified through TikTok, Spotify, and via Overtime and paid influencers).The ATP will have more opportunities to fine-tune its fashion-forward walkout moments, with more Athlete Arrivals planned for select tournaments—including the Miami Open and Madrid Open—and culminating at the ATP Finals in Turin.In Miami, up to 10 players will be featured in the new set of Athlete Arrivals. The ATP is also set to collaborate with Lacoste on bespoke looks for Grigor Dimitrov (a Lacoste brand ambassador) as well as ‘custom content captured on the city's streets.
The ATP will have more opportunities to fine-tune its fashion-forward walkout moments, with more Athlete Arrivals planned for select tournaments—including the Miami Open and Madrid Open—and culminating at the ATP Finals in Turin.In Miami, up to 10 players will be featured in the new set of Athlete Arrivals. The ATP is also set to collaborate with Lacoste on bespoke looks for Grigor Dimitrov (a Lacoste brand ambassador) as well as ‘custom content captured on the city's streets.
In Miami, up to 10 players will be featured in the new set of Athlete Arrivals. The ATP is also set to collaborate with Lacoste on bespoke looks for Grigor Dimitrov (a Lacoste brand ambassador) as well as ‘custom content captured on the city's streets.
Sonay Kartal is into the Round of 16 at Indian Wells for the second straight year after upsetting Madison Keys in comeback fashion Monday night. In doing so, she became the first British woman to reach the fourth round of the event twice.
Sonay Kartal has put together one heck of a run to the fourth round at Indian Wells.
After saving a match point to upset Emma Navarro in the second round, Kartal worked her magic again Monday night, rallying from a set down to upend 2025 semifinalist Madison Keys 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 in just under two hours. The win sends her into the Round of 16 for the second straight year.
Indian Wells: Scores | Draws | Order of play
“As a player, you have favorite tournaments throughout the year,” Kartal said in her on-court interview. “And I've said in all these interviews that this is an event that I really look forward to coming back to. There are a lot of similarities to being at home with the conditions, and I think these courts really suit my game and enhance my game.
“When you're happy in the environment, that can translate onto the match court.”
With the result, Kartal became the first British woman to reach the fourth round at Indian Wells twice. It also marked the fifth Top 20 win of her WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz career.
It came on a night when Keys looked untouchable early, racing through the opening set. She broke first for 2-1, and after Kartal leveled at 2-2, reeled off four straight games to take the set. The American fired 25 winners to just 13 unforced errors in that frame, using not only her forehand but also a mix of drop shots, lobs and sharp net play that kept Kartal off balance.
And then the match flipped.
“Being the underdog, you come out here and you kind of have nothing to lose,” Kartal said. “I wanted to do what I did in the previous matches and that was to be aggressive and try to keep up with her level.
“She's an incredible player, and I knew there were going to be times where she was going to be unbeatable. I just tried to weather the storm.”
Mission accomplished. Kartal countered Keys' pace with two key adjustments, the biggest coming on serve. After winning just 5 of 15 points second-serve points in the first set, she amped up the aggression in the second.
The payoff was an 86%-win rate on second-serve points and a string of smooth service holds. After facing six break points in the opener, she faced none in the second. On return, she broke Keys twice, the second time on a double fault that sent the match to a decider.
Kartal's rally tolerance sharpened in the second set as well, forcing Keys to be the one to make mistakes. The Brit hit only two winners in the set, but with just one unforced error, she controlled the rallies and, as a result, the scoreboard.
While the first two sets were more decisive, the decider proved to be a back-and-forth affair. Despite some long service games for Keys, the two traded holds through the first seven games. Kartal's persistence finally paid off when a brilliant backhand pass -- one of many she produced throughout the night -- set up her third break point, and a cruel net cord left Keys stranded to give Kartal the chance to serve for the match.
Apparently the tennis gods weren't done. On the next point, another net cord fell Kartal's way. She capitalized on the good fortune, holding her nerve and her serve with veteran calm before one final Keys forehand drifted wide to send her into the fourth round.
Round of 16 bound 🛫Sonay Kartal makes it two round 4 appearances in a row in the desert ☀️#TennisParadise pic.twitter.com/zUnmrpNC8k
Kartal will face Elena Rybakina in the Round of 16. She has yet to face the two-time Grand Slam champion in her career.
Sonay Kartal is into the Round of 16 at Indian Wells for the second straight year after upsetting Madison Keys in comeback fashion Monday night. In doing so, she became the first British woman to reach the fourth round of the event twice.
The world No. 1 battled back from a set and a break down to beat Arthur Rinderknech on Monday night.ByJohn BerkokPublished Mar 10, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 10, 2026
© 2026 Getty Images
It wasn't easy but Carlos Alcaraz continued his flawless start to the season on Monday night, battling back from a set and a break down to beat Arthur Rinderknech in the third round of Indian Wells, 6-7 (6), 6-3, 6-2, and improve to 14-0 in 2026.That record includes seven wins en route to the Australian Open title (and completing the Career Slam), five wins en route to the title in Doha and now two wins at Indian Wells.The Spaniard's latest victory gives him another nifty stat, too—he's now won an incredible 70 of his last 75 matches on the tour, a stretch that dates back to the start of last April.His only five losses in the last 11 months have come to Holger Rune in the Barcelona final (on clay), Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon final (on grass) and Taylor Fritz at Laver Cup, Cam Norrie in his first match in Paris and Sinner again in the ATP Finals final (all on indoor hard courts at the end of last year).He's undefeated on outdoor hard courts in that span, going 32-0 since falling to David Goffin in Miami last year.
That record includes seven wins en route to the Australian Open title (and completing the Career Slam), five wins en route to the title in Doha and now two wins at Indian Wells.The Spaniard's latest victory gives him another nifty stat, too—he's now won an incredible 70 of his last 75 matches on the tour, a stretch that dates back to the start of last April.His only five losses in the last 11 months have come to Holger Rune in the Barcelona final (on clay), Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon final (on grass) and Taylor Fritz at Laver Cup, Cam Norrie in his first match in Paris and Sinner again in the ATP Finals final (all on indoor hard courts at the end of last year).He's undefeated on outdoor hard courts in that span, going 32-0 since falling to David Goffin in Miami last year.
The Spaniard's latest victory gives him another nifty stat, too—he's now won an incredible 70 of his last 75 matches on the tour, a stretch that dates back to the start of last April.His only five losses in the last 11 months have come to Holger Rune in the Barcelona final (on clay), Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon final (on grass) and Taylor Fritz at Laver Cup, Cam Norrie in his first match in Paris and Sinner again in the ATP Finals final (all on indoor hard courts at the end of last year).He's undefeated on outdoor hard courts in that span, going 32-0 since falling to David Goffin in Miami last year.
His only five losses in the last 11 months have come to Holger Rune in the Barcelona final (on clay), Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon final (on grass) and Taylor Fritz at Laver Cup, Cam Norrie in his first match in Paris and Sinner again in the ATP Finals final (all on indoor hard courts at the end of last year).He's undefeated on outdoor hard courts in that span, going 32-0 since falling to David Goffin in Miami last year.
He's undefeated on outdoor hard courts in that span, going 32-0 since falling to David Goffin in Miami last year.
Stuck the landing 🤸Carlos Alcaraz defeats Arthur Rinderknech 6-7, 6-3, 6-2!Gotta love the moment at the net 😆#TennisParadise pic.twitter.com/dAErSUlj5x
For the first 70 minutes on Monday, Alcaraz had his hands full.He had chances in the first set, bringing up double break point in Rinderknech's 3-all service game, and then storming back from 5-2 down to hold a set point up 6-5 in the tie-break—but he mis-hit a forehand to make it 6-all, and Rinderknech snuck out the 63-minute opening frame a few points later.Then, things looked even dodgier for Alcaraz, as Rinderknech broke serve for a 1-0 lead at the start of the second set—but the Spaniard broke right back in the next game to make it 1-all and was never behind again, winning 12 of the last 16 games of the match to run away with it in the end.He closed it out on his first match point with a huge inside-in forehand winner, his 22nd forehand winner of the night.“He was playing his best tennis, I would say, in the first set and beginning of the second,” Alcaraz said afterwards.“For me it was really, really difficult—I got in trouble, to be honest. But I'm just really happy with the way that I dealt with everything that was happening. Accepted, kept going, stayed strong mentally and tried to do things a little bit differently. I just started to play more solid, waiting for my chances, and also I could return much more after that first set.“Overall I'm really happy I was able to turn things around.”
He had chances in the first set, bringing up double break point in Rinderknech's 3-all service game, and then storming back from 5-2 down to hold a set point up 6-5 in the tie-break—but he mis-hit a forehand to make it 6-all, and Rinderknech snuck out the 63-minute opening frame a few points later.Then, things looked even dodgier for Alcaraz, as Rinderknech broke serve for a 1-0 lead at the start of the second set—but the Spaniard broke right back in the next game to make it 1-all and was never behind again, winning 12 of the last 16 games of the match to run away with it in the end.He closed it out on his first match point with a huge inside-in forehand winner, his 22nd forehand winner of the night.“He was playing his best tennis, I would say, in the first set and beginning of the second,” Alcaraz said afterwards.“For me it was really, really difficult—I got in trouble, to be honest. But I'm just really happy with the way that I dealt with everything that was happening. Accepted, kept going, stayed strong mentally and tried to do things a little bit differently. I just started to play more solid, waiting for my chances, and also I could return much more after that first set.“Overall I'm really happy I was able to turn things around.”
Then, things looked even dodgier for Alcaraz, as Rinderknech broke serve for a 1-0 lead at the start of the second set—but the Spaniard broke right back in the next game to make it 1-all and was never behind again, winning 12 of the last 16 games of the match to run away with it in the end.He closed it out on his first match point with a huge inside-in forehand winner, his 22nd forehand winner of the night.“He was playing his best tennis, I would say, in the first set and beginning of the second,” Alcaraz said afterwards.“For me it was really, really difficult—I got in trouble, to be honest. But I'm just really happy with the way that I dealt with everything that was happening. Accepted, kept going, stayed strong mentally and tried to do things a little bit differently. I just started to play more solid, waiting for my chances, and also I could return much more after that first set.“Overall I'm really happy I was able to turn things around.”
He closed it out on his first match point with a huge inside-in forehand winner, his 22nd forehand winner of the night.“He was playing his best tennis, I would say, in the first set and beginning of the second,” Alcaraz said afterwards.“For me it was really, really difficult—I got in trouble, to be honest. But I'm just really happy with the way that I dealt with everything that was happening. Accepted, kept going, stayed strong mentally and tried to do things a little bit differently. I just started to play more solid, waiting for my chances, and also I could return much more after that first set.“Overall I'm really happy I was able to turn things around.”
“He was playing his best tennis, I would say, in the first set and beginning of the second,” Alcaraz said afterwards.“For me it was really, really difficult—I got in trouble, to be honest. But I'm just really happy with the way that I dealt with everything that was happening. Accepted, kept going, stayed strong mentally and tried to do things a little bit differently. I just started to play more solid, waiting for my chances, and also I could return much more after that first set.“Overall I'm really happy I was able to turn things around.”
“For me it was really, really difficult—I got in trouble, to be honest. But I'm just really happy with the way that I dealt with everything that was happening. Accepted, kept going, stayed strong mentally and tried to do things a little bit differently. I just started to play more solid, waiting for my chances, and also I could return much more after that first set.“Overall I'm really happy I was able to turn things around.”
“Overall I'm really happy I was able to turn things around.”
Awaiting the No. 1-seeded Alcaraz in the fourth round on Wednesday will be No. 13-seeded Casper Ruud, who also battled back from a set down to win his third-round match against No. 24-seeded Valentin Vacherot, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.Alcaraz leads Ruud in their head-to-head, 5-1, which includes 4-0 on outdoor hard courts. Their most famous meeting was a four-set win for the Spaniard in the 2022 US Open final.
Alcaraz leads Ruud in their head-to-head, 5-1, which includes 4-0 on outdoor hard courts. Their most famous meeting was a four-set win for the Spaniard in the 2022 US Open final.
“It's a very important win,” said Michelsen. “Top ten player, been top American for many years, someone I have looked up to for a long time.”ByJoel DruckerPublished Mar 10, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 10, 2026
© Getty Images
INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—A tremendous display of energy and alertness, accompanied by savvy wind management, were the defining factors that propelled world No. 44 Alex Michelsen to a 6-4, 7-6 (6) upset win over seventh-seeded Taylor Fritz in a third round match at the BNP Paribas Open this afternoon.Bursting forward with intensity from the start, Michelsen frequently smothered Fritz with deeper drives, better than usual serves and, in the wake of a late stage hiccup, a Houdini-like escape in the secondset tiebreaker.“To beat someone like Taylor, you have to go out there and have a lot of energy,” said Michelsen. “I feel like that's also kind of my style. I'm one of those guys that shows a little more energy, shows a little more positivity and negativity. Both ways, right?”
Bursting forward with intensity from the start, Michelsen frequently smothered Fritz with deeper drives, better than usual serves and, in the wake of a late stage hiccup, a Houdini-like escape in the secondset tiebreaker.“To beat someone like Taylor, you have to go out there and have a lot of energy,” said Michelsen. “I feel like that's also kind of my style. I'm one of those guys that shows a little more energy, shows a little more positivity and negativity. Both ways, right?”
“To beat someone like Taylor, you have to go out there and have a lot of energy,” said Michelsen. “I feel like that's also kind of my style. I'm one of those guys that shows a little more energy, shows a little more positivity and negativity. Both ways, right?”
Fritz was uncomfortable for the vast majority of the match.“I think that I struggled a lot with the wind in the beginning,” he said. “I was trying to be aggressive, and when I was trying to be aggressive with the wind, I just couldn't. Just made a lot of mistakes mistiming the ball, so I kind of had to just accept that wasn't really working and try to just put more balls in the court.”Only late in the second set, down 3-5, did Fritz assert himself as American tennis' highest-ranked male, and begin to play at least a semblance of the tennis that had taken him to the title here four years ago. With Michelsen serving for the match at 5-4, 30-15, Fritz drove a deep backhand return that extracted a netted backhand. Subsequently earning a break point to level the set, Fritz scampered brilliantly and capped off the rally with a carved forehand down-the-line winner.Despite Fritz's near-midnight surge, Michelsen was usually the one in command. He broke serve at 1-1 in first set, triggering a dropped racket from an anguished Fritz. Soon enough, Michelsen handily closed out the opener at 15. And when Michelsen captured Fritz's at 2-all in the second set, Fritz this time broke his frame over his knee.
“I think that I struggled a lot with the wind in the beginning,” he said. “I was trying to be aggressive, and when I was trying to be aggressive with the wind, I just couldn't. Just made a lot of mistakes mistiming the ball, so I kind of had to just accept that wasn't really working and try to just put more balls in the court.”Only late in the second set, down 3-5, did Fritz assert himself as American tennis' highest-ranked male, and begin to play at least a semblance of the tennis that had taken him to the title here four years ago. With Michelsen serving for the match at 5-4, 30-15, Fritz drove a deep backhand return that extracted a netted backhand. Subsequently earning a break point to level the set, Fritz scampered brilliantly and capped off the rally with a carved forehand down-the-line winner.Despite Fritz's near-midnight surge, Michelsen was usually the one in command. He broke serve at 1-1 in first set, triggering a dropped racket from an anguished Fritz. Soon enough, Michelsen handily closed out the opener at 15. And when Michelsen captured Fritz's at 2-all in the second set, Fritz this time broke his frame over his knee.
Only late in the second set, down 3-5, did Fritz assert himself as American tennis' highest-ranked male, and begin to play at least a semblance of the tennis that had taken him to the title here four years ago. With Michelsen serving for the match at 5-4, 30-15, Fritz drove a deep backhand return that extracted a netted backhand. Subsequently earning a break point to level the set, Fritz scampered brilliantly and capped off the rally with a carved forehand down-the-line winner.Despite Fritz's near-midnight surge, Michelsen was usually the one in command. He broke serve at 1-1 in first set, triggering a dropped racket from an anguished Fritz. Soon enough, Michelsen handily closed out the opener at 15. And when Michelsen captured Fritz's at 2-all in the second set, Fritz this time broke his frame over his knee.
Despite Fritz's near-midnight surge, Michelsen was usually the one in command. He broke serve at 1-1 in first set, triggering a dropped racket from an anguished Fritz. Soon enough, Michelsen handily closed out the opener at 15. And when Michelsen captured Fritz's at 2-all in the second set, Fritz this time broke his frame over his knee.
GettyImages-2265670642© Getty Images
© Getty Images
Based on the way the match was going, you'd think Michelsen was the veteran, Fritz the less-experienced competitor.“But he was playing well,” said Fritz. “He was able to dictate and move me around and, you know, with how windy I felt like it was, he was doing a really good job with still being able to attack.”Considering that these two each have big serves, it was surprising to see the tiebreaker take a number of twists and turns. With Michelsen making four forehand errors, Fritz quickly went ahead 4-1. A third set appeared imminent. But Michelsen fought back well.With Fritz holding a set point at 6-5, Michelsen threw up a couple of lobs that kept the rally alive and gave him the chance to win the point, thrilling the nearly filled to capacity Stadium 2. Two backhand errors from Fritz capped it off.“Yeah, definitely got a little lucky at the end,” said Michelsen, “but stayed as tough as I could. Had a tough game at 5-4, felt like I should have served it out there, but stayed composed.”
“But he was playing well,” said Fritz. “He was able to dictate and move me around and, you know, with how windy I felt like it was, he was doing a really good job with still being able to attack.”Considering that these two each have big serves, it was surprising to see the tiebreaker take a number of twists and turns. With Michelsen making four forehand errors, Fritz quickly went ahead 4-1. A third set appeared imminent. But Michelsen fought back well.With Fritz holding a set point at 6-5, Michelsen threw up a couple of lobs that kept the rally alive and gave him the chance to win the point, thrilling the nearly filled to capacity Stadium 2. Two backhand errors from Fritz capped it off.“Yeah, definitely got a little lucky at the end,” said Michelsen, “but stayed as tough as I could. Had a tough game at 5-4, felt like I should have served it out there, but stayed composed.”
Considering that these two each have big serves, it was surprising to see the tiebreaker take a number of twists and turns. With Michelsen making four forehand errors, Fritz quickly went ahead 4-1. A third set appeared imminent. But Michelsen fought back well.With Fritz holding a set point at 6-5, Michelsen threw up a couple of lobs that kept the rally alive and gave him the chance to win the point, thrilling the nearly filled to capacity Stadium 2. Two backhand errors from Fritz capped it off.“Yeah, definitely got a little lucky at the end,” said Michelsen, “but stayed as tough as I could. Had a tough game at 5-4, felt like I should have served it out there, but stayed composed.”
With Fritz holding a set point at 6-5, Michelsen threw up a couple of lobs that kept the rally alive and gave him the chance to win the point, thrilling the nearly filled to capacity Stadium 2. Two backhand errors from Fritz capped it off.“Yeah, definitely got a little lucky at the end,” said Michelsen, “but stayed as tough as I could. Had a tough game at 5-4, felt like I should have served it out there, but stayed composed.”
“Yeah, definitely got a little lucky at the end,” said Michelsen, “but stayed as tough as I could. Had a tough game at 5-4, felt like I should have served it out there, but stayed composed.”
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Fritz also commended Michelsen's serve. “I practice with him a lot,” said Fritz. “I don't feel like he normally serves that well. Just especially on the big points today, he just served incredible on a lot of the big points.”In addition to nine aces and winning 57 percent of his second-serve points (compared to only 39 percent for Fritz), Michelsen saved seven of eight break points.“Yeah, I felt like I was making a lot of first serves,” Michelsen said, “hitting spots well, and I was hitting all four of the spots so he couldn't really get a read, I felt like. Yeah, I think I served really well today.”
In addition to nine aces and winning 57 percent of his second-serve points (compared to only 39 percent for Fritz), Michelsen saved seven of eight break points.“Yeah, I felt like I was making a lot of first serves,” Michelsen said, “hitting spots well, and I was hitting all four of the spots so he couldn't really get a read, I felt like. Yeah, I think I served really well today.”
“Yeah, I felt like I was making a lot of first serves,” Michelsen said, “hitting spots well, and I was hitting all four of the spots so he couldn't really get a read, I felt like. Yeah, I think I served really well today.”
This was a meaningful victory for Michelsen. In his last four tournaments, he'd been unable to string together two straight victories. But Michelsen has now won two matches at Indian Wells for the first time in his career.“It's a very important win,” said Michelsen. “Top ten player, been top American for many years, someone I have looked up to for a long time.”Now having reached the round of 16 at a Masters 1000 event for the second time in his career, Michelsen next faces the winner of the match between Daniil Medvedev and Sebastian Baez. He's 0-3 versus Medvedev and has never played Baez. The highly positive energy Michelsen showed versus Fritz—a raw and compelling appetite for competition—could well take this Orange County resident further at his near-backyard tournament.
“It's a very important win,” said Michelsen. “Top ten player, been top American for many years, someone I have looked up to for a long time.”Now having reached the round of 16 at a Masters 1000 event for the second time in his career, Michelsen next faces the winner of the match between Daniil Medvedev and Sebastian Baez. He's 0-3 versus Medvedev and has never played Baez. The highly positive energy Michelsen showed versus Fritz—a raw and compelling appetite for competition—could well take this Orange County resident further at his near-backyard tournament.
Now having reached the round of 16 at a Masters 1000 event for the second time in his career, Michelsen next faces the winner of the match between Daniil Medvedev and Sebastian Baez. He's 0-3 versus Medvedev and has never played Baez. The highly positive energy Michelsen showed versus Fritz—a raw and compelling appetite for competition—could well take this Orange County resident further at his near-backyard tournament.
Plus: previews of Anisimova vs. Mboko and Zverev vs. Tiafoe on a loaded Tuesday in the desert.BySteve TignorPublished Mar 10, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 10, 2026
© 2025 Getty Images
⏰ Estimated start time: 2:00 p.m. ET👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel app“I remember thinking, like, we're both going to get very far,” Osaka said when she was asked about her only other meeting with Sabalenka, which took place at the 2018 US Open.Osaka was right, of course, but for a time it looked like her close win that evening in Louis Armstrong Stadium had given her a permanent edge in their race toward the top. She would win four majors in the next three years and reach No. 1, while Sabalenka took the long way up the mountaintop. By the time she reached the summit, Osaka's career has cratered.
👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel app“I remember thinking, like, we're both going to get very far,” Osaka said when she was asked about her only other meeting with Sabalenka, which took place at the 2018 US Open.Osaka was right, of course, but for a time it looked like her close win that evening in Louis Armstrong Stadium had given her a permanent edge in their race toward the top. She would win four majors in the next three years and reach No. 1, while Sabalenka took the long way up the mountaintop. By the time she reached the summit, Osaka's career has cratered.
“I remember thinking, like, we're both going to get very far,” Osaka said when she was asked about her only other meeting with Sabalenka, which took place at the 2018 US Open.Osaka was right, of course, but for a time it looked like her close win that evening in Louis Armstrong Stadium had given her a permanent edge in their race toward the top. She would win four majors in the next three years and reach No. 1, while Sabalenka took the long way up the mountaintop. By the time she reached the summit, Osaka's career has cratered.
Osaka was right, of course, but for a time it looked like her close win that evening in Louis Armstrong Stadium had given her a permanent edge in their race toward the top. She would win four majors in the next three years and reach No. 1, while Sabalenka took the long way up the mountaintop. By the time she reached the summit, Osaka's career has cratered.
Now the roles have reversed, and it's Osaka who is chasing Sabalenka's No. 1 ranking. After a couple of frustrating comeback years, she's back up to No. 16, and she's playing the event where she made her first breakthrough title run as a teenager, also in 2018. All in all, it's not a bad time and place for Osaka to get her first crack at Sabalenka, and restart a rivalry that never came to be.Sabalenka says it's an occasion she's looking forward to: “A fashion show at the beginning, then a crazy match. She's a great player.”
Sabalenka says it's an occasion she's looking forward to: “A fashion show at the beginning, then a crazy match. She's a great player.”
