A team of surgeons from Clalit Schneider Children’s Medical Center and Clalit-Beilenson Hospital replaced half of a 15-year-old patient’s pelvis using a custom-designed, 3D-printed titanium and advanced polymer implant after global surgeons declared the case inoperable. 

The patient, Mark, was diagnosed with cancer for the second time at age 14 after beating the cancer he was diagnosed with at 2-years-old. His recurrence came in the form of osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer in his pelvic region accompanied by lung metastases. 

Mark was diagnosed where he lived in Russia, and due to the location and the spread, global specialists classified the tumor as inoperable. For osteosarcoma, complete surgical removal is critical for survival. 

Mark’s mother brought him to Israel where, after targeted chemotherapy led by Dr. Orli Michaeli, the lung metastases cleared and the primary tumor shrank. 

A joint team of surgical experts from Clalit-Schneider and Clalit-Beilinson Hospital mobilized to challenge Mark’s supposedly inoperable diagnosis. 

The team spent hundreds of hours of precise digital planning on a 19-hour procedure in which half of Mark’s pelvis was removed and replaced with a 3D-printed implant custom-designed to fit Mark’s unique anatomy. 

Implant designed to restore mobility as well as remove tumor

Dr. Arie Greenberg, Specialist in Joint Replacement and Orthopedic Oncology at Clalit-Beilinson Hospital, explained that the team’s goal was not just to remove the tumor but to restore mobility, and called the custom implant a “quantum leap in surgical oncology.” 

The implant is made of an advanced polymer that allows bone growth into the structure, he explained. 

“This was one of the most complex and challenging cases we have ever encountered,” said Dr. Israel Weiss, Head of the Orthopedic Oncology Unit at Clalit-Schneider and Clalit-Beilinson Hospitals.

“Instead of accepting that the tumor was inoperable, our cross-institutional teams combined custom 3D design and advanced printing technology to open a new horizon of possibilities. This breakthrough showcases the power of integrated expertise across our network,” he said.

Dr. Weiss highlighted the vital collaboration of key surgical leaders, including Dr. Eviatar Nesher, Head of the Transplantation Department at Clalit-Beilinson, and Prof. Yona Kosashvili, Head of the Orthopedic Department at Clalit-Beilinson.

Mark is currently recovering at Clalit-Schneider Children’s Medical Center. 

This post was originally published on here.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down from his role at the helm of one of the world’s largest tech companies after a 15-year tenure that saw Apple become the first publicly traded U.S. company with a $1 trillion market cap and other notable milestones.

He announced in April that he would step down as Apple CEO at the end of August, and while he is leaving that role, he will remain with the company as the executive chairman. John Ternus, who most recently served as Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, will be Cook’s successor.

Cook became CEO in August 2011 when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigned six weeks before his death. Jobs first met Cook in 1998 and convinced him to join Apple that year, starting his career at the tech giant as a senior vice president for worldwide operations.

“As you know, I am not leaving Apple. But I am stepping away from a role that I have loved deeply,” Cook said in a memo emailed to all employees on his final day. “I will miss this work in ways I can only begin to imagine, even as I remain completely at peace with my decision.”

“Together, we have created something far greater than any one of us could have imagined or accomplished alone. And that’s the secret to our success. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other up,” Cook said.

“We have made it possible to leave our ‘dent in the universe,’ as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe, because of what we value and how we see the world,” he added.

Cook’s tenure at Apple saw the tech giant move to compete in new product and service categories, building a broader consumer tech ecosystem off of the MacBook, iPhone and iPad.

In 2014, Cook and the company announced the Apple Watch as the company entered the wearable health tech market, while it also launched Apply Pay that year to build on its base of consumer device users to compete in mobile payments.

The next year, Apple Music marked the company’s pivot from iTunes to a subscription-based model for consumers who stream their music, while 2016 saw the debut of Apple’s AirPods which supercharged the growth of the company’s wearables division. The company also launched Apple TV+ and Apple Card in 2019 as it continued to broaden its service offerings.

Apple also hit a number of major corporate milestones under Cook’s leadership. It became the first U.S.-based publicly traded company to reach $1 trillion in market capitalization in 2018. 

Apple later reached the $2 trillion milestone in 2020, surpassed the $3 trillion market for the first time in 2022 during intraday trading, then crossed $4 trillion in October 2025. It briefly overtook Nvidia for largest market cap in July 2026.

Over the years, Apple has vied with ExxonMobil, Nvidia and Microsoft for the title of most valuable publicly traded U.S. company, with the top spot regularly changing hands among those companies. Within that period, Apple ranked first for much of the 2013 to 2018 period.

Apple currently has a market cap of roughly $4.6 trillion, ranking second behind Nvidia’s $5.25 trillion market cap while leading Microsoft’s $3.79 trillion valuation.

Apple is planning to hold the first major event under new CEO John Ternus next week on Sept. 9, when it will unveil its newest iPhone and could potentially reveal the long-awaited foldable iPhone.

Cook said in his letter that he takes “enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John,” adding that few people “understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does and I could not be more excited for his leadership.”

A report by Reuters noted that analysts expect Apple to launch a foldable iPhone, entering a new segment of the smartphone market to compete with Samsung in the growing device segment.

Timothy (or Tim) Armoo became a millionaire before turning 30. Now, as Gen Z blames a brutal job market and AI for their struggles, the millionaire entrepreneur isn’t having any of it—he says this is actually the easiest moment in history to get rich.

“It is scarily easy” to build wealth right now, Armoo told Fortune. “This is the greatest era of wealth creation ever. And it kind of pains me when a lot of young people are like, “I’m bored.” How can you be bored? This is the greatest technology ever in history, and you’re not obsessing over it.”

“In 2026, if you’re talking about the small things (that you can do to become successful), one of the most obvious things is to build relatively small projects with AI,” he added. 

Armoo knows more than most what it’s like to make it, despite the odds being stacked against you. Sent to live with his grandmother in Ghana as a baby, he described the start of his life as “uncertain and dangerous.” When he finally moved back to London, home became a council estate in the middle of gang violence and knife crime.

Yet despite arriving in the U.K. with no money, no network, and years of instability behind him, Armoo started his first business —a tutoring service —at just 14, scaling it to 65 tutors within six weeks. By 17, he already had an acquisition under his belt: the sale of his publication, Entrepreneur Express, to Horizon Media. In 2017, while most of his university peers were out partying, he spent his second year founding Fanbytes, an influencer marketing agency that went on to land clients like the U.K. government, Deliveroo, and Samsung. Brainlabs acquired it in 2022 for an eight-figure sum, when Armoo was just 27.

Armoo is putting his money where his mouth is—$6.7 million of it

It’s no secret that Gen Z don’t want 9-to-5 jobs. Research, surveys, and snap polls have consistently revealed that the latest generation of workers want to be their own boss—and Armoo says AI has made that dream more achievable than ever. He’s put real money behind the claim, too.

“AI enables you to think of an idea and put it out into the world,” Armoo added. “And social media means that you don’t need to pay someone in order to do it. You just need to spend time on the platform and just keep posting.”

And he’s backing that up with cash. Armoo’s just launched Legon Fund, where he’s committed £5 million (around $6.7 million) of his own cash to fund AI startups founded by minority entrepreneurs.

“The reason I did that was that my wealth wave was social media,” he explained. “Now I think the wealth wave is AI, and I don’t want anyone to say, ‘Well, I had the idea, but I didn’t have the money to distribute it.’”

“So now, you have no excuse, because you can learn—ChatGPT and Claude are virtually free—and if you’ve got something that’s working, here’s the money to get more customers for it.”

Gen Z is giving up on corporate jobs entirely—and increasingly betting on themselves 

Entry-level hiring has slowed sharply as companies lean on AI, and Gen Z graduates are applying to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of roles without a single offer to show for it. But, Armoo isn’t wrong: It’s perhaps never been easier to ditch the corporate ladder altogether and become your own boss.

A generation ago, creating a shop front and marketing your business would have required renting a physical space and splashing out on ad space in your local paper. 

Now entrepreneurs don’t even need to leave home to build a website on Squarespace, sell directly to customers on TikTok, and catch up with contractors or clients anytime on Zoom. 

Gen Zers, the oldest of whom were born in 1997, have barely known a world without those tools.

“There’s so much more infrastructure available for people who want to create things of their own,” says Natasha Stanley, head coach at careers site Careershifters.org, previously told Fortune, adding that there’s been a “democratization of access to the entrepreneurial world.” 

Chase Gallagher, the 24-year-old founder of $1.5 million a year CMG Landscaping, echoed that starting a business is “easier now than ever before because 20 years ago we didn’t have this here”—while pointing to his phone. “This device has made me millions of dollars because it’s helped me market my business.”

And in fact, plenty of Gen Zers are already ahead of the curve: The second-fastest-growing job title among the generation is “founder,” according to LinkedIn. According to Intuit’s Entrepreneurship in 2026 report, 43% of Gen Z are considering starting a business in 2026—more than any other generation. 

“My generation doesn’t want to go work a consulting or banking job. They don’t even want to be an astronaut anymore,” Steven Schwartz, the Gen Z founder and CEO of the creator-commerce platform Whop, previously told Fortune. “They want to make content online, they want to find customers online.”

His advice? “The biggest learning is you have to just start a business if you want to. You can’t be successful in business if you’re not starting a business. That’s step one,” Schwartz says, laughing. “So I think just doing it is a huge thing and not really worrying about, ‘What if this doesn’t work?’ Because like, what if it does work?”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Besides a social media post from President Donald Trump, the White House has said little about what he is calling “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” in Venezuela.

Trump said the agreement announced Friday night would give the United States a stake in Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, a step toward his goal of extracting energy from the country after American forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro in a middle-of-the-night raid in January and brought him to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, described the deal as a step toward economic recovery that will modernize the country’s oil industry. In a televised address to the nation late Sunday, Rodríguez insisted Venezuela’s sovereignty is secure and said she wants the country to become a global energy powerhouse.

Earlier on Saturday, she said the oil reserves would “cease to be an inert, cold statistic and will instead become concrete solutions. Housing is one of them.”

But the answers to many questions, including how soon the reserves could be drilled and who will pay to make it happen, were not immediately clear. No text of any agreement has been released.

A look at what is known and unknown:

What are the terms?

The U.S. government and an unnamed private operator in Venezuela formed a new company that was given the rights to untapped oil fields for 100 years.

A statement from Rodríguez said the deal involves the development of 17 fields with a proven potential of 65 billion barrels. It said the agreement could draw $100 billion in investment into Venezuela’s oil industry and yield over $209 billion in taxes for Caracas.

Trump said the agreement was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Rodríguez.

The deal gives the United States 55% effective output of the new private company, including an ownership stake and rights to buy oil at cost. American purchases of the oil will go toward the U.S. strategic oil reservesalong with the military, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The company would be the second largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco, according to the official.

Will gas prices go down?

Probably not any time soon.

Trump says the deal will help lower gas prices for Americans. That is an important objective for the Republican president as the Iran war slows the shipping of Persian Gulf oil and keeps prices elevated months before November elections in the United States.

But experts have repeatedly warned that Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars to repair. A substantial boost in production is not expected to happen quickly.

The deal could be “helpful in the long run, but it’s not going to do anything to change the price of gasoline at the retail station for Labor Day weekend,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University.

Neither side made clear who would pay for infrastructure investments and at what cost.

The average price of gas in the U.S. stood at about $4.08 a gallon on Saturday, according to AAA. The average price was $3.20 at the same time last year.

Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, said the oil industry is awaiting clarity on the deal’s details. Venezuela has room to increase its oil production, he said — in the past it produced more than 2.5 million barrels a day above current levels — but investments of this scale don’t happen quickly.

“It’s going to take time — many years — to deploy that much capital and produce the kind of incremental results that history suggests possible,” Book said.

How will Venezuelans react?