“She's a great player,” Sabalenka said of Osaka. “Came back after pregnancy. Incredible shape. I have been watching her matches, really admire her.”© Getty Images
© Getty Images
Together, Sabalenka and Osaka raised the power bar in women's tennis when they appeared in the late-2010s, and nobody has raised it higher since. This will be a battle of first strikes, from serve to return to forehand to backhand. Osaka is one of the few players who can match Sabalenka's pace, which tends to rattle her. The question is whether she can match her margin for error, too. Sabalenka hits with more shape, and thus more safety, on her serve and her forehand in particular.That might allow Sabalenka to wait out any hot streaks from Osaka, and wait until a cold one comes around. Winner: Sabalenka
That might allow Sabalenka to wait out any hot streaks from Osaka, and wait until a cold one comes around. Winner: Sabalenka
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⏰ Estimated start time: 4:00 p.m. ET👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel app“Some matches you work for,” Tiafoe says of the prospect of facing Zverev in the round of 16 at a Masters 1000. “It's great.”After an off year in 2025, the American, with new coach Mark Kovacs, has been climbing his way back toward matches and moments like this. He made the final last week in Acapulco, and a quarterfinal before that in Delray. Kovacs is a specialist in biomechanics, and he has clearly brought a new awareness, and a renewed swagger, to Tiafoe's game and mindset.He also seems energized by the faster courts in Indian Wells this year.You see my last two matches? It was damn great. I'm happy. I'm happy the courts are a little faster. Frances Tiafoe after blitzing Flavio Cobolli, 6-1, 6-2Is the new Tiafoe ready to take another step up and knock off Zverev, too? The German sounds happy with his game as well; not so much about any results, but about his recent commitment to play with more aggression and risk. While he barely squeaked past Brandon Nakashima 6-4 in the third on Sunday, he'll feel confident in his chances against Tiafoe. He leads their head-to-head 8-1, and hasn't lost to him since 2017.“He's one of the better servers out here, so the biggest thing is to take care of my score and put scoreboard pressure,” Tiafoe says of Zverev.“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel app“Some matches you work for,” Tiafoe says of the prospect of facing Zverev in the round of 16 at a Masters 1000. “It's great.”After an off year in 2025, the American, with new coach Mark Kovacs, has been climbing his way back toward matches and moments like this. He made the final last week in Acapulco, and a quarterfinal before that in Delray. Kovacs is a specialist in biomechanics, and he has clearly brought a new awareness, and a renewed swagger, to Tiafoe's game and mindset.He also seems energized by the faster courts in Indian Wells this year.You see my last two matches? It was damn great. I'm happy. I'm happy the courts are a little faster. Frances Tiafoe after blitzing Flavio Cobolli, 6-1, 6-2Is the new Tiafoe ready to take another step up and knock off Zverev, too? The German sounds happy with his game as well; not so much about any results, but about his recent commitment to play with more aggression and risk. While he barely squeaked past Brandon Nakashima 6-4 in the third on Sunday, he'll feel confident in his chances against Tiafoe. He leads their head-to-head 8-1, and hasn't lost to him since 2017.“He's one of the better servers out here, so the biggest thing is to take care of my score and put scoreboard pressure,” Tiafoe says of Zverev.“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
“Some matches you work for,” Tiafoe says of the prospect of facing Zverev in the round of 16 at a Masters 1000. “It's great.”After an off year in 2025, the American, with new coach Mark Kovacs, has been climbing his way back toward matches and moments like this. He made the final last week in Acapulco, and a quarterfinal before that in Delray. Kovacs is a specialist in biomechanics, and he has clearly brought a new awareness, and a renewed swagger, to Tiafoe's game and mindset.He also seems energized by the faster courts in Indian Wells this year.You see my last two matches? It was damn great. I'm happy. I'm happy the courts are a little faster. Frances Tiafoe after blitzing Flavio Cobolli, 6-1, 6-2Is the new Tiafoe ready to take another step up and knock off Zverev, too? The German sounds happy with his game as well; not so much about any results, but about his recent commitment to play with more aggression and risk. While he barely squeaked past Brandon Nakashima 6-4 in the third on Sunday, he'll feel confident in his chances against Tiafoe. He leads their head-to-head 8-1, and hasn't lost to him since 2017.“He's one of the better servers out here, so the biggest thing is to take care of my score and put scoreboard pressure,” Tiafoe says of Zverev.“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
After an off year in 2025, the American, with new coach Mark Kovacs, has been climbing his way back toward matches and moments like this. He made the final last week in Acapulco, and a quarterfinal before that in Delray. Kovacs is a specialist in biomechanics, and he has clearly brought a new awareness, and a renewed swagger, to Tiafoe's game and mindset.He also seems energized by the faster courts in Indian Wells this year.You see my last two matches? It was damn great. I'm happy. I'm happy the courts are a little faster. Frances Tiafoe after blitzing Flavio Cobolli, 6-1, 6-2Is the new Tiafoe ready to take another step up and knock off Zverev, too? The German sounds happy with his game as well; not so much about any results, but about his recent commitment to play with more aggression and risk. While he barely squeaked past Brandon Nakashima 6-4 in the third on Sunday, he'll feel confident in his chances against Tiafoe. He leads their head-to-head 8-1, and hasn't lost to him since 2017.“He's one of the better servers out here, so the biggest thing is to take care of my score and put scoreboard pressure,” Tiafoe says of Zverev.“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
He also seems energized by the faster courts in Indian Wells this year.You see my last two matches? It was damn great. I'm happy. I'm happy the courts are a little faster. Frances Tiafoe after blitzing Flavio Cobolli, 6-1, 6-2Is the new Tiafoe ready to take another step up and knock off Zverev, too? The German sounds happy with his game as well; not so much about any results, but about his recent commitment to play with more aggression and risk. While he barely squeaked past Brandon Nakashima 6-4 in the third on Sunday, he'll feel confident in his chances against Tiafoe. He leads their head-to-head 8-1, and hasn't lost to him since 2017.“He's one of the better servers out here, so the biggest thing is to take care of my score and put scoreboard pressure,” Tiafoe says of Zverev.“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
You see my last two matches? It was damn great. I'm happy. I'm happy the courts are a little faster. Frances Tiafoe after blitzing Flavio Cobolli, 6-1, 6-2
Is the new Tiafoe ready to take another step up and knock off Zverev, too? The German sounds happy with his game as well; not so much about any results, but about his recent commitment to play with more aggression and risk. While he barely squeaked past Brandon Nakashima 6-4 in the third on Sunday, he'll feel confident in his chances against Tiafoe. He leads their head-to-head 8-1, and hasn't lost to him since 2017.“He's one of the better servers out here, so the biggest thing is to take care of my score and put scoreboard pressure,” Tiafoe says of Zverev.“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
“He's one of the better servers out here, so the biggest thing is to take care of my score and put scoreboard pressure,” Tiafoe says of Zverev.“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
“I think the past results don't really have effect. Just go out and believe in it and execute.” Winner: Tiafoe
⏰ Estimated start time: 9:00 p.m. ET👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel appBoth women are in the Top 10. Both had meteoric rises and memorable victories in 2025. Both have made themselves crowd favorites. Both had a good run last month—Mboko to the Doha final, Anisimova to the Dubai semis—and would seem to be in form. Now they'll meet for the first time.Their technique is very different, but there are similarities in their shot selection. Each loves her two-handed backhand, each loves to send it to into the corners with maximum pace, and neither has a problem taking it down the line. At 5'11, Anisimova is an inch taller than Mboko, and she has the more imposing serve.So far in Indian Wells, Mboko hasn't dropped a set, while Anisimova has surrendered one. But I wonder if that will help the American. She was ambushed in the first set of her opener by a fired-up Anna Blinkova. But that splash of cold water woke Anisimova up, and she has dropped just three games in the four sets she's played since.For a player with Anisimova's ball-striking skill, that's the kind of roll that could sweep Mboko away, too. Winner: Anisimova
👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel appBoth women are in the Top 10. Both had meteoric rises and memorable victories in 2025. Both have made themselves crowd favorites. Both had a good run last month—Mboko to the Doha final, Anisimova to the Dubai semis—and would seem to be in form. Now they'll meet for the first time.Their technique is very different, but there are similarities in their shot selection. Each loves her two-handed backhand, each loves to send it to into the corners with maximum pace, and neither has a problem taking it down the line. At 5'11, Anisimova is an inch taller than Mboko, and she has the more imposing serve.So far in Indian Wells, Mboko hasn't dropped a set, while Anisimova has surrendered one. But I wonder if that will help the American. She was ambushed in the first set of her opener by a fired-up Anna Blinkova. But that splash of cold water woke Anisimova up, and she has dropped just three games in the four sets she's played since.For a player with Anisimova's ball-striking skill, that's the kind of roll that could sweep Mboko away, too. Winner: Anisimova
Both women are in the Top 10. Both had meteoric rises and memorable victories in 2025. Both have made themselves crowd favorites. Both had a good run last month—Mboko to the Doha final, Anisimova to the Dubai semis—and would seem to be in form. Now they'll meet for the first time.Their technique is very different, but there are similarities in their shot selection. Each loves her two-handed backhand, each loves to send it to into the corners with maximum pace, and neither has a problem taking it down the line. At 5'11, Anisimova is an inch taller than Mboko, and she has the more imposing serve.So far in Indian Wells, Mboko hasn't dropped a set, while Anisimova has surrendered one. But I wonder if that will help the American. She was ambushed in the first set of her opener by a fired-up Anna Blinkova. But that splash of cold water woke Anisimova up, and she has dropped just three games in the four sets she's played since.For a player with Anisimova's ball-striking skill, that's the kind of roll that could sweep Mboko away, too. Winner: Anisimova
Their technique is very different, but there are similarities in their shot selection. Each loves her two-handed backhand, each loves to send it to into the corners with maximum pace, and neither has a problem taking it down the line. At 5'11, Anisimova is an inch taller than Mboko, and she has the more imposing serve.So far in Indian Wells, Mboko hasn't dropped a set, while Anisimova has surrendered one. But I wonder if that will help the American. She was ambushed in the first set of her opener by a fired-up Anna Blinkova. But that splash of cold water woke Anisimova up, and she has dropped just three games in the four sets she's played since.For a player with Anisimova's ball-striking skill, that's the kind of roll that could sweep Mboko away, too. Winner: Anisimova
So far in Indian Wells, Mboko hasn't dropped a set, while Anisimova has surrendered one. But I wonder if that will help the American. She was ambushed in the first set of her opener by a fired-up Anna Blinkova. But that splash of cold water woke Anisimova up, and she has dropped just three games in the four sets she's played since.For a player with Anisimova's ball-striking skill, that's the kind of roll that could sweep Mboko away, too. Winner: Anisimova
For a player with Anisimova's ball-striking skill, that's the kind of roll that could sweep Mboko away, too. Winner: Anisimova
⏰ Estimated start time: 9:00 p.m. ET👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel app“It's a really big thing to play against those guys,” Fonseca says of facing top-tier opponents like Sinner and his rival Carlos Alcaraz. “I'm gonna enjoy playing out there…try to enjoy as much as possible to see where my game is.”Having fun, testing yourself, reveling in the moment: This would seem to be an ideal way to begin your first encounter with the world No. 2. It might even help Fonseca, a 19-year-old Brazilian whose forehand is a match for anyone's on tour, get off to a fast start and rev up his many excitable fans. If so, the question will be: What does he do then? Is he ready to handle a lead over Sinner, and the pressure that will suddenly come with it?
👉 Stream live on the Tennis Channel app“It's a really big thing to play against those guys,” Fonseca says of facing top-tier opponents like Sinner and his rival Carlos Alcaraz. “I'm gonna enjoy playing out there…try to enjoy as much as possible to see where my game is.”Having fun, testing yourself, reveling in the moment: This would seem to be an ideal way to begin your first encounter with the world No. 2. It might even help Fonseca, a 19-year-old Brazilian whose forehand is a match for anyone's on tour, get off to a fast start and rev up his many excitable fans. If so, the question will be: What does he do then? Is he ready to handle a lead over Sinner, and the pressure that will suddenly come with it?
“It's a really big thing to play against those guys,” Fonseca says of facing top-tier opponents like Sinner and his rival Carlos Alcaraz. “I'm gonna enjoy playing out there…try to enjoy as much as possible to see where my game is.”Having fun, testing yourself, reveling in the moment: This would seem to be an ideal way to begin your first encounter with the world No. 2. It might even help Fonseca, a 19-year-old Brazilian whose forehand is a match for anyone's on tour, get off to a fast start and rev up his many excitable fans. If so, the question will be: What does he do then? Is he ready to handle a lead over Sinner, and the pressure that will suddenly come with it?
Having fun, testing yourself, reveling in the moment: This would seem to be an ideal way to begin your first encounter with the world No. 2. It might even help Fonseca, a 19-year-old Brazilian whose forehand is a match for anyone's on tour, get off to a fast start and rev up his many excitable fans. If so, the question will be: What does he do then? Is he ready to handle a lead over Sinner, and the pressure that will suddenly come with it?
Fonseca was met by a large following and did what he could to oblige autograph requests and acknowledge anyone shouting his name,© Matt Fitzgerald
© Matt Fitzgerald
After enduring injuries and a second-half slump in 2025, the teenager is back on the hunt again. He saved a match point to beat 16th-seeded Karen Khachanov, then followed it with a 6-2, 6-3 rout of 23rd seed Tommy Paul in front of a pro-American crowd. In that win, his game looked as electric as it had when he broke onto the tour a year ago. While Sinner feeds on pace, he may not enjoy the amount that Fonseca gives him.Still, he will probably find a way to handle it, and send back even more of his own. Sinner has had a disappointing season by his standards, but he loves hard courts, and he hasn't dropped a set in two matches. With Alcaraz firmly on top, and with no points to defend in Indian Wells, he may also feel like he doesn't have all that much to lose right now, either. Winner: Sinner
Still, he will probably find a way to handle it, and send back even more of his own. Sinner has had a disappointing season by his standards, but he loves hard courts, and he hasn't dropped a set in two matches. With Alcaraz firmly on top, and with no points to defend in Indian Wells, he may also feel like he doesn't have all that much to lose right now, either. Winner: Sinner
And she's spent 195 of those 250 weeks in the Top 2.ByJohn BerkokPublished Mar 09, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 09, 2026
© 2026 Robert Prange
Iga Swiatek faced Maria Sakkari in the third round of Indian Wells today, but before she even took the court, she reached a milestone.Today she began her 250th career week in the Top 10 of the WTA rankings, an incredible achievement given she's still just 24 years old.Having already captured her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros in 2020, Swiatek broke into the Top 10 for the first time as a 19-year-old on May 17th, 2021, rising from No. 15 to No. 9 after winning her first WTA 1000 title in Rome. And other than slipping to No. 11 for two weeks in October that year, she's been ranked in the Top 10 ever since.IGA SWIATEK'S TOP 10 STINTS:May 17th to October 17th, 2021 [22 weeks]November 1st, 2021 to present [228 weeks and counting]
Today she began her 250th career week in the Top 10 of the WTA rankings, an incredible achievement given she's still just 24 years old.Having already captured her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros in 2020, Swiatek broke into the Top 10 for the first time as a 19-year-old on May 17th, 2021, rising from No. 15 to No. 9 after winning her first WTA 1000 title in Rome. And other than slipping to No. 11 for two weeks in October that year, she's been ranked in the Top 10 ever since.IGA SWIATEK'S TOP 10 STINTS:May 17th to October 17th, 2021 [22 weeks]November 1st, 2021 to present [228 weeks and counting]
Having already captured her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros in 2020, Swiatek broke into the Top 10 for the first time as a 19-year-old on May 17th, 2021, rising from No. 15 to No. 9 after winning her first WTA 1000 title in Rome. And other than slipping to No. 11 for two weeks in October that year, she's been ranked in the Top 10 ever since.IGA SWIATEK'S TOP 10 STINTS:May 17th to October 17th, 2021 [22 weeks]November 1st, 2021 to present [228 weeks and counting]
IGA SWIATEK'S TOP 10 STINTS:May 17th to October 17th, 2021 [22 weeks]November 1st, 2021 to present [228 weeks and counting]
Incredibly, Swiatek has spent 195 of her 250 career weeks in the Top 10 inside the Top 2. She spent 125 weeks at No. 1 between 2022 and 2024, and this week will be her 70th career week at the No. 2 spot.IGA SWIATEK'S 250 TOP 10 WEEKS BY RANKING:No. 1: 125 weeksNo. 2: 70 weeks [including this week]No. 3: 5 weeksNo. 4: 9 weeksNo. 5: 3 weeksNo. 6: 1 weekNo. 7: 2 weeksNo. 8: 14 weeksNo. 9: 20 weeksNo. 10: 1 weekThere's no chance of her falling out of the Top 10—or even the Top 5—no matter what happens the rest of the way at Indian Wells this week.
IGA SWIATEK'S 250 TOP 10 WEEKS BY RANKING:No. 1: 125 weeksNo. 2: 70 weeks [including this week]No. 3: 5 weeksNo. 4: 9 weeksNo. 5: 3 weeksNo. 6: 1 weekNo. 7: 2 weeksNo. 8: 14 weeksNo. 9: 20 weeksNo. 10: 1 weekThere's no chance of her falling out of the Top 10—or even the Top 5—no matter what happens the rest of the way at Indian Wells this week.
There's no chance of her falling out of the Top 10—or even the Top 5—no matter what happens the rest of the way at Indian Wells this week.
Speaking of Indian Wells, Swiatek's match-up against Sakkari today was actually a revenge match, as she fell to the Greek in a nail-biter in the quarterfinals in Doha a few weeks ago, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5.But there was no such nail-biting in their rematch, as Swiatek broke serve five times en route to a comprehensive 6-3, 6-2 victory.With the win, she also inched ahead in their head-to-head, 5-4, which includes two wins in the final of Indian Wells, in 2022 and 2024.Awaiting the No. 2-seeded Swiatek in the fourth round of the WTA 1000 event on Wednesday will be No. 13-seeded Karolina Muchova, a 6-0, 6-3 winner over Croatia's Antonia Ruzic earlier in the day.
But there was no such nail-biting in their rematch, as Swiatek broke serve five times en route to a comprehensive 6-3, 6-2 victory.With the win, she also inched ahead in their head-to-head, 5-4, which includes two wins in the final of Indian Wells, in 2022 and 2024.Awaiting the No. 2-seeded Swiatek in the fourth round of the WTA 1000 event on Wednesday will be No. 13-seeded Karolina Muchova, a 6-0, 6-3 winner over Croatia's Antonia Ruzic earlier in the day.
With the win, she also inched ahead in their head-to-head, 5-4, which includes two wins in the final of Indian Wells, in 2022 and 2024.Awaiting the No. 2-seeded Swiatek in the fourth round of the WTA 1000 event on Wednesday will be No. 13-seeded Karolina Muchova, a 6-0, 6-3 winner over Croatia's Antonia Ruzic earlier in the day.
Awaiting the No. 2-seeded Swiatek in the fourth round of the WTA 1000 event on Wednesday will be No. 13-seeded Karolina Muchova, a 6-0, 6-3 winner over Croatia's Antonia Ruzic earlier in the day.
Carlos Alcaraz turned a sticky situation into a runaway victory with a scintillating close to his evening showdown with Arthur Rinderknech on Monday at the BNP Paribas Open. Trailing the big-serving Frenchman by a set and an early break, Alcaraz turned the match on its head for a comfortable 6-7(6), 6-3, 6-2 victory in Indian Wells, extending his perfect start to the 2026 season to 14-0.
"He was playing his best tennis, I would say, in the first, the beginning of the second. For me, it was really, really difficult," said Alcaraz, who was pegged back by an aggressive start from Rinderknech. "I got in trouble, to be honest, but just really happy with the way that I dealt with everything that was happening. I accepted it, kept going, stayed strong mentally and then tried to do a little bit different... I think I just started to play more solid, waiting for my chances."
Alcaraz nearly stole a tight opening set, but mishit a forehand on set point at 6/5 after clawing back from 2/5. Rinderknech took full advantage to take the tie-break, then pressed home his advantage with an opening break in the second set.
But after saving both break points against him in the opening set with fearless tennis, Rinderknech could not consolidate that early break in set two. Alcaraz broke on four of 10 break chances across sets two and three, according to Infosys ATP Stats, and overwhelmed his opponent after finding his groove on the stadium court.
Even a minor ankle worry could not stop Alcaraz's race to the finish, with a misstep briefly causing concern early in set two. While Alcaraz plans to have his physio check out the ankle, his play seemed to provide all the answers he needed: "I moved in the third set perfectly, so hopefully tomorrow is going to be like nothing at all," he said.
In addition to stretching his winning streak to start the season — a run that includes titles at the Australian Open and Doha — Alcaraz also earned his 32nd straight victory on outdoor hard courts, dating back to Miami last year. Alcaraz also improved to 6-0 in his Lexus ATP Head2Head against Rinderknech, who has now lost 11 of his past 12 sets against the No. 1 player in the PIF ATP Rankings.
Alcaraz will next bring a 5-1 Lexus ATP Head2Head record into his last-16 meeting with Casper Ruud. The 13th-seeded Norwegian also came from behind to advance on Monday, beating 24th seed Valentin Vacherot 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.
In fine form 🔥@DaniilMedwed dismisses Baez 6-4, 6-0 to reach the fourth round in Indian Wells.@BNPPARIBASOPEN | #TennisParadise pic.twitter.com/CMbrY5KfvS
Daniil Medvedev closed out the men's evening action with a 6-4, 6-0 decision against Sebastian Baez on Stadium 2. Both men entered the match with a Tour-leading 14 wins this season, and with Monday's result Medvedev became the first man to reach 15 singles victories on the year.
The World No. 11 is on a six-match winning streak dating back to the start of his Dubai title run late last month.
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The Brazilian teenager has now won seven of his last eight matches against Top 30 players since last September.ByJohn BerkokPublished Mar 09, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 09, 2026
© ¬©Icon Sportswire All Rights Reserved
On Saturday, Joao Fonseca survived one of the toughest battles so far at Indian Wells this year, coming back from double match point down at 6-4 in the second set tie-break to defeat Karen Khachanov, 4-6, 7-6 (7), 6-4.On Sunday he won again but in much different fashion, storming past Tommy Paul, 6-2, 6-3, to reach the fourth round of the Masters 1000 event.With that, he's broken new ground—the 19-year-old is now through to the round of 16 at a Masters 1000 event for the first time in his career.And with his wins over Khachanov and Paul over the last two days, he's now won seven of his last eight matches against Top 30 players.JOAO FONSECA VS TOP 30 PLAYERS SINCE '25 US OPEN: 7-1d. No. 27 Tsitsipas in '25 Davis Cup RR, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5d. No. 25 Cobolli in '25 Laver Cup RR, 6-4, 6-3d. No. 23 Shapovalov in '25 Basel QFs, 3-6, 6-3, 4-1 ret.d. No. 18 Davidovich Fokina in '25 Basel F, 6-3, 6-4d. No. 24 Shapovalov in '25 Paris 1st Rd, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3l. to No. 14 Khachanov in '25 Paris 2nd Rd, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3d. No. 16 Khachanov in '26 Indian Wells 2nd Rd, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4d. No. 24 Paul in '26 Indian Wells 3rd Rd, 6-2, 6-3
On Sunday he won again but in much different fashion, storming past Tommy Paul, 6-2, 6-3, to reach the fourth round of the Masters 1000 event.With that, he's broken new ground—the 19-year-old is now through to the round of 16 at a Masters 1000 event for the first time in his career.And with his wins over Khachanov and Paul over the last two days, he's now won seven of his last eight matches against Top 30 players.JOAO FONSECA VS TOP 30 PLAYERS SINCE '25 US OPEN: 7-1d. No. 27 Tsitsipas in '25 Davis Cup RR, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5d. No. 25 Cobolli in '25 Laver Cup RR, 6-4, 6-3d. No. 23 Shapovalov in '25 Basel QFs, 3-6, 6-3, 4-1 ret.d. No. 18 Davidovich Fokina in '25 Basel F, 6-3, 6-4d. No. 24 Shapovalov in '25 Paris 1st Rd, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3l. to No. 14 Khachanov in '25 Paris 2nd Rd, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3d. No. 16 Khachanov in '26 Indian Wells 2nd Rd, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4d. No. 24 Paul in '26 Indian Wells 3rd Rd, 6-2, 6-3
With that, he's broken new ground—the 19-year-old is now through to the round of 16 at a Masters 1000 event for the first time in his career.And with his wins over Khachanov and Paul over the last two days, he's now won seven of his last eight matches against Top 30 players.JOAO FONSECA VS TOP 30 PLAYERS SINCE '25 US OPEN: 7-1d. No. 27 Tsitsipas in '25 Davis Cup RR, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5d. No. 25 Cobolli in '25 Laver Cup RR, 6-4, 6-3d. No. 23 Shapovalov in '25 Basel QFs, 3-6, 6-3, 4-1 ret.d. No. 18 Davidovich Fokina in '25 Basel F, 6-3, 6-4d. No. 24 Shapovalov in '25 Paris 1st Rd, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3l. to No. 14 Khachanov in '25 Paris 2nd Rd, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3d. No. 16 Khachanov in '26 Indian Wells 2nd Rd, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4d. No. 24 Paul in '26 Indian Wells 3rd Rd, 6-2, 6-3
And with his wins over Khachanov and Paul over the last two days, he's now won seven of his last eight matches against Top 30 players.JOAO FONSECA VS TOP 30 PLAYERS SINCE '25 US OPEN: 7-1d. No. 27 Tsitsipas in '25 Davis Cup RR, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5d. No. 25 Cobolli in '25 Laver Cup RR, 6-4, 6-3d. No. 23 Shapovalov in '25 Basel QFs, 3-6, 6-3, 4-1 ret.d. No. 18 Davidovich Fokina in '25 Basel F, 6-3, 6-4d. No. 24 Shapovalov in '25 Paris 1st Rd, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3l. to No. 14 Khachanov in '25 Paris 2nd Rd, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3d. No. 16 Khachanov in '26 Indian Wells 2nd Rd, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4d. No. 24 Paul in '26 Indian Wells 3rd Rd, 6-2, 6-3
JOAO FONSECA VS TOP 30 PLAYERS SINCE '25 US OPEN: 7-1d. No. 27 Tsitsipas in '25 Davis Cup RR, 6-4, 3-6, 7-5d. No. 25 Cobolli in '25 Laver Cup RR, 6-4, 6-3d. No. 23 Shapovalov in '25 Basel QFs, 3-6, 6-3, 4-1 ret.d. No. 18 Davidovich Fokina in '25 Basel F, 6-3, 6-4d. No. 24 Shapovalov in '25 Paris 1st Rd, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3l. to No. 14 Khachanov in '25 Paris 2nd Rd, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3d. No. 16 Khachanov in '26 Indian Wells 2nd Rd, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4d. No. 24 Paul in '26 Indian Wells 3rd Rd, 6-2, 6-3
Paul had won the pair's only previous meeting in two tie-breaks, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (3), on the clay of another Masters 1000 event in Madrid last year, but this time Fonseca came out in total control, racing out to a 3-0 lead and eventually breaking a second time to close out the 40-minute first set.The momentum shifted early in the second set as Paul broke for the first time in the opening game and then held for a 2-0 lead, but Fonseca got the break back right away, winning three games in a row—and eventually six of the last seven games of the match—to run away with it in the end.The Brazilian teenager clubbed one last unreturnable forehand on match point to seal the victory after an hour and 22 minutes on court.
The momentum shifted early in the second set as Paul broke for the first time in the opening game and then held for a 2-0 lead, but Fonseca got the break back right away, winning three games in a row—and eventually six of the last seven games of the match—to run away with it in the end.The Brazilian teenager clubbed one last unreturnable forehand on match point to seal the victory after an hour and 22 minutes on court.
The Brazilian teenager clubbed one last unreturnable forehand on match point to seal the victory after an hour and 22 minutes on court.
Fonseca improved to 4-3 on the year.© Matt Fitzgerald
© Matt Fitzgerald
Up next for Fonseca? The world No. 2, Jannik Sinner.It'll be a first-time meeting.“Jannik is a huge player,” Fonseca said. “Him and Carlos, they're winning everything. I'll just rest tomorrow and then on Tuesday back on court, trying to put as much pressure as I can, and trying to play like this.“We tennis players, we look forward to playing against the top players, so it's going to be a pleasure, and hopefully I can get the win.”
It'll be a first-time meeting.“Jannik is a huge player,” Fonseca said. “Him and Carlos, they're winning everything. I'll just rest tomorrow and then on Tuesday back on court, trying to put as much pressure as I can, and trying to play like this.“We tennis players, we look forward to playing against the top players, so it's going to be a pleasure, and hopefully I can get the win.”
“Jannik is a huge player,” Fonseca said. “Him and Carlos, they're winning everything. I'll just rest tomorrow and then on Tuesday back on court, trying to put as much pressure as I can, and trying to play like this.“We tennis players, we look forward to playing against the top players, so it's going to be a pleasure, and hopefully I can get the win.”
“We tennis players, we look forward to playing against the top players, so it's going to be a pleasure, and hopefully I can get the win.”
While the ATP Tour competes at Indian Wells, the first two Challenger 175 events of 2026 kick off.ByFlorian HeerPublished Mar 09, 2026 copy_link
Published Mar 09, 2026
As the ATP Tour competes at its first Masters 1000 event of the season in Indian Wells, the ATP Challenger Tour launches its first two Challenger 175 tournaments of the year: the Arizona Tennis Classic in Phoenix and the República Dominicana Open - Copa Cap Cana.Scheduled for March 9–15, both events are part of the Tennis Channel Showcase series and promise star-studded fields featuring Top 50 standouts, experienced international contenders, and some of the game's most exciting rising talents.Arizona Tennis Classic back in PhoenixNow in its sixth edition, the Arizona Tennis Classic returns to the iconic Phoenix Country Club, offering fans an intimate, up-close experience with professional tennis.“Being positioned between Indian Wells and Miami gives players a great opportunity to stay competitive during one of the most important stretches of the season,” said Jonathan Levine, tournament founder. “We're excited to once again host a world-class field in Phoenix.”
Scheduled for March 9–15, both events are part of the Tennis Channel Showcase series and promise star-studded fields featuring Top 50 standouts, experienced international contenders, and some of the game's most exciting rising talents.Arizona Tennis Classic back in PhoenixNow in its sixth edition, the Arizona Tennis Classic returns to the iconic Phoenix Country Club, offering fans an intimate, up-close experience with professional tennis.“Being positioned between Indian Wells and Miami gives players a great opportunity to stay competitive during one of the most important stretches of the season,” said Jonathan Levine, tournament founder. “We're excited to once again host a world-class field in Phoenix.”
Now in its sixth edition, the Arizona Tennis Classic returns to the iconic Phoenix Country Club, offering fans an intimate, up-close experience with professional tennis.“Being positioned between Indian Wells and Miami gives players a great opportunity to stay competitive during one of the most important stretches of the season,” said Jonathan Levine, tournament founder. “We're excited to once again host a world-class field in Phoenix.”
“Being positioned between Indian Wells and Miami gives players a great opportunity to stay competitive during one of the most important stretches of the season,” said Jonathan Levine, tournament founder. “We're excited to once again host a world-class field in Phoenix.”
The field is led by world No. 33. Corentin Moutet. After a first-round bye, the 26-year-old Frenchman will face the winner of the match between his compatriot Quentin Halys and a qualifier. Known for his creative shot-making and unpredictable playing style, Moutet will be one of the main attractions for fans throughout the week.In the bottom half of the draw, No. 2 seed Zizou Bergs will either take on Benjamin Bonzi of France or Australian Alexander Bolt in his opening match. The 47th-ranked Belgian has continued his steady rise on the ATP Tour and arrives in Phoenix looking to add another strong result to his season. French veteran Adrian Mannarino and Nuno Borges round out the top four seeds. Mannarino starts against the winner of the encounter between American wild card Mitchell Krueger and a qualifier; Borges awaits either James Duckworth of Australia or Jan-Lennard Struff from Germany.“What makes this tournament truly special is the rare combination of world-class competition and an unmatched atmosphere,” said Jonathan Levine. “The energy throughout the week, paired with the passion of Phoenix's tennis fans, creates an experience that feels both electric and uniquely personal.