Some in Venezuela considered it a betrayal of what their government has stated repeatedly for decades: Venezuelan resources are for Venezuela, and leaders would not allow the U.S. government access to those resources.

At a market in eastern Caracas on Saturday, Douglas Borjas said he was upset about the announcement.

“I think they’re doing it to cling to power,” he said of Venezuela’s leaders. “It’s like, ‘I’m giving you a vast amount of petroleum as long as you leave me alone here in power.’”

He added: “The Venezuelan people deserve better. Venezuela has resources that can be exploited, but for the benefit of the people, not for the benefit of the corrupt elite.”

Harvard University professor Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister, called it a “shameful deal.”

“Venezuelans will not respect this illegitimate deal and no major US oil company will take it seriously because they know it will not last,” Hausmann said on social media, adding that Rodríguez “has no legitimacy or constitutional power to commit Venezuela to any such deal.”

In her national address, Rodríguez pushed back on some of the early criticism.

“One thing must be absolutely clear: Venezuela retains ownership and sovereignty over its resources,” Rodríguez said. She said the goal is to reach other agreements with transnational private companies such as Chevron, Repsol and Shell.

She added: “We want to be an energy powerhouse, a major oil producer, a significant gas exporter, and a major national petrochemical developer.”

What’s the reaction on Capitol Hill?

It is unclear whether Congress will play a role in the arrangement, but lawmakers from both parties were quick to weigh in.

Trump allies called it a win.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said it was a historic deal that helps both countries. “If it were up to DC Democrats, Maduro would still be in power, Venezuelan oil would be going to China at half price, and the people of Venezuela would be getting robbed by a corrupt regime,” Moreno wrote on social media.

It was condemned by Democrats who said Maduro’s capture was a means to this end.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Trump was always after Venezuela’s oil, branding it “corruption at epic scale.”

“Will prices come down for Americans? Who knows but likely not as much as Trump has forced them up thru his idiotic Iran War,” Kaine said on social media.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said Trump “put our service members at risk to get Venezuelan oil for his billionaire buddies.”

What questions remain?

Many important details remain unclear, including who will cover necessary investments, the identity of the private operator and how America’s stake in the company breaks down.

The U.S. will get 55% of the company’s effective output, but it was not clear what portion of that comes from an ownership stake and how much comes from the right to buy oil at cost.

It also is unclear how the industry will react. Persuading big American oil companies to return to the region could prove a challenge given the political uncertainty and damaged infrastructure.

Chevron, the only U.S. oil company actively producing in Venezuela, declined to comment. Separately from Trump’s announcement, Chevron already had been in talks to expand investment in the country. Exxon Mobil also declined to comment.

David Oxley, chief climate and commodities economist at Capital Economics, said that on its face, the deal could double U.S. oil reserves and reduce dependence on crude oil from Canada and Mexico. But Oxley, writing in a commentary, cautioned that there are logistical hurdles and said the value of Venezuela’s reserves may have been exaggerated under former President Hugo Chavez.

Even with legal and security guarantees, it is not clear that U.S. oil companies “would be eager to invest,’’ he wrote, noting that “there simply might be more enticing commercial opportunities on offer elsewhere.’’

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

New York isn’t just losing residents — it’s losing some of the people who help power its economy.

As New York continues to see residents move to other states, former New York Gov. George Pataki is warning that entrepreneurs, financial leaders and major donors are increasingly heading for the exits.

Pataki joined FOX Business’ Cheryl Casone on “Mornings with Maria” to discuss the state’s outmigration, its business climate and the policies he believes are pushing residents and job creators elsewhere.

“You know, it’s just almost tragic to see the loss of people, not just people, but people who create jobs, who donate to hospitals and museums, the best of New York, the people who have made New York the entrepreneurial and financial center are just leaving,” Pataki said.

The former governor argued that New York risks weakening its position as the nation’s financial center as companies expand their workforces elsewhere, pointing to the growing pull of lower-tax states such as Texas.

“We fought hard to keep it the financial capital of the world. It still is for the moment. But if we continue these tax-and-spend and soft-on-crime policies, it’s just going to get worse,” he said.

Pataki also warned that additional tax increases and rising debt could deepen the state’s challenges and drive more residents away. Still, he said New York has the ability to reverse course.

“We’re going to end up not just with the highest taxes in the country, but with unsustainable debt, with more people leaving,” Pataki said. “We’re not doing great right now, but New York is New York. It’s very resilient. It still has great people. We put in place the right policies and it will come roaring back. So in that sense, I’m an optimist.”

For nearly three decades, 59-year-old Eileen Munoz spent her workdays in a cubicle. To her, the tiny confined desk came to represent everything she felt about her 9-to-5 career in insurance: stuck. 

The most she ever made in a year was $70,000, and she eventually became so burnt out that she would cry on Sundays knowing her cubicle and another full workweek were waiting for her.

Seeing how miserable she had become and how work was spilling into her home life, her husband encouraged her to quit. Finally, in her mid-50s, she did, without much of a plan and assuming whatever came next would be her old job in a different font. Instead, a friend introduced her to user-generated content, or UGC, where brands pay everyday creators to make social media content they can use to market their products. Munoz had never edited a video, filmed herself for a brand or even added subtitles. 

But in 2025, just her second year as a content creator, she brought in roughly $500,000 from UGC and TikTok Shop, where she promotes products aimed at people navigating middle age, including skincare and supplements as well as products related to menopause, thinning hair and aching joints. She also works across home and pet categories.

Munoz is an unusually successful example of an opportunity emerging for Gen X in an industry long associated with Gen Z and millennials. But the creator economy may already be older than its reputation suggests: Fortune reported in 2022 that the average creator was 40, according to an Adobe study. As brands increasingly rely on creators to sell products online, some older creators are finding that the age they once feared would hold them back can actually work in their favor. Marketers still need to reach consumers in their 40s, 50s and 60s, and recent research suggests a creator’s age can shape how credible they appear to consumers.

“I thought, am I too old?” Munoz said. “That is honestly the number one thing that I hear.”

Brands have an age problem

Florian Dost, a marketing professor at Brandenburg University of Technology, coauthored a recent study that found age can increase assumptions of a creator’s expertise while perceived attractiveness tends to diminish those views.

He described a “sweet spot” that varies by platform and what is being sold, noting that one TikTok experiment, for example, put the optimal apparent age between the late 40s and mid-50s.

“I definitely see that brands, but also influencer agencies, have a blind spot for age,” Dost told Fortune. “Selling new stuff to old consumers is the biggest marketing challenge of our day.”

Munoz knows this too, saying brands have plenty of young people to hawk their wares but not middle-aged influencers.

And when it comes to what she buys herself, that age gap matters. 

“I will not buy [skincare] from a 19-year-old, 20-year-old, 30-year-old,” she said. “I’m gonna buy from people my age.”

A second act

UGC was Munoz’s entry into content creation. After she began making money creating content directly for brands, she added TikTok Shop as a separate income stream.

Unlike UGC, where a brand typically pays for a piece of content, TikTok Shop allows creators to post videos featuring products to their own accounts and earn commissions when viewers buy. Munoz says experimenting with those videos and learning what converts viewers into customers helped turn social commerce into her biggest source of creator income.

For Munoz, the transformation wasn’t just financial. Previously, she had spent decades working overtime whenever it was available. Now she works from home in Diamond Bar, California, where she controls her schedule and hopes her creator income will eventually allow her husband to retire, too.

She says the biggest obstacle she hears from other Gen Xers is the assumption that social media belongs to somebody younger. Her generation didn’t grow up filming videos on smartphones or editing TikToks. Munoz didn’t know how to do any of it either.

“If you think you are too old to do UGC or TikTok Shop, that is such a lie,” Munoz said.

Now she wants to use the location freedom that comes with her work to travel with her husband and spend months at a time living in places they once could only visit, from New York to France. 

Which is a striking reversal from the Sundays she once spent dreading the return to her cubicle.

“I feel like crying sometimes,” Munoz said. This time, though, it’s because “it is the best job ever.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

As the new school year begins, the debate over digital versus analog learning rages on, while more school districts reconsider the role of devices in the classroom.

That’s as test scores in math and reading tanked after schools ditched textbooks in favor of screens. But the effect of computers and tablets on education goes beyond the basics of the so-called three R’s.

“Elementary school always taught more than reading and mathematics. Children learned how to wait for someone else’s idea to be expressed before sharing their own, to negotiate disagreements and explain their thinking,” University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education professor Sarah Schneider Kavanagh and University of Portland School of Education professor Katie A. Danielson wrote in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this month.

Such lessons are actually a critical aspect of growing up, as children’s cognition has been shown to mature via person-to-person interactions, not just from receiving information, they added

But classroom computers and adaptive software now provide individualized instruction to many students. While that offers benefits, Kavanagh and Danielson warned there are also trade-offs.

For example, when students merely click through math lessons on their own instead of solving problems with classmates, they don’t hear different ways of thinking.

That kind of collective learning is especially important in the era of AI as distinctly human skills like attention span, curiosity, judgment, empathy and collaboration become more valuable, Kavanagh and Danielson argued.

“Children don’t need school to become more like the digital world,” the professors wrote. “They are already immersed in that world for much of the time outside school hours. They need a place designed for other aims, such as conversation instead of consumption and collaboration instead of personalization. That isn’t resisting the future; it’s preparing children to be fully human in it.”

Computers and online learning saw steadily expanded use in classrooms for decades, then they became essential during COVID-19 lockdowns. But rather than revert to pre-pandemic ways afterward, schools continued to relying heavily on them.

There’s now a growing backlash. According to one tally, lawmakers in at least 17 states had introduced or debated legislation related to devices or screens in classrooms as of July.

And earlier this year, the nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, banned in-school screen use for students in preschool through first grade and curbed screen time for older students.

There’s growing evidence that devices not only hurt test scores but children’s ability to think.

Earlier this year, in written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations, despite its unprecedented access to technology.

He said Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the previous one, citing a stark correlation in scores and time spent on computers in school.

While skills measured by these tests aren’t always indicative of intelligence, they are a reflection of cognitive capability, which Horvath said has been on the decline over the last decade or so.

“We’re facing challenges more complex and far-reaching than any in human history—from overpopulation to evolving diseases to moral drift,” he told Fortune‘s Sasha Rogelberg. “Now, more than ever, we need a generation able to grapple with nuance, hold multiple truths in tension, and creatively tackle problems that are stumping the greatest adult minds of today.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A Miami defense-technology company generating about $1 million in annual revenue is preparing to enter the public market in a deal that could value the combined company at $638 million. Its biggest advantage may be its growing access to Washington.

Space-Eyes develops artificial-intelligence software that detects and tracks drones while combining radar, radio-frequency and satellite data into a single operating picture for governments and security agencies.

Eric Trump joined the company during the second quarter as its third-largest private investor and a strategic adviser. Space-Eyes has agreed to merge with McKinley Acquisition Corp., a blank-check company, and expects the combined business to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker CUAS.

The transaction assigns an enterprise value of approximately $370 million to the operating business—about 370 times its reported annual revenue. The larger $638 million figure represents the projected equity value of the combined company and assumes that McKinley shareholders do not withdraw their money before closing.

That distinction matters. Space-Eyes has participated in military exercises and was selected by the U.S. Space Force to develop tracking algorithms, but its valuation depends heavily on winning much larger government and commercial contracts as it moves beyond research and development.

The company opened a Washington office in January and has assembled a proposed post-merger board with extensive defense, financial and corporate experience. The nominees include retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and former Delta Force officer Jim Reese; former Morgan Stanley investment-banking executive Terry Meguid; Wharton professor Harbir Singh; and aerospace entrepreneur Norm Christensen.

Company executives said Eric Trump helped introduce prospective board members but will not serve as a director. McKinley Chief Executive Peter Wright said Trump brings experience assessing drone threats to high-profile properties, regardless of his relationship to the president.

The investment adds Space-Eyes to a growing collection of drone and robotics companies connected to President Donald Trump’s sons.