In the bottom half of the draw, No. 2 seed Zizou Bergs will either take on Benjamin Bonzi of France or Australian Alexander Bolt in his opening match. The 47th-ranked Belgian has continued his steady rise on the ATP Tour and arrives in Phoenix looking to add another strong result to his season. French veteran Adrian Mannarino and Nuno Borges round out the top four seeds. Mannarino starts against the winner of the encounter between American wild card Mitchell Krueger and a qualifier; Borges awaits either James Duckworth of Australia or Jan-Lennard Struff from Germany.“What makes this tournament truly special is the rare combination of world-class competition and an unmatched atmosphere,” said Jonathan Levine. “The energy throughout the week, paired with the passion of Phoenix's tennis fans, creates an experience that feels both electric and uniquely personal.
“What makes this tournament truly special is the rare combination of world-class competition and an unmatched atmosphere,” said Jonathan Levine. “The energy throughout the week, paired with the passion of Phoenix's tennis fans, creates an experience that feels both electric and uniquely personal.
Joao Fonseca was the champion in Phoenix last year.© AGENCIA IMAGENSHOP
© AGENCIA IMAGENSHOP
Meanwhile on the island of Hispaniola, the second edition of the Republica Dominicana Open – Copa Cap Cana gets underway. Set against the stunning backdrop of the Dominican Republic's eastern coastline, the tournament has quickly established itself as one of the most distinctive stops on the ATP Challenger Tour. Held at the Racquet Village in the luxury resort community of Cap Cana, the event combines high-level professional tennis with the unique atmosphere of a Caribbean destination.This year's top seed is Miomir Kecmanovic, who is seeking his third ATP Challenger career title this week in addition to his two triumphs on the ATP Tour in Kitzbühel 2020 and Delray Beach last year. The world No. 58 will play either Mackenzie McDonald from the United States or Italian Luca Nardi in his first-round match.Valentin Royer leads the bottom half of the draw and will start his title bid against the winner of the encounter between two veterans, when Roberto Bautista-Agut of Spain will take on David Goffin from Belgium. Third-seed Damir Dzumhur from Bosnia and Herzegovina will oppose either Roman Andres Burruchaga of Argentina or a qualifier, and No. 4 seed Hubert Hurkacz from Poland awaits the winner of the all-Italian clash between Francesco Maestrellli and Mattia Bellucci. Special attention will certainly be on local wild card entry Nick Hardt, who faces sixth seed Mariano Navone of Argentina in the first round.
This year's top seed is Miomir Kecmanovic, who is seeking his third ATP Challenger career title this week in addition to his two triumphs on the ATP Tour in Kitzbühel 2020 and Delray Beach last year. The world No. 58 will play either Mackenzie McDonald from the United States or Italian Luca Nardi in his first-round match.Valentin Royer leads the bottom half of the draw and will start his title bid against the winner of the encounter between two veterans, when Roberto Bautista-Agut of Spain will take on David Goffin from Belgium. Third-seed Damir Dzumhur from Bosnia and Herzegovina will oppose either Roman Andres Burruchaga of Argentina or a qualifier, and No. 4 seed Hubert Hurkacz from Poland awaits the winner of the all-Italian clash between Francesco Maestrellli and Mattia Bellucci. Special attention will certainly be on local wild card entry Nick Hardt, who faces sixth seed Mariano Navone of Argentina in the first round.
Valentin Royer leads the bottom half of the draw and will start his title bid against the winner of the encounter between two veterans, when Roberto Bautista-Agut of Spain will take on David Goffin from Belgium. Third-seed Damir Dzumhur from Bosnia and Herzegovina will oppose either Roman Andres Burruchaga of Argentina or a qualifier, and No. 4 seed Hubert Hurkacz from Poland awaits the winner of the all-Italian clash between Francesco Maestrellli and Mattia Bellucci. Special attention will certainly be on local wild card entry Nick Hardt, who faces sixth seed Mariano Navone of Argentina in the first round.
Beyond the competition on court, the tournament stands out for its setting. Located near Punta Cana's famous beaches and turquoise waters, the venue offers players and fans a rare blend of elite sport and tropical scenery. The Racquet Village features modern facilities, multiple match courts, and an intimate stadium environment that allows spectators to experience world-class tennis up close.Both tournaments - the Arizona Tennis Classic as well as the República Dominicana Open - offer a total prize purse of $300,000, with each champion earning 175 ATP Ranking points. Together, they mark an important moment on the Challenger calendar, giving players a chance to compete for significant points and prize money during a pivotal phase of the season.
Both tournaments - the Arizona Tennis Classic as well as the República Dominicana Open - offer a total prize purse of $300,000, with each champion earning 175 ATP Ranking points. Together, they mark an important moment on the Challenger calendar, giving players a chance to compete for significant points and prize money during a pivotal phase of the season.
After a narrow escape in her opening round, Iga Swiatek found her rhythm at the BNP Paribas Open on Monday, taking down Maria Sakkari to secure a spot in the Indian Wells fourth round.
INDIAN WELLS -- It's a long, long way from Warsaw, Poland -- closing in on 6,000 miles -- but Iga Swiatek can't help but feel at home here in the desert.
The relatively slow hard courts and higher bounces suit her game and discerning eye. The warm vibe seems to be a good fit with her relatively chill personality. As a result, Swiatek has now produced a sterling record of 24-3 (.889) at the BNP Paribas Open and made at least the semifinals each of the past four years, including two titles.
She'd love to make it three-out-of-five.
On Monday evening, it was a routine 6-3, 6-2 victory over No. 32 seed Maria Sakkari, who had beaten Swiatek just last month in the Doha quarterfinals. Swiatek now holds a 5-4 head-to-head career edge.
“We played two finals here, so it's funny [to see] us playing two years later in third round,” Swiatek said in her on-court interview. “So for sure it wasn't an easy match. I'm really happy with the result.”
Sakkari and Swiatek came to this match riding vastly different trajectories. Swiatek was ranked No. 2 when Ashleigh Barty retired before the Miami Open in 2022 and was elevated to No. 1. For the duration of those nearly four years, Swiatek has held one of the top two positions in the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz rankings.
That same year, 2022, Sakkari rose to a career high of No. 3 on the strength of four final appearances, including Indian Wells. She would finish among the year-end Top 10 for three straight years, but in 2024 her ranking declined to No. 32 and, in 2025, No. 52.
Coming in, though, Sakkari had been efficient, winning all her service games and saving six-of-six break points. She started that way against Swiatek, converting her fourth break point in the opening game and executing a lengthy hold for a 2-0 lead.
And then Swiatek ramped up her forehand through the breezy conditions and won six of the last seven games.
The second set was more of the same, with Swiatek breaking Sakkari's serve three times. One last backhand from Sakkari drifted long and Swiatek raised her fist as she strode to net.
Swiatek broke Sakkari five times in all and saved six of eight break points against her.
Thus, Swiatek is the first woman to advance to the Round of 16 for six consecutive years at Indian Wells since Agnieszka Radwanska and Carolina Wozniacki between 2008-2014. Since the format's introduction in 2009, Swiatek (129-31, .806) trails only Serena Williams (148-28, .841) for winning percentage at WTA-1000 events -- minimum 10 matches.
In Swiatek's past 34 matches against opponents ranked outside the Top 20, she had just one loss -- against Sakkari in Doha -- and now that defeat has been avenged.
Swiatek said she went to school on that loss to Sakkari in Doha.
“I think I adjusted better to the shorter balls than I did in Doha,” Swiatek said afterward. “I remember it was quite annoying there making mistakes from these balls. I also understood the wind a bit better.
“I think I served better, maybe. The return was also, like, on point. I remember in Doha mishitting and not hitting clean sometimes. Today I could really feel free to push Maria. Yeah, I just had good timing, I would say.”
After a narrow escape in her opening round, Iga Swiatek found her rhythm at the BNP Paribas Open on Monday, taking down Maria Sakkari to secure a spot in the Indian Wells fourth round.
Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas earned a first-round victory Monday when they upset defending champions Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic 6-3, 6-2 at the BNP Paribas Open.
Better known for their singles rivalry, Djokovic and Tsitsipas entered the doubles draw as an unfamiliar pairing, despite having faced each other 14 times on the Tour. But the wild cards quickly found their rhythm to earn a comprehensive 53-minute win against third seeds Arevalo and Pavic, who won the title in 2025 by beating four teams of primarily singles players.
Playing together for the first time, Djokovic and Tsitsipas controlled the match behind a strong serving performance in front of a packed crowd on Stadium 3. They won 89 per cent of their first-serve points and saved all four break points they faced, according to ATP Infosys Stats.
They will face fellow singles stars Arthur Rinderknech and Valentin Vacherot in the second round.
Earlier on Monday, Djokovic, a five-time singles champion at the event, reached the fourth round of the singles draw for the first time in nine years when he defeated Aleksandar Kovacevic 6-4, 1-6, 6-4. Tsitsipas lost to Denis Shapovalov in the opening round.
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Katerina Siniakova upset defending Indian Wells champion Mirra Andreeva in a emotion-filled, intense battle. A match that featured 42 break point opportunities, Siniakova saved 19 of the 26 she faced to book her first appearance at the BNP Paribas Open fourth round.
INDIAN WELLS -- Katerina Siniakova had already spent 319 minutes on court by the time she arrived for Monday's third-round match at the BNP Paribas Open.
Across the net stood reigning champion Mirra Andreeva, the No. 8 seed on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, who needed just 50 minutes to defeat Solana Sierra after receiving a first-round bye.
But the contrast in court time offered little clue to how this one would unfold.
In a tense and occasionally testy contest, Siniakova rallied past Andreeva 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 in 2 hours, 48 minutes to reach the Round of 16 at Indian Wells for the first time.
"I am, so much," a delighted Siniakova said in press. "I think you could see it in the match that I was trying to slow it down, you know, just take my time.
"Yeah, I'm just so happy that I finish it, because my body is feeling it, definitely."
The match had its dramatic moments. Both players directed comments to the chair umpire about their opponent and exchanged a few glares across the net. Fittingly, it ended with a net cord that fell Siniakova's way on match point.
"Of course I'm happy it went on the other side," Siniakova said. "I was, like, 'Should I cheer or should ...' no, it's really tricky finish."
Clean or chaotic, the result was what mattered most. The victory sends Siniakova into the fourth round of a WTA 1000 event for the seventh time in her career.
Next up is Elina Svitolina, who defeated Ashlyn Krueger in straight sets. Svitolina holds a 4-0 edge in their head-to-head series, including a meeting here in Indian Wells in 2024.
Break-point opportunities: Holding serve was not the strong suit for either player Monday. In total, there were 42 break-point opportunities, 31 of which came in the first two sets. It wasn't an uncommon situation for Siniakova, who in her 3-hour and 28-minute win over Leylah Fernandez, played a total of 37 break-point opportunities. For comparison, Siniakova won just 54% of points on her serve, while Andreeva won just half of hers.
"I think both of us were a little bit struggling against the wind, so we were kind of losing the games on that side and winning on the other side," Siniakova said.
"But, yeah, I was expecting her to go to my forehand. That's what usually players do. So I was just happy I could, you know, return it well and get into the rallies, to the point, when I think I'm better."
There were seven different games, where the receiver sprinted to a 0-40 lead to set up triple break-point opportunities. Though both Andreeva and Siniakova were each broken seven times, Siniakova saved 19 of the 26 break points she faced. The three most critical came in the final game, where Andreeva had three opportunities to get the match back on her serve, but Siniakova came in the clutch to serve out the match.
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Throughout the match, Siniakova excelled on the return, often using her backhand both crosscourt and down the line. Of her 27 winners, 21 of them came in the first two sets.
Siniakova prevails in second-set tiebreak: Leading at both 4-2 and 5-4 in the second-set tiebreak, Andreeva was two points away from ending the match in straight sets and booking her spot to a second-straight Round of 16 at Indian Wells.
However, Siniakova rallied to win five of the final six points in the tiebreak -- the final two points of the tiebreak were Andreeva forehand errors, her Achilles heel Monday afternoon. Andreeva now falls to 1-4 in set tiebreaks in 2026, while Siniakova has won both of her tiebreaks this season.
Andreeva's forehand frustrations: It was a sluggish start for the 18-year-old Andreeva. She quickly found herself down 3-0, dropping two games of serve, and several of her forehand shots went sailed or didn't go over the net. Andreeva avoided a 4-0 deficit in the opening set after a Siniakova error, and Andreeva won the deuce with a forehand winner that just clipped the line.
Though Andreeva won six of the final seven games to take the first set, the forehand issues were scattered across her game. In the second set's fourth game, Andreeva -- leading 0-40 -- failed to convert triple break point and another in the deuce, including a missed forehand winner. She lost the second-set tiebreak with missed, typically-routine forehand volley, too. In total, Andreeva recorded 75 unforced errors to Siniakova's 62.
Those errors mounted to expressed frustration. From frequent complaints to her box to multiple racquet smashings, Andreeva ultimately received a code violation for throwing her racquet to her bench before smashing it a few more times after dropping the second-set tiebreak.
Katerina Siniakova upset defending Indian Wells champion Mirra Andreeva in a emotion-filled, intense battle. A match that featured 42 break point opportunities, Siniakova saved 19 of the 26 she faced to book her first appearance at the BNP Paribas Open fourth round.
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Radio Rewind: 2026 Australian Grand Prix
McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella explained in more detail what his team need to do to catch up to Mercedes and Ferrari after being the third-fastest team in Melbourne.
McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella conceded there is "work ahead of us" as the reigning World Champions McLaren were left unable to fight for victory in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
With Oscar Piastri dramatically crashing out of his home event, before the race even started on his way to the grid, 2025 World Champion Lando Norris was left as the team's sole representative as the lights went out.
While he did hold off a charging Max Verstappen in the closing stages to take fifth, McLaren look to have slipped behind Mercedes and Ferrari in the early 2026 pecking order – the Silver Arrows took an impressive 1-2 result and the fast-starting Scuderia were very much in the fight.
“In fairness, the gap today was, if anything, similar to what we saw yesterday in Qualifying,” Stella explained after Sunday's race, with Piastri and Norris qualifying in fifth and sixth respectively.
“There's performance that needs to come from two main areas. One is the power unit exploitation, and one is having more grip in the corners. And in a way, today, I think it was exactly the same.
“Still, we remain a little puzzled by the difference we see in the data between the speed of our car and the speed of other cars using the same power unit. This clearly indicates that we should be doing a better job in understanding how to utilise the power unit with the complexities that came with the 2026 regulations. So, definitely work to do.”
McLaren are running the same power unit as Mercedes, who put theirs to good use in recording a 1-2 to start the season in style. Stella admitted that Mercedes are also quicker in the corners, with the Woking-based squad needing to understand how they are losing that crucial time.
“Develop the car,” Stella stated as McLaren's main objective now. “This will take a few races, in terms of seeing some major upgrades that can allow us to change a bit the category for which we compete. Therefore, I think in these few initial races, we will have to make sure that we extract most of the car in its current configuration.”
McLaren's race data was solely collected by Norris, after Piastri crashed on his out-lap before the race. It dashed hopes of a home podium yet again for the Australian, but Stella believes his young charge will bounce back as he explained the causes of the incident.
“Oscar, very unfortunate and very tough for him in front of the Australian crowd," McLaren's Team Principal said. "But Oscar… [is a] tough guy mentally.
“He will use all this to get even more concentrated and determined, starting from China. So, we will make sure that we all face this in a united way."
Stella highlighted that Piastri had used that kerb throughout the weekend, but that the combination of being on it with colder than normal tyres did not help the Australian.
He continued: “This further compounds with an element that doesn't make it easier again, which is the fact that with these oscillations and following the shift, there's an extra torque, let's say, that when we look at the behaviour of the power unit, it's sort of expected to happen like that.
“In testing, we might have seen some similar circumstances, but we didn't have the combination of cold tyres and the kerb which aggravated the fact that you may have these inconsistencies from a power deployment point of view. Well, power deployment is not correct. I would say torque deployment in grip-limited phases.”
Piastri will look to bounce back in China this weekend, as McLaren seek more data with which to decide on the development direction of their car in 2026.
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Radio Rewind: 2026 Australian Grand Prix
Audi scored in Australia, courtesy of Gabriel Bortoleto - and Jonathan Wheatley hopes it is a sign of what is to come for his team.
Audi Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley was quick to praise Gabriel Bortoleto's “historic” P9 finish in the first race of the season, as the Brazilian drove Audi to their first-ever F1 points in the team's maiden Grand Prix.
Having taken over the Sauber outfit, Audi have also produced their own power unit for their debut season, and they were in the thick of the action from word go in Melbourne.
On raceday they only had one car competing – Nico Hulkenberg was unable to start after being wheeled off the grid with a loss of telemetry – but Bortoleto was able to turn a P10 grid slot into ninth at the flag, despite being on the arguably slower two-stop strategy.
“I think we spent the winter focusing on ourselves, not getting caught up in what other teams' performance was like, not spending hours analysing everyone else's runs in Bahrain. We just wanted to come here and execute a clean race weekend,” Wheatley said afterwards.
“We had some encouraging testing, and we came here feeling reasonably confident in terms of the performance of the car. But if you'd have said to me, I could swap anything and give you P9 in the race, I would have taken your hand off earlier in the week. So, look, I think it's been a very encouraging first race for the team, a historic moment – Audi, Formula 1 car, scoring points in its first ever race.
"I feel the yin and yang that the other driver didn't get a chance to start the race, but I think all in all, we can hold our head up high and say it's a good start to our journey."
Australia was a race of discovery for every team as they begin to battle in a new era of F1 regulations. For the drivers, they have had to learn a new way to extract performance from very different cars to last season – and Wheatley was quick to pay tribute to Bortoleto too, who fought back with fresh tyres late on to climb into the points.
“He's a fast learner, and I've talked before about his work ethic, but I think I should mention it now because he spent the whole of January either on the simulator in Neuberg or in Hinwil. He based himself there.
“He could have stayed in Brazil for a little bit longer. He showed a tremendous work ethic. He's working super hard with the engineers on the R26 and the AFR26. And once again, I'm sat here thinking that he's developing really, really well as a driver and into, obviously, a future talent.”
Hulkenberg though was unable to start the race – and his issue was not connected to that which Bortoleto suffered at the end of Q2 in Qualifying when he rolled to a stop at the pit entry. Wheatley was unable to confirm exactly what had happened to the German's car, simply stating that it “lost telemetry” on the way to the grid.
As for where the team go from here, Wheatley knows they are on the back foot in some ways, given they do not have any customer data to draw on as the only team running the brand new Audi power unit. That puts them at a disadvantage compared to the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari, who have multiple teams running their engines.
“[Sunday was] the first time we've had a chance to really look at what other teams are doing and how they're doing it. We're fast learners, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that information can be used to benefit us,” Wheatley said.
“As the cars get more sophisticated, the engines become more efficient, the racing becomes closer. I think we're just at the early set of these regulations, and it's just a case of developing our cars all the way through it, including the power unit.
“Every time we take these brand-new cars to a new track with new characteristics, we could shake the order up. And the order is closer, I think, in the midfield than any of us were expecting, but maybe we'll be saying something different next week. It's a World Championship. It starts with a set of technical regulations.
“Let's get on the journey. It's going to be fascinating.”
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Radio Rewind: 2026 Australian Grand Prix
Mercedes secured a perfect 1-2 result in Melbourne, but could Ferrari have challenged for the win with a different decision?
George Russell and Kimi Antonelli delivered Mercedes a spectacular 1-2 result in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, but did Ferrari blow their opportunity of winning by deciding to keep both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton out on track during two closely-spaced Virtual Safety Cars?
Leclerc was leading the race on Lap 12 – very narrowly – from Russell's Mercedes, the pair having passed and repassed over the first few laps in a thrilling display. Hamilton's Ferrari was running third, just one second behind Russell.
A VSC to retrieve Isack Hadjar's broken-down Red Bull prompted Mercedes to bring both Russell and fourth-placed Antonelli into the pits for time-cheap stops to change from the medium to the hard tyre. Ferrari elected to keep both Leclerc and Hamilton out despite the 10 second saving to the pack of stopping under a VSC, compared to doing so with everyone at full racing speed.
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The actress, who starred in Disney productions like Agatha All Along, shared a (not-so) cryptic message on her Instagram profile.
The actress updated the bio on her Instagram profile, leaving a message that fueled speculation about a possible upcoming project. With just three words, Hahn once again captured everyone's attention.
Her account now reads “Mother Knows Best,” alongside a mirror emoji — a detail that Disney's official account later reposted on its X channel. This is a clear reference to Mother Gothel's song in Tangled, and the upcoming live-action adaptation.
Audiences have already seen Hahn shine on Disney+ as the villainous witch Agatha Harkness. However, the actress's resemblance to the animated version of Rapunzel's “mother” has fueled speculation about a possible role in the upcoming live-action adaptation.
The actress's cryptic post also included a video she shared on Instagram, showing off her “outfit of the day.” In the clip, Hahn appears to be in her backyard. She wears a T-shirt featuring multiple images of Mother Gothel.
However, this wouldn't be the first time the actress has hinted at something through her wardrobe. During awards season, Kathryn Hahn wore several striking gowns that could subtly evoke the look of Mother Gothel.
With this new clue, speculation about the actress's potential future role continues to grow. Since the themed premieres of Barbie, actors' outfits are rarely random and often serve as part of a broader promotional strategy.
Story developing…
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With final Oscar balloting closed on March 5, we're running our ninth annual series of interviews with Academy voters from different branches for their unfiltered takes on what got picked, overlooked, and overvalued in the 2026 award season. Voters' picks are in bold. Interview edited for brevity.
This producer didn't vote for “Sinners” in all 16 categories, but they got close. And they were honest with the Academy about what they had and had not seen.
Best Picture: “Sinners”
I trust my gut. I see all the movies and read some interviews, but there's so much information now. And when I'm getting daily alerts from The Hollywood Reporter or Deadline, you can get so you know immediately, if you're on social media, who's just won what award at what event. And I've tried not to let that affect my votes. And I voted the first day [the Oscar balloting] opened, because I wanted to vote before the SAG Awards and the PGA. I wanted not to be persuaded by anything. When it comes to actually voting, I don't want to vote for something because it's expected to win.
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I've been in the Academy for over 20 years. Some years it feels like there's more of a consensus, both among the voters and my colleagues and peers and among the critics and journalists. This year, it feels like there's a bit more of a shift.
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What [The Academy does] now — they've never done this — you get an email every week telling you what categories you qualified to vote in, and what categories you still have to get through. And it started a few weeks ago. And every week I'm like, “Oh my God.” So it reminds you about how you have to see every film, but honestly, you can just click “watched.” Like, who's monitoring? It's not real.
Best Picture was easy. I voted for “Sinners.” I love it. I've seen it three times in the movie theaters. I love Ryan Coogler. I've been a fan since “Fruitvale.” That film was undeniable in the themes and the way it was constructed.
Best Director: Ryan Coogler, “Sinners.” I'm a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan: “There Will Be Blood” is another North Star for me, and “One Battle” was extraordinary on so many levels. But Ryan Coogler, what he did with “Sinners,” that is an original screenplay. How did he do that? How did he just weave in those characters and the music? That's my director.
Best Actress: Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet.” When I saw “Hamnet” in September, I went to the first screening in L.A., when I was so taken with the film, and felt instinctively that this is the performance of the year. And there were extraordinary performances. Rose Byrne was amazing, but it's Jessie Buckley for me, and I've known this for months and months. I don't understand the “Hamnet” backlash. It did win the Audience Award at TIFF, and there was so much anticipation. I don't understand why there's been such a resistance to it. But I loved it.
Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners.” I loved what he did, but I have to tell you, I was torn with him and Leo DiCaprio, who was genius in “One Battle After Another.” It was one of the two categories that I actually struggled with. But what [Jordan] did was amazing, OK? Chalamet is talented. I was not that high on [“Marty Supreme”]. I got a little turned off by the whole publicity thing. He's young, and he has time.
Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners.”
Supporting Actor: Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another.” What he did in that role was genius and fantastic in so many ways.
Adapted Screenplay: “Hamnet.” It is a great book. It is a very different adaptation. It was really accomplished to pull that off with that material and that story and make it fresh and interesting and engaging. And I love the structural shifts.
Original Screenplay: “Sinners.”
Casting: “Sinners.”
Cinematography: “Sinners.”
Costume Design: “Frankenstein.” That was undeniable, that craft and level of achievement. And I went to a number of Academy screenings, listening to Guillermo del Toro talk about the craft of the production design.
Editing: “Sinners.”
Hair & Makeup: “Frankenstein.”
Production Design: “Frankenstein.”
Original Score: “Sinners.”
Original Song: “Sinners.” But it was hard. I listened to all of them.
Sound: “Sinners.” But I was torn between “Sinners” and “Sirāt.”
Visual Effects: “Sinners.” I saw most of “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” And I watched “Jurassic World Rebirth” and “The Lost Bus” on the portal.
Animated Feature: “KPop Demon Hunters.”
Documentary Feature: “The Perfect Neighbor.” That was hard for me to pick. I was torn. I love “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” and “The Alabama Solution,” but I did vote for “The Perfect Neighbor” because of gun control issues, and it's actually about editing: It was masterful the way that film was put together.
International Feature: “Sirāt.” I opted in for the first year to do the international. You're assigned to a group, it's either 12 or 15, and that is painful. It was a lot of movies. I loved “Sirāt.” I was taken with the performances and the themes and the sound. I know I'm an outlier. It probably won't win.
Animated Short: I skipped them for the first time. I didn't have time.
Documentary Short: “Children No More: Were and Gone.” It was a good year for the short docs, but that was the one that popped for me.
Live Action Short: “Butcher's Stain.” It had some political juice to it. I found that category to be tedious this year. I didn't respond to the films. I didn't get them. I didn't understand the highly stylized [“Two People Exchanging Saliva”]. “Singers” was a conceit that just repeated itself. It was a one-note thing. “Friends of Dorothy” was quaint. Because of the world that we're in right now, I'm looking for a little bit more.
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The facts, as they stand today: convicted rapist and disgraced former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has been accused by nearly 100 women of various forms of sexual misconduct, leading to three jury trials, a raft of convictions (plus one overturned conviction, a procedural thing, not an innocence thing), a 23-year sentence for rape in the third degree (in New York), a 16-year sentence for rape and other crimes (in California), and another upcoming New York trial.
As of this writing, Weinstein has bounced around various prisons in New York and California and is currently being held at New York City's notorious Rikers Island. He's in his cell 23 hours a day. Two of his children refuse to speak to him. His brother Bob has cut ties with him. The only movies he can watch are the ones he can rent on his prison-issued tablet. He has a variety of ailments, now including bone marrow cancer. He's, by his own admission, “dying here.”
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So, when The Hollywood Reporter's editor-in-chief Maer Roshan went to see him in January for a 60-minute interview, the longest the former super-producer has given since his convictions, he inevitably wondered just how much reflection on and ownership for his crimes Weinstein was willing to take. Turns out, not much.
In the interview, published today, Weinstein offers both a look inside his daily life (very different from how it was a decade ago, when he ruled Hollywood) and a glimpse into his own ego (very much the same, it seems). Most striking is that he maintains that he “did not assault” anyone.
By “anyone,” he means the nearly 100 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct in myriad forms, including rape.
Asked by Roshan if there is “any part of you that acknowledges that you wronged [your accusers],” and Weinstein was both resolute and seemingly delusional, playing off the convictions and accusations as him “going out” with the wrong women and being “pushy or overly seductive” with them.
“Did I make a pass at some of these women unsuccessfully? Did I overplay my hand? Yes,” Weinstein said. “Was I pushy or overly seductive? Yes to all of that. Look, I should never have gone out with the people I went out with. I was married to a fantastic woman who had no idea what I was doing. I lied all the time. I improperly used my staff to hide these things. But did I ever sexually assault a woman? No. I never did that.”
Later, Weinstein told Roshan, “The thing I was doing wrong was not sexual assault. It was cheating on my wife. I was desperate to keep that secret from her. I did not want Disney to find out. I did everything to protect myself from that kind of scandal.”
When asked if he ever apologized to any of his accusers, Weinstein said, “I apologized to them generally. You can't call them when you're in a trial with them. But I'll say it here today: I apologize to those women. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been with them in the first place. I misled them.”
Roshan, to his credit, then told Weinstein that he was “not sure that's much of an apology, honestly. It sounds like what you're most regretful for is cheating on your wife. Are you sorry for your transgressions beyond that?” Weinstein answered, “I misled them. I cheated on both my wives. That's immoral. But I did not assault them. That is the big lie of all of this. I won't apologize for something I didn't do. I will be proven innocent. That I promise you.”
Weinstein will again be in court on April 14, when he will be retried for rape.
You can read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter.
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If “The Perfect Neighbor” director Geeta Gandbhir wins the Oscar this coming Sunday for her documentary film, or for the documentary short “The Devil Is Busy,” she'll still be a Grammy and a Tony short of the subject of her next documentary film: Whoopi Goldberg.
Gandbhir is set to direct a biographical documentary on the life of EGOT winner Goldberg, which will be told in Goldberg's own words and expand upon Goldberg's autobiography “Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother and Me.” Gandbhir's Message Pictures is teaming with Imagine Documentaries, in association with One Hoe Productions, on the currently untitled film.
Whoopi Goldberg, formerly Caryn Elaine Johnson, began her life as a dyslexic child growing up in New York City public housing before becoming an acclaimed comedian and one-woman performer and eventually the star of “The Color Purple,” an activist, and the co-host of “The View.” The film specifically will follow Goldberg as she re-imagines her debut 1984 Broadway one-woman show “The Whoopi Monologues,” as well as how she develops new theater projects, spends time with her great grandchild, and leads a quiet life living in Italy.
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“Whoopi Goldberg is a brilliant and groundbreaking storyteller who has shaped the landscape of entertainment for years,” Gandbhir said in a statement. “I, along with my partners Sam Pollard and Alisa Payne at Message Pictures, Whoopi's long-time producing partner Tom Leonardis, President of Whoop, Inc, and Imagine Documentaries are honored to bring her story to life in this documentary.”
Imagine has made a number of biographical docs, including “Music by John Williams,” “Jim Henson Idea Man,” “Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything,” “Marty: Life Is Short,” and more.
“Imagine is thrilled to reunite with my friend and longtime collaborator the exceptional Geeta Gandbhir, Tom Leonardis and Message Pictures on this extraordinary opportunity to celebrate the singular icon that is Whoopi Goldberg,” said Sara Bernstein, President of Imagine Documentaries. “The world needs more Whoopi!”
Producers on the film are Sara Bernstein, Tom Leonardis, Geeta Gandbihir, Alisa Payne, Meredith Kaulfers, Sam Pollard, and Justin Wilkes. Executive producers are Brian Grazer and Ron Howard.
Goldberg's revived “The Whoopi Monologues” will open at Lincoln Center Theatre this summer and on Broadway. Goldberg is also developing “Sister Act 3” for Disney+ and is an executive producer on an ABC and Hulu pilot series called “Welcome to My Funeral.”
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By Andreas Wiseman
Executive Editor Of International & Co-Head Of Film
Anticipation has been high for the arrival of Amazon MGM's big-budget space movie Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling.
The Phil Lord- and Christopher Miller-directed space adventure, which is eyeing a $50 million-plus box office opening off an estimated $150M+ production budget, sees Gosling's school teacher Ryland Grace wake up alone on a spaceship light-years from Earth. As his memory returns, he uncovers a mission to stop a mysterious substance killing the sun, and save Earth. An unexpected friendship may be the key to this. Sandra Hüller is among supporting cast.
The reviews are coming in and it's fair to say that the early read on the movie is that it's a critical hit. The film, which opens March 20, currently has a 94% score from 70+ reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Deadline's Pete Hammond said: “A movie made for Imax, Project Hail Mary is mission accomplished; an entertaining and engaging piece of science fiction that suggests even though we may be worlds apart, in order to save us from ourselves we must band together now more than ever.”
Empire gave the film 4/5 stars, calling it “a very watchable old-school blockbuster crowd-pleaser. Ryan Gosling and an alien made of rocks are the best space-based double-act since R2-D2 and C3-PO.”
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USA Today called the film “the first great movie of 2026”: “The science is accessible and Ryan Gosling is a superb everyman in the excellent space adventure.”
The BBC's Nicholas Barber gives the film 4/5 stars, noting its 2 1/2-hour length but says despite that “it manages to be zippily entertaining throughout.”
Indiewire also highly approves, writing that “Ryan Gosling goes full ‘Martian,' and thank the heavens for that … in this enormously entertaining and genuinely inspiring adaptation of Andy Weir's other smash hit novel set in space.”
Robbie Collin in The Telegraph also gives it 4/5 stars, trumpeting it as “great fun … with flashy practical effects and a heart-warming story, Project Hail Mary is like a medley of all your favourite sci-fi films.”
Gizmodo was also a fan, noting “it's got laughs, it's got stakes, it's got emotions, it's got it all. And all of it is viewed through stunning visuals on every level.”
The Irish Times called it a “sentimental treat,” while the Times of London described Gosling's charisma as “out of this world.”
The Independent also gives the film 4/5 stars: “This Ryan Gosling vehicle is immensely likeable and technically impressive, even if it has the whiff of top-shelf nostalgia.”
The Guardian gave the film 3/5 stars, saying “Ryan Gosling's charm carries an unserious last-ditch space mission,” calling the film “a bit silly, but Gosling's charisma keeps it watchable.”
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The filmmaker fired back at Arquette for "a lack of class" in slamming the film: "You took the money."
By
James Hibberd
Writer-at-Large
Quentin Tarantino has fired back at Rosanna Arquette after the actress criticized the writer-director's use of the N-word in his script for Pulp Fiction.
Arquette, who played the character Jody in the 1994 crime thriller, had recently told The Times UK that the acclaimed film is “iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally, I am over the use of the N-word. I hate it. I cannot stand that [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It's not art, it's just racist and creepy.”
Tarantino released a statement to media outlets in response to Arquette's comments late Monday, which reads in full:
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“Dear Rosanna,
I hope the publicity you're getting from 132 different media outlets writing your name and printing your picture was worth disrespecting me and a film I remember quite clearly you were thrilled to be a part of?
Do you feel this way now?
Very possibly.
But after I gave you a job, and you took the money, to trash it for what I suspect is very cynical reasons, shows a decided lack of class, no less honor.
There is supposed to be an esprit de corps between artistic colleagues.
But it would appear the objective was accomplished.
Congratulations
Q“
(An “esprit de corps,” by and by, is defined as “a feeling of pride, fellowship, and common loyalty shared by the members of a particular group.”) The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to a rep for Tarantino.
Several Tarantino characters have used the N-word in his films, which has sparked criticism over the years from others such as Spike Lee.
During a 2022 appearance on HBO Max's Who's Talking to Chris Wallace, Tarantino replied to a question about the violence and racial language in his films by saying, “Then see something else. If you have a problem with my movies then they aren't the movies to go see. Apparently, I'm not making them for you.”
Samuel L. Jackson, who has starred in several Tarantino films, including Pulp Fiction, has defended the filmmaker on this front. “You can't just tell a writer he can't talk, write the words, put the words in the mouths of the people from their ethnicities, the way that they use their words,” he said to Esquire in 2019. “You cannot do that, because then it becomes an untruth; it's not honest. It's just not honest.”
While Jamie Foxx told Yahoo Entertainment in 2018 while promoting Django Unchained that the word in the film was historically accurate. “The N-word was said 100 times, but I understood the text — that's the way it was back in that time,” he said.
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With the first pick in the draft goes Charles “Peanut” Tillman, the Chicago Bears defensive legend who played in the NFL for 13 seasons. This may not be the NFL Draft, but it does involve NFL players.
Tillman was the first selection in a schoolyard pick 'em of NFL players past and present being divided into teams, not for a scrimmage or football game, but for an exercise in which Tillman and other NFL stars would be tasked with making a short film.
Tillman is one of 26 former and current NFL players who, between March 3 – 6, participated in the NFL & NFLPA Film and Entertainment Career Tour, which helps position pro athletes for jobs in the entertainment industry after they retire from playing. The annual event, now in its fourth year in this iteration, is put on by filmmaker Deon Taylor and his indie production banner Hidden Empire, and in addition to lectures, panel discussions with industry professionals, tech demos, and tours of studio lots across four days, Taylor also puts the athletes through the paces of making their own movie… or their version of one.
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The teams of players were assigned scenes from movies like “Trading Places,” “Get Out,” “Sinners,” “Casino,” and Taylor's own “Black and Blue.” Someone would be tasked with directing the scene, others with acting, one would be the DP shooting on legit A7M4 and FX2 Sony cameras, and one would even be the producer responsible for calling the “bank” and figuring out how to secure funding for the project, optioning a script, and securing props and locations all with Monopoly money. A team of editors then cuts together the footage and all the shorts are screened for a makeshift awards ceremony, which Taylor has dubbed not the Oscars, but the “Tyrones.”
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IndieWire attended one day of the bootcamp, and what's surprising about the event is how, for all the athletes involved, this is not a hobby or fun showcase, but a serious path to get players started on a career in entertainment after the NFL.
Taylor and his team have already placed one athlete from last year's program as a staff writer on the upcoming Hulu series from Dan Fogelman called “The Land.” Jaylin Holmes, who plays for the Washington Commanders, in January had an episodic pilot make its premiere at Sundance. Others from this year's class will get to participate in Sundance Labs long after this bootcamp has ended. Players as famous as Cam Heyward, DK Metcalf, and Kyler Murray have participated in prior sessions. And the players at this year's session are hardly green when it comes to understanding the film industry.
Hidden Empire's event fostered a true locker room atmosphere for the players, but all the hulking, well-dressed attendees might also secretly be nerds. They asked intelligent questions about LUTs (look-up tables) during a Sony presentation about the camera equipment they'd be using, they took copious notes as Taylor articulated the difference between handheld and steadicam or showed off his storyboards and visual mood boards for his upcoming film, and some were genuinely starstruck when Taylor introduced “Heat” cinematographer Dante Spinotti as one of the session's mentors.
“Athletes have a different drive. It doesn't matter if you play high school baseball or soccer, you're an athlete, you have a different muscle. There's something in you that says, I want to go figure this out. That's why we found success,” Taylor told IndieWire. “That's a really big deal for you and in life because it makes you understand, if I do this really really hard or really go at this pace, I can get to where I'm trying to get to. Hard work doesn't always give you what you want, but it will put you in position, and I think a lot of these athletes are after that. The program is special in that way.”
When compared to other incubator programs, it's hard to deny the energy that's in the room for this one. Hidden Empire co-CEO Roxanne Taylor argues that because their company is independent, they can prepare the NFL players in the room for every aspect of the film industry in a way studios aren't equipped to do. And because these are young men who have not had the luxury of film school and are coming in behind the eight ball, they're able to offer more individual attention and access than they'd be able to receive elsewhere.
“You've got to have that energy so they're locked in and understand what it really takes to do this,” Roxanne Taylor said. “That speaks to who we are as people, because if you go to any of these other studios, you're going to be sitting in a room, and there's going to be talking heads, and there's no energy.”
“We screaming and shit, we're grabbing microphones, impromptu pulling people up, trailers playing, people talking and asking questions in the middle of the Q&A,” Taylor said. “That's not normal. Most people, we do the panel and we talk, and then we do this. No man, this is interactive. Fire away. That's how our brains think as athletes.”
The players who attended this year had desires to be writers, directors, actors, cinematographers, producers, or really just be involved in film in some way. Players had to apply through the NFL and even submitted reels or writing samples, and the league's player engagement team then selects the most passionate of the bunch. In Taylor and Hidden Empire, the NFL further believed they found a partner who could truly position them for success after their playing careers.
“What we were looking for was somebody who was willing to empower the guys and really give them insight and not hold back on what it's really like,” said Tracy Perlman, SVP of Player Operations with the NFL. “I feel like a lot of times when people give them information, well, you're an NFL player, you're going to be able to do [a lot]. Deon's like, this is hard. It's as hard as it was for you to make the team, to break into something new when you transition out. So when we came back and wanted to bring this back, we wanted a partner like Deon who would be able to do that.”
Hamza Abdullah, a safety who played in the league for six years, told IndieWire about his passion for movies and why, not unlike an NFL team, making a movie is a team sport for which he's happy to play any role.
“As football players, we understand the job of every individual on our roster…every single name on the cast and the credits is important and integral to the success of that [film],” Abdullah said. “That's what I love about film, because you're back on the team. You can't do it alone. I've never seen a movie yet where there's only one name on the cast or the crew. I haven't seen it yet, and I don't know how good that movie would be. But they're definitely not winning an Oscar. So as a football player, we're always preparing to win the Super Bowl, and I think that's something that we missed as we transition out of the game … and that's what the film industry brings, being able to be on the team again.”
Abdullah said it's not everyday a fan can come into the locker room and get a sense of practice and game planning, and it's just as unheard of for athletes to be able to see the nuts and bolts process of filmmaking. He touted Taylor as a Mike Tomlin type (Taylor should direct the Tomlin movie with Omar Epps as the former Steelers coach, he suggested) that like any great coach he'd run through a brick wall for and who would “challenge you to be the best version of yourself.” And Abdullah did not mince words about how important a program like this is to him and his peers.
“What the NFL is doing with this program is going to save lives, period, stop right there,” he said. “It's allowing individuals who are in the NFL to have access to the entertainment industry while you're playing, and then after you're playing. I'm not saying everyone that comes off the field is going to be in entertainment or acting, but now you get an opportunity. That's all you want as an athlete is an opportunity. That's what this awards us is an opportunity, to be able to have producers, writers, directors, music, ADs, you have all these people at every level of the industry, and you're able to ask them a question. Information is everything. We get an opportunity to hear information and get information from the source. There's nothing like that.”
For Taylor, the moment for these players to get involved and learn about Hollywood is now, and he hopes to instill the idea that to be able to actually make something from your own mind is “artistry” and a “gift from God.”
“Look, it's not for the faint of heart, this is a very hard business,” Taylor said. “But what we're trying to explain to these people is you're in a position right now with the NFL where you're the 1 percent of the 1 percent. You have access right now. Utilize it before you don't have it.”
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Zendaya wore a gold band to Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday, further fueling the rumors that she's already married to Tom Holland.
The “Euphoria” actress flaunted what seemed to be a wedding band as she stepped out for the Louis Vuitton autumn/winter 2026 fashion show.
Zendaya initially kept her left hand tucked inside her pocket when she arrived at the event, but once inside, she was photographed wearing the gold band on her left ring finger.
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She left her Jessica McCormack engagement ring at home, instead replacing it with a Clash de Cartier ring ($4,200) in white gold. The former Disney star piled on the Cartier jewels, wearing a smaller, diamond-covered version of the same ring ($7,150) on her pointer finger as well as matching hoop earrings ($5,550).
On her right hand, she wore a chunkier version of the same style ($5,150) as well as a Clash de Cartier bracelet ($11,200) and a Love Unlimited bracelet ($9,400).
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The rumored newlywed kept the bridal vibes going in an all-white look that included a high-low shirt dress, cinching her waist with a black belt.
She also showed off her bob hairstyle that she debuted last month.
Zendaya's gold band has been one of the biggest pieces of evidence that she and Holland, both 29, secretly tied the knot.
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She wore the telling jewelry instead of her five-carat engagement ring for the first time during an outing in Beverly Hills on Feb. 18.
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Then, she added the gold band under her engagement ring in a March 5 photoshoot for her and Robert Pattinson's new movie, “The Drama.”
Though Zendaya has yet to speak out about the marriage rumors, her longtime stylist, Law Roach (who was by the star's side at Louis Vuitton) teased the union.
“The wedding has already happened,” Roach said in a bombshell claim to “Access Hollywood” at the 2026 Actor Awards on March 1.
“You missed it,” he added, “It's very true.”
However, Zendaya's mom, Claire Stoermer, cast doubt on Roach's claim with a cryptic Instagram upload, insinuating he was joking about the alleged nuptials.
But then actress Liza Colón-Zayas, who is starring in the upcoming “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” with Zendaya and Holland, reposted an Instagram Story, adding to the speculation.
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The couple was first romantically linked in 2017, but it wasn't until 2021 that they took their relationship public.
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Zendaya confirmed their engagement by wearing a diamond ring to the 2025 Golden Globes.
Afterwards, TMZ revealed that Holland “popped the question” during the holidays in “a very intimate setting” at one of Zendaya's homes.
A source told Page Six that, while the stars “had discussed marriage over the years,” Zendaya “had no idea” Holland was going to propose.
“They both value their privacy, so the proposal was something Tom wanted to keep private as well,” the insider shared.
By
Cheyenne Roundtree
Former Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra was rushed to a hospital over the weekend after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke, causing the left side of his body to go completely numb.
The outspoken 67-year-old punk-rocker reassured fans that he's in stable condition and recovering in the hospital. “I still have a lot of great stuff in me, but right now I gotta lotta of rehabbing to do,” Biafra said in an Instagram post shared Monday night.
Biafra — born Eric Boucher — said the stroke was caused by high blood pressure and occurred when he tried getting out of bed on Saturday night. “My left leg just collapsed under me and I fell to the floor,” Biafra said. “I couldn't even break the fall with my left arm because it wasn't working either. I tried to hop back up again, and I couldn't.”
Showing his characteristic humor despite his circumstances, he added, “I realized I had ‘fallen and I can't get up!” a reference to the infamous television commercials for the medical device Life Alert.
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Sharing the news through Biafra's independent label, Alternative Tentacles, the label said it would continue to share updates on Biafra's progress. “Speaking for the Alternative Tentacles family, we are all just very thankful he is okay and getting the care that he needs,” the post concluded.
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Biafra served as the lead singer and co-founder of the San Francisco punk band Dead Kennedys from 1978 until the band split in 1986. The group reunited sans Biafra in 2001.
Last month, Biafra criticized the current iteration of the band for being willing to perform at this year's Punk in the Park festival despite owner Cameron Collins' contributions to Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. “The real Dead Kennedys would never have let this happen in the first place,” Biafra told Stereogum. “One more sordid reason I don't ever want to play with them again.” (Organizers have since canceled the festival.)
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So an edgelord and a rage-baiter walk into a bar… OK, that's not exactly the plot of “Uncut Gems” EP and “Good Time” producer Oscar Boyson's directing debut, “Our Hero, Balthazar.” But with those two characters, played by Jaeden Martell and Asa Butterfield respectively, you know you're in for a thrillingly toxic ride. The trailer has just premiered for the 2025 Tribeca film I called a “propulsive and fascinatingly contradictory cross between gun-culture warning letter and Safdies-esque thriller.” Watch it below.
“Our Hero, Balthazar” has steadily been building buzz at word-of-mouth screenings since Tribeca, where it was the first runner-up for the Narrative section's Audience Award. This is indeed a really well-executed and confident satire that is — abrasive? Yes! Discomfiting? Sure! — always entertaining. Co-written by Ricky Camilleri, the film also stars Jennifer Ehle, Noah Centineo, Anna Baryshnikov, Becky Ann Baker, and Avan Jogia.
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Here's the film's synopsis: “A headlong race through a world where success can be measured in engagement and tragedy has become content, ‘Our Hero, Balthazar' follows two neglected teens thrown together by a chance online encounter. Privileged yet lonely New Yorker Balthy (Jaeden Martell) Malone dreams of becoming a hero, while struggling Texan Solomon Jackson (Asa Butterfield) seeks recognition by posting violent threats. When Balthy, in an act of misguided heroism, travels to Texas in an attempt to befriend Solomon and avert a possible tragedy, he is drawn into a dangerous and thrilling new world. Despite their differences, both find refuge from their crushing loneliness in each other's company, but for all Balthy's good intentions, his decisions are driving them close to the precipice of disaster.”
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And more from my review: “Boyson doesn't entirely peel away from the Benny-and-Josh-established aesthetic that's now the expected parlance of millennial filmmakers seeking to capture an unvarnished, on-edge New York — Boyson, after all, co-founded the Safdies' Elara Pictures before the brothers split creatively. The stylized filmmaking becomes its own sort of critical point of view here, revving up the audience and probably encouraging even a few in the room to endorse its agonized worldview via the movie's compelling craft. ‘Our Hero, Balthazar' is both a cautionary tale and an entertainment, and how Boyson straddles the high wire cutting between those two opposing forces is what makes this promising debut most fascinatingly restless.”
Picturehouse and WG Pictures open “Our Hero, Balthazar” in New York City on March 27 and in Los Angeles on April 3.
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By Greg Evans
NY & Broadway Editor
Joshua Jackson made his first public comments on the February 11 passing of his Dawson's Creek co-star James Van Der Beek, telling the Today show this morning, “I think it hits in a variety of different ways.”
“For me as a father now, I think the enormity of that tragedy for his family hits me in a very different way than just as a colleague,” Jackson said. “So I think the processing is is ongoing.”
Watch the interview below.
Jackson recalled Van Der Beek and their Dawson‘s days with affection. “He and I shared this very amazing time … and it was formational for us,” he said. “I know both of us look back on that time with great fondness, but I will also say that I know that I'm really just a footnote in what he actually accomplished in his life.”
“He became what we used to just call a good man, a man of the kind of belief, the kind of faith that allowed him to face the impossible with grace, an unbelievable partner and husband, just a real man who showed up for his family and a beautiful, kind, curious, interested, dedicated father,” Jackson said.
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Van Der Beek revealed his colorectal cancer in 2024, and the 47-year-old Jackson has partnered with the NHL and AstraZeneca as part of the pharmaceutical company's Get Body Checked Against Cancer campaign, which highlights the importance of getting screened for cancer.
“Obviously, when James got his diagnosis, and now I'm thinking about a contemporary of mine going through something like this, and when the AstraZeneca folks reached out, I also have a lifelong connection to hockey,” Jackson said, adding, “Guys don't like to talk about this. We don't like to go to the doctor, we don't like to deal with this stuff. And I know a lot of ways in your life, like that stiff upper lip thing can be helpful, but in this it's not helpful at all.”
Last month, Katie Holmes, who co-starred with Van Der Beek and Jackson in Dawson's Creek, said of her late cast mate, “I am so grateful to have shared in a piece of James' journey. He is beloved…To share space with your imagination is sacred. Breathing the same air in the land of make believe and trusting that each other's hearts are safe in their expression. These are some of the memories, along with laughter, conversations about life, James Taylor songs — adventures of a unique youth.”
To see how other Dawson‘s cast members paid tribute to Van Der Beek, go here.
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By Jesse Whittock
International TV Co-Editor
Heartstopper creator Alice Oseman has updated on the YA series' movie finale – and there's still a little while to wait before it drops on Netflix.
Speaking this afternoon at the London Book Fair at the Kensington Olympia, the show's creator – who also writes and illustrates the graphic novels on which it is based – said Heartstopper Forever will not drop before the final book in her series releases on July 2.
Answering a Deadline-submitted question about a launch date during a Q&A session, Oseman replied: “It won't be coming out before the book. It was so important to me that the book comes out first, so people can experience the end of the story in the book. The series was the adaptation, not the other way around.”
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The series as been credited for its outsized impact on across TV, social media, music and books and its dedication to LGBTQ+ representation. With a particularly dedicated novel following, Oseman has previously said her preference is for the novel to drop before Heartstopper Forever.
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Filming on Wash Westmoreland movie wrapped last year in July, and it is now nearing post-production completion.
“We are literally days away from it being finished,” said Oseman. “We are doing the final little bits of VFX and animation, and hopefully by the end of next week is going to be sent to be dubbed in various languages and quality-checked by Netflix, but my work on it will be done.”
Heartstopper follows the queer love story of British students Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) and Nick Nelson (Kit Connor), as they grow into young men. The series is based on Oseman's graphic novel series of the same name, and first launched on Netflix in 2022.
Plot details on the finale pic are being kept secret, but the summary for the book provides some insight: “Everyone in school knows Nick and Charlie. Everyone knows they're going to be together forever. But Charlie's busy with his bid to become head boy. And while Nick is preparing to leave for uni, he's starting to wonder who he'll be… without Charlie.”
Here's everything we know about the streaming movie right now.
The See Saw Films-produced series concluded following its run after three seasons last year. The show is among a tranche of young-adult dramas that continue to drive streaming viewing among younger demographics. Despite critical acclaim, ratings were down about 30% for the third season, doubt was cast on Season 4 and the movie was later ordered in lieu of a full run.
Oseman, whose other YA novels including Solitaire, Radio Silence and I Was Born For This!, is heavily involved with the Heartstopper adaptation. She recalled pitching the series into Netflix alongside Patrick Walters, the See-Saw TV exec who recently joined A24, with the concept that there was “a gap in the market” for a YA series about a young, queer male couple. “Netflix were probably excited about that,” she added.
Oseman had initially self-published the Heartstopper novels after securing funding via Kickstarter. The books, which are part of a series of four novels, were subsequently published by Hachette Children's Group earlier this year. Her keynote interview at the LBF was met warmly by a packed audience, as she was named the event's Creative of the Fair and received a YA Book Prize Special Achievement Award from industry trade title The Bookseller.
The LBF began today in London and runs until Thursday (March 12). The Fair will next year move to the ExCel Centre on the other side of London.
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Cher stole the show at son Chaz Bono's wedding with a massive ring on that finger.
The singer, 79, sparked speculation she and partner Alexander “AE” Edwards may have wed by sporting the sparkler — and a band — at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Monday.
Reps for Cher and Edwards did not immediately respond to Page Six's requests for comment.
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Statement jewelry aside, the Grammy winner cut a casual figure arriving at the nuptials in a star-patterned sweatsuit and sneakers.
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Cher watched her eldest child and his partner, Shara Blue Mathes, walk down the aisle in one of the hotel's ballrooms.
Bono, 57, and Mathes have been together since 2017.
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As for Cher and Edwards, the couple went public with their romance in late 2022 — and have repeatedly defended their 40-year age gap.
She also regularly gushes over Edwards' “precocious” 6-year-old son, Slash, whom he co-parents with ex Amber Rose.
“Before I met [Edwards], I walked around my house saying, ‘I want a man and a toddler,'” the songwriter shared with “Armchair Expert” listeners in January.
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While reports surfaced in December 2025 that Cher and her much-younger boyfriend planned to wed, a spokesperson for the performer hit back at rumors.
“There [are] absolutely no plans for a wedding in her future,” Cher's rep insisted last year.
The “If I Could Turn Back Time” crooner has been married twice before — to Sonny Bono and Gregg Allman.
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She and Edwards made headlines for a possible engagement when Cher showed off a jaw-dropping diamond ring from the record producer via Instagram mere months into their relationship.
The actress called the teardrop bling the “best Christmas gift” she'd ever received in a 2023 “Access Hollywood” interview — and clarified why it wasn't on her left hand ring finger.
“He said to me, ‘You're the right girl, it's the right ring, for the right finger,'” Cher recalled at the time.
Technically minded science fiction stories like those written by The Martian novelist Andy Weir can be loosely divided into tales about someone saving their own life, and tales about ensuring that life will go on in the future. Because of Project Hail Mary‘s high-concept plot, its sweeping journey across the stars, and its existential threat to humanity, it initially presents itself as the latter. Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up light years from home, alone on a ship with a pair of dead astronauts for company and a hazy memory of what he's doing there. He eventually puzzles out that he's there to investigate a distant star that, when faced with the same microscopic alien threat as our own sun, isn't fading out like good ol' Sol. But, thanks to filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (and Martian adapter Drew Goddard), Project Hail Mary isn't all that concerned with the science in its fiction; like the inverse of its slacker-cool scientist lead, the film is actually a schlubby buddy comedy dressed up in the finest hard sci-fi regalia that Amazon MGM could afford. It's a far less nuts-and-bolts affair than The Martian, and a more frustratingly structured one thanks to the amnesia, but it doubles down on the astronaut charm offensive, flooding its sweet space odyssey not with big questions, but small signs of growth.