Eric Trump invested in Israeli drone manufacturer Xtend as part of its planned public-market transaction. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. also backed Powerus through an investment vehicle, while Trump Jr. became an adviser to drone-components manufacturer Unusual Machines in late 2024. Eric Trump separately serves as chief strategy adviser to robotics developer Foundation Future Industries.

Several of those companies have secured or pursued government business. Powerus announced an agreement to supply interceptor drones to the U.S. Air Force, while Foundation Future Industries received a $24 million Pentagon contract to test humanoid robots for potential military applications.

Those connections have attracted congressional scrutiny. House Democrats asked the Defense Department’s inspector general in May to investigate the circumstances surrounding Pentagon business awarded to a drone company backed by the president’s sons. Lawmakers later sought a broader review of federal awards involving multiple defense companies connected to the Trump family.

Representatives for Eric Trump have said he is a passive investor in certain ventures, does not participate in their daily operations and plays no role in awarding or overseeing government contracts.

For investors, the immediate question is whether Space-Eyes can turn government relationships and promising technology into substantial revenue. The merger still requires shareholder and regulatory approval, and its expected fourth-quarter closing is not guaranteed.

Buying into the company would therefore mean wagering on contracts Space-Eyes expects to win—not on the approximately $1 million in business it produces today.

JBizNews Desk | Miami

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Northwest Naturals is recalling nearly 2,000 pounds of raw cat and dog food after federal testing found salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes contamination in two chicken products distributed nationwide.

The Portland, Oregon-based company is voluntarily recalling 53 cases, or 1,272 pounds, of Northwest Naturals Frozen Chicken Recipe and 19 cases, or 684 pounds, of Northwest Naturals Frozen Raw Diet for Dogs Chicken Recipe, according to a company announcement posted Friday by the Food and Drug Administration.

The recall covers a total of 1,956 pounds of product.

The 2-pound Frozen Chicken Recipe, which is marketed as cat food and a protein topper for dogs, tested positive for salmonella. The 6-pound Frozen Raw Diet for Dogs Chicken Recipe tested positive for both salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes, according to the announcement.

The contamination was identified after product samples were collected and tested by the FDA. No illnesses had been reported in connection with the recall as of Aug. 28, the company said.

The affected 2-pound Frozen Chicken Recipe bears lot number B-5, a best-by date of Jan. 26, 2028, and UPC 087316384956. The affected 6-pound Frozen Raw Diet for Dogs Chicken Recipe bears lot number B-19, a best-by date of Jan. 25, 2028, and UPC 087316380392. The recalled products were distributed to retail stores nationwide.

Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes can sicken animals that eat contaminated products and can also pose a risk to people who handle the food or come into contact with contaminated surfaces, according to the recall notice.

Pets infected with either bacteria may experience lethargy, diarrhea or bloody diarrhea, fever, vomiting, decreased appetite, and abdominal pain. Infected animals can also carry the bacteria and potentially spread them to people or other animals.

Consumers who purchased the affected products are being advised to stop feeding them to their pets and return the unused portion to the place of purchase for a full refund.

Northwest Naturals also advised consumers handling raw pet food to wash their hands thoroughly and clean and sanitize bowls, utensils, surfaces and storage areas that come into contact with the products.

FOX Business reached out to Northwest Naturals for additional comment.

JERUSALEM — Israeli banks are approaching a Sept. 1 deadline that could sharply disrupt financial ties with the Palestinian Authority, threatening billions of shekels in trade and potentially creating economic fallout for businesses on both sides.

Bank Hapoalim and Israel Discount Bank have for decades served as correspondent banks connecting Israel’s financial system with Palestinian banks.

Those relationships allow payments to move between Israeli and Palestinian businesses and support more than NIS 20 billion in annual trade involving goods and services.

But the banking arrangements have become increasingly difficult to maintain because of legal exposure involving money laundering, terrorist financing and other compliance risks.

The Israeli government has provided the banks with indemnity and legal protections allowing them to continue operating, but those protections have repeatedly been temporary.

Without continued protection, the banks have warned they could sever their relationships with Palestinian financial institutions.

The Sept. 1 deadline now brings that question directly into focus.

The Bank of Israel has asked the banks to continue providing services in order to prevent a potentially severe economic disruption, and discussions have been underway over postponing the cutoff.

No final long-term solution had been reached when those discussions were reported.

The economic stakes are significant.

A complete break in correspondent banking ties would make it much more difficult for Palestinian businesses to pay Israeli suppliers and for Israeli companies to collect payments from Palestinian customers.

It could also interfere with salary transfers, commercial transactions and the movement of shekels through the Palestinian banking system.

Israeli officials have previously approved the creation of a government company that could eventually take over the correspondent-banking role from commercial banks and shield them from the legal exposure they say has become increasingly difficult to accept.

That system, however, has not yet become operational because of legislative and bureaucratic delays.

For now, Bank Hapoalim and Israel Discount Bank remain the financial bridge.

The issue has also drawn international attention because of concerns that a sudden banking cutoff could destabilize the Palestinian economy and create wider economic and security consequences in the West Bank.

The Palestinian economy is heavily dependent on the Israeli shekel and on access to Israeli financial institutions.

Any disruption therefore extends well beyond banking.

Israeli manufacturers, wholesalers, food suppliers, construction companies and other businesses that sell into Palestinian markets could also be affected if payments are interrupted.

The Bank of Israel’s intervention reflects those broader concerns.

The immediate question entering Sept. 1 is whether another temporary arrangement will be reached or whether the banking relationship will begin moving toward an actual cutoff.

Either way, the deadline highlights a larger unresolved problem Israel has been trying to address for years: how to maintain necessary commercial activity with Palestinian financial institutions while protecting Israeli banks from legal and regulatory exposure.

Until a permanent mechanism is established, each extension simply pushes that decision further down the road.

JBizNews Desk | Jerusalem

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Target is expanding its push into higher-end beauty with a new specialty-style concept that the retailer says is part of its broader effort to return to growth.

The Minneapolis-based retailer said Target Beauty Studio will launch Sept. 10 in more than 600 stores nationwide and on Target.com, bringing together more than 1,600 products from 90 prestige, emerging and international brands. More than two-thirds of the brands will be new to Target.

The rollout represents a notable expansion of Target’s beauty assortment while adding features more commonly associated with specialty beauty retailers, including dedicated beauty advisers, product testing, rotating product showcases and personalized recommendations.

Target said the new concept is one example of the investments it is making in merchandise and the in-store shopping experience as part of its plans to return to growth. The company operates more than 2,000 U.S. stores.

“When guests shop for beauty, they want to pick up their standbys while also exploring what’s new and trending, and Target Beauty Studio is designed with that mix in mind,” Amanda Nusz, Target’s senior vice president of merchandising, essentials and beauty, said in a statement. “It’s an inspiring destination to discover what’s new, now and next in beauty — and a powerful example of how our merchandising authority comes to life through an elevated guest experience.”

The assortment will span skincare, makeup, haircare, fragrance, bath and body products, nail care and sun care. Brands joining Target include Sunday Riley and First Aid Beauty in skincare, Briogeo and Nioxin in haircare and several Korean beauty brands, including Amuse, Kaja and Rom&nd.

The announcement comes after the retailer concluded its shop-in-shop partnership with Ulta Beauty. The partnership rolled out in August 2021 and ended this month.

Target is also adding products from international brands, including Mexican beauty company SARELLY and French nail care brand Manucurist, while offering premium fragrances, styling products, sun care and self-tanning products.

Stores with Target Beauty Studio will feature a central display that rotates several times a year to highlight brands, collaborations and seasonal products. The retailer will also offer a dedicated assortment of miniature products designed to give shoppers a lower-cost way to try new items.

The company is tying the concept to its Target Circle loyalty program through exclusive offers and experiences. Target said the first 100 guests at most stores during a Sept. 26 promotional event will receive a Target Circle bonus that can be used to shop Beauty Studio in stores and online.

Target said Beauty Studio will continue to evolve with new brands and products, while its existing beauty assortment will remain alongside the new concept.

President Donald Trump stepped up his attacks against the media on Sunday with an admonition to the Federal Communications Commission to investigate polling used by news outlets and punish a prominent television news host.

Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with journalists and news organizations who publish stories he doesn’t like, particularly those about his standing in the polls. Numerous recent polls show Trump has the lowest approval rating of either of his terms in office as the unpopular Iran war continues and gas prices remain high.

Trump has increasingly used his animosity toward the press to seek action by the FCC, which controls broadcast licensing.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly protects freedom of the press and freedom of speech. 

Trump complained Sunday that something must be done about “fake polls” used by the news media. “FCC TO THE RESCUE!” he trumpeted in a social media post. Polls are often sponsored by television networks or news organizations, but conducted by universities or polling companies over which the FCC has no control. The FCC also has no control over cable stations or print media. 

In the same series of Sunday morning posts, the president also lashed out at Kristen Welker, the moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, for saying his endorsements of Republican candidates in primary elections this year had shown mixed results. Earlier in the week, he attacked New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman for reporting that he was skipping the annual Sept. 11 commemoration in New York this year because he wouldn’t have a speaking role. 

“How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves?” Trump said of Welker’s reporting. “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”

Short of canceling NBC’s broadcast license, there’s little the Trump administration can legally do to punish Welker for her reporting.

“Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her,” an NBC spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

A handful of the candidates that Trump endorsed this year did not win their primaries or special elections. Some of his prominent endorsements, including the special election to elevate Darline Graham to replace her late brother, Lindsey Graham, in the Senate, did win. 

Trump urged the chairman of the FCC to follow up on his complaints.

“I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously,” Trump wrote.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump’s administration announced a “historic” crackdown on trucking fraud during a news conference in Detroit on Monday.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the move alongside Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, saying tens of thousands of illegal drivers’ licenses were issued under former President Joe Biden’s administration. 

Duffy noted that millions of illegal immigrants were allowed into the country under the previous administration and many were granted commercial drivers’ licenses, with many of them not even able to speak English.

The administration is shutting down 110 driving schools that were the “greatest offenders” in granting drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants, as well as 160 additional schools that Duffy says lacked proper space for driving tests or had unlicensed instructors. 

This is a developing story. Check back soon for updates.

A new global bank designed specifically to finance defense spending is moving closer to reality — and Canada wants to put itself at the center of it.

The proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, or DSRB, is seeking to raise roughly €100 billion, about $116 billion, to provide lower-cost financing and loan guarantees for governments and defense contractors.

Canada, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine and Albania have already backed the concept.

So far, however, the project has secured only about €5 billion in commitments, according to officials involved in the effort.

The bank’s broader target is approximately €20 billion in paid-in capital, with another €80 billion available to support future lending.

The idea is simple.

Governments across Europe and NATO are being asked to spend dramatically more on defense.

Large contractors can usually finance themselves.

Smaller suppliers often cannot.

That creates a bottleneck.

A company capable of manufacturing drones, missile components, ammunition, radar systems or military electronics may have government demand waiting for it but still struggle to borrow enough money to expand a factory, hire workers or build inventory.

The proposed bank is designed to solve that problem.

It would lend to governments and defense companies while also providing guarantees that could encourage commercial banks to finance smaller or riskier suppliers.

That could create an entirely new financing system around the defense industry.

And that matters because the global rearmament push increasingly depends not only on military budgets, but on whether companies can actually raise the capital needed to produce what governments are ordering.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has strongly backed the project and wants the institution headquartered in Canada.

But there is a major obstacle.

Several of the world’s largest economies have not joined.

Germany and Britain remain outside the project, while Japan has not committed.

That matters because the DSRB wants a triple-A credit rating.

A high rating would allow it to borrow money cheaply in global bond markets and then pass those lower financing costs on to governments and defense companies.

Without major sovereign backers, obtaining that rating could become more difficult.

There are also questions about duplication.

The European Union already has its €150 billion SAFE defense-financing program, while Britain is developing a separate Multilateral Defence Mechanism with several European partners.

Some governments are asking why another institution is necessary.

Supporters argue that the DSRB would be different because it would become a permanent multilateral financial institution rather than a temporary government program.

It could also finance companies outside the European Union.

That is particularly important for countries such as Canada, Turkey and Ukraine.

Major financial institutions are already paying attention.

Around a dozen banks, including JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, have provided approximately $10 million in funding or services to help establish the institution.

Those banks could eventually earn substantial fees arranging defense projects financed through the DSRB.

For investors and businesses, the significance is bigger than the bank itself.

Defense spending is increasingly becoming an industrial-policy story.

Governments are not simply buying more weapons.

They are trying to rebuild factories, expand supply chains, increase ammunition production and create domestic manufacturing capacity that has been allowed to shrink for decades.

That requires enormous amounts of private capital.

If the DSRB succeeds in raising €100 billion and leveraging that money into even larger amounts of lending, smaller defense companies could gain access to financing previously available mainly to the largest contractors.

That could create new factories, new suppliers and new investment opportunities throughout the defense economy.

But the project still has to prove that it can attract enough large governments to make the economics work.

Canada is prepared to move ahead with the countries already committed.

The real test now is whether Britain, Germany and other major economies decide that joining is worth the cost.

If they do, the DSRB could become something much larger than another international institution.

It could become a permanent global financing engine for the defense industry.

JBizNews Desk | Ottawa / London

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A teenager in a Ford Mustang reportedly smashed through the perimeter fence of a New Hampshire airport Saturday night, drove onto an aircraft parking area and struck both a tractor and a small parked plane.

Nobody was killed. Authorities say the 17-year-old driver was intoxicated and fleeing police. There is no indication the incident was terrorism.

But that is exactly why what happened should get Washington’s attention.

If an allegedly intoxicated teenager being chased by police can drive through an airport perimeter and reach aircraft, America should be asking a much larger question: What happens when someone actually intends to cause damage?

That question carries far greater weight today.

The United States is confronting renewed hostilities with Iran, whose Revolutionary Guards have vowed retaliation following American military action against Iranian positions. Tehran has repeatedly demonstrated that its responses do not have to remain confined to a traditional battlefield. Iran has options ranging from attacks on energy and shipping infrastructure to cyber operations, proxies and other forms of asymmetric warfare.

And economic disruption itself can be a weapon.

The latest confrontation has already demonstrated how quickly geopolitical conflict can reach American businesses and consumers. Renewed fighting around the Strait of Hormuz sent oil prices sharply higher Monday. The waterway is one of the most important energy corridors on Earth, and disruptions there immediately affect transportation, manufacturing, shipping, inflation and ultimately the price Americans pay for everyday goods.

America therefore cannot think about homeland security only in terms of military bases or government buildings.

Airports are economic infrastructure.

So are ports, power grids, water systems, telecommunications networks, rail lines, fuel terminals, data centers and major logistics hubs.

Disable enough of them—even temporarily—and the damage does not stop at the physical site. Flights are canceled. Cargo stops moving. Workers cannot get where they need to go. Supply chains back up. Businesses lose revenue. Insurance costs rise. Markets react. Consumers pay more.

That is precisely why hostile governments and terrorist organizations increasingly look at economic disruption as part of modern warfare.

Iran has also previously been accused of cyber activity targeting Western utilities and American water infrastructure. Recent reporting on Tehran’s potential retaliation options has identified energy facilities, shipping routes, utilities, cyberattacks and sabotage among the vulnerabilities security officials must consider.

None of that means Saturday’s incident in New Hampshire was anything more than what police say it was.

It means America should learn from it.

According to New Hampshire State Police, the Mustang crashed through the perimeter fence at Portsmouth International Airport, crossed an aircraft apron and struck a tractor and an unoccupied stationary aircraft before stopping.

That should be treated as a real-world security test that nobody intended to conduct.

The question for airport authorities around the country should now be straightforward: Could the same thing happen here?

Could an ordinary passenger vehicle penetrate the perimeter? How quickly would it be detected? Could it reach a commercial aircraft, fuel storage area or other sensitive infrastructure? Where are physical barriers strong enough to stop a vehicle rather than merely mark a boundary? And are smaller airports being protected with the same urgency Americans expect at the largest hubs?

Security planning cannot begin after a hostile actor finds the weakness.

September 11 taught America what happens when civilian transportation infrastructure is turned into a weapon. Twenty-five years later, the threat environment has changed enormously. Drones, cyberattacks, inexpensive technology and decentralized terror networks have expanded the number of ways an adversary can create enormous economic damage without fielding an army.

The lesson from New Hampshire is therefore bigger than one teenager, one fence and one damaged airplane.

The United States is again facing enemies who openly want to impose costs on America. Protecting the country means protecting not only American lives but the infrastructure that keeps the American economy moving.

A fence that can be smashed through by an intoxicated teenager should not simply be repaired.

It should trigger a question across the country:

Where else are we this vulnerable—and are we going to find those weaknesses before our enemies do?

JBizNews Desk | New Hampshire

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A fuel supplier is suing a New Jersey distributor and its president, alleging they failed to pay for gasoline that was later sold through stations in the Trump-promoted Freedom Fuel Network.

Mansfield Oil Company filed the lawsuit against KRSM Inc. and its president, Syed Kazmi, on Aug. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Mansfield alleges KRSM obtained approximately 150 loads of fuel from its account at the Twin Oaks terminal in Pennsylvania between May 21 and July 7, totaling roughly 1,124,594 gallons worth $3,998,868.46. 

“KRSM sold a portion of such fuel to its stations that are part of the Freedom Fuel Network,” Mansfield alleges in the complaint. The company further claims KRSM was able to sell some of the fuel at low prices because it had not paid Mansfield for it. Those allegations have not been adjudicated. 

KRSM had been a Mansfield customer since 2022. A commercial credit application included with the complaint and signed by Kazmi states that if Mansfield extended credit and KRSM purchased fuel, KRSM would be responsible for paying for it. The agreement called for payment by electronic funds transfer within 10 days of receiving an invoice. 

Mansfield acknowledged in the complaint that a data-receiving error delayed its ability to send the invoices until early July. The company said it later discussed what it characterized as minor pricing discrepancies with Kazmi, revised the invoices and sent them to KRSM on July 17. Mansfield alleges its bank subsequently advised it that KRSM had refused attempted drafts from its account. 

KRSM disputes Mansfield’s account of the payment dispute.

Kazmi said in an Aug. 25 court declaration that he “did not agree that the amounts Mansfield demanded were correct or owing.” In court filings, KRSM contends the dispute centers on the prices Mansfield charged for the fuel and says it objected to the invoices before the lawsuit was filed.

On Aug. 28, U.S. District Judge Gerald Austin McHugh vacated an earlier temporary restraining order that had frozen the identified M&T Bank account but granted Mansfield’s requests for preliminary injunctions in part. McHugh ordered the defendants to maintain at least $2.75 million in the account while the litigation proceeds.

The Freedom Fuel Network drew national attention after lowering pump prices amid President Donald Trump’s push for cheaper gasoline.

The White House published a Freedom Fuel Network video on July 7 promoting the network’s lower prices.

Freedom Fuel says on its website that it is a privately owned company that “answered President Trump’s call to action to lower prices at the pump.”

“We didn’t hesitate; we took decisive action and lowered our prices to make filling up more affordable for hardworking families across the greater Philadelphia area,” the company says on its website.

Freedom Fuel also says 25 participating stations experienced an average volume increase of more than 50% after prices were lowered, with several locations increasing more than 100%. Those figures are company-reported and have not been independently verified.

Mansfield’s lawsuit brings claims including breach of contract, unjust enrichment, action for the price, account stated and conversion. The company is seeking at least $3.998 million, plus interest, costs and other damages. 

Fox Business reached out to attorneys for KRSM and Kazmi, Freedom Fuel Network and counsel for Mansfield Oil for comment.

A new global bank designed specifically to finance defense spending is moving closer to reality — and Canada wants to put itself at the center of it.

The proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank, or DSRB, is seeking to raise roughly €100 billion, about $116 billion, to provide lower-cost financing and loan guarantees for governments and defense contractors.

Canada, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine and Albania have already backed the concept.

So far, however, the project has secured only about €5 billion in commitments, according to officials involved in the effort.

The bank’s broader target is approximately €20 billion in paid-in capital, with another €80 billion available to support future lending.

The idea is simple.

Governments across Europe and NATO are being asked to spend dramatically more on defense.

Large contractors can usually finance themselves.

Smaller suppliers often cannot.

That creates a bottleneck.

A company capable of manufacturing drones, missile components, ammunition, radar systems or military electronics may have government demand waiting for it but still struggle to borrow enough money to expand a factory, hire workers or build inventory.

The proposed bank is designed to solve that problem.

It would lend to governments and defense companies while also providing guarantees that could encourage commercial banks to finance smaller or riskier suppliers.

That could create an entirely new financing system around the defense industry.

And that matters because the global rearmament push increasingly depends not only on military budgets, but on whether companies can actually raise the capital needed to produce what governments are ordering.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has strongly backed the project and wants the institution headquartered in Canada.

But there is a major obstacle.

Several of the world’s largest economies have not joined.

Germany and Britain remain outside the project, while Japan has not committed.

That matters because the DSRB wants a triple-A credit rating.

A high rating would allow it to borrow money cheaply in global bond markets and then pass those lower financing costs on to governments and defense companies.

Without major sovereign backers, obtaining that rating could become more difficult.

There are also questions about duplication.

The European Union already has its €150 billion SAFE defense-financing program, while Britain is developing a separate Multilateral Defence Mechanism with several European partners.

Some governments are asking why another institution is necessary.

Supporters argue that the DSRB would be different because it would become a permanent multilateral financial institution rather than a temporary government program.

It could also finance companies outside the European Union.

That is particularly important for countries such as Canada, Turkey and Ukraine.

Major financial institutions are already paying attention.

Around a dozen banks, including JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, have provided approximately $10 million in funding or services to help establish the institution.

Those banks could eventually earn substantial fees arranging defense projects financed through the DSRB.

For investors and businesses, the significance is bigger than the bank itself.

Defense spending is increasingly becoming an industrial-policy story.

Governments are not simply buying more weapons.

They are trying to rebuild factories, expand supply chains, increase ammunition production and create domestic manufacturing capacity that has been allowed to shrink for decades.

That requires enormous amounts of private capital.

If the DSRB succeeds in raising €100 billion and leveraging that money into even larger amounts of lending, smaller defense companies could gain access to financing previously available mainly to the largest contractors.

That could create new factories, new suppliers and new investment opportunities throughout the defense economy.

But the project still has to prove that it can attract enough large governments to make the economics work.

Canada is prepared to move ahead with the countries already committed.

The real test now is whether Britain, Germany and other major economies decide that joining is worth the cost.

If they do, the DSRB could become something much larger than another international institution.

It could become a permanent global financing engine for the defense industry.

JBizNews Desk | Ottawa / London

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Israel and Greece signed the largest defense agreement in the history of their relationship Monday, putting Israeli missile-defense technology at the center of Greece’s military buildup as tensions with Turkey continue to intensify across the eastern Mediterranean.

The agreement, valued at approximately €3 billion, or roughly $3.5 billion, will give Greece a comprehensive multi-layered air-defense network built around three Israeli systems: Rafael’s David’s Sling and SPYDER systems and Israel Aerospace Industries’ BARAK MX.

The project, known as the “Achilles Shield,” represents one of the largest defense export agreements ever signed by Israel.

Israel’s Ministry of Defense Director General Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amir Baram and his Greek counterpart Ioannis Bouras signed the agreement Monday at Israeli Defense Ministry headquarters.

For Israel, the deal is much bigger than another weapons sale.

It establishes Israeli technology as the backbone of the air defenses of a NATO member and strengthens an emerging strategic relationship among Israel, Greece and Cyprus at a time when all three are increasingly concerned about Turkey’s regional ambitions.