Like the heroes in so many schlubby buddy comedies, Grace follows an arc of stunted self-discovery and self-assurance, of growing up and finally looking outside himself. It's the kind of thing men write when they're having kids (Weir's son was born the same year that Project Hail Mary hit shelves), and wondering if their life's meaning exists beyond the jokes they crack, the jobs they hold, and the problems they solve. It's no coincidence that the main draw of the film adaptation, aside from Gosling's charm and the staggering space effects, is its most childlike creation: the craggy, multi-legged, faceless rock-spider alien Grace dubs “Rocky.”
Rocky, sent by his own planet in his own ship (filled with the bodies of his own crewmembers) on a similar mission, is Grace's unlikely double—and becomes Grace's desperate coworker despite their inability to share an atmosphere. Their interspecies bond, formed through crystalline barriers and a jerry-rigged translation program that makes the alien engineer sound like an enterprising toddler or Koko the gorilla, is the heart of the film. It's a little parental, a little Aliens Say The Darndest Things. Rocky's cute, scampering, chattering puppet—voiced and operated by James Ortiz, whose team creates a character Jim Henson would envy—provides a natural personality foil to the perpetually reluctant and amused Grace, whose boat-rocking stint as a molecular biologist ended with him teaching middle school.
Observing the odd couple interact—first solely through their vessels, then through scientific constants, then in person—is much more fun than simply watching another stranded spaceman send jargon-filled video messages off into the void. As Rocky and Grace ostensibly figure out how to save their homes using data gleaned from the star they're stationed outside of, they're also figuring out how to communicate, how to safely hang out with each other, and how to teach each other things. This relationship mostly overrides the larger mission, which means that the thrills—whether housed inside practical Weir-style plot twists or flashy spacewalk set pieces—are never especially pressing. But the time spent aboard the Hail Mary is far more winning than the frequent flashbacks to Earth, where the film metes out exposition through Grace's accessible, Martian-style experiments.
These flashbacks are also the only times Grace interacts with other humans, specifically Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller), the hardass head of the Hail Mary expedition. These illuminating yet disruptive sequences (which almost certainly worked better on the page) clear the fog from Grace's memory, while shedding light on his immature character—how did this handsome non-astronaut screw-up end up stuck in space, anyways? The glimpses we get into the international initiative to save Earth and its sun are cursory and, like the rest of the film, comedy-forward. It's funny most of the time, cringe-inducing some of the time, and almost always sentimental. But at least back in space, this tone is bolstered by impressive spacecraft design, arresting exterior VFX, and the best skittering critter the screen has seen in years.
And because of this, it mostly works that Project Hail Mary is more concerned with Rocky than with humanity. Grace's acceptance of responsibility and the notions of self-sacrifice that come along with it never succumb to the saccharine, feet-dragging endings of his film, because Rocky is both an endearing figure and a good-enough metaphor for why one should act selflessly. In conveying this, Lord and Miller, in their first finished film since getting booted from Solo almost a decade ago, maintain their sense of clever silliness—a silent space-set sequence between the two spaceships is a delightfully dumb use of millions of VFX dollars. They also struggle to wrestle their film's scope into a form that's both manageable and focuses on the elements that interest them. Over two-and-a-half hours, the duo's film gazes in wonder at alien engineering, opens its heart to human vulnerability through karaoke, and makes the case that inspiring the next generation (or at least perpetuating its existence) is alluring enough to shake the smarmiest manchildren from their self-imposed exile. Most effectively, though, Project Hail Mary sees a personal sense of humor shine through the bludgeoning grandeur of a AAA sci-fi.
Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Writer: Drew Goddard
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, Lionel Boyce, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub
Release Date: March 20, 2026
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The '70s and '80s were a heyday for Oscar winners topping the Hot 100, but the double distinction became far less common beginning in the '90s.
By
Paul Grein
With HUNTR/X's “Golden” from KPop Demon Hunters a strong contender to win an Academy Award on Sunday (March 15), we may soon see an addition to our list of songs that have both topped the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Oscar for best original song. The last song to join the list was “Shallow” from A Star Is Born seven years ago.
“Golden” topped the Hot 100 for eight nonconsecutive weeks last year. The exuberant smash is competing for best original song with “Dear Me” from Diane Warren: Relentless; “I Lied to You” from Sinners; “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from Viva Verdi!; and “Train Dreams” from Train Dreams.
The Motion Picture Academy first awarded best original song in 1935. Billboard launched the Hot 100 in 1958. In the chart's nearly 68-year history, only 17 songs have hit No. 1 and also won best original song. B.J. Thomas' “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head” was the first song to achieve the double distinction. The jaunty tune, from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, spent four weeks at No. 1 in January 1970 before winning the Oscar that April.
Barbra Streisand and Jennifer Warnes are the only artists who have topped the Hot 100 twice with Oscar-winning songs. Burt Bacharach, Giorgio Moroder and Will Jennings are the only songwriters who have won two Oscars for songs that topped the Hot 100.
The 1970s and 1980s were a heyday for best original song winners topping the Hot 100, but the double distinction became far less common beginning in the 1990s. That decade, only two songs earned the double victory, followed by one each in the 2000s and 2010s and now one (so far) in the 2020s.
In chronological order, here are the 17 songs that have doubled up atop the Hot 100 and at the Oscars. The year shown is the year of the Oscar ceremony. This list will be updated if “Golden” wins on Oscar Sunday.
Additional research by Xander Zellner.
From the film: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Credits: Music by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David
Weeks at No. 1: Four, beginning Jan. 3, 1970Performed on the Oscar telecast by: B.J. Thomas
Notes: This was both Thomas' first No. 1 and Bacharach's first best song winner. The award was presented by Candice Bergen, a star even then, nearly two decades before her career-capping role as Murphy Brown. Bacharach won a second Oscar on the night for best original score for a motion picture (not a musical).
From the film: Shaft
Credits: Music & lyrics by Isaac Hayes
Weeks at No. 1: Two, beginning Nov. 20, 1971
Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Isaac Hayes
Notes: With this cool and funky smash, Hayes became the first Black songwriter to win for best original song. The award was presented by Joel Grey, co-star of the recently released Cabaret (which would win eight Oscars, including best supporting actor for Grey, the following year). Hayes received a second Oscar nod that year for best original dramatic score. This was his only No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 – in fact, his only top 10 hit.
From the film: The Poseidon Adventure
Credits: Music & lyrics by Joel Hirschhorn & Al Kasha
Weeks at No. 1: Two, beginning Aug. 4, 1973Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Connie Stevens
Notes: This ballad hadn't even cracked the Hot 100 when the Oscars were presented on March 27, 1973. It first charted in June and reached No. 1 in August. This was McGovern's first Hot 100 hit and the first of two Oscar winners for Kasha & Hirschhorn, both of which were written for disaster movies produced by Irwin Allen. The second, two years later, was “We May Never Love Like This Again” from The Towering Inferno.
McGovern also had a Hot 100 hit with that song, albeit a much more modest one. It peaked at No. 83. Sonny & Cher, whose weekly variety show was then at its peak, presented the Oscar to “The Morning After.” Said Kasha in accepting the award: “I'm very, extremely grateful, and you made two people very happy in Brooklyn tonight, Rose and Irving Kasha. So, I want to thank you for that.”
From the film: The Way We Were
Credits: Music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Alan & Marilyn BergmanWeeks at No. 1: Three, beginning Feb. 2, 1974
Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Peggy Lee
Notes: This instant standard was Streisand's first No. 1 hit on the Hot 100. It reached No. 1 two months before the April 2, 1974 ceremony. It was Hamlisch's only best song winner and the second for The Bergmans, following “The Windmills of Your Mind” from The Thomas Crown Affair.
Hamlisch made history as the first and only composer to win three Oscars in one night. In addition to this award, he also won best original dramatic score for The Way We Were and best scoring: adaptation for The Sting. “Marvin, it's positively obscene how many of these you have,” Marilyn Bergman teased in accepting the best song award. She also paid tribute to Streisand, calling her “the best singer that any lyric writer could ever have singing their song.”
Streisand was nominated for best actress for her performance in The Way We Were but declined to perform the song on the telecast. The producers got Peggy Lee to sing it instead. Streisand finally sang the song on the Oscars in 2013, during the In Memoriam segment, which included her friend and frequent collaborator Hamlisch.
From the film: A Star Is Born
Credits: Music by Barbra Streisand, lyrics by Paul Williams
Weeks at No. 1: Three, beginning March 5, 1977
Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Barbra Streisand
Notes: This was Streisand's second No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 and brought her a second Oscar, following her best actress win for Funny Girl. She is, to this day, the only person to win Oscars for both acting and songwriting. This is Williams' only Oscar win to date.
“Evergreen” reached No. 1 a few weeks before the Oscar telecast on March 29, 1977. The award was presented by Neil Diamond, who would team with Streisand in the following year to record a duet version of “You Don't Bring Me Flowers” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.
“In my wildest dreams I never, never could ever imagine winning an Academy Award for writing a song,” Streisand said in accepting the award. For his part, the diminutive Williams good-naturedly said, “I was gonna thank all the little people, and then I remembered I am the little people.”
From the film: You Light Up My Life
Credits: Music & lyrics by Joseph Brooks
Weeks at No. 1: Ten, beginning Oct. 15, 1977Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Debby Boone
Notes: This was Boone's first Hot 100 hit and her only song to crack the top 40. This was also Brooks' only Oscar nomination. Fred Astaire, one of the greatest stars in the history of music in film, presented the award. Brooks could have showed more finesse in his acceptance speech: “Thank God it's over,” he said, laughing. “It's been a long kind of haul. I am so happy that after all this time it's finally here.”
Two songs that might have given “You Light Up My Life” a run for its money – the Bee Gees' “Stayin' Alive” and Kander & Ebb's “Theme From New York, New York” (performed in the film by Liza Minnelli) – weren't even nominated. Read more here about the Bee Gees' snub.
From the film: Arthur
Credits: Music & lyrics by Peter Allen, Burt Bacharach, Christopher Cross & Carole Bayer Sager
Weeks at No. 1: Three, beginning Oct. 17, 1981Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Christopher Cross
Notes: This marked the first time in Oscar history that four songwriters shared the credit for writing the best song winner. It was Cross' first new music since becoming the first person to sweep the top four Grammy awards in the same year on Feb. 25, 1981. It became his second No. 1 hit (following “Sailing”) and Bacharach's second best song winner (following “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head”).
It was the only win in that category for Sager, who has also been nominated for such award-worthy songs as “Nobody Does It Better” and “The Prayer.” It was the only nomination in that category for both Cross and Allen. Bette Midler, who had a Hot 100 hit in 1977 with the Sager-co-written “You're Moving Out Today,” presented the award.
From the film: An Officer and a Gentleman
Credits: Music by Jack Nitzsche & Buffy Sainte-Marie, lyrics by Will Jennings
Weeks at No. 1: Three, beginning Nov. 6, 1982
Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes
Notes: This was the only No. 1 for both artists and the only Oscar winner for both Nitzsche and Sainte-Marie (who were married at the time). Jennings landed a second best song winner in 1998, for co-writing a big hit from an even bigger movie about a supposedly unsinkable ship. Olivia Newton-John, who had performed the nominated “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from Grease on the 1979 Oscar telecast, presented the award.
From the film: Flashdance
Credits: Music by Giorgio Moroder, lyrics by Irene Cara & Keith Forsey
Weeks At No. 1: Six, beginning May 28, 1983Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Irene Cara and 44 boys and girls from the National Dance Institute
Notes: This was the second best song winner that Cara performed, following “Fame,” but this time she co-wrote the song and thus shared in the Oscar glory. This was her only Oscar nod and also her only No. 1 Hot 100 hit. Moroder won again in the category in 1987 for co-writing “Take My Breath Away” from Top Gun. Forsey was nominated in 1988 for co-writing the Bob Seger hit “Shakedown” from Beverly Hills Cop II.
A second song from Flashdance, “Maniac,” was also nominated. The award was presented by Jennifer Beals, the star of Flashdance, alongside Matthew Broderick, who had starred in 1983's WarGames.
From the film: The Woman in Red
Credits: Music & lyrics by Stevie Wonder
Weeks at No. 1: Three, beginning Oct. 13, 1984
Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Diana Ross
Notes: This was Wonder's eighth of 10 No. 1 hits on the Hot 100, and his only Oscar winner. “I cannot, I cannot believe it,” Wonder said in accepting the award from presenter Gregory Hines. “I never thought this would happen.”
This was the first (and so far only) year in Oscar history where all five nominees for best original song were No. 1 Hot 100 hits. Read more about that year's hit-studded field here.
From the film: White Nights
Credits: Music & lyrics by Lionel Richie
Weeks at No. 1: Four, beginning Dec. 21, 1985Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Lionel Richie
Notes: Songwriters don't always win for their most classic film songs. Richie is a good example: He was nominated for writing “Endless Love,” his elegant duet with Diana Ross, which he wrote for the 1981 film of the same name. He lost to Burt Bacharach and company for “Arthur's Theme.” Richie won four years later with this less classic ballad, which was the fifth of his five No. 1 solo hits. The award was presented by Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor, stars of the all-time classic movie musical Singin' in the Rain.
Richie was a cowriter on a second song that was nominated that year, “Miss Celie's Blues (Sister)” from The Color Purple. There was also a second nominated song from White Nights – “Separate Lives (Love Theme From White Nights),” written by Stephen Bishop for Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin.
From the film: Top Gun
Credits: Music by Giorgio Moroder, lyrics by Tom Whitlock
Weeks at No. 1: One: Sept. 13, 1986
Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Melba Moore and Lou Rawls
Notes: Moroder has been nominated for three Oscars – and won all three. He won for best original score for Midnight Express in 1979 and then best original song for “Flashdance…What a Feeling” and this rock ballad. This was Whitlock's only nomination, as well as Berlin's only top 20 hit on the Hot 100. Oscar producers enlisted R&B stars Melba Moore and Lou Rawls to perform the song on the telecast.
From the film: Dirty Dancing
Credits: Music by John DeNicola, Donald Markowitz & Franke Previte, lyrics by Frank Previte
Weeks at No. 1: One: Nov. 28, 1987Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes
Notes: Five years after “Up Where We Belong,” Warnes made it back to the Oscar stage, and to the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100, performing this song from Dirty Dancing. This was Medley's only top 40 hit apart from the Righteous Brothers, the blue-eyed-soul duo of the '60s and '70s. The award was presented by Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli, who had co-starred in the 1981 hit Arthur.
This was the only Oscar nomination for all three co-writers. In accepting the award, Previte gave thanks to the film's music supervisor Jimmy Ienner (older brother of record exec Don Ienner): “Well, about a year and a half ago a gentleman called me up and told me that I should write a song for Dirty Dancing that would change my life. So I'd like to thank Jimmy Ienner for changing my life.”
From the film: Aladdin
Credits: Music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Tim Rice
Weeks at No. 1: One: March 6, 1993
Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Brad Kane & Lea Salonga
Notes: This song probably wouldn't exist were it not for lyricist Howard Ashman's tragic death from AIDS in 1991. After Ashman died, Menken had to find a new collaborator. Enter Tim Rice, who had risen to fame in musical theater collaborating with Andrew Lloyd Webber. Rice graciously saluted Ashman in his acceptance speech: “I'm extremely lucky to be standing in his shoes. I know he'd be here today if he were still alive.”
“A Whole New World” prevailed over “Friend Like Me,” which Menken had written with Ashman shortly before his death. This was Rice's first of three best song winners; Menken's third of four. Menken won a second Oscar on the night for best original score.
“A Whole New World” reached No. 1 a few weeks before the March 29, 1993 ceremony. It was Bryson's only No. 1 hit on the Hot 100; Belle's only top 40 hit on that chart. Oscar producers booked Brad Kane & Lea Salonga, who sang the original version of the song in the film, to perform it on the telecast, rather than the pop performers who sang it over the end credits.
From the film: Titanic
Credits: Music by James Horner, lyrics by Will Jennings
Weeks at No. 1: Two, beginning Feb. 28, 1998Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Celine Dion
Notes: This was Dion's third No. 1 hit on the Hot 100, following “The Power of Love” and “Because You Loved Me” (which was also from a film, Up Close & Personal). It reached No. 1 a few weeks before the March 23, 1998 ceremony. It was Jennings' second best song winner, following “Up Where We Belong.” It was Horner's only best song winner. Madonna, who had performed two Oscar-winning songs, “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” from Dick Tracy and “You Must Love Me” from Evita, presented the award. Horner also won for best original dramatic score.
Titanic director James Cameron famously didn't want a pop song in his film. Horner and Jennings wrote one anyway, and Dion recorded it, more or less on spec. Accepting the Oscar, Horner said: “Jim Cameron, thank you for being in a good mood that day when I brought you the song.”
From the film: 8 Mile
Credits: Music by Jeff Bass, Eminem & Luis Resto, lyrics by Eminem
Weeks at No. 1: 12, beginning Nov. 9, 2002Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Not performed
Notes: This was the first hip-song to win for best original song. It was Eminem's first No. 1 on the Hot 100, and the only best original song nomination for all three winners. Barbra Streisand presented the award, which would have made for an Oscar photo op for ages if Eminem had shown up. As it was, Resto was the only winner who was present. He praised Eminem: “It's a great thing working with Marshall day in, day out. He's creative. He has symphonies in his head that I'm privileged to put on the tape.” When Em didn't show, Oscar producers wisely refrained from selecting a substitute performer to do “Lose Yourself.” Eminem finally performed the song on the Oscars in 2020.
From the film: A Star Is Born
Credits: Music & lyrics by Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt & Anthony Rossomando
Weeks at No. 1: One: March 9, 2019Performed on the Oscar telecast by: Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper
Notes: This was Gaga's fourth No. 1 hit on the Hot 100. “Shallow” peaked at No. 5 prior to the Oscar telecast, but surged to No. 1 in the wake of the Feb. 24, 2019 ceremony, where Gaga and Cooper memorably performed the song. It was the first Oscar-winning song to not reach No. 1 until after the Oscar telecast since “The Morning After” in 1973.
Gaga was the first person to be nominated for an Oscar for acting in a leading role and songwriting in the same year. Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) equaled the feat the following year. Accepting the award, Gaga paid tribute to her co-star and director, Bradley Cooper: “Bradley, there is not a single person on the planet that could have sang this song with me but you.” In his speech, Ronson showered praise on Gaga: “I think when you're in the room with this person, you don't really have to do too much. She acts, she writes, she sings the song. Lady Gaga, we salute you; thank you for this.”
Three of the four writers have received subsequent Oscar nods: Gaga was nominated in 2023 for co-writing “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick; Ronson and Wyatt were nominated in 2024 for “I'm Just Ken” from Barbie.
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When he wakes up on an empty spaceship hurtling away from the sun (and thus Earth and everyone and everything he knows), temporarily amnesiac Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) has such little handle on his situation and his place within it that he takes to a dry-erase board to sort his thoughts and questions. “WHO AM I?” is top of the list. (Later, he will note that he is “OK with cilantro.”)
Those three words could just as easily function as the overall theme of Phil Lord and Chris Miller's marvelously entertaining and deep-feeling “Project Hail Mary.” And, before you balk at the ol' important-questions-on-a-dry-erase-board gambit (sorry to “A Quiet Place,” we love you, but that dry-erase board has got to go), know this: The film earns such a heady question. It even answers it.
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Based on Andy Weir's novel of the same name, the film's comparisons to Ridley Scott's own Weir adaptation “The Martian” are certainly fitting, but Lord and Miller's first directorial outing in more than a decade also weaves in shades of everything from “Cast Away” to “E.T.” and just about every (good) film about unlikely friendship you could possibly name.
Picking up in media res on Grace's journey (he is never called Ryland, and only briefly “Dr. Grace”) is a smart way to get audiences immediately invested in whatever the hell our hero has gotten himself into, though the choice ultimately dilutes some of the film's lasting power. Who was Dr. Ryland Grace? What was his life like on Earth? And why does it feel like such a distant memory? Small quibbles, really, because what we do see and learn over the course of the film is so instantly compelling.
As a bearded and baffled Grace attempts to figure out not only who he is, but why he is on a spaceship, what he's meant to do on it, and much more, Gosling's natural charm and affability shine through. His amnesia is only temporary, and smaller answers tend to make themselves known in unexpected ways. “Am I smart?” Gosling hollers at no one (everyone) when he quickly solves a math problem, even as he's mostly unable to dress himself or walk upright (well, gravity and all that). But he's surely capable and emotional, as we see when he sets about giving space funerals to the two fellow astronauts who died during the journey, and that Grace, despite all his best attempts, just can't remember.
Don't worry. Answers are coming. “Project Hail Mary” is adapted for the screen by Drew Goddard, who previously scripted Ridley Scott's film version of “The Martian,” so he's phenomenally well-suited to the material. Flashbacks and memories are seamlessly integrated into the film as Grace recalls them, and the audience grows eager to unpack the mysteries of the film and the mission at its center.
A few years before Grace's solo magical mystery tour to the outer reaches of the universe, a strange phenomenon was discovered: a thin, dim line of infrared radiation between Venus and the sun. That alone would be disconcerting, but that the line (dubbed the Petrova Line, after the scientist who discovered it) seems to be linked to a new, gradual dimming of the sun? That's catastrophic. Or, it's sure as hell about to be.
Flashback Grace is a middle school teacher, one who really seems to love sharing his love of science with his kiddos, even though he clams up about the Line and the so-called “Dots” that make it up. This Grace? He knows too much, and he's not about to freak out his young charges. After all, he was once a molecular biologist, one who managed to get himself kicked out of the scientific community due to some of his more out-there beliefs.
The main one? Oxygen, kind of a scam! Or, more precisely, that oxygen is not key to all life, a concept that's really not that wild, but one that bends toward a specific kind of non-Earth-bound way of thinking that his fellow wonks really did not like. So when Eva Stratt (a delightfully composed Sandra Hüller, who later makes off with the most heartbreaking karaoke scene I've ever seen) shows up at his school to talk to him about the Line and what the world's governments plan to do about it, he's naturally resistant. Stratt, however, does not take no for an answer, and Grace is soon drafted into working on what will eventually be called Project Hail Mary: a plan to not only understand the Dots (their fancier name, “astrophage,” which means “sun eater,” explains why they're so nefarious), but to off them for good.
Grace has some early success with his experiments — hilariously and fittingly, he has to conduct them on his own, though he does eventually draft help from the g-man overseeing him (a very funny Lionel Boyce) — and discovers plenty about the astrophage. Yup, they're consuming the sun, and the energy they get from that helps power them to the next sun or planet or whatever they are going to chow down on (they “toot to scoot,” as he puts it). (The film, like Weir's books, is chock-a-block with heady scientific chatter, terminology, methodology, and theories; much like “The Martian,” Goddard does stellar work making it all understandable, digestible, and even fun.)
Of course, Grace is hardly the only scientist that Stratt has on this damn thing, but he does emerge as an early contender for unlikely MVP. Up in space, he's about to meet another MVP.
Grace is also not the only scientist or the only unlikely space traveler drafted to save his world from the astrophage (how he came to be on the ship is a spoiler for much later in the film). Flashbacks and his own work have finally clued Grace into his mission: go to distant star Tau Ceti, which is swarmed with its own astrophage invasion and has not dimmed, and figure out what's so damn special about the system (and what could be replicated on Earth).
When he arrives in the Tau Ceti system (as with all of the film's many space shots, these sequences, especially in IMAX, are stunning), someone else is already there. And, there's no getting around it, he's adorable. If you wished that Matt Damon's Dr. Mark Watney somehow managed to make pals with his potato plants in “The Martian,” have we got a film for you. But Grace's new friend — an engineer from the star system 40 Eridani who looks a bit like a particularly flexible rock crossed with a jittery crab, and whom he names Rocky — isn't just here for buddy humor. He also proves essential to all of Grace's missions. Not just the “save Earth” one, but the “who am I?” one, too.
Lord and Miller's film is already neck-deep in process porn before Rocky rolls onto the scene (yes, he does eventually roll, care of his own smart designs), but having a new partner for all his calculations and machinations and worries and wonders only amps up this particularly pleasurable element of the film. Come for them engaging in rudimentary puppetry, stay for them working out each other's respective alphabets in real time (James Ortiz, who puppets Rocky and eventually voices him, is a star capable of nearly outshining Ryan Gosling).
The pair are well-matched on all fronts, particularly when it comes to their intellectual pursuits. For as advanced as Rocky's civilization is, there are a few things he just doesn't know about, like radiation (perhaps the Eridians just don't need it, what an idea). Grace may have all that handled, but Rocky has a real knack for finding new ways to solve problems, and these two are about to have a lot of problems to solve. Space! Pretty scary! And, for anyone concerned that this all sounds a bit too chatty and fun, the final act of the film is crammed with the kind of space-set action sequences that will likely only further remind you why a Lord and Miller “Star Wars” would have been so great.
To write more about the pleasures and pains of “Project Hail Mary” would be (yes, over 1,300 words in) a disservice to what's most entertaining and satisfying about the film: watching it unfold, enjoying the process, accepting the mission, asking the big questions. That's about as much as you can ask from any blockbuster film these days.
Amazon MGM Studios will release “Project Hail Mary” in theaters, including IMAX, on Friday, March 20.
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By Pete Hammond
Awards Columnist/Chief Film Critic
It would be easy to dismiss Project Hail Mary as an amalgamation of movies set in space that we have seen over the decades. First and foremost has to be 2015's The Martian, which presented Matt Damon alone on the Red Planet interacting with officials back on Earth. That came from author Andy Weir's 2011 book with a screenplay adaptation by Drew Goddard, the same combination that created this new film. Throw in some 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, Silent Running, a bit of Ad Astra, the heart of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, the language of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the isolation of Gravity to mention a few predecessors. It is therefore a very tall order to be truly original, to create something that feels fresh and new in this well-worn genre. Cinematically, that would actually be asking for a kind of Hail Mary pass itself.
What directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie) achieve, with what I would term the most intimate use ever for the scale of those large Imax cameras, is a bit of a miracle because it is the humanity, not the hardware, that you take away from this unquestionably theatrical experience. It is big, but it doesn't feel all that epic even though the storyline on its surface sounds like any number of setups for every disaster movie you have ever seen. Thank God it isn't that. Essentially the sun is about to expire taking all life along with it. There is no way to save us unless we find just the right person who can essentially give up everything, including most likely their own life, travel decades into the future 12 light years from Earth and devise the formula to stop this certain apocalypse. And no, it's not a job for Superman. This movie has no use for superheroes.
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Enter Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling), whom we first meet alone on his space ship, an appearance suggesting no grooming for ages, going about his daily routine in isolation. This begins a non-linear approach to telling his story as we catch up with him on Earth in flashbacks in bits and pieces like a puzzle the audience has to slowly piece together. We see him in his classroom as a middle school science teacher who catches the eye of mysterious government official Eva Spratt (Sandra Hüller) who initiates a series of conversations exploring his expertise in exactly the Hail Mary pass they need to try and reverse the course of this certain calamity that will spell finis for life on Earth, that is, unless as she believes Grace is her man to prevent it, even as it means he will surely die trying. The alternative as she explains is he and anyone along for the ride are going to die anyway without this fix. We all will. Grace, once he finally understands the enormity of the request, wants none of it and rejects her, but she is persistent, enthralled with his formulas, and won't give up. Of course we know he has no choice, and thus takes off on this epic journey.
Eventually he gets a partner from another corner of the universe on the same mission, a spidery bunch of rocks he names Rocky, an alien lifeforce with the similar rare level of intelligence to team with Grace on this mission, one they find they must work together and bond to pull off. The message here is clear: We are stronger with each other than divided in fear. This becomes the buddy relationship that carries the second half of this journey and this film. It's funny and heartening, and Rocky makes for one of those adorable creature pals that gives E.T. and R2-D2 a run for their money. It also gives Gosling someone, something to play off of and relieves the isolated tedium of the early going.