Greece has accelerated its military modernization as tensions with Ankara grow over islands, maritime boundaries and control of the Aegean Sea.

Those tensions were again visible in recent days when Greek F-16 fighter jets were reportedly scrambled after a Turkish drone operated near the Greek islands of Samothraki and Lemnos.

Turkey and Greece are both NATO members, yet their longstanding disputes over territorial waters, airspace and islands have repeatedly pushed the two countries toward confrontation.

Israel’s relationship with Turkey has also deteriorated sharply under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, making Greece increasingly important to Jerusalem both strategically and economically.

The new defense system will give Greece multiple layers of protection against aircraft, drones, cruise missiles and ballistic threats.

David’s Sling provides the longer-range layer. BARAK MX covers medium-range threats, while SPYDER can defend against aircraft, helicopters, drones and missiles at shorter ranges.

Together, the systems are designed to operate as one integrated defensive network.

Delivery is expected within approximately 35 months.

Greek companies will also receive a significant share of the work, with approximately €700 million expected to be carried out by Greece’s domestic defense industry.

That provision is particularly important as European countries increasingly seek not only to purchase weapons but also to develop their own manufacturing capabilities and secure their supply chains.

For Israel’s defense industry, the implications are enormous.

Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries are already seeing surging global demand as governments across Europe dramatically increase defense spending and seek air-defense systems proven under real combat conditions.

Israel’s systems have gained particular attention because of their repeated operational use against missiles, drones and rockets during recent conflicts.

The Greece agreement follows Israel’s record Arrow 3 sale to Germany and a growing list of major European defense contracts.

It also comes only months after Greece signed a separate approximately $750 million agreement for Elbit Systems’ PULS rocket artillery system.

Together, the agreements are turning Greece into one of Israel’s most important defense customers.

But the larger story may be geopolitical.

Israel increasingly views Greece as a strategic gateway into Europe and as part of a broader network of countries whose security and economic interests overlap with its own.

That relationship could eventually extend beyond the purchase of individual missile-defense systems.

Closer integration among Israel, Greece and Cyprus could allow the countries to share radar information, sensors and command-and-control capabilities, creating a much broader picture of aerial threats across the eastern Mediterranean.

For Greece, the objective is deterrence.

For Israel, it is exports, alliances and strategic depth.

And for Israel’s defense industry, the agreement is another sign that air defense has become one of the country’s most valuable exports.

A technology developed primarily to protect Israel is rapidly becoming part of the defense architecture of Europe.

JBizNews Desk | Israel

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent heads into the G20 finance ministers meeting in Asheville on Monday carrying an unusually heavy agenda.

He wants the world’s largest economies to talk about trade imbalances, economic growth, debt transparency and cutting financial ties with Iran.

But the meeting is also likely to turn the spotlight back on the United States itself.

Washington is now dealing simultaneously with new tariffs, a $40 trillion federal debt load, elevated long-term Treasury yields, intervention in currency markets and growing questions about how aggressively the government should try to influence borrowing costs.

That makes this G20 gathering more than a routine diplomatic meeting.

It is becoming a test of how much confidence the rest of the world still has in the way the United States is managing global finance.

Bessent is expected to push countries to address what Washington sees as excessive trade imbalances and industrial overcapacity, particularly from China.

He is also expected to press governments and financial institutions to reduce or cut economic relationships with Iran as the administration expands secondary sanctions.

That could put several G20 members in an uncomfortable position.

Many of them agree that Chinese overproduction has distorted global markets.

But they are also wary of Washington using tariffs, sanctions and financial pressure in ways that can disrupt their own economies.

The U.S. position is complicated further by its own borrowing needs.

Federal debt crossed $40 trillion earlier this month, while the 30-year Treasury yield recently reached its highest level in nearly two decades.

Treasury responded by expanding purchases of older long-dated government bonds, doubling the maximum size of certain buyback operations to $4 billion.

The government says those purchases are designed to improve market liquidity, not artificially control interest rates.

But investors and foreign officials are watching closely.

The United States still depends heavily on global investors to finance its debt.

Foreign governments, central banks, pension funds and institutions are major buyers of Treasury securities.

If those investors begin demanding higher yields because they are concerned about inflation, deficits or intervention in financial markets, borrowing becomes more expensive not only for Washington but eventually for American businesses and households.

That is why this week’s G20 discussion matters far beyond diplomacy.

A Treasury yield is not simply a Wall Street number.

It helps determine the cost of mortgages, corporate loans, commercial real estate financing and enormous infrastructure investments now being planned across the U.S. economy.

Bessent is therefore walking into Asheville asking other countries to change their economic behavior while simultaneously defending some unusually aggressive U.S. policies of his own.

The administration has imposed or threatened tariffs against dozens of countries.

It has expanded sanctions pressure on Iran.

Treasury has intervened alongside Japan to support the yen.

And Washington has increased bond buybacks at a time when markets are already nervous about the amount of debt the government must sell.

The official American G20 agenda is built around growth, modernizing financial regulation, reducing excessive global imbalances, improving debt transparency and strengthening cross-border payments.

Those are familiar economic goals.

The environment surrounding them is not.

The world’s largest economies are entering the meeting with energy markets disrupted, trade relationships under pressure, inflation still elevated in several countries and central banks again considering higher interest rates.

That means the conversation in Asheville could quickly move from long-term economic cooperation to a much more immediate issue:

How much government intervention can global markets absorb before investors begin demanding a higher price for uncertainty?

For American businesses and consumers, that question matters because the answer will eventually show up in borrowing costs, currencies, tariffs and prices.

Bessent goes into the G20 trying to persuade the world that Washington has a coherent plan for stronger growth and more balanced trade.

This week, the world gets a chance to ask him the same question about America’s own finances.

JBizNews Desk | Asheville, North Carolina

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The Federal Reserve spent much of the summer trying to convince markets that patience would be enough.

Kevin Warsh just changed that conversation.

In his first Jackson Hole address as Fed chair, Warsh made clear that the central bank’s 2% inflation target is not negotiable and that policymakers may still need to raise interest rates again if inflation does not move convincingly lower.

That was enough to immediately reset expectations across global markets.

Before the speech, traders saw roughly a 35% chance of a September rate increase.

After Warsh spoke, that probability jumped to around 60%.

The two-year Treasury yield climbed, the dollar strengthened, gold fell sharply and stocks struggled as investors adjusted to the possibility that the next major Fed move may not be a cut.

That matters because only weeks ago, much of Wall Street was focused on when rates could begin moving lower.

Now the question is different:

Will the Fed have to raise them again?

Warsh did not promise a September hike.

He deliberately avoided that kind of guidance.

Instead, he laid out the conditions that would force the Fed to act.

Inflation remains well above target.

The labor market remains relatively strong.

And Warsh said financial conditions do not appear broadly restrictive enough to guarantee inflation will return to 2%.

That combination gives the Fed room to tighten further if upcoming data do not improve.

For businesses, this matters immediately.

A higher Fed rate increases the cost of short-term borrowing, credit lines, floating-rate debt and business loans.

For consumers, it can keep pressure on credit cards, auto loans and eventually mortgages.

For investors, it changes how stocks are valued.

Growth companies — particularly expensive technology names — become harder to justify when safer government bonds offer higher returns.

That is why the market reaction went far beyond the Fed funds futures market.

Gold dropped sharply after the speech.

The dollar strengthened.

U.S. stocks finished Friday lower.

And global markets are now entering the new week with the possibility of tighter U.S. monetary policy firmly back in the conversation.

Warsh’s message is especially important because he appears determined to run the Fed differently from his predecessors.

He has criticized excessive forward guidance and suggested that markets should rely less on carefully choreographed hints from the central bank.

That means investors may receive fewer promises about what the Fed will do next and more pressure to react directly to inflation, employment and financial conditions.

In practical terms, that could make markets more volatile.

Every major inflation report now matters more.

Every employment report matters more.

And the September Fed meeting is no longer being treated as a routine hold.

The next major test comes as policymakers review the latest inflation and employment data before their September decision.

If inflation remains near current levels, the argument for another increase becomes stronger.

If price pressures cool meaningfully, the Fed can wait.

But the important shift has already happened.

Rate hikes are no longer a remote possibility sitting somewhere in the background. They are back at the center of the conversation.

And that means businesses, borrowers and investors need to start planning for a world in which money may become more expensive before it becomes cheaper.

JBizNews Desk | Jackson Hole, Wyoming

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Chinese fast-fashion business Shein Global Holdings Ltd. was once worth more than the parent companies of H&M and Zara, giving its reclusive boss Sky Xu a net worth of more than $23 billion.

But Xu’s fortunes have turned in four short years as Shein battles tariffs, political scrutiny and growing competition. Shein is set to go public in Hong Kong on Tuesday at just over a quarter of the $100 billion it was worth in 2022. Xu’s personal wealth, based on his 30% stake, falls to about $8 billion at the listing price, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The more than $15 billion decline in Xu’s riches also comes down to poor timing. Chinese consumer brands that went public over the past year or so initially drew strong investor interest until a string of artificial-intelligence companies made their debuts, stealing their thunder and minting new billionaires. 

“They definitely missed the window,” Sam Wyatt, an international-equities portfolio manager at U Ethical Investors based in Melbourne, said of Shein’s initial public offering. E-commerce is now a less attractive story to investors than AI, he said.

Read More: Shein Bets on Everlane Acquisition to Kickstart Empire Post-IPO

While some AI companies have delivered blistering first-day gains, the overall performance of Hong Kong IPOs has been mixed. Shares of beverage maker Eastroc Beverage Group Co. and pig breeder Muyuan Foods Co. are both trading below their listing prices after debuts that exceeded $1 billion. The brothers who founded Mixue Group, a fast-growing bubble-tea chain, have seen their wealth shrink by more than a fifth since the company went public last year.

A Shein spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Xu, 43, started Shein in 2012 with three partners. They had all worked at the same search-engine marketing company and used their experience to grow Shein into an online retailer known for cheap, trendy clothes. The business flourished during the Covid-19 pandemic, when young shoppers fueled an explosion of sales.

Revenue growth has slowed since then, according to data Shein disclosed in July ahead of its IPO. One of the company’s key strategies — sidestepping import taxes in the US and Europe through small shipments — was upended last year when the Trump administration ended a key tariff exemption and the European Union announced a fixed customs duty on small parcels. 

“The direction of the market is changing, not in Shein’s favor, especially in the recent years,” said Sheng Lu, a professor in fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware. AI is also leveling the playing field for Shein’s competitors, who would be able to cater better and more quickly to changing consumer tastes, he said. 

Shein tried to go public during its heyday but struggled to gain traction in New York and London, where the company faced scrutiny over its labor practices. The company’s supply chain is rooted in China but relies on the US and Europe as key markets. Executives distanced the brand from its Chinese origins and moved its global headquarters to Singapore, though they ultimately needed Chinese regulators’ approval for an IPO. 

“Shein was the hottest topic two to three years ago — a Chinese firm that could have IPO’ed in the US because it already had a strong fast-fashion brand in the US and strong consumer recognition,” said Jason Hsu, chief investment officer at Rayliant Global Advisors. “But the hot topic now is AI.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday shared a statement in support of religious Givati Brigade soldiers who refused to board a Namer armored personnel carrier with a female paramedic during an operational mission in the Gaza Strip, saying he would demand answers from the IDF over its handling of the incident.

“I support the Givati soldiers who insisted on their right and duty to serve in the IDF while preserving their values and faith and while adhering to the Joint Service Order,” Smotrich said.

The soldiers were prosecuted on Sunday by court-martial rather than criminally, an IDF source indirectly told The Jerusalem Post.

A second IDF source indirectly confirmed the disciplinary process to the Post, adding that the military is not pleased that the information was published before the verdicts were handed down.

Smotrich says cannot sit by as ‘leader of Religious Zionism’

“The soldiers have the full backing of the rabbis and directors of the Hesder Yeshivot Association, who examined the issue thoroughly and with the appropriate caution and stand behind the decision,” Smotrich said following the decision.

“I prayed and hoped with all my heart that the IDF would come to its senses and prevent the need for my intervention, but since that did not happen, as the leader of Religious Zionism, I cannot sit idly by, and I will demand answers from the IDF on the matter,” Smotrich said.

This post was originally published on here.

Japan has spent more money defending its currency in the past month than ever before.

The country’s Finance Ministry says it used 15.3993 trillion yen — roughly $96.5 billion — between July 30 and August 26 to support the yen after it fell to its weakest levels in roughly four decades.

That would already be a major story for Japan.

But the reason global markets are paying attention is that the consequences do not stop in Tokyo.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that a disorderly collapse in the yen could force investors around the world to unwind large financial positions, disrupt bond markets and ultimately raise borrowing costs for American households and businesses.

That is because the yen has spent years at the center of one of the most important trades in global finance.

Japan kept interest rates extremely low for decades.

Investors could borrow cheaply in yen and use that money to buy higher-yielding assets elsewhere — including U.S. Treasuries, corporate bonds and stocks.

That strategy is commonly known as the yen carry trade.

It works well when the yen is stable.

It becomes dangerous when the currency begins moving violently.

If the yen suddenly strengthens, investors who borrowed in yen can face rapidly growing losses and may be forced to sell other assets to repay those loans.

If the yen collapses instead, Japan faces higher import costs, more inflation and pressure on households and businesses.

That puts Tokyo in a difficult position.

Japan cannot simply allow the yen to fall indefinitely.

But defending it on this scale also has consequences.

The July intervention was particularly unusual because the United States joined Japan in buying yen, a rare example of coordinated currency intervention between the two governments.

Japan’s Finance Ministry later confirmed that the July 31 action was carried out together with the U.S. Treasury.

The government has also said it is prepared to intervene again if markets become disorderly.

The yen had weakened to around 164 per dollar before the intervention, its lowest level in about 40 years. The operation temporarily strengthened it, but the currency has since drifted back toward the 160 level.

That is why the pressure has not disappeared.

Japan is also increasingly expected to raise interest rates again.

The Bank of Japan lifted its benchmark rate to 1% in June, and economists now expect another increase could come as soon as September.

Higher Japanese rates would help support the yen.

But they could also encourage Japanese investors to keep more money at home instead of buying U.S. bonds.

That creates another potential problem for Washington.

Japan is one of the largest foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities.

If Japanese investors find domestic bonds increasingly attractive, demand for U.S. government debt could weaken at exactly the moment Washington needs enormous amounts of financing for a federal debt load that has already surpassed $40 trillion.

Less demand generally means Treasury must offer higher yields to attract buyers.

And higher Treasury yields eventually filter through to mortgages, corporate loans, commercial real estate and other borrowing costs.

That is the connection Bessent is warning about.

A currency problem in Japan can become a financing problem in the United States.

For businesses and investors, the bigger lesson is that currencies are no longer moving quietly in the background.

Governments are intervening directly.

Central banks are changing rates.

And enormous pools of capital can move from one country to another very quickly when the economics change.

Japan has already spent nearly $100 billion trying to stabilize the yen.

If the currency remains under pressure, the next intervention could be even larger.

And the biggest question for Americans may ultimately not be what happens to the yen itself.

It may be what happens to U.S. borrowing costs if one of the world’s largest sources of capital begins bringing more of its money home.

JBizNews Desk | Tokyo / Washington

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Nepal’s rescue teams, helped by Chinese and Indian experts, worked overnight to reach hundreds of people believed to be stuck inside blocked hydropower project tunnels in the aftermath of last week’s Himalayan flood that carved a trail of destruction in the country’s valley towns and villages as well as across the border in China.

The unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud and debris on the Nepal-Tibet border on Wednesday – blamed on a glacier collapse – killed nearly 800 people and more than 3,000 are still missing.

Hundreds of bodies, many unidentified, have been buried in shallow graves as they began decomposing in the humid weather in the plains of the Himalayan country after being swept down the mountains by the torrent.

Nepali officials said that the focus was on reaching the hundreds of workers believed to be trapped inside about half a dozen hydropower project tunnels that had been blocked by mud and rock debris.

Pictures and videos shared by rescue teams showed earth-moving equipment digging and shoveling mud and rocks under lights in the dark of the night as workers watched. Soldiers used torchlight in a big pit they had created to look for space to get into one tunnel.

Nepal’s disaster management authority said that 933 people were missing from hydropower projects in the flood-hit region. The Red Cross has estimated that more than 90,000 people are likely to have been affected by the disaster, which China has linked to the effects of climate change.

Complete assessment of damage challenging, Nepal PM says

“A large amount of debris has been deposited, and that is posing us a big challenge to opening the tunnels,” Nepal army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet told Reuters. “Our main focus is on opening the tunnels.” 

Prime Minister Balendra Shah said the flood was an “unprecedented and devastating natural disaster” and it remained challenging to compile a complete assessment of the damage.

“Despite the adverse weather, difficult terrain and continuing risks, we are moving forward with determination to save the lives of our citizens,” he said in a Facebook post late on Sunday, adding that nearly 21,000 security personnel were involved in the rescue operations, besides civilian workers and volunteers.

Nepali authorities said 788 had died, with 2,500 missing, including the more than 900 people at hydropower projects, as of Sunday night. On the Chinese side, authorities said 16 people were killed in Gyirong County, and 546 were missing.

Beijing has said 261 foreign nationals from 23 countries were unaccounted for in Tibet, near a key border crossing with Nepal. 

China’s state-run CCTV reported Beijing has mobilized more than 2,100 rescue workers and allocated at least 220 million yuan ($33 million) to support relief efforts and has been airdropping equipment and supplies to frontline rescuers, while its soldiers used life-detection equipment to look for the missing.

 Survivors look to salvage belongings

Although Nepal has said that it does not need foreign help in general rescue and search, it has leaned on giant neighbors India and China for their expertise in tunnel rescue.

Rescue operations have been suspended several times since Friday because of bad weather and concerns that a lake formed across the Nepal-China border by the disaster could trigger fresh flooding after it began overflowing into Nepal’s rivers.

The weather was good on Monday, and rescue work continued to pick up pace, said Narendra Pariyar, the district administrator of Rasuwa, one of the two hard-hit districts.

In the holy town of Devighat, on the banks of the flooded Trishuli River, residents walked around the shells of what had once been homes, trying to salvage their belongings from the debris.  

The flood was “caused by glacier instability under the long-term effects of global warming,” Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported, saying it was a “new and prominent feature of cryosphere disasters” on the Tibetan plateau.

Two Nepali officials told Reuters that China had not shared much information on glacier risks and water levels following a meeting to strengthen cooperation earlier this year, and they feared that a lack of data sharing could hamper future disaster preparedness. China’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting.

The mudslide from the Nepalese side took six to seven minutes to reach the Gyirong border crossing, CCTV said, citing the findings of Chinese scientists. Dramatic surveillance footage shared worldwide showed torrents of water and debris engulfing buildings while people tried to flee.

This post was originally published on here.

CEOs have been warning professionals that AI won’t take their jobs—it’ll actually be their tech-savvy coworkers snatching up opportunities. Now, those who aren’t riding the wave of the AI job boom may be leaving $100,000 on the table, especially women.

AI job postings in the U.S. have doubled since 2023, according to a recent LinkedIn analysis, but women only accounted for 26% of hires in jobs that required AI skills last year, compared to their 50% representation rate in non-AI roles. And moving up the totem pole, they’re even less likely to be included; across 27 countries in the world, women hold only 13% of tech-related C-suite positions at AI companies. However, it isn’t for a lack of trying.

“The findings suggest that while AI is becoming an increasingly important source of career growth and economic opportunity, women aren’t being afforded these opportunities,” the LinkedIn report says.

Women are missing out on thousands of dollars each year thanks to the gender imbalance in the AI job market. The professional platform’s study found that AI is pumping out some of the “fastest-growing and highest-paying opportunities in today’s labor market”; the average AI job posting offers an annual salary of around $177,000, compared to non-AI roles which typically pay roughly $80,000. 

Of course, women are already well-acquainted with being underpaid and undervalued—the gender wage gap even widened slightly last year, as women earned 18.6% less than men for doing the same work. Now they’re being boxed out of lucrative AI jobs while professionals in the male-dominated industry reel home $100,000 more each year. 

Fewer women are occupying high-level AI jobs that pay $300K

AI’s gender opportunity gap isn’t just about whether women are using AI. It all starts with who is given access to high-level positions, where tech skills can translate into serious earning power. 

It should be noted that women tend to view AI more negatively than men. Working women are more concerned for their career security, skeptical that the risks outweigh the benefits, and wary of harmful bias reverberating throughout the algorithms. They’re twice as likely as men to say that AI will negatively impact them over the next two decades, as opposed to leaving a positive mark. So it checks out that women are 22% less likely than men to be regular AI users at work.

But skepticism around the technology doesn’t fully explain the gap. Even women who make it into the AI workforce are less likely to land roles with the biggest paychecks and influence. LinkedIn found that women only make up 20% of head of AI roles, which typically pay $236,000 a year. They also only account for 26% of director of AI positions (around $300,000 annually), and 18% of member of technical staff jobs (roughly $245,000 each year). 

And just like the C-suite trends seen across real estate, tech, and finance, women’s representation is whittled down at each layer. In general, women’s occupation in AI roles is 10% lower than their share in jobs unrelated to the tech. And at AI-focused companies, women account for 5% less of the workforce compared to businesses outside of the industry. LinkedIn says the biggest gap appears at the top level: a “leadership penalty” may be holding them back from bigger titles. The gender gap for C-suite roles is 15% wider than for roles below the executive level. 

Together, three “Triple Penalty” barriers have been keeping women back from thriving professionally in the AI era: working in leadership roles, working in AI jobs, and working at AI companies. Closing those gaps is critical to ensure that women aren’t left behind in the very economy they’re helping build.

“AI is creating some of the fastest-growing and highest paying jobs in the economy,” the August LinkedIn report said. “Yet women remain less represented in many of the jobs, companies, and leadership roles shaping AI’s future.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The world’s largest chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, released quarterly results that almost any company would envy: a 40% jump in revenue to $40.2 billion, and a 77% jump in profit to $22.3 billion. Investors, though, decided those gaudy numbers weren’t enough. The next day, TSMC shares dropped 7.3%—and dragged Taiwan’s benchmark TAIEX index down in the biggest single-day point decline on record.

TSMC’s outsize role poses a challenge for Sherman Lin, the chair of the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation, which runs the island’s main stock exchange. According to Bloomberg calculations, Taiwan overtook India to become the world’s fifth-largest stock market—behind only the U.S., mainland China, Japan, and Hong Kong—in May. And yet two-fifths of that value comes from TSMC. 

That’s why Lin and his colleagues at the stock exchange are trying to make sure that investors, domestic and foreign, give all of Taiwan’s other companies a close look too. 

“The best way to understand Taiwan is as a technology island,” he says. “We’re like an industrial park. Companies can have fast and agile collaborations among the supply chain.” He rattles off the cities along the corridor that runs from Taipei down through Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung and Kaohsiung with manufacturers all within a few hours’ drive of each other. “Technology really is in our DNA,” he adds.

Taiwan’s pitch contrasts to other equity markets in the region: Hong Kong, for example, is a gateway into mainland China; Singapore is trying to position itself as a home for Southeast Asian companies. Lin, however, is focused on technology. 

“When global investors invest in Taiwan, they are not simply investing in one company,” he says. “They are investing in the value created by an entire AI ecosystem and supply chain.” 

TSMC, ‘Taiwan’s most iconic company’

It’s impossible to talk about Taiwan’s stock market and not mention Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s leading producer of advanced chips and supplier to companies like Apple and Nvidia. The company is worth close to $2 trillion, making it the most valuable company based in Asia.