The flashbacks and structure Goddard and Lord/Miller have brought to this adaptation work well here as the book itself had a very interior Grace basically thinking a lot and narrating his own story, fine for a novel but difficult to pull off in a film that runs more than two-and-a-half hours and requires dazzling visuals. For its first third we are guessing a lot about just what it is Grace is up to and how he got there, but it all pays off with thrilling results, a human story over one that emphasizes massive destruction and that, like The Martian, makes this latest trip into space one worth taking.
You can see why Gosling, who has traveled to space before in the more dour First Man in which he played astronaut Neil Armstrong, is more the common man this time, caught up in extraordinary circumstances beyond his control. He also has a great face to work with for brilliant cinematographer Greig Fraser's frequent closeups in tight quarters. With Project Hail Mary Gosling scores one of his best screen roles, a constant star presence often alone on screen, and he keeps us with him all the way. Hüller, the fine German actress (Anatomy of a Fall), gets the kind of part we haven't seen her do and she plays it convincingly, a determined official who knows the consequences if her bet on Grace is wrong. The other key acting triumph here is all off screen, as puppeteer James Ortiz manages to take a visual effect of a bunch of rocks and physically turn it into pure artistry. Rocky comes memorably alive. Shout-out also to Viz Effx wizard Paul Lambert and his team, as well as creature creator Neil Scanlon. All the production elements are first rate, notably Charles Wood's production design, Joel Negron's tricky editing, and a sensational score from the great Daniel Pemberton, which just may be his best to date.
A movie made for Imax, Project Hail Mary is mission accomplished, an entertaining and engaging piece of science fiction that suggests even though we may be worlds apart, in order to save us from ourselves we must band together now more than ever.
Producers are Amy Pascal, Gosling, Lord, Miller, Weir, Aditya Sood and Rachel O'Connor.
Title: Project Hail MaryDistributor: Amazon MGM StudiosRelease date: March 20, 2026Directors: Phil Lord & Christopher MillerScreenwriter: Drew GoddardCast: Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller, James Ortiz, Ken Leung, Milana Vayntrub, Lionel Boyce, Priya KansaraRating: PG-13Running time: 2 hr 36 min
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The book is wonderful. Looking forward to this, so relieved at the positive review!
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By
Emily Zemler
Hilary Duff appeared on The Tonight Show to perform her recent single, “Roommates,” and to discuss her career with host Jimmy Fallon. The pop star performed in a bedroom-themed set alongside a live band, giving the song a cinematic TV debut.
“Roommates” comes off Duff's new LP, Luck … or Something. The track was co-written by Duff, her husband, musician Matthew Koma, and Brian Phillips, and reflects on losing the spark in a relationship. Luck … or Something is Duff's first new album since 2015's Breathe In. Breathe Out. Her Small Rooms, Big Nerves tour kicked off on Jan. 19 in support of the album.
Duff sat down with Fallon to discuss the album and her tour, as well as growing up as Lizzie Maguire. She shared that her kids are fans of her music. “They love my music,” she said. “It's very sweet.”
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Fallon professed his love for The Lizzie Maguire Show and then asked Duff, “Who was your Lizzie Maguire? Who were you superfans of when you were growing up?”
“The Olsen twins,” she said. “Brother For Sale! When they were spies. They were like twin sister spies. I had it on video, my VHS, and I was obsessed with the Olsen twins. I'm about to drop a lot of names here: I met the Olsen twins at Aaron Carter's birthday party, pre us dating. I was like, ‘I have arrived. I've made it. Both of the Olsen twins are here.' It was crazy.”
Duff also answered a series of questions from fans, including her favorite onscreen love interest and her favorite 2000s Hilary Duff commercial.
Elsewhere on the late-night show, Duff joined Fallon for a “Sip and Sing” challenge, which involved singing random songs with a mouthful of water. Fallon unsuccessfully sang Harry Styles' “Watermelon Sugar” while Duff attempted Alanis Morisette's “Ironic,” which Fallon somehow guessed.
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Duff recently sat down with Rolling Stone to explain how she wanted to approach music as a mom. “It was really important to me to not make a record that was like, ‘I'm a mom and I pick up my kids at school and pack lunches every day and it's so hard,'” she said. “It was not at all what I was interested in talking about. What I was interested in talking about is the shift in how it makes me feel, as a person.”
She added, “People have known my life since I was a child, and so they know all the characters in it and they know what I'm talking about. For me, it was important to be open about that theme. It genuinely came from the heart.”
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Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.
By
Charisma Madarang
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran escalates, President Donald Trump and his Cabinet have offered a litany of dizzying updates on the conflict.
During a phone interview with CBS News on Monday, Trump said the war with Iran is “very complete, pretty much.” Speaking from his Doral, Florida, golf club, the president claimed “[Iran has] no navy, no communications, they've got no air force. Their missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their manufacturing of drones.” He added, “If you look, they have nothing left. There's nothing left in a military sense.”
However, during a CBS 60 Minutes interview taped Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that he wanted viewers to know “this is only just the beginning.” His words were echoed by the Defense Department's rapid-response X account on Monday morning, which posted a video of what appeared to be strikes targeting various, unidentified sites alongside the caption “This is just the beginning — we will not be deterred until the mission is over.” A few hours later, the same Defense Department account posted on X, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight,” with a photo of what seemed to be a missile in the air superimposed with the words “No Mercy” and no further context.
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Later on Monday, Trump appeared to shift from his stance from earlier in the day. During a news conference, a reporter confronted the president, and stated, “You said the war is ‘very complete,' but your defense secretary says ‘This is just the beginning.' So which is it?”
“You could say both,” replied Trump. “It's the beginning of building a new country.… We could call it a tremendous success right now — as we leave here, I could call it — or we could go further, and we're going to go further.”
Q: You said the war is 'very complete.' But your defense secretary says 'this is just the beginning.' So which is it?TRUMP: You could say both pic.twitter.com/4orXm5ZM4b
Last week, after a closed-door classified briefing over the U.S military campaign against Iran, many House Democrats expressed exasperation with the Trump administration and said the president and his team had not offered a sufficient justification for the attack on foreign soil.
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In a social media video posted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at the time, she directly addressed those watching and said, “It is so much worse than you thought.” Warren continued, “You are right to be worried. The Trump administration has no plan in Iran. This illegal war is based on lies, and it was launched without any imminent threat to our nation. Donald Trump still hasn't given a single clear reason for this war, and he seems to have no plan for how to end it, either.”
When Time magazine recently asked Trump whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks in the U.S., the president replied, “I guess.” Trump said, “We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But, yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
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Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.
Comedian Conan O'Brien realized that late-night shows were in deep trouble after his viral appearance on the popular online show “Hot Ones.”
In a recent interview withThe Hollywood Reporter, the former late-night host weighed in on the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” as well as the brief pulling of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following comments made after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
O'Brien appeared in 2024 on “Hot Ones,” a show on YouTube where celebrities answer questions while eating chicken wings that increasingly get spicier.
His appearance on the show has received more than 15 million views.
“That was the moment the scales fell from my eyes,” O'Brien told The Hollywood Reporter. “If a guy can do World Series numbers with overhead that looked, to me, to be about $600, and you have every big star lining up to do his show or Chicken Shop Date … that's when I profoundly understood that late night shows are in trouble.”
Colbert, whose program is ending in May, called O'Brien the “patron saint of ex-talk show hosts” and revealed he'd been urging Colbert to quit for years. O'Brien had a near three-decade stint across multiple late-night programs, hosting “Late Night” (1993-2009) and then briefly “The Tonight Show” (2009-2010) on NBC, before moving over to TBS and hosting “Conan” until 2021.
“We were out, a few Emmys ago, and he kept saying, ‘I want you to know there's a lot of fun to be had when this is over, so don't feel like you need to stay.' It almost hurt my feelings, but he was just being kind. He Dutch uncle'd me,” Colbert told The Hollywood Reporter.
Some believe Colbert's criticism of President Donald Trump played a role in his show ending. Trump's FCC (Federal Communications Commission), headed by Brendan Carr, had to approve David Ellison's Skydance Media purchasing CBS parent company Paramount.
O'Brien said, “I'm of the mind that yes, these shows are going away and will become something else.”
However, O'Brien added, “But I don't like when other malign forces intervene, because they're trying to curry favor. That pisses me off.”
In September, Kimmel's late-night show was pulled off the air after his remarks about Kirk's alleged assassin sparked outrage and a veiled threat from the FCC.
Disney decided to suspend the show after two major affiliate owners pulled airings of Kimmel from their stations, and Kimmel reportedly had told executives he would not apologize for his comments. His show returned following the brief hiatus.
CBS announced last year that Colbert's show would go off the air this May, citing it as a purely financial decision and denying it had anything to do with the then-looming merger between Paramount and Skydance.
O'Brien, who has stayed active with a podcast and HBO Max show, is hosting the Oscars this Sunday for the second straight year.
We regret to inform you that there are apparently some problems so drastic that not even an AI Bill Clinton impression can fix them: Seth MacFarlane has revealed that he currently has “no plan” to make a third season of his Peacock series Ted because, turns out, that CGI weed-smoking teddy bear is kind of expensive to keep putting on the screen.
Comparing the show's costs and logistical overhead to “doing an Avengers movie every 22 minutes,” MacFarlane told The Wrap this week that “What I kept hearing [from Peacock and Universal] was, ‘Listen, the show is really expensive to produce and there's no way to do it at a lower cost.' So I said, ‘All right, I hear you loud and clear.'”
Although there's been no formal decision on whether the show would get a third season, MacFarlane points out that he and his writers very deliberately wrote the show's second-season finale (which aired this week) to serve as a potential series ender, with main character John (Max Burkholder) committing to getting really buff (presumably so that he can be played by Mark Wahlberg in the future Ted movies). “So [showrunners] Brad Walsh and Paul Corrigan and I kind of painted ourselves into a corner,” MacFarlane noted. “Is there a way to do it? There's always a way to do anything. But at the moment, it might take some narrative acrobatics. There's no plan that I've heard of at the moment to do Season 3.”
Deadline notes that MacFarlane does have a bit of an out here: He and his team are reportedly already working on a fully animated Ted spin-off, which will presumably get around all those pesky cost overruns by going pure cartoon. (Not that the series will necessarily be cheap, since it reportedly takes place after 2015's Ted 2, and is set to co-star Wahlberg and Amanda Seyfried—but at least they won't have to be doing the constant Roger Rabbit-ing that apparently skyrocketed costs on the live-action show.)
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With its cast and writers set, Saturday Night Live UK is growing ever closer. Variety previously reported that the series would look quite a bit like the SNL we've all come to know over the past 51 seasons, complete with a monologue, musical guests, and a Weekend Update segment. The first teaser certainly supports this; the clip introduces the cast in a very similar manner as they're introduced in the U.S. version, except of course that these comics are live from London, not New York.
That all being said, this is just a teaser for the series, and (probably) not the actual introduction that will kick off every episode. Hopefully, they're able to find a British version of Don Pardo or Darrell Hammond to announce the cast if they really want to imitate what we have going on over here.
Deadline also reports that at least some of the hosts for the six-episode season are expected to be announced soon. The trade also picked up an unconfirmed report from The Sun that claims Tina Fey will host the first episode of the British version, which an unnamed insider claimed is symbolic of “handing the baton” from the Americans to the Brits. In any case, Saturday Night Live UK kicks off across the pond on March 21.
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Luke Bryan is reflecting on a special memory from “American Idol” that still weighs on his heart. During a recent interview with Billboard, Bryan shared the moment from the show he wishes he could revisit. The beloved country star said he would change how much time he spent appreciating singer Willie Spence while he had the chance.
“I would have cherished more moments with Willie Spence,” Bryan, 49, said.
Spence competed on season 19 of the long-running singing competition and quickly became a standout performer. The young singer later finished the season as the runner-up.
Bryan said the loss of Spence, who died in October 2022 at age 23, still feels deeply personal.
“That's a biggie to me — losing him and knowing how much he touched me in that room, in that space, watching him perform week in and week out. It was truly breathtaking,” Bryan shared.
Bryan also reflected on how close Spence's hometown was to his own.
During the conversation, Bryan sat alongside fellow “American Idol” judges Carrie Underwood and Lionel Richie, as well as longtime host Ryan Seacrest. As he spoke about Spence's journey on the show, Bryan noted that the singer grew up just a short distance from where he was raised in Georgia.
“He was from Douglas, Georgia, which is an hour from my hometown,” Bryan shared, adding, “That loss really affected me.”
For Bryan, that personal connection made Spence's death even more difficult to accept.
He said that from time to time, he still comes across old clips of Spence performing on the show. Watching them brings back memories of the young singer's powerful voice and the bond they built during the competition.
“It breaks my heart for him and his family, and I can only imagine what his career might have been,” Bryan continued.
Spence made a deep impression on both viewers and the judges during his run on “American Idol.”
Week after week, the Georgia singer delivered performances that showed the depth and strength of his voice.
Some of his most memorable moments included a stirring cover of Rihanna's “Diamonds” and a powerful rendition of “The Prayer,” the classic duet by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli.
For that performance, Spence took the stage with Katharine McPhee-Foster, creating one of the season's most emotional highlights.
Bryan said watching Spence sing throughout the competition was something he will never forget.
“It's like when you go back to your high school reunion and you realize some of your classmates aren't here,” he explained.
“Then you realize that considering the years you've been on the show, the sad reality is we are going to lose people.”
Spence finished the season as the runner-up, just behind the winner, Chayce Beckham.
Willie really did light up every room he walked into. He could change the mood instantly when he started singing. He will truly be missed. https://t.co/XTqm65UJu0— Luke Bryan (@lukebryan) October 12, 2022
Seacrest also spoke about the difficult reality of being part of the “American Idol” family for so many years.
After more than two decades on the show, he said the community has grown to include thousands of contestants, making moments of loss especially painful.
“When you've got that kind of history and the legacy in this show and touched so many different lives and people, it's never something that you ever think about when you start this, but it is inevitably part of life,” Seacrest, 51, said.
People reported that Spence died in October 2022 following a crash in Jasper, Tennessee. Authorities said his Jeep Cherokee veered off Interstate 24 and struck a tractor-trailer that was parked along the shoulder.
After the tragedy, a representative for “American Idol” shared a statement mourning the young singer.
“We are devastated about the passing of our beloved American Idol family member, Willie Spence.”
“He was a true talent who lit up every room he entered and will be deeply missed,” the statement continued. “We send our condolences to his loved ones.”
For Bryan, memories of Spence remain closely tied to their time together in the “American Idol” studio. The performances, he said, are moments he will always carry with him.
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Popular fitness influencer Sarah Green experienced the worst loss a parent could imagine. Her daughter, Honor Forrest, passed away at the age of 23.
“My beautiful daughter, Honor. Forever my baby,” Green shared via Instagram on February 23. “Our hearts are broken. There are no words for this kind of pain. As her family and her closest friends, we are holding each other close and leaning on our faith to navigate each day.”
She added, “Please respect our privacy at this unbearable time and for those who wish to help…pray for us.”
Sarah and Honor shared a special bond.
“My baby girl… If only love could have saved you ♥️” the influencer captioned a touching video montage with her young daughter.
A memorial is being held in Honor's honor on March 18.
“Honor…. to know her, is to love her,” Green shared. “If you love her, we welcome you to join us to celebrate her beautiful 23 years of life. Instead of flowers, we would prefer as a family any donations go to @mindcharity.”
While Green did not disclose her late daughter's cause of death, Men's Journal reported that she included the hashtags “#ketamine” and “#saynotodrugs,” which may indicate an accidental drug overdose may have been a factor.
Fans flooded the comments section of Green's post to send their love and condolences.
“This is heartbreaking, sorry for your loss. Losing a child is so difficult,” one follower wrote. “This gave me comfort when I had some grief, hoping this helps you too. Grief is like glitter. In the beginning, it's everywhere.. on your hands, in your hair, scattered across every corner of your life. You try to clean it up, to restore some sense of order. And for a while, it seems like you've succeeded. But then, one day, you move a sofa or open a forgotten drawer, and there it is again. A tiny sparkle that catches the light and reminds you of what you lost.”
Another commented, “My heart is absolutely broken for you all 💔 no words. Sending you so much love strength. We love you xxxxxxxx”
“I am sending you all so much love and strength. I don't have the right words to say but I am thinking of you all so much. Love you lots sending you the biggest hugs,” a third wrote.
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Ivanna Lisette Ortiz is being held in custody, with bail set at $10.2 million, after shots were fired at the singer's house on Sunday.
By
Kimberly Nordyke
Managing Editor, Digital
Police have identified the woman arrested in connection with the Sunday shooting at the home of Rihanna and A$AP Rocky.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department told The Hollywood Reporter that 35-year-old Ivanna Lisette Ortiz was booked for attempted murder. Bail has been set at $10,225,000.
New broke Sunday that a woman had fired several shots into the Beverly Hills mansion, with a round penetrating a wall of the home. The woman reportedly fired the shots from her car, a white Tesla, across the street and then fled the scene. A call was made to 911, with police responding around 1:21 p.m.
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Officers followed the suspect to a parking lot in Sherman Oaks, where she was arrested. According to an LAPD radio dispatch cited by the Los Angeles Times, the woman fired off “approximately 10 shots.”
Photos posted online show multiple bullet holes in the front driveway gate of the residence. According to multiple reports, Ortiz used an AR-15-style weapon, but LAPD declined to confirm further details.
Rihanna was reportedly at home during the shooting, but it's unclear if A$AP Rocky or their children were present. The couple have three children together: sons RZA, age 3, and Riot Rose, age 2, and daughter Rocki, who was born in September. The couple are said to live in the tony Post Office neighborhood of Beverly Hills.
No injuries were reported, and authorities have not yet released a motive.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out a rep for Rihanna and A$AP Rocky.
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By
Nancy Dillon
A man who says he was severely injured while working at Kanye West's $57 million Malibu beach mansion — and allegedly fired for refusing to run carbon monoxide–spewing generators indoors — is asking a jury to award him $1.7 million in damages from the artist now known as Ye.
Plaintiff Tony Saxon sat in a Los Angeles courtroom Monday as his lawyer, Ron Zambrano, revealed the requested award for the first time during the two-week civil trial. If jurors decide Ye acted with malice, they could tack on hefty punitive damages, too.
In clashing closing arguments, Zambrano and Ye's lawyer, Andrew Cherkasky, offered sharply different interpretations of the evidence. Zambrano argued that Saxon, 35, had been clearly hired as a full-time employee responsible for renovation project management and around-the-clock security at Ye's beachfront residence designed by the Pritzker Prize–winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
Saxon produced thousands of pages of records to support his claims, Zambrano said. By contrast, Ye's legal team turned over 19 pages.
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“He kept things that were embarrassing, and he still presented them to you,” Zambrano said of his client. “Mr. Saxon, for all his layers, was transparent with you. He has been victimized, and he got hurt.”
Among the documents, Zambrano said, were 94 pages of text messages exchanged with Ye, who bought the house for $57 million in 2021 and ordered it stripped of plumbing, toilets, fixtures, cabinets, electricity, a jacuzzi, and a concrete chimney topped with two custom 30-foot stainless steel stacks, jurors heard. Ye later sold the house for $21 million in September 2024, a steep loss.
Cherkasky, when it was his turn, branded Saxon a liar who had “a great time” voluntarily staying at Ye's “castle on the beach” until Ye cut him loose. The lawyer claimed Saxon later fabricated a story about an injury and unpaid wages for an undeserved payday. “The lies are so deep and so wicked, not a thing can be believed that came out of his mouth,” Cherkasky said, calling Saxon a “professional victim.”
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Cherkasky then praised Ye for showing up Friday, on time, and taking the witness stand. As Rolling Stone previously reported, Ye struggled to keep his eyes open. “He answered the questions. He wasn't sleeping. He was bored. This is beneath him,” Cherkasky said Monday.
The lawyer blasted Saxon's camp for pressing Ye's wife, Bianca Censori, on the witness stand Thursday over the fact that she signed some documents on Ye's behalf during the case. She told jurors she had a “POA,” apparently meaning power of attorney.
“The convenience of a wife signing something is no fraud, no sketchiness, no ‘conservatorship' whatsoever,” Cherkasky argued. “It's just the personal touch a wife may give her superstar husband.”
Censori, who worked on the Ando house as well, told jurors Ye had an aversion to stairs and windows, preferring “ramps and slides” instead, and “trying mesh as the barrier between indoor and out.” She also claimed Saxon told her he was a licensed contractor. Saxon denies this.
In his rebuttal closing argument, Zambrano said Ye hardly deserved a “participation prize” for his three hours of testimony. “Who's been here the rest of the time? You guys,” Zambrano told the jury of seven women and five men.
Zambrano centered his closing arguments on claims that Ye was gutting the Ando house without permits and hired Saxon not as a licensed contractor, but to keep the project discreet. He highlighted a message from Censori in a group text chain that read, “No permitting increases caution,” suggesting they should seek to minimize “red flags.”
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Kanye West Malibu Mansion Trial: Tony Saxon Denies 'A Most Heinous Fraud'
Zambrano said Ye terminated Saxon after he injured his back and started asking questions. Ye and Censori, who testified she was working as Yeezy's head of architecture at the time, clearly knew Saxon was injured, the lawyer argued, pointing to more texts.
“I hurt my back and have been taking it easy,” Saxon wrote in one message to Ye shown on a screen in court. “My back is so fucked,” Saxon wrote in a separate message to Censori In other texts, Saxon asked whether he could see a chiropractor who regularly visited Ye's warehouse office in Los Angeles. In one thread to Censori, he wrote, “I can't live here anymore,” adding that he asked Ye to hire new security.
Zambrano said Saxon was a vintage records dealer and performer who billed himself to Ye as a “guy with a van,” not a professional contractor. “Tony is not a general contractor. He never was. Everyone knew that,” Zambrano argued. He said Ye's failure to secure workers' compensation insurance for the Ando house renovation left him responsible for Saxon's past and future harm.
According to Zambrano, the $240,000 that Saxon received from Ye was used to pay workers and buy supplies. He said only $65,315 was left in Saxon's accounts when he was fired. The lawyer also highlighted a notation in bank records where Ye's accountant wrote that a $120,000 wire transfer to Saxon on Oct. 15, 2021, was for “Ando Project Management.” Zambrano also said Ye texted Saxon in a manner that was controlling him as an employee.
“He's looking for updates as a homeowner, as a person who hires a contractor,” Cherkasky countered. “Your passion about the outcome of [your home] is not an invitation to have [someone] become an employee.” Cherkasy argued that when Saxon texted Ye, “Please trust the process,” and “This will be done right,” he was acting in his capacity as an independent contractor.
During the two-week trial, jurors heard potentially pivotal testimony from handyman Jeromy Holding, who corroborated Saxon's claims that the project had no permits, and nobody considered Saxon the right guy to handle permitting. Holding said he heard the residence was destined to serve variously as a private school location, a bomb shelter, a monastery, a recording studio, and a playground with slides and ramps. He claimed Ye yelled at Saxon to work faster.
In her own full day of testimony, Censori resisted the idea that the project was rushed and chaotic. She described Ye's evolving directives as “iterations” of an overarching vision that remained constant. “This was all concepts. The idea that it changed is not necessarily correct. When he would describe ideas, it was holistically his concept. It was always going to be a residence. That was never changing.”
In his Friday testimony, Ye yawned, closed his eyes for long stretches, and at times seemed to catch his head falling forward as if dozing while seated on the witness stand. Speaking in monotone, he answered “I don't recall” to dozens of questions. He admitted he hired Saxon to execute his vision for the Ando house but did not elaborate.
Jurors are expected to start deliberating on Tuesday, the judge said.
The subdued testimony came a little more than a month after Ye took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal, apologizing for his long hisotry of antisemitic remarks. “I'm not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness,” Ye wrote in the apology published Jan. 26. “I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
Saxon's case is the first to reach a jury among a wave of civil complaints filed by people who worked for Ye over the past six years. The musician, 48, has faced more than a dozen lawsuits after he went on a highly publicized Twitter tirade in October 2022, tweeting his now-infamous plan to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” Weeks later, Rolling Stone published an investigation into the allegedly “toxic” work environment at his Yeezy label, where Ye purportedly told one staffer that “skinheads and Nazis were his greatest inspiration.”
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Last year, Ye again posted inflammatory messages on X, formerly Twitter, writing “IM A NAZI,” and “I LOVE HITLER.” Days after that, he aired a Super Bowl commercial promoting Yeezy.com, where he later sold shirts emblazoned with swastikas. Last May, he released a single titled “Heil Hitler,” which was quickly removed from most digital streaming services.
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Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2026 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.
In the first-ever Ohana round on “American Idol,” which aired on March 9, 2026, judges Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, and Lionel Richie weren't the only ones trimming the competition from 30 to the Top 20 contestants.
After three groups — family members, peers, and industry experts — chose the three Platinum Ticket recipients, the judges had to choose the other 17 who would advance. That meant another 10 didn't make it through, and some of the eliminations were a big surprise.
Sheldon Riley is no stranger to reality competitions, but he's become known worldwide as a singer who wears elaborate costumes and a mask. He has used “American Idol” to break out of that mold, step out from behind his mask, and bravely try to deliver more authentic performances.
Before the 26-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, sang his selection, he looked out at the crowd full of other contestants' family members and said it was a beautiful thing to see, but that he didn't have any family present for him.
“Unfortunately, I don't have family with me here today,” he said, getting choked up. “I actually haven't had family with me in a long time on this music journey of mine. Sorry, sorry. Sometimes in life, when you are not handed the right cards and not put in the right family with the right people, you have to build your own family and your own home. And that's me. I'm really grateful to be here. Thank you for having me, and thank you for being my little family here with me.”
Riley then sang “To Build a Home” by The Cinematic Orchestra featuring Patrick Watson. But after a couple of lines, he began to cry. He did manage to sing several more lines that were beautiful and had the industry experts in tears, but he crumpled again.
Underwood told him, “You have so much talent and range and power and range in your vocals. I feel like your brain just gets in the way. I feel like you're building up some walls in front of us, every time you sing. But you don't need to do that, because you're enough.”
Twenty-five-year-old stay-at-home mom Chloe Lauren stepped into a whole new world when she auditioned for season 24, and judges Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan, and Lionel Richie fell in love with her during her audition. Overcome with emotion, she tearfully told them, “I'm so lucky. I didn't think I'd ever get to be somewhere like this.”
She sometimes got emotional offstage during Hollywood Week, prompting her share in her Instagram Stories on February 24, “I've seen some comments online calling me ‘too emotional,' and I want to be clear — being emotional means I'm invested, present, and passionate.”
At the end of Hollywood Week, the singer from Warrenville, South Carolina, managed to win a sing-off against Mary Jo Young. But during the Ohana round, as she performed Adele's “Hello,” she ran into trouble with the band and sounded a bit shaky. Bryan whispered that she needed to learn to control her emotions better, but Underwood told her in the end, “Way to finish strong.” Nevertheless, Lauren was sent packing.
Many fans of Bryant Thomas were shocked by his elimination after a powerful segment aired before his performance of Fleetwood Mac's “Landslide.” The singer, who got engaged during his “American Idol” audition, shared that he'd recently moved from Mobile, Alabama, to South Florida and felt disconnected from his friends and family.
Wearing his signature Crocs, Thomas got a bit emotional while he sang, but he received a standing ovation from all three judges. However, Bryan told him, “Before you sang, talking to your family and telling them how much you love 'em is emotional. We still gotta remember ‘I got a song to deliver and I gotta make sure I'm knocking this thing out start to finish. Now, you're one of my favorite voices, but it got a little screamy, a little bit.”
When it was evident he did not move ahead to the next round, many fans flooded his social media page to complain, including one who wrote, “Im so shocked he didnt make it to the top 20! PLEASE dont stop singing brother! You got such an amazing talent!”
Here are the other seven contestants who didn't make it through to the next round: Bella Emry, 22, of Bend, Oregon; Tianna Roberts, 27, of Sumter, South Carolina; Brianna Yancey, of Alpharetta, Georgia; Kiera Howell, 16, of Geneva, Alabama; Jacquie Lee, 28, of Colts Neck, New Jersey; Brenna Brigman, 18, of Arlington, Texas; and Michael Garner, 16, of Forrest City, Arkansas.