It makes over 40% of the TAIEX, Taiwan’s benchmark index; it carries an even larger weighting on third-party indices, like the MSCI Taiwan Index where TSMC accounts for as much as 60% . (The second-largest company on MSCI’s index, MediaTek, has only 5% weighting). Taiwanese often call the company the “sacred mountain” protecting the island’s economy and stock market. 

“TSMC is undoubtedly Taiwan’s most iconic company,” Lin says. “But our real competitive advantage is not that we have one or two world-class companies. It’s that we have the world’s most complete and competitive AI ecosystem.”

Jimmy Beunardeau / Hans Lucas—AFP via Getty Images

The macroeconomic data backs him up: Taiwan’s government now forecasts growth of 11% for 2026, which would be the fastest growth rate since 1987.

TSMC “sits on top of a much broader Taiwanese AI-picks-and-shovels supply chain, with hundreds of small-cap investable stocks,” says Ram Thirukkonda, a senior investment strategist at Acadian Asset Management. “Many of the smaller companies in this group have outperformed even TSMC over roughly the last three years.”

Still, he points out that Taiwan’s industry is more focused on chip foundries, meaning gains are “steadier” compared to the more wild swings seen in South Korea’s equity markets. 

‘Hidden champions’

Lin is trying to push investors to consider what he calls “hidden champions,” or profitable companies in sectors that may get overlooked by more electronics-focused investors. In January, TWSE’s index subsidiary launched the “Taiwan Pristine Stock Index,” tilting away from the electronics sector to include biotechnology, construction, food, sports and leisure. 

Another bet from the stock exchange is the “Taiwan Innovation Board,” launched in 2021 for companies in AI, semiconductors, green energy and other priority sectors. “It’s a kind of revolution for us,” Lin says. “We’d like to take advantage of overseas attention and shift it to the Taiwan Innovation Board.” 

The board is still small, with fewer than 30 listed companies, compared to more than 1,000 on the main market. But TIB-listed companies are strong performers: Shares of companies listed on the Innovation Board are up by 177% for the year so far. 

Taiwan had 70 IPOs across the Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taipei Exchange in 2025, which together raised $3.3 billion, a record amount for the island’s stock markets. Forty percent of these IPOs were from companies in the AI supply chain, according to Brenda Hu, a senior vice president at TWSE. 

Still, Taiwan isn’t raising anywhere near the same amount of money as major financial centers. Hong Kong, for example, raised $37.4 billion across 119 deals last year, making it the world’s top IPO venue for 2025. And this year, Shanghai’s STAR Market has won its own mega-tech IPOs from companies like memory maker ChangXin Memory Technologies and robotics firm Unitree. 

Taiwan is also pursuing a program to encourage companies to improve their shareholder value, following in the footsteps of Japan and South Korea. The “Power Up” program pushes Taiwan-listed companies to strengthen their corporate governance and make their disclosures more transparent. As of January, almost 46% of TWSE-listed companies had announced their “power up” plans.

A similar effort in Japan pushed companies to unwind their complicated cross-shareholding structures and expand their share buyback programs, helping lift the value of Japanese companies. These reforms are partly credited for lifting Japan’s stock market, which had languished in a slump for over a decade, to record highs in recent years. 

“The main goal of Power Up is very simple: Reduce the information gap,” Lin says. “We would like companies like TSMC and Wiwynn to report to investors on their mid- and long-term strategies.”

‘Perfect timing’

The U.S. and Europe account for 80% of foreign investment into Taiwan; Lin calls these markets his “first priorities.” Yet he’s also interested in the Middle East, which he describes as a “rich area” that TWSE has only made “small steps” into. 

Hu also names India and Japan as sources of investment, and suggests that Taiwan’s ETFs and savings accounts could be attractive to those outside Taiwan. 

Taiwan has become a growing hub for wealth in the region—in part due to the AI boom. Hu estimates that Taiwan has around 772,000 people with over $1 million in assets, the fifth-highest number in Asia. Eighty percent of them put their wealth into financial assets, the highest proportion in Asia. 

Some things about Taiwan will not be changing quickly. The exchange operates from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and closes before most of Asia-Pacific. Other Asian markets are considering ditching some long-term practices in order to keep trading for longer: Hong Kong, for example, recently allowed the market to stay open during typhoons and extreme weather, and is even considering keeping it open over lunch.

I-Hwa Cheng—AFP via Getty Images

Lin had previously floated the possibility of expanding trading hours to 3:30 p.m., with no lunch break. Regulators, however, disagreed, with Financial Supervisory Commission chairman Peng Jin-lung calling it “not a priority” and noting it wouldn’t move forward until there was more consensus among Taiwanese stakeholders. 

When asked about these reforms, Lin suggests that Taiwan has “different characteristics” from its peers. “In Taiwan, retail investor protection is quite important,” Lin explains. “The first priority for us is to take care of local investors and give them a more fair and efficient trading process.”

Still, Lin seems to see today’s AI boom as an opportunity to push for change and build Taiwan’s profile. Even as earnings among semiconductor manufacturers keep growing, there’s still an subtle fear among investors and analysts that things will eventually come back down to Earth. 

From Lin’s perspective, the energy around AI and semiconducts could last for another two or three years, making it an especially timely moment to act. “This is perfect timing for us,” he says.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Welcome to Eye on AI. Beatrice Nolan here. In today’s issue:

• Google DeepMind is losing its grip on elite AI talent, new data shows
• DeepSeek seeks $7.4 billion at a $74 billion valuation.
• OpenAI data-center head leaves amid broader exodus.
• And OpenAI releases more details on the Hugging Face hack.

Enterprises are starting to look beyond America for their AI needs. 

As Chinese open-weight AI models increasingly close the gap with their closed-source U.S. counterparts, more enterprises are warming to the idea of using Chinese alternatives. It’s easy to see why: open-weight models offer companies more opportunities to fine-tune AI models, are much cheaper, and generally give enterprises more control, including more assurance that their data isn’t being used to train potentially competing products.

While Anthropic and OpenAI still dominate how American businesses buy AI, new spending data suggests that at least a minor shift is underway.

According to Ramp’s latest AI Index—which tracks token and subscription spend across its customer base—the share of businesses paying for model serving platforms, which give companies access to open source and Chinese-developed models, rose to 6.1% of total AI-spending businesses in July, up from 4.5% in January 2026.

The shift may show increased enterprise interest in open-weight models such as Moonshot’s Kimi K3, which made waves on its release for being both an unusually large open-weight model but also one that showed coding and agentic performance close to leading proprietary systems.

Z.AI, another Chinese AI lab, this week confirmed that it built Ox Alpha, a previously anonymous model that had been performing well on AI benchmarks and gained enthusiastic reviews from AI developers over the weekend. The company has renamed it GLM-5.3-Flash and said it will charge $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens—another aggressively priced Chinese offering in a market where DeepSeek and Moonshot have already put pressure on rivals’ pricing. Z.ai is also thought to close to releasing a larger version of GLM-5.3 that many believe will rival some of the best models from Anthropic and OpenAI in cyber capabilities, potentially a watershed event that many fear will usher in a new era of AI-powered cyber attacks for which industry is woefully unprepared.

China is now clearly ahead in the open-model race. For example, Hugging Face found that, in almost every month of 2026, the largest and most capable open model came from a Chinese lab, while the U.S.’s most notable recent challengers have come from Thinking Machines Lab, and, more recently, Meta. But those American releases have generally not matched Kimi K3’s scale or developer pull.

Alex Brunicki, a partner at Backed VC, told me he’s already seeing a shift in how enterprises are approaching open source models.

“We’ve seen a lot of companies…developing industry‑specific foundation models using open source models that are then fine tuned on very particular data sets,” he said. “They’re not necessarily using the frontier models for all of the work that they’re doing. They’re actually using these open source models which are free to use.”

At least two established organizations have recently publicly switched to open-source for some areas of their business. Thomson Reuters said this week it has built an in-house model, called Thomson-1, based on Snowdon, a system the company developed by adapting Alibaba’s open-source Qwen model.

The model will handle document-review tasks that previously ran on Claude. As part of the announcement, CTO Joel Hron said companies do not need ever-larger, more expensive models to get useful results, and that starting from a strong open foundation and specializing it deeply can produce capable AI at lower cost.

Harvey, the legal tech firm backed by OpenAI, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz, also recently announced that its new model, Harvey Tenet, was post-trained on top of Moonshot AI’s open-weight Kimi K3 and that it outperformed both its base model and U.S. frontier systems, including Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, on complex legal agentic tasks. Harvey had previously built its product by customizing closed models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google.

Ramp’s lead economist, Ara Kharazian, wrote that recent growth of open-source has not yet dented spending on OpenAI or Anthropic directly. New AI buyers are still choosing the established American labs; for example, Anthropic gained the most ground among businesses in July, rising 1.1 percentage points to 43.5% market share, and OpenAI climbed just 0.23 points to 39.7%.

However, Anthropic’s Fable 5, thought to be the most advanced model on the market—so much so that the U.S. government briefly suspended foreign access to it for national security purposes— accounted for just 6% of tokens businesses purchase from Anthropic and 11.4% of dollars spent on Anthropic models overall, despite being priced at roughly $10 per million tokens, twice the cost of OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol. 

That model, by comparison, makes up 25% of OpenAI’s tokens and 23% of its spend. Kharazian argues Fable 5 has effectively found the market’s ceiling, and businesses are not willing to pay a premium for the best model on the market when a cheaper one is good enough.

Taken together, all this may suggest American frontier labs have found the limit on what customers will pay for the newest, most expensive model, and open-source may just be stepping in to fill that gap.

With that, here’s more AI news.

Beatrice Nolan
[email protected]
@beafreyanolan

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Russia is keeping more of its diesel at home.

Moscow has extended its ban on diesel exports through September 30, as repeated attacks and refinery disruptions continue to tighten domestic fuel supply and reduce the amount available to foreign buyers.

The restriction covers diesel, marine fuel and gas oils exported by Russian producers.

That matters far beyond Russia.

Russia is one of the world’s largest diesel exporters, and when those barrels disappear from the global market, buyers in Europe, Turkey, Africa and Asia have to compete more aggressively for supply from the United States, India, the Middle East and other refiners.

The result can be higher prices even when crude oil itself is not surging.

That distinction is important.

A trucking company does not buy crude oil.

It buys diesel.

An airline does not buy crude oil.

It buys jet fuel.

A construction company does not care what Brent crude is trading at if the refined fuel it actually needs remains expensive.

That is why refinery outages can create a different kind of energy shock.

Russia may still have crude oil available, but if damaged refineries cannot turn that crude into diesel, gasoline and other usable fuels, the global market can look adequately supplied on paper while the products businesses actually need remain tight.

The pressure has already forced buyers to change trade routes.

Turkey has sharply increased diesel purchases from the United States and India as Russian supply has become less dependable.

That means fuel is traveling farther, shipping costs are rising, and buyers are becoming more exposed to international freight and insurance costs.

For businesses, the impact can spread quickly.

Higher diesel prices raise the cost of trucking.

That pushes up freight bills.

Retailers, manufacturers and food distributors then have to decide whether to absorb those costs or pass them on to customers.

The result can be another layer of inflation even if headline oil prices are easing.

For Russia, the export ban is an attempt to stabilize its own domestic market.

Refinery disruptions have tightened supplies at home, and Moscow is prioritizing Russian consumers and businesses over foreign buyers.

But every barrel kept inside Russia is one less barrel available elsewhere.

That makes the ban part of a broader problem now affecting global energy markets:

the world may have enough crude oil, but it does not always have enough functioning refining capacity in the right place.

That is becoming especially important as the Iran conflict, shipping disruptions and geopolitical sanctions already complicate the movement of fuel around the world.

For investors, the lesson is straightforward.

Do not look only at crude prices.