Voting will begin with the first of two episodes featuring the Top 20, set to air on March 16 at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
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The rock star took to Instagram to clear the air after a quote from his interview went viral for all the wrong reasons.
By
Annie Harrigan
Despite what headlines you might have read, Jack White does not in fact think Taylor Swift‘s music is boring.
On Monday (March 9), White shared a lengthy text post to his Instagram, with the White Stripes co-founder explaining that he's putting the post up for just a day and then taking it down. (In fact, it's already been deleted just a few hours later.) In the post, White got straight into business. “I didn't say I think Taylor Swift's music is ‘boring,'” White says. “Or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together.”
The post was a direct response to backlash from a Sunday interview with The Guardian. When asked if any of his songs were entirely autobiographical, White said that they are not. “Now it's become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups.” He then says that he doesn't find this style of songwriting “interesting at all.”
Naturally, the Internet quickly went ablaze. Less than 24 hours after the interview was published, publications recirculated the quote under headlines announcing that White was “throwing shade” at the “Anti-Hero” singer. Insider Hook‘s managing editor Bonnie Stiernberg shared a think piece titled “There Is ‘No Right' Way to Write a Song.” And, of course, Swifties were quick to defend their queen. Some called out White for being a “hypocrite,” stating that half of his music was about his divorce with Karen Elson. Others pointed out that White's comments came out on International Women's Day. One simply said “not all men but always a man.”
In response to the flak, the “Seven Nation Army” singer cleared the air in his since-deleted Instagram post. He explained that his point was that he found writing about himself in his lyrics uninteresting, and that imaginary characters are “more attractive for me as a writer.”
He continued to acknowledge Swift's and other similar songwriters' success in the industry and said that he is “very happy for them that they've succeeded in engaging with so many music lovers in their own way.”
After clearing up what he meant regarding songwriting and Swift's style, White turned his attention to journalists.
“These are the times where I'm made less and less interested in doing interviews,” he says. “Because in the age of this massive demand for click bait and content, any scrape of anything interesting or off the beaten path that can be turned into drama is swarmed over and spit out as bait.”
As a result, White finds himself less willing to give answers with “any sort of romance or passion or reflection” as he feels they may be misconstrued and used to boost page views.
Hopefully, White's post laid to bed the newly manufactured beef between the rocker and pop star.
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This idiot can not sing, and only has one song worth a damn. Such an over rated idiot.
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By
Charisma Madarang
This is why we can't have nice things.
Jack White posted a statement on Instagram Monday evening after numerous publications took his comments in an interview with The Guardian out of context. When discussing poetry and songwriting, White mentioned fellow musician Taylor Swift‘s style of songwriting, and explored his own approach to storytelling when creating music. Unfortunately, online outlets framed his words as a critique of the Tortured Poets star, especially when it came to headlines that quickly circulated on the internet.
“Putting this up for a day and then taking down to just put this to bed,” wrote White in the since-deleted post. “I didn't say that I think Taylor Swift's music was ‘boring' or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together. What I was trying to say in an interview I did about poetry and lyric writing, was that I don't find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about and It could be uninteresting for people who listen to my music to delve into, and that imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer.”
White went on to acknowledge the “tremendous success” of Swift and other songwriters who have their own process, while stating that just “because I say I have a way of doing things doesn't mean that I think that EVERYONE should do it the same way.” He added, “They should do what works for them, And they do, and it is obviously appealing to many people, and I'm glad to hear that.”
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When asked by The Guardian in the article published Sunday, if any of any of his songs were entirely autobiographical, White replied, “Not too much. Now it's become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired breakups, which I don't find interesting at all. I think it's a little bit boring for me to write about myself.”
White further explained, “Even if I've had a really interesting day, I feel like I've already lived that, I don't need to go through it every time I sing this song. If it's something really painful, I'm not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over. So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else's character. I can't really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else's shoes.”
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In his Monday statement, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee said that at times he has been “made less and less interested in doing interviews” amid the “age of this massive demand for click bait and content.” Any “scrape of anything interesting” can be used as drama and “spit out as bait,” he continued, leading White to “not want to answer questions with any sort of romance or passion or reflection as I'm too busy having to worry about accidentally triggering nonsense like this from so called ‘journalists' and ‘editors.'”
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He ended his response to the wave of backlash following his interview by saying, “This has always been a problem as it encourages artists to give ‘safe' answers to any question and stifles artistic vision and imagination and pushes all of us to not share anything interesting, which was one of the points I made about keeping private things private in that same interview. But yeah, content.”
White recently released Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, a collection of lyrics from the artist's solo recordings including No Name, The Raconteurs, and more, plus selected poems and writings by White, and essays by poet Adrian Matejka.
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If there's an upside to the game industry's continued obsession with risk-averse remakes, it's that this trend has brought several iconic horror series back from the dead. The latest to get the remake treatment (in this case, for the second time) is Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, a 2003 PlayStation 2 game often considered an undisputed great. Simply put, it's about ghost photography. Less simply put, it's about the suffocating specter of traditionalism and a town so steeped in past sins that it's frozen in an endless loop of repentant torment. Make no mistake, Minakami Village is not an ideal tourist destination.
As for this remake, like virtually all of these recent horror retreads, there's a devil's bargain at play. It trades the original's fixed camera angles and the atmosphere that came with it for shiny new graphics, a much friendlier control scheme (the original had character movement on the right stick and camera movement on the left, which is just twisted), and the ability to play it, like, at all—it has never been re-released, and a PS2 disc goes for a lot on eBay. Thankfully, what matters most returns intact: This remake is damn scary, both in an immediate sense, as creepy ghosts pop out of nowhere, and in its chilling reminder of how structural violence can seep into the very bones of a place.
The bad times begin as a pair of twins, Mio and Mayu, reminisce in a forest glade. They had played here when they were little kids, something that brings back a not-so-pleasant memory for Mio. Her overeagerness once led to her sister Mayu taking a steep fall, one that left her with a permanent leg injury. When Mio snaps out of reliving this, she sees that Mayu is wandering off, following a crimson butterfly into the forest while mumbling something incoherent. Mio chases after her, but is swallowed by the woods. When she finally breaks into a clearing, the sky has turned dark. In front of her is a decrepit town that looks straight out of the previous century. She'll soon learn its name—Minakami Village—and become very familiar with a heinous ritual conducted there. Mio has to track down her sister and discover a way out of this very bad place before it swallows them.
Doing this isn't so easy, mostly because of the ghosts. To survive, Mio needs to use a powerful relic, the Camera Obscura, a tool that can perform exorcisms by taking pictures of the dead. Just like when the game first came out, this focus on photography is ingenious because it goes against what most people want to do when something really unnerving is on the screen: close their eyes. You'll need to stare straight at ghoulish apparitions as you wait for the camera to focus. Not only that, but you'll have to wait until the spirit is about to lunge before snapping a picture to get the most out of your film and stun the ghost out of its attack. If you don't time it right, well, at least there are healing items conveniently stashed throughout the village (although picking them up may trigger a jump-scare and another haunting).
Beyond this paranormal game of chicken that leaves you waiting for the perfect moment, there are plenty of smaller Camera Obscura features to fiddle with, like filters that come with pros and cons—one lets you take pictures from much further away but is longer to reload, while another is highly damaging but only works at close range. It's not exactly as complicated as navigating a DSLR, but the basic camera functionality of adjusting your focus, zoom, filters, and various types of film (basically ammo) offers lots of options to lay the dead to rest. These many toggles also create natural moments of panic as you fumble to get the perfect configuration while something nasty approaches.
These ghost battles are spine-tingling in the moment, but Fatal Frame II's greatest staying power comes from how you have to use this camera to document the past. Specifically, you'll find passive spirits whose lingering emotions have left a psychic imprint, letting you take their pictures as they reveal the story behind Minakami Village. The player is cast as a paranormal investigator, pulled into this tantalizing mystery as they discover secrets through a viewfinder. You'll also (less subtly) learn things through text and audio logs; a true classic of video game exposition.
Piecing together the truth is a slow, winding process that mirrors Mio's path through this village, taking her through a maze of abandoned homes and subterranean passages that stew in potent J-horror discomfort: At one point, a long-haired woman crawls out of a box that may as well be Sadako's well from Ring. The sound design sparks much of the tension as creaky floorboards disrupt the silence of these long-abandoned homes. Eventually, despite all the ghost attacks, you form a strange bond with this horrible place, its familiar stairwells and sliding doors, and even the alleyway where you were chased by an unkillable nightmare monster.
This intimacy makes it all the more disturbing when you're confronted with the realities of this deeply cursed village, a place where centuries-old beliefs have warped into something twisted and cruel. You're forced to reckon with the sins of history, particularly as it comes to a specific type of patriarchal violence against children.
The most critical detail this remake gets across is this inertia of tragedy, weaving together slow-burning anxiety and an uncomfortably believable backdrop into something that will outlast the jump scares triggered when you open doors (which are somewhat overused). While the lack of fixed camera angles undermines some of the ambiance found in the original, it's still damn scary in a different way. You'll creep down pitch-dark corridors with nothing but your perpetually flickering flashlight or be chased by an unkillable specter whose tormented cries echo through washi-paper walls. They even slapped a filter over the game's pristine modern graphics to give it a bit of that old-school grime; there was probably a more elegant way to pull this off, but this touch admittedly works better than you would think.
The remake's changes mostly land, but there is one big snag: its much slower pacing. Part of the problem comes from the all-new optional side-missions. Each is tied to one of the major characters from the story, and while a few add a bit more heft to their demises, they feel redundant to the main plot. The other major issue that inflates the playtime is that even if you avoid these side-stories, the central ghost battles eventually start to wear a bit thin. Part of this comes down to these spirits having a frustrating tendency to become “enraged,” causing them to recover their health as they become stronger and more aggressive. This will sometimes happen multiple times in the same encounter, and while unlockable camera upgrades help get around weaker foes, some of the late-stage exorcisms go from frightening to frustrating due to large, replenishing health pools. The noticeably low framerate certainly doesn't help either. While it's important to get across some amount of helplessness in these kinds of games, the frequency and length of these hauntings eventually lead to outright fatigue, especially given that this remake is noticeably longer than the original.
Still, extended runtime or no, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly's central horrors haven't lost their resonance. Trapped in an endless night, these broken spirits convey the hell of history with every miserable cry. They're hard to look at and even harder to capture on camera, but it's impossible to get anywhere without viewing this kind of ugliness head-on. People will probably argue about which version of this game is the “best” or “definitive” one for some time. The only reason this remake warrants that question is that it gets across the most salient point: Minakami Village is the kind of nightmare that should never be repeated.
Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly was developed by Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo Games and published by Koei Tecmo. Our review is based on the PlayStation 5 version. It is also available for the Nintendo Switch 2, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
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On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are taking a closer look at a pair of pop stars who got their starts in the 2010s.
Bruno Mars released his debut album in 2010, while Harry Styles and his One Direction bandmates dropped theirs in 2011. In the decade and a half since, these two have skyrocketed to superstardom in their own ways — and then in the past two weeks, they each blessed pop fans with a brand-new project.
On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are taking a closer look at Mars' The Romantic (released Feb. 27) and Styles' Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (March 6) and where each pop star is in his respective career. For Mars, he's cementing the loverboy credentials he's built up through “Just the Way You Are” all the way through Silk Sonic's 1970s come-ons. For Styles, he's taking a sonic left turn and introducing his rabid fanbase to new soundscapes and subject matters as they evolve through life together.
Listen to our full breakdown in the new episode below:
Also on the show, we've got chart news on how Mars is back at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time in more than a decade, as The Romantic debuts atop the chart. Meanwhile, the set's lead single “I Just Might” comes back to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart. Plus, could Styles debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 next week with Kiss All the Time?
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard's managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
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As L.A. prepares to host the world-renowned restaurant's $1,500-a-night pop up, Hollywood may find revelations of the creative visionary's violent temper all too familiar.
By
Gary Baum
Senior Writer
On the eve of its $1,500-per-person Los Angeles pop-up, which starts Mar. 11, Noma — often ranked the world's top restaurant — has been exposed as a creative institution that built and sustained its reputation on physical and psychological workplace abuse. The New York Times investigation, published Mar. 7, came as no surprise to the fine dining world. Star chef Rene Redzepi's misconduct had long been an open secret. In fact, he'd himself disclosed more than a decade ago in an essay that he'd “yelled and pushed people” at Noma, explaining, “I've been a bully for a large part of my career.”
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The revelations detail how Redzepi would assault and degrade employees in the pursuit of his exacting standards. This included punching underlings, striking them with kitchen implements and slamming them against walls — as well as threatening, according to the Times, “to use his influence to get them blacklisted from restaurants around the world, to have their families deported, or to get their wives fired from their jobs at other businesses.” The chef has since apologized.
What's most telling is how Redzepi enacted a collective punishment theater at his restaurant in Copenhagen, which is known for revolutionizing Nordic cuisine with its emphasis on foraged ingredients and innovative fermentation techniques. His staff was forced to witness degradations against employees he believed had failed him. This complicity ritual — common in gangs, cults and other authoritarian organizations — lessens the likelihood of dissent.
I've long covered fine dining for The Hollywood Reporter. Yet Redzepi's dark dynamic with his mistreated acolytes brings most to mind my experience over the years investigating L.A.'s toxic high-control groups, in which charismatic, visionary leaders — of an acting conservatory, a fitness studio, a personal-growth workshop — have wielded unimaginable power over followers to devastating effect. Like Noma, they're hermetic subcultures in which dreams of ascension and perfection often instead turn into unintended nightmares.
The restaurant industry is known for its normalized cruelty and casual nihilism. Anthony Bourdain wrote multiple bestselling books about it, and FX's acclaimed The Bear is an exploration of the consequences. But the singular dilemmas of its fine dining realm, with Noma as Exhibit A, are perhaps best understood not within the context of hospitality. Instead, the better analogue is arthouse filmmaking.
Both scenes exploit the desire for — and peril of — prestige. These hothouses draw an inexhaustible supply of idealistic pilgrims who've chosen to forego more stable and remunerative career paths in pursuit of the high-wire act that is a meaningful creative life. The vicious crucibles they then encounter are all too often rationalized as just another step along their hero's journey of sacrifice on the way to hoped-for success. In other words, this makes them easy pickings.
In recent decades, Hollywood has romanticized haute cuisine — its aesthetics, personalities, strictures, ingenuities, excesses — in everything from Bravo's long-running competition Top Chef and Netflix's hagiographic Chef's Table to the satirical but still adoring horror-comedy film The Menu. In each project, there's an understanding that what sets fine dining apart from all other dining is that it's a conscious performance. Those tasting menus are the original binge entertainment.
Wolfgang Puck, the industry's favorite chef, famously pioneered the open kitchen in high-end restaurants nearly a half-century ago at Spago. This act turned diners into spectators within a stage set where the chef is the star.
Several of Redzepi's employees described how he subverted Noma's own open kitchen, which was an outward display of masterful technique and mindful professionalism. While they prepared dishes in view of the dining room, he crouched out of sight below the counters, jabbing his charges in the legs.
Redzepi closed the original Denmark location of Noma a few years ago, citing its unsustainable financial model, which relied on the unpaid labor of many of the lowliest of those pilgrims, who've now been revealed as abused. Since then, it'd been refashioned as a mobile global brand, propelled by what was until now his exalted public reputation.
It's unclear whether Redzepi's misconduct will hurt him and Noma. After all, if nothing else, he's a nimble performer: virtuoso kitchen genius, community-minded symposium guru, contrite artiste. There are few others in fine dining with his range. Now we'll see if he can pull off a villain arc.
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The actor, who plays Dr. Jack Abbott, breaks down the biggest moments of season two so far.
By
Seija Rankin
Senior Editor
When The Pitt‘s executive producers first approached Shawn Hatosy with their pitch for Dr. Abbott's season two arc, he balked. “There was some discussion early on when I joined the show about how maybe Abbott would come back full-time in season two, so I was eagerly awaiting the news,” he explains. “And then they came back to me to suggest that he's in the E.R. in the middle of the season and I was like, what does that mean? Why am I coming in the middle? Am I dying? Am I coming in on a gurney?”
The actor came around quickly once the creators explained that they were going to have Dr. Abbott serve as part of a SWAT team. “I loved the idea,” he added.
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Hatosy is currently in Toronto filming his next project, the FX limited series Cry Wolf, alongside Olivia Colman, Brie Larson, showrunner Sarah Treem (The Affair) and director Anne Sewitsky. He can't say much about the series yet, outside of teasing that it's “one of the best scripts” he's ever read and that it is the sort of narrative that constantly leaves the viewer off balance. The actor is also looking forward to meeting more fans of The Pitt than on his last trip to the country. “Animal Kingdom is huge in Canada, I think it must have been on during COVID or something,” he says. “When I was here during the summer, I couldn't walk to the elevator in my hotel without somebody being like, ‘Oh my God, you're Pope.'”
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Below, he takes a break from set to break down season two, including his The Pitt directorial debut.
Let's start with Abbott's SWAT storyline. When does this man sleep?
I guess he doesn't. He has his days free and he does all this stuff. I think he's very lonely and just trying to figure out things to keep him occupied. I really love how he brings up the therapist, because he misses the point in such a big way. I remember having a conversation with my therapist when I gave up drinking, and I was like, I need something. I found tennis through that session. So I can imagine Abbott having a similar conversation, and he probably went and tried to play golf and it was not his thing so he decided to join the SWAT team.
Without giving anything away, I'm curious if, when you were learning about this season's arc, you thought Robby was actually going to go on his motorcycle trip?
I did. I was disappointed because I thought it was so clear to Abbott through the mass casualty event what his purpose was. Even though he's a bit confused about how to live that out, because he's doing SWAT, he's still trying. I guess this is Robby's version of self-reflection, but no-helmet motorcycle-riding… it's disappointing.
Have you ever or will you ever ride a motorcycle?
No. I love the idea of it, but I don't trust other people. I like to ride a bike, and then when we were shooting the roof scene in season one, that was a functional hospital. We had to stop probably 12 times throughout filming because helicopters were coming in, and our technical advisor was like, yeah those are all bike and motorcycle injuries. It was just like, well, fuck.
Did you notice an immediate shift after the success of the first season of The Pitt? Did your phone start ringing more?
I guess the phone was ringing. The way I was getting the at-bats was different. The self-tape request would come, and I don't love to do self-tapes anyways because you're often guessing at what they want. After some of the success of The Pitt, I was getting into meetings with casting directors rather than having to provide a self-tape. I don't think Ready or Not 2 would have happened — they were big fans of The Pitt. I was unfamiliar with the first movie, so when [the script] arrived, I was like, what is this? But I was immediately taken with its dysfunction. It was disturbing and hilarious.
You really engage with the fandom in a way that feels unique. Do you remember the point at which you realized viewers of the show were becoming quite rabid?
I don't think I understood it as it was happening. I'm certainly somebody that was online and paying attention to stuff, but I wasn't on TikTok. But then I would see these edits come through, and the comments. Our fan base is so forensic, and they look and read into everything. Around the Emmy nominations, I could sense that it was taking on something totally different. Then Animal Kingdom started streaming on Netflix, and it was the confluence of those two things that made me really pay attention to what people were saying.
Have you ever felt shy or embarrassed by the attention that is being directed specifically towards you, and often specifically about you being hot? I'm thinking about the reaction to Abbott's shirtless scene, or even the reaction to the news that he would have a shirtless scene.
I try to never take any of it seriously. Yes, that episode really blew up and it's weird. Certainly, it creates these lines where things can get a little complicated, like if I'm out in public with my family. I don't want to be the guy who isn't taking the picture with the fans because I know that it means something to them. Especially when I've talked to fans who are really moved by the show, I've had people say they were struggling and then watched Abbott not jump [off the roof]. But then when it comes to me and my pasty, flabby back out in the world, yeah, it can get a little weird. I just try and enjoy it.
You directed episode nine; did that come out of those same discussions about Abbott having a bigger role this season?
Well, because I've worked with John [Wells] for a number of years, I'm always throwing my name out there. I remember last year we were shooting episode 15 and John was directing. Abbott had so much medical [dialogue] that episode — and I'm not Noah, OK? He's very good at looking at that day-of and just being able to do it. Like Laurence Olivier. I take a lot of repetition and preparation. So anyways, in between takes, John was like, “Would you want to direct this show?” I'd just directed Rescue High Surf, another one of our shows, and it had just aired, so he was asking me if I'd want to do it again and on this show. I was like, I don't know if I can do Abbott and be a director at the same time. And then I went home that night and thought, Did I just talk myself out of a job? So I made sure to call him and say, “I didn't mean that I don't want to direct period.” And then I think in season two, somebody ended up not being able to do it, and I was able to step in.
Did everything go smoothly?
No. (Laughs.) There were some changes in the script early on, and it caused a whole trauma to be moved into the episode. And Isa had appendicitis, and she had a lot in the episode, so we shot out of order for basically the first time so that we could put her stuff at the end. Also, the first thing that John's office said to me when they called me about this is, “We want you to direct but we want you to know that Abbott's in the episode.” And it was fine, because Abbott isn't in it a lot. I don't know how Noah did it [in episode six]. The scene I was most anxious about was filming outside; it was an exterior, and I had Howard with the oxygen on his face and he's talking through the iPad to his sister on a FaceTime on the screen, and I'm in the scene.
Was that actress actually on FaceTime, or is that done in post?
We built a little room in the hospital, and the actress was there that day. We had her on the phone and we were able to do it live. Usually, you'd have a script supervisor read those lines and then we would burn in that image on the phone.
Did you solicit any advice?
Noah directed episode six, so he was editing and finishing it at the time. The thing about our show is that our scripts are dense. There's a lot of pages, and we fly. The dialogue moves very fast, and so much of the show is transitioning from scene to scene in a continuous way. So you can create really beautiful transitions but if the show is long, those are the first things that are going to be cut. I had a couple that I thought were indefensible. I thought they were bulletproof. That they can't cut them. And of course they did. The episode was very specifically written to start on [with] Robby and Dana at the hub, watching the madness, and then they share a look and she walks over to the bell and starts ringing it. So I created this very cool shot where I was over Robby, looking at the hub, hearing it and it rotated around him and found them both. I loved it, I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and then after the producers got done with the cut, it started with her walking to the bell. I was like, damn it. (Laughs.)
Can fans expect another Abbott-themed playlist for season two?
I was actually just thinking about this. I will do it for sure, because it seemed to be very popular in season one. I like to feed the fans.
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Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: Supernatural, the boys
Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) choking out his character in The Boys Season 5 trailer has Misha Collins feeling some Supernatural deja vu.
As we inch closer to the April 8th kick-off of the final, scorched-earth battle between Homelander (Antony Starr) and Butcher (Karl Urban), there are a whole lot of storylines coming out of what we've seen so far of the final season. For example, what role will Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy play in all of this? Will he remain a "loyal dad" to Homelander, or set aside his revenge mission against Butcher when he sees what his "son" has planned? When the word came down that Ackles' Supernatural co-stars, Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins, were announced as joining Prime Video and Showrunner Eric Kripke's The Boys, that raised another wave of speculation (especially considering what the trio teased about it over the past several months). Earlier today, Collins had a little fun with it all, sharing a look at Soldier Boy choking out his character and comparing it to a scene from their Supernatural days where the roles were reversed, and Castiel (Collins) had the upper hand on Dean (Ackles). "Revenge is sweet, isn't it, [Jensen Ackles]?" Collins wrote as the caption to his post.
Here's a look at Collins' Instagram post from earlier today, followed by a look back at our thoughts on what that Season 5 trailer could mean for Ackles/Soldier Boy, Padalecki, and Collins:
A post shared by Misha Collins (@misha)
In the official teaser, we heard the words, "A reckoning is coming," spoken as Homelander stood before a frozen Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), although it's tough to say if those words were directly tied to that moment. Now, we're learning that as he attempts to achieve immortality, Homelander wants his dear old dad along for the ride. That fits with Kripke's previous comments that their father-son dynamic would be a significant factor this season. What we're not buying into is the idea that Soldier Boy will buy into what Homelander's planning. Does he see his son as a means to an end – in this case, killing Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) for betraying him? Yes, but seeing Homelander positioning himself as an actual kind of god takes things to a whole other level. By the way, the exchange between Soldier Boy and Homelander about why he woke him up was twisted genius.
Here, we get a brief tease of a Soldier Boy-Homelander stand-off, when Soldier Boy learns for the first time that Butcher has powers – before he eats an automobile, courtesy of Butcher:
Looks like someone might be getting a history lesson…
In the previous teaser, we saw Soldier Boy behind Jared Padalecki's character before it cut to the scene with Homelander and Soldier Boy together. Later, we see Padalecki's character in what appears to be some kind of supersuit in the middle of a very gory scene. During Fan Expo Boston (as reported by Collider) in August, Padalecki teased this about his character's connection to Soldier Boy: "I'll say this much — my character is very excited to meet Soldier Boy." In the segment we saw in the trailer, we're getting another look at a shocked Padalecki, with Misha Collins in the mix this time. It's clear that Soldier Boy isn't too thrilled with Collins; the suit Collins is wearing suggests he might be tied into the whole god/religion run that Homelander is on – maybe something that Soldier Boy can't but into.
We've seen all too well what can happen when Soldier Boy unleashes his power. Look no further than how close he came to putting down Homelander for good. So it's interesting to see who he's unleashing on here. Unless we're victims of slick editing, it seems Butcher and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) are shocked by what they're seeing, but not necessarily afraid. Of course, Butcher is on a don't-give-a-fuck run, so that might explain it (Frenchie does seem a bit more "anxious" about the situation).
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The horror genre is especially receptive to franchises, legacy sequels, and reboots. It's a rare case in which a franchise's seventh entry can suddenly bring in the highest box office revenue to date. Audiences are hungry to nostalgically return to the horror franchises that have scared them the most over the years, whether that's Halloween, Scream, The Exorcist, or Paranormal Activity.
Paranormal Activity, created by Oren Peli, first hit theaters in 2007. Its groundbreaking minimalist approach to found-footage ghost stories has spawned a seven-film franchise that's grossed nearly $900 million worldwide and is likely to cross the billion-dollar threshold after the release of the recently announced upcoming installment.
It's been five years since Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, a standalone sequel and soft reboot that ditched the franchise's lore and failed to commit to its signature found-footage angle. It's been a decade since the last conventional Paranormal Activity film, which has been long enough for this terrifying tradition to come back into favor.
Paranormal Activity was a defining horror franchise during the 2010s that helped revitalize the found-footage genre for modern audiences. So much of these films' success comes down to the directors who are shaping these stories and constructing the scares. Ian Tuason, the writer and director of A24's viral aural horror film, undertone, has been announced as the creative force at the helm of “Paranormal Activity 8.” Paranormal Activity's DNA can be felt in undertone, a claustrophobic and small-scale experience where an investigation into mysterious audio recordings unleashes something considerably more sinister.
However, these tonal similarities are no accident.
Courtesy of A24
Ian Tuason explicitly turned to Paranormal Activity during undertone‘s construction. “The audio files in undertone were based on the first Paranormal Activity movie, in terms of the couple who were recording themselves,” admits Tuason. “It was a very big influence on the movie.” Tuason's meticulous control over his craft led to a fortuitous meeting at Blumhouse with both Jason Blum and James Wan, in which he explicitly voiced his interest in Paranormal Activity.
“Jason Blum initially talked to me about a bunch of different IPs, and I expressed the most interest in Paranormal Activity,” explains Tuason. Tuason is the perfect choice to reboot Paranormal Activity since he's well aware of how to get the most out of a smaller budget, which was essential to the bare bones indie-esque approach to the earlier Paranormal Activity films.
Tuason outlines that James Wan was interested in his angle for the revival and where he would take future Paranormal Activity films. “This was a spontaneous meeting because I just happened to be in LA at the time. I pitched him [James Wan] something in one minute that I thought of the day before. And that was it.
“I felt like the franchise couldn't be rebooted in any other way.”
Tuason is keeping the specifics of his new Paranormal Activity film close to his chest. It remains unclear if the franchise's de facto demon mascot, Toby, will return. However, Tuason explains that the advancements in technology since The Ghost Dimension‘s release are what excite him most about his new entry. “Technology — camera technology — has advanced to a point where it's become a big part of the film and what I want to do there,” admits Tuason. It's an encouraging direction for the franchise, considering how well Tuason incorporates audio and visual technological elements in undertone.
More details about the next Paranormal Activity will develop in the coming year, but one subject that Tuason can definitively rule out – at least from him – is the possibility of a Paranormal Activity VR expansion. Tuason cut his teeth with VR horror films before undertone, but he's not interested in returning to this space, even if Paranormal Activity is a property that lends itself to the medium. “No,” confirms Tuason on the prospect of a VR Paranormal Activity promo tool. “I went from cinema to VR, and then I realized how much I love cinema. I went back to the cinema, and now I'm not leaving.” With undertone's breakout success, Tuason will hopefully have a rich, long career in cinema ahead of him.
undertone is in theaters on March 13, courtesy of A24. Paranormal Activity 8 is currently scheduled to be released on May 21, 2027.
Photo by Dustin Rabin, courtesy of A24
Daniel Kurland is a freelance writer, comedian, and critic, whose work can be read on Splitsider, Bloody Disgusting, Den of Geek, ScreenRant, and across the Internet.
Daniel knows that "Psycho II" is better than the original and that the last season of "The X-Files" doesn't deserve the bile that it conjures. If you want a drink thrown in your face, talk to him about "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II," but he'll always happily talk about the "Puppet Master" franchise.
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Based on a short story by Josh Malerman (Bird Box, Incidents Around the House), A Ben Evans Film is now in production in Detroit.
Bloody Disgusting has exclusively learned that Grammy-nominated electronic music producer Joel “deadmau5” Zimmerman has joined the cast in a cameo role.
The movie will also feature a Greasy Strangler reunion, with Michael St. Michaels and Sky Elobar once again playing a father-son duo.
“Any chance to reunite with Michael and get a little grease back on the screen is a good time,” says Elobar. “We had a blast making The Greasy Strangler, and it's been a lot of fun bringing that energy into A Ben Evans Film.”
A Ben Evans Film finds the titular filmmaker (Elobar) struggling to complete his magnum opus. As work progresses and Evans descends deeper into obsession, he finds himself going to greater and greater lengths to complete his “masterpiece.”
The darkly comic, psychological horror story is written and directed by James Henry Hall & Bret K. Hall.
Alamo Drafthouse founder and NEON co-founder Tim League (The Greasy Strangler, The ABCs of Death) has boarded the project as an executive producer.
Taylor Cole has also joined as producer alongside Malerman and Ryan Lewis' Spin a Black Yarn, Magical Jungle Productions, and Little Spark Films.
“From the moment A Ben Evans Film crossed my desk, it was clear this was the kind of bold, off-center genre project you don't see every day,” says Cole. “It's unsettling, original, and exactly the kind of film that stays with you.”
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Radio is an artistic medium that taps directly into the imaginative subconscious. In the gaps of space, the mind fills in the blanks. When radio first became widespread, it was swiftly accompanied by tales of ghosts and demons possessing the airwaves. Much of that is easily explained away as the overactive anxieties of a populace who did not yet understand how this newfangled technology worked, but the spirit of those days survived. With each new advancement, suspicions arise, and something swoops in to prey upon our latent fears.
Enter: podcasts. Everyone and their mother has one these days, or so it seems. Podcasts are just a digital form of radio, but the peak of its popularity has coincided with another obsession in the zeitgeist, that of true crime and the paranormal. undertone takes advantage of this moment with one of the most exceptionally sound-designed films in the genre's history. A film which makes extraordinary use of negative space – not just auditory but visual, begging viewers to scan every frame for any possible indication of threat or lurking evil – undertone works best when gnawing at nagging expectations.
Unfortunately, a lot of that spectacular work is upended by a glaringly underwritten screenplay with a confusingly inept understanding of how podcasting actually works. As a director, Ian Tuason is economical, calculated, and equipped with an astoundingly good compositional eye. His script, however, lacks any real depth or reason. It's a frustrating film precisely because Tuason convincingly shows us what he can do (so much so that he has been named as the new steward of the Paranormal Activity franchise), but what it lacks ultimately tips the scales in the wrong direction.
undertone works when it is focused on the margins, which is where Evy (Nina Kiri) mostly lives. An isolated woman who spends the bulk of her time caretaking for her dying mother (Michèle Duquet), Evy's only connection to the outside world seems to be her popular paranormal podcast called The Undertone. She has a boyfriend, Darren (Ryan Turner), but has a much closer relationship to her podcast co-host, Justin (Adam DiMarco). The two host their show from across continents, which means that, conveniently for Tuason's purposes, Evy has to record it around the spooky time of three in the morning.
The structure of the show is pretty simple. Justin acts as its unequivocal believer in paranormal activity, while Evy is the skeptic. On each episode, they discuss a story – sometimes in real time – and debate the merits of its connection to the great beyond. Evy's skepticism lies in direct contrast to her mother's religiosity; Christian symbols and figurines adorn the house, and Tuason relentlessly focuses our attention on them. It's not particularly subtle, but it is clear.
Off the podcast, Evy's life is very undefined. Her relationship with Darren doesn't seem to hold much water, but given that she's just found out she's pregnant, everything feels a bit hairy. On the podcast, Justin is surprising her with a new, juicy episode. He has received a mysterious email from what seems like an automated account with ten audio files. His pitch is that they listen to them, live on air, and respond to whatever it is they hear.
The audio is really creepy. It starts off as a cutesy recording of a man, Mike (Jeff Yung), trying to prove to his wife, Jessa (Keana Bastidas), that she talks in her sleep, but devolves into an odd mix of static and children's songs sung in reverse. Justin keeps insisting he hears messages inside the files, but Evy, whether out of genuine skepticism or an attempt to stave off her metastasizing fears, argues there's nothing there at all.
For every impressive and meticulous directorial choice, there's an equally silly and convenient narrative choice.
But it becomes harder and harder to deny it. Actually, Tuason does such a strong job at holding off and escaping any horror clichés that for much of the film, it seems distinctly possible that Evy is just sleep-deprived and paranoid. But because we are so well immersed in her own auditory landscape, we are left to work in overdrive trying to determine if even the slightest bit of movement in the corner of a frame is something demonic.
The thing is, much of Evy's character doesn't square up with her desire to make podcasts, and the podcast itself is so derpy that anytime it returns to their overwritten, chummy banter, all tension is immediately punctured, and the film grinds to a screeching halt. Kiri is a really magnetic actor, but her character is clammy and nervous in a way that never squares away with the person who insists, despite all the mounting danger, they listen to every last audio file.
Further, the podcast seems to exist in a reality completely divorced from the actual landscape of podcast production. For one thing, it seems strange that these people only seem to record about ten minutes at a time, yet can still churn out a weekly episode. Evy is the only character that you ever see in the film (besides her comatose mother), which is a choice that isolates her effectively, yet doesn't make much sense in practice. Especially with the podcast – why aren't they chatting over Zoom or FaceTime?
And therein lies the central confusion of watching undertone. For every impressive, meticulous directorial choice, there's an equally silly narrative convenience. The film is reliant on its brilliant sound mix, but also on subdued images of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and sound wave files on Garageband. Neither host enters the recording with any plan, apparently, as a lot of it consists of them simultaneously looking things up on Google.
Perhaps it's fitting that a horror film set around a podcast flits in and out of being engaging, since that's more or less the experience of listening to one, but it doesn't exactly make for a cohesive viewing experience. If Evy is being haunted by something, perhaps it's the possibility that her podcast needs some work.
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Artificial intelligence is going to make it easier to spot whether a bird, a plane or an otherworldly creature is in the sky, Canada's top UFO expert says, as Canadians continue to report sightings of unidentified flying objects.
Chris Rutkowski has spent decades researching the phenomena and is part of Ufology Research, a Manitoba-based organization that tracks UFO sightings in Canada and publishes an annual report.
The group's 2025 analysis, released Monday, includes data taken from observation stations set up by passionate UFO enthusiasts across the country.
"They're gathering scientific data above and beyond just the average person seeing something in the night sky. This is an attempt to quantify UFO sightings," Rutkowski said.
Some are training artificial intelligence to be able to distinguish a bird, an aircraft or a satellite from something unknown, he said.
The technology helps with more "sophisticated" detection, Rutkowski said.
"Using AI to find patterns is going to help us uncover what's really going on."
He pointed to work being done by the Galileo Project at Harvard University.
It has established a number of sites where high-tech telescopes and cameras monitor the sky, and artificial intelligence is used to classify and analyze the observations.
Data collected by Ufology Research found that reports of 1,052 UFO sightings in Canada were filed last year with government agencies, participating private organizations and through social media.
The group defines a UFO as an "object seen in the sky which its observer cannot identify."
Of those sightings, half were classified as nocturnal lights, such as satellites, aircraft or stars.
A little more than three per cent were deemed unexplained.
"It should be emphasized the classification of 'unknown' does not imply alien visitation. Each case may still have an explanation following further investigation, and of those that remain unexplained, they may remain unexplained but still are not incontrovertible proof of extraterrestrial intervention or some mysterious natural phenomenon," the report says.
Sightings were documented in every province and territory, with Ontario leading the way.
The report says the number of sightings is often related to population size, with larger cities and metropolitan areas experiencing the most.
In the past, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have held the title of having the most sightings in a city. Last year, it was Calgary.
Ufology Research has been gathering data for more than 35 years, relying on co-operation from investigators and researchers across the country.
The report says a comprehensive collection hasn't been possible due to some organizations withholding information.
A report from the Office of the Chief Science Advisor last year recommended that the federal government set up a public-facing agency to address and monitor UFO sightings.
Rutkowski said he supports the move, as there's concern about incursions into Canadian airspace and worries about Canadian sovereignty.
"As part of Canada's defence package, I think it would be something to look at very seriously."
Ultimately, he said, fascination around the mystery of what's out there remains.
"One in 10 Canadians believe they've seen UFOs," he said. "That means you're not alone if you've seen something."
The Canadian Press
Brittany Hobson is a reporter with The Canadian Press.
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Artificial intelligence is going to make it easier to spot whether a bird, a plane or an otherworldly creature is in the sky, Canada's top UFO expert says, as Canadians continue to report sightings of unidentified flying objects.
Chris Rutkowski has spent decades researching the phenomena and is part of Ufology Research, a Manitoba-based organization that tracks UFO sightings in Canada and publishes an annual report.
The group's 2025 analysis, released Monday, includes data taken from observation stations set up by passionate UFO enthusiasts across the country.
"They're gathering scientific data above and beyond just the average person seeing something in the night sky. This is an attempt to quantify UFO sightings," Rutkowski said.
Some are training artificial intelligence to be able to distinguish a bird, an aircraft or a satellite from something unknown, he said.
The technology helps with more "sophisticated" detection, Rutkowski said.
"Using AI to find patterns is going to help us uncover what's really going on."
He pointed to work being done by the Galileo Project at Harvard University.
It has established a number of sites where high-tech telescopes and cameras monitor the sky, and artificial intelligence is used to classify and analyze the observations.
Data collected by Ufology Research found that reports of 1,052 UFO sightings in Canada were filed last year with government agencies, participating private organizations and through social media.
The group defines a UFO as an "object seen in the sky which its observer cannot identify."
Of those sightings, half were classified as nocturnal lights, such as satellites, aircraft or stars.
A little more than three per cent were deemed unexplained.
"It should be emphasized the classification of 'unknown' does not imply alien visitation. Each case may still have an explanation following further investigation, and of those that remain unexplained, they may remain unexplained but still are not incontrovertible proof of extraterrestrial intervention or some mysterious natural phenomenon," the report says.
Sightings were documented in every province and territory, with Ontario leading the way.
The report says the number of sightings is often related to population size, with larger cities and metropolitan areas experiencing the most.
In the past, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have held the title of having the most sightings in a city. Last year, it was Calgary.
Ufology Research has been gathering data for more than 35 years, relying on co-operation from investigators and researchers across the country.
The report says a comprehensive collection hasn't been possible due to some organizations withholding information.
A report from the Office of the Chief Science Advisor last year recommended that the federal government set up a public-facing agency to address and monitor UFO sightings.
Rutkowski said he supports the move, as there's concern about incursions into Canadian airspace and worries about Canadian sovereignty.
"As part of Canada's defence package, I think it would be something to look at very seriously."
Ultimately, he said, fascination around the mystery of what's out there remains.
"One in 10 Canadians believe they've seen UFOs," he said. "That means you're not alone if you've seen something."
The Canadian Press
Brittany Hobson is a reporter with The Canadian Press.
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William Morgan
Topics: UFO, Military
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The unexplained disappearance of a retired Air Force major general who worked at a military base closely linked with UFO research has been branded a 'grave national security crisis', after a massive search effort has failed to locate him.
On February 27 at 11am, 68-year-old William 'Neil' McCasland stepped out of his front door on Quail Run Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico and disappeared. Despite a coordinated effort from Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office and the FBI, they still have no idea what he did after leaving his home.
Law enforcement are going to great lengths in their attempt to locate the missing retired military general and UFO expert, including utilizing undisclosed 'advanced technologies', but have so far failed to uncover any 'evidence of foul play.'
Police and investigating federal agents believe the 'avid outdoorsman' may have gone hiking in the and asked for anyone who was in the nearby Northeast Heights and Sandia foothills to get in touch if they saw someone resembling McCasland on February 27 or 28.
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“Our priority is finding Mr. McCasland safely,” said Sheriff John Allen. “Our investigators and search teams are working continuously, and we're coordinating closely with our local, state, and federal partners.
"We're asking the public to help by checking and preserving any security camera footage from the area and reporting any information immediately. We will share confirmed updates as soon as we can while protecting the integrity of the investigation.”
While their best guess is that McCasland went hiking, the sheriff's office added that they are 'still considering all possible scenarios' that could have led to him vanishing on the morning of Friday, February 28.
But investigative journalist Ross Coulthart has branded his disappearance as a 'grave national security crisis', as the retired general worked on top secret US military technology for four decades has 'some of the most sensitive secrets of the United States in his head.'
Speaking on his Reality Check podcast, Coulthard added: “If you were Russia, or you were China, God forbid, General Neil McCasland would be one of your targets. So I sincerely hope that's not the case.”
There are very few people in America who know as much about secret military project as McCasland, who became the assistant director of the Office of Special Projects-13 in California after getting his doctorate from MIT.
He then spent the ensuing decades working on a number of projects that turned from science fiction into fact, including heading up the project that later became the advanced satellite imagery that allows the US military to view every inch of the planet's surface.
In the late 90s McCasland was picked to be the chief engineer for the entire Global Positioning System (GPS), which was developed by the Department of Defense and would revolutionize both military and consumer technology in the coming decades.
His ensuing job titles became even more improbable, running the Space Based Laser Project Office for a few years before being assigned to head up the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate - based in UFO-friendly New Mexico.
Then, towards the end of his career, he was promoted once again, to director of special programs at the Pentagon, a position which gave him access to and knowledge of America's most top secret research.
But Coulthart says it was his final posting that proved most confidential, when he was moved to Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to command its Air Force Research Laboratory, where he oversaw billions of dollars' worth of future weapons research.
This base is also rumored to contain fragments extraterrestrial debris, including from the alleged Roswell UFO crash. With President Trump signaling that he was open to revealing more information extraterrestrials, Coulthart says the major general supported the move to declassify.
“The timing is screechingly relevant,” Coulthart said. “The fact that Gen. Neil McCasland has disappeared off the face of the earth is a grave national security crisis for the United States of America. This is a man with some of the most sensitive secrets of the United States in his head.”
In an appeal to the public for help in their search, local sheriffs said: "We are asking for your help in finding him. We believe there are people who have information valuable to locating Neil who have not yet spoken to law enforcement.
"This could include people who have been in the Sandia mountains and may have seen Neil or captured him on a GoPro or other recording device, specifically on Friday, February 27 or Saturday, February 28.
"Sometimes people have information but do not come forward because they feel it may not be important. Regardless of how insignificant you think your information might be, or whether you think we are already aware of it, please contact us and allow us to make that determination.
"If you have any information, text BCSO to 847411 or call our Missing Persons Unit at (505) 468-7070."
Vigloo Debuts Fully AI-Produced English-Language Supernatural Microdrama
New series showcases how AI helps creators transform ambitious visions into scalable, sustainable productions
Bloodbound Luna, Vigloo's 22-episode English-language YA supernatural microdrama, was produced through a fully AI-native workflow in just eight weeks by a team of fewer than 10 creators.
LOS ANGELES & SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vigloo, a global microdrama platform from Korea, today announced the release of Bloodbound Luna, a 22-episode English-language YA dark fantasy microdrama produced entirely through an AI-native workflow. Designed specifically for U.S. audiences, the series marks a significant evolution from Vigloo's earlier AI-assisted productions, moving toward fully generative storytelling, from visuals to voice performances.
“AI is not replacing the human creativity behind storytelling, it's expanding what creators can achieve,” said Neil Choi, CEO of Vigloo.
Bloodbound Luna follows Luna, who forms a forbidden bond with Jacob, the Alpha of the Nightclaw pack. When her blood reveals she is neither fully wolf nor vampire but a rare and powerful hybrid, tensions erupt into war between the species, forcing Luna to confront her identity and claim her true power.
Completed in just eight weeks by a lean team consisting of fewer than 10 creators, the series used reference-based AI generation to achieve natural character movement and fully synthetic voice performances. Fantasy is traditionally one of the most capital-intensive genres to produce and difficult to sustain in short-form formats. Bloodbound Luna demonstrates how AI can make such storytelling viable, delivering visually ambitious episodes optimized for global audiences while remaining feasible within tighter production budgets.
The series is part of Vigloo's broader 2026 strategy, which includes producing approximately 30% of its annual content slate through AI-driven studio workflows, including animation. The company's prior in-house AI-produced title, Met a Savior in Hell, garnered more than 4 million views, confirming audience demand for high-quality, AI-assisted storytelling.
Vigloo envisions AI as a catalyst for expanding what small creative teams can produce. By accelerating experimentation and enabling scalable genre production, AI unlocks new possibilities for global microdrama audiences. The company also plans to develop AI-driven content through IP partnerships across web comics, serialized web fiction, and games.
“AI is not replacing the human creativity behind storytelling, it's expanding what creators can achieve,” said Neil Choi, CEO of Vigloo. “With Bloodbound Luna, we've shown how small teams can scale their creative vision and produce ambitious genre stories.”
About Vigloo
Vigloo, the global home for vertical dramas, delivers mobile-first, episodic storytelling designed for today's on-the-go audiences. Originating in South Korea, its extensive library features more than 350 premium dramas with episodes under two minutes each, spanning genres such as romance, comedy, and thriller—all tailored for global audiences. The platform develops original IP for the U.S., Korean, and Japanese markets, sourcing scripts directly from local creators, and releases content worldwide in nine languages. Vigloo is operated by SpoonLabs, a global content platform company backed by investments from leading venture capital firms and Korean video game company Krafton. For more information, visit www.vigloo.com and www.spoonlabs.com/kr/.
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+ 1 (415) 218-3627
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+ 1 (415) 218-3627
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Commissioning Editor, Health + Medicine and Host of Strange Health podcast, The Conversation
Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol
Visiting Fellow in Menstrual Physiology, King's College London
Katie Edwards is Commissioning Editor, Health and Medicine at The Conversation in the UK. Sally King is the founder of Menstrual Matters- the world's first evidence-based info hub on menstrual health and rights.
Dan Baumgardt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.h76yhwy7r
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Period scooping sounds like something you would only hear in a biology lab, not while doom-scrolling TikTok. Yet earlier this year, videos claiming you can “scoop out” your period to avoid the mess and shorten the whole thing racked up millions of views. Some people were pushing in the shower using pelvic floor muscles. Others described using water, fingers, or even objects to “clean out” menstrual fluid.
In the final episode of the first season of The Conversation's Strange Health podcast, co-host Dan Baumgardt and I watched the clips, winced a bit, laughed a bit, then did what we always do: we asked an expert what is actually going on inside the body.
I spoke to Sally King, a visiting fellow at King's College London and founder of the evidence-based menstrual health project Menstrual Matters. Her first point was almost disappointingly simple: you cannot shorten a period by “scooping”. Menstruation is the shedding of the uterine lining, triggered by hormonal changes and helped along by uterine contractions. Once the process is underway, removing fluid from the vaginal canal does not stop the uterus shedding tissue. It might make you feel less “full” for a moment, but it does not end your period early.
Where King's tone sharpened was on the version of “scooping” that involves washing inside the vagina with water or soap, essentially douching. This is not harmless hygiene. The vagina is self-cleaning and has an acidic environment that supports protective bacteria. Flooding it with neutral water or alkaline products disrupts that balance and is linked to infections such as bacterial vaginosis, and in some cases more serious reproductive health problems.
If the motivation is smell, discomfort or discharge, the answer is not Dettol or “feminine washes”. It is proper treatment and, crucially, a culture where people feel able to ask for help without shame.
Read more:
‘Dirty red': how periods have been stigmatised through history to the modern day
Then there videos raving about “emergency period stop” drinks. Lime juice. Tajín. Shots of whatever is trending this week. King was blunt: there is no scientific basis for any food or drink instantly halting a period mid-cycle. Menstrual symptoms can change from month to month anyway, which makes it easy to mistake coincidence for cause, especially online where confirmation bias thrives.
And yet not all viral period content is rooted in disgust. Some of it is a backlash against stigma. The most eyebrow-raising example is “period masking”, where influencers smear menstrual blood on their faces and claim the stem cells will transform their skin.
King's verdict was half delighted, half exasperated. Menstrual fluid does contain unusually interesting stem cells, and scientists are investigating them for regenerative medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, researchers reported promising results using menstrual blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells as a treatment in severely ill patients, but these were processed cells delivered in a clinical setting, not a DIY face mask.
Read more:
Menstrual health literacy is alarmingly low – what you don't know can harm you
These trends flourish in the gaps left by poor menstrual health education, including in medicine. King argues that we still teach about menstruation primarily as a prelude to pregnancy, rather than a complex biological process with its own functions and health signals.
If a hack relies on shame, secrecy, or the idea that your body is dirty and must be “fixed” fast, it is probably selling you something, even if what it wants is only your attention.
Strange Health is hosted by Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt. The executive producer is Gemma Ware, with video and sound editing for this episode by Anouk Millet. Artwork by Alice Mason.
If you've got a question about a viral trend or video you've seen and you'd like us to delve into the science behind it in a future episode, please email us at strangehealth@theconversation.com.
Listen to Strange Health via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.
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Golduck represents the transformation of potential into mastery, evolving from the perpetually confused Psyduck into a sleek, powerful, and formidable Water-type Pokémon. Its streamlined design, incredible speed, and combination of physical and psychic abilities make it a force to be reckoned with in any battle scenario. Trainers quickly recognize that Golduck is not merely an evolution of a comical Pokémon but a capable and intelligent combatant, able to outmaneuver and outsmart opponents while delivering devastating attacks with precision. This evolution exemplifies the Pokémon principle that strength and strategy often lie beneath the surface, waiting to be unleashed.
Visually, Golduck is an impressive creature. Its streamlined, blue body, webbed hands and feet, and red gem on its forehead convey both agility and latent psychic power. The red gem symbolizes the awakening of its psychic potential, hinting at the raw mental energy that lies beneath its composed exterior. Golduck's sharp eyes, pointed beak, and long tail further emphasize its predatory efficiency and grace. Its overall design suggests speed, power, and tactical awareness, signaling to trainers and opponents alike that it is a Pokémon built for precision, resilience, and adaptability in battle.
In combat, Golduck excels through a combination of Water-type attacks and psychic abilities. Its moveset often includes Surf, Hydro Pump, Psychic, Ice Beam, and Aqua Tail, allowing it to handle a wide variety of opponents. Surf and Hydro Pump provide strong and consistent Water-type offense, capable of dealing heavy damage while maintaining battlefield control. Psychic expands its type coverage, particularly against Fighting and Poison types, and takes advantage of Golduck's innate mental abilities. Ice Beam can surprise Grass or Dragon-type opponents, adding versatility to its offensive arsenal. Aqua Tail offers a high-powered physical attack that complements Golduck's speed and agility. This balance of offense, coverage, and versatility ensures that Golduck remains a relevant and threatening presence in battles of all levels.
Golduck's speed is one of its greatest assets. Its high Speed stat allows it to act first in most encounters, enabling trainers to dictate the flow of battle, exploit weaknesses, and strike before opponents can react. Moves like Agility further enhance its speed, allowing it to overwhelm opponents with relentless pressure. This combination of velocity and precision transforms Golduck from a reactive Pokémon into a proactive one, capable of controlling the battlefield and creating opportunities for follow-up attacks or team coordination.
The evolution from Psyduck to Golduck is not just a change in strength but a transformation in tactical potential. While Psyduck relies on luck and bursts of psychic energy, Golduck combines these abilities with enhanced physical power, increased speed, and refined techniques. This evolution underscores the importance of patience, training, and strategy, demonstrating that even Pokémon that initially seem unpredictable or underwhelming can evolve into dominant forces when properly nurtured. Trainers who understand Golduck's full potential can exploit both its psychic and Water-type abilities to maximize its effectiveness.
Golduck's personality and instincts also play a role in its combat success. Known for intelligence, awareness, and adaptability, it can anticipate opponents' moves, adjust its strategy, and execute attacks with precision. This strategic versatility makes it effective not only as a single combatant but also as a key member of team formations, where its ability to manipulate the battlefield and exploit enemy weaknesses can determine the outcome of a match. Golduck demonstrates that a combination of raw power, speed, and clever strategy is often more effective than relying on brute strength alone.
Design-wise, Golduck balances elegance and intimidation. Its streamlined form and sleek movements convey grace, while its gem and intense eyes hint at formidable psychic power. Its aquatic adaptations, such as webbed limbs and tail fin, reinforce the notion of speed and versatility, making it clear that Golduck is as effective in water as it is on land. This design teaches a broader lesson about Pokémon: appearances can be deceiving, and strategic capability often lies beneath the surface, waiting to be mastered.
In competitive gameplay, Golduck thrives due to its offensive versatility, speed, and ability to manipulate opponents with psychic abilities. Surf and Hydro Pump provide reliable Water-type coverage, while Psychic adds strategic depth, allowing it to counter specific threats. Moves like Ice Beam and Aqua Tail expand its reach, making it effective against a range of Pokémon types. Its high Speed and tactical utility allow trainers to maintain initiative, set up favorable scenarios, and deliver precise, impactful attacks. Evolution into Golduck transforms Psyduck's latent potential into a fully realized and versatile combatant.
Culturally, Golduck has become a symbol of transformation, mastery, and hidden potential. Its evolution from a confused Psyduck emphasizes growth, training, and strategic thinking. Fans appreciate its combination of elegance, power, and tactical versatility, seeing Golduck as a Pokémon that rewards skillful trainers who understand its strengths. Its iconic appearance in games, competitive play, and anime highlights the appeal of Pokémon that combine beauty, intelligence, and combat efficiency, proving that mastery often lies in patience and understanding.
Ultimately, Golduck embodies speed, precision, and strategic brilliance. Its ability to combine Water-type attacks with psychic abilities, control the flow of battle, and exploit weaknesses ensures it remains a versatile and formidable Pokémon. From casual encounters to competitive arenas, Golduck demonstrates that intelligence, adaptability, and tactical insight can elevate a Pokémon to dominance.
Golduck continues to captivate trainers with its blend of elegance, power, and strategic versatility. Its combination of swift attacks, psychic potential, and battlefield awareness makes it an enduring and compelling choice for anyone seeking a Water-type Pokémon that excels in both style and effectiveness.
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Psyduck is one of the most intriguing and memorable Pokémon in the series, standing out for its odd behavior, unique design, and hidden potential. At first glance, Psyduck appears to be a perpetually confused and somewhat helpless Water-type Pokémon. Its vacant stare, headache-prone personality, and clumsy actions often mislead trainers and opponents into underestimating its true capabilities. However, beneath this unassuming exterior lies a Pokémon with remarkable psychic abilities, surprising strength, and a tactical advantage that can turn the tide of any battle.
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