Watch refinery outages, diesel inventories, export restrictions and shipping routes.

Those are the numbers that can determine what businesses actually pay to keep trucks moving, factories operating and goods delivered.

Russia’s latest move is another reminder that energy inflation does not always begin at the oil well.

Sometimes it begins at the refinery.

JBizNews Desk | Moscow

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

United States Senator Ted Cruz backed President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post declaring “mission accomplished” in the war with Iran, while going further by calling for the collapse of the Iranian regime during a Meet the Press interview on Sunday.

Host Kristen Welker asked Cruz whether he agreed with the president’s declaration, noting that the war was entering its sixth month this week despite Trump previously saying it would last only a few weeks.

Cruz responded that he agreed “unequivocally” that the president’s military objectives had been achieved.

According to Cruz, the US has eliminated Iran’s military capabilities and nearly destroyed its supply and manufacturing infrastructure for ballistic missiles and drone programs, as well as its air force, navy, and leadership.

“Their air force is in rubble on the runway. Their navy is sunk and at the bottom of the ocean. Much of their senior leadership has been eliminated. So in terms of military objectives, I think that is correct,” Cruz said.

Cruz also addressed the US blockade of Iran and its objective of imposing economic pressure on the country, claiming that Iran’s economy is in “free fall.”

“Now, if you also look at the objective of imposing economic harm, right now with the blockade that we are holding on Iran, Iran is facing $500 million a day of economic cost. That is enormous cost that is ratcheting up,” Cruz said.

Cruz supports collapsing Iran regime, arming Kurds and protesters

The senator went further, saying he supports a long-term objective of collapsing the Iranian regime and doing so by arming Kurdish forces and protesters.

“Now, I would like to see the longer-term objective be regime collapse,” Cruz said.

“The ayatollah and the mullahs are radical Islamist zealots… The Ayatollah routinely chants, ‘Death to America.’ The Ayatollah… This regime… has been the world’s leading state sponsor of terror for 47 years. So what I’ve been urging is for President Trump and the Trump administration to arm the protesters, the people of Iran. Arm the Kurds and let the protesters remove this regime,” he said.

Welker followed up by asking Cruz why US troops had not returned home if the military objectives had been achieved.

Cruz responded that while there are “occasional skirmishes,” the “active military conflict has reduced significantly,” and said the troops’ current role is focused on enforcing economic pressure through the blockade.

Cruz highlights role of Iranian protesters

Cruz said he believes economic sanctions are a powerful tool, but argued they would be even more effective with support from protesters inside Iran. He also highlighted that the conflict began after the regime killed tens of thousands of protesters.

He reiterated his support for arming protesters, saying: “Frankly, Kristen, it’s not fair to expect some Iranian protester standing there with a rock to stand up against soldiers with machine guns. I believe if we arm the protesters, particularly the Kurds, who had a long history of being effective fighters.”

Cruz said that while the US should not determine who governs Iran, it does have an interest in preventing the country from being ruled by a regime that threatens America.

“It’s not our business to determine who the government of Iran is. But it is our business to say the government of Iran should not be a radical theocrat who hates America and is trying to kill Americans,” he said.

Cruz concluded by praising Trump’s leadership, saying: “And President Trump is acting as a strong commander in chief to keep the American people safe.”

This post was originally published on here.

A Florida grand jury found that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration “misappropriated” $10 million in taxpayer money it diverted to a charity connected to his wife, but it declined to file criminal charges due to a lack of evidence indicating who specifically was responsible.

DeSantis on Thursday did not dispute the legitimacy of the secret grand jury report obtained and published online by CBS News Miami, but he insisted no laws were broken and said whoever leaked the sealed documents would face “consequences.”

The Leon County grand jury completed its report in January on investigations into Hope Florida, the charity started in 2021 by Florida first lady Casey DeSantis. Despite the lack of charges, the report ignited a new round of criticism aimed at DeSantis and other top state Republicans over the charity receiving $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement intended to help poor children get health insurance.

David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for governor, called for the grand jury probe to be reopened. He faces Republican Byron Donalds in November. DeSantis, under Florida law, cannot seek a third term.

The Hope Florida charity is supposed to help financially struggling families connect with churches and aid groups to help keep them off publicly-financed assistance programs. The $10 million was instead moved to political action committees that used the money to oppose a 2024 statewide ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana for adults in the state.

DeSantis opposed the measure, and it fell just short of the 60% supermajority it needed to become law.

“Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,” the report concluded.

The grand jury said no one would take responsibility for sending the money to the charity or had any memory of who did.

“We recognize that this would be an impediment to criminal prosecution,” the report noted. “While we can’t prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes and we would like to see changes made to prevent this from happening again.”

The grand jury report concluded that James Uthmeier, who was DeSantis’ chief of staff at the time, “was in a position of authority over those involved in settling,” and that his Keep Florida Clean PAC was the prime recipient of the $10 million. The grand jury said then-state Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office knew of the plans to divert the money. She was later appointed by DeSantis to the U.S. Senate.

Uthmeier and Moody are both seeking reelection.

In a news conference Thursday, Uthmeier suggested Democrats were behind the grand jury report leak and called renewed interest in its findings “a politically motivated hoax.”

In a post on X on Thursday, Moody said her office was only one of several agencies that signed off on the initial settlement, and “had no knowledge of how funds would be spent” by Hope Florida, state lawmakers or any other group.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The US Treasury Department is likely to unveil weekly new secondary sanctions aimed at increasing economic pressure on Iran, with an initial focus on banks, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Reuters on Sunday.

After imposing penalties on the United Arab Emirates branches of Egypt’s Banque Misr on Friday over alleged financial links to Iran, Bessent said in an interview that the next step may be cutting off an institution entirely from the dollar-based financial system.

“You’re going to see a lot more of these every week,” Bessent said ahead of a Group of 20 finance leaders meeting. “We’re starting with the banks, and we’re telling the banks it’s not okay to have Iranian money and to aid the regime.”

Bessent said he intends to drive the message home to G20 finance ministers and central bank governors to cut economic ties to Iran, or face secondary sanctions.

This is a developing story.

This post was originally published on here.

Florida dominated a new list of markets attracting out-of-town shoppers for newly built homes, with outside shoppers generating more than 80% of new-construction views in several of the state’s metro areas.

Lakeland led the nation, with out-of-town shoppers accounting for more than 83% of new-construction views during the second quarter, followed by Cape Coral at 82.4%, Port St. Lucie at 80.9% and North Port at 80.5%, according to a new Realtor.com report.

Nationwide, 67.2% of views of new-construction listings came from out-of-metro shoppers, compared with 65.4% for existing-home listings.

Durham, North Carolina, rounded out the top five at 80.2%.

Deltona, Florida; Charleston and Greenville, South Carolina; Stockton, California; and Augusta, Georgia, also drew strong interest from out-of-market shoppers, the report found.

“The new builds are competitively priced in these metros, so out-of-metro buyers who maybe did not necessarily have new construction in mind find lots of new builds that fall into their price filters,” Realtor.com senior economist Joel Berner said in a statement.

Affordability and Sun Belt lifestyle are among the major factors driving out-of-market interest in those areas, according to Berner.

The difference in metro-wide median new-construction listing prices can be substantial.

Lakeland’s median new-construction listing price was $315,821 in the second quarter, compared with $1,946,685 in Miami.  Many shoppers viewing homes in Lakeland came from Miami, Orlando and Tampa, the report found.

Cape Coral, meanwhile, attracted shoppers browsing from Miami, New York City and Chicago.

Brian Stephens, a real estate agent and team leader with eXp Realty in Lakeland, said builders are also attracting buyers with closing-cost assistance and mortgage-rate buy-downs.

“They have slightly more inventory, and they offer to pay for the buyers’ closing costs and even buy the interest rate down,” Stephens told Realtor.com. “Why purchase a resale when you can purchase a new home and get a warranty and everything is brand-new?”

Those incentives are becoming increasingly important as builders compete for buyers nationwide.

Nationally, the median asking price for a newly built home was $450,256 during the second quarter, down 0.1% from a year earlier, according to Realtor.com.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged his country’s economic woes amid pressure from the U.S., which is strangling its trade while protecting other countries’ ships carrying oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

Recent weeks have seen Tehran lose leverage over the critical energy chokepoint as traffic picks up, especially via a southern route along Oman’s coast. At the same time, warnings about Iran’s economy from Pezeshkian and the regime’s other relative moderates have been mounting.

In an interview with state media on Friday, he signaled defiance in the face of all the economic pressure and credited Iran’s resilience to its unity.

“We have many problems,” Pezeshkian said, according to a Google translation. “There’s inflation, economic issues, employment and many other problems, but the people are with us.”

Indeed, inflation has soared above 80%, with prices for certain food staples up 100%. The International Monetary Fund said in April Iran’s economy will shrink 6.1% this year, the worst contraction in decades. And a labor ministry official estimated that more than 1 million jobs had been lost by late May.

In an apparent dig at Iranian hardliners who reject negotiations with the U.S. and favor continued war, Pezeshkian added that “we may have many things; we may even have missiles and bombs, but they are of no use.”

He later noted that imports are not coming into the country, including gasoline. The naval blockade has not only prevented Iran from exporting oil via its ports, it has also kept out imports of refined fuels that Iran needs despite being a major oil producer.

That has created shortages and long lines at gas stations, made worse by deep subsidies that encourage excess consumption. In the interview, Pezeshkian described efforts to curb fuel demand and hike prices, but hinted they can’t go too far.

“We shouldn’t make someone whose life revolves around gasoline suffer,” he explained. “We shouldn’t put more pressure on those who are already under pressure. People are on the edge now; if I put more pressure on them, they might fall off the edge. We have to be careful that no one falls off.”

Pezeshkian estimated that Iranian trade has plunged 25%-35%, with imports down significantly more than exports. In fact, trade intelligence firm Kpler said Iran’s August crude export loadings have collapsed more than 80% compared to a year ago.

Since the naval blockade was reimposed, U.S. force have redirected 82 commercial vessels, disabled three and boarded two to ensure compliance, Central Command said on Friday.

“Some people say that sanctions have no effect at all,” Pezeshkian said. “I really don’t know what to tell these people. I just want to say this, saying that sanctions have no effect is not consistent with these facts.”

While the U.S. military tightens its chokehold, it is simultaneously loosening Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz. Last week, Central Command said U.S. forces completed clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping routes.

Estimates vary on exactly how much oil is leaking through, but the upshot is the volumes are substantial albeit still well short of normal. According to Goldman Sachs, total exports of crude and oil products from the region have risen to 15 million-16 million barrels a day. And Kpler said oil flows from the Persian Gulf have recovered to around 70% of pre-war levels.

U.S. officials told Axios that about 10 million barrels of oil a day are being transported out of the strait through the Omani corridor the U.S. military is defending.

A two-week stretch of U.S. bombing last month degraded Iran’s radar and maritime surveillance systems, the report said, making it easier for tankers to sail through undetected at night with their transponders turned off. This has allowed vessels to make shuttle runs in and out, then unload oil to other tankers that deliver the cargo to customers.

To be sure, Iran is still attacking ships, but that hasn’t been enough to stop traffic. Meanwhile, the U.S. military continues to weaken Iran’s ability to close the strait. On Sunday, U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers that were preparing to deploy sea mines in the strait.

Gregory Brew, an expert on Iran and oil at the Eurasia Group, said on X on Friday that Iran overplayed its hand in July, when it resumed attack on shipping in the strait’s southern route.

“The result: the MOU is dead, the blockade is back in place, and the US is succeeding (to a partial, but notable extent) at reopening the strait without another deal,” he added. “Perhaps the status quo swings back in Iran’s favor, but right now this looks like a miscalculation to me.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

John Ternus, who takes over as CEO of Apple this week, joined Apple in 2001, just four years after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Satya Nadella entered Microsoft in 1992, only two years after completing his master’s degree. Andy Jassy joined Amazon in 1997, 24 years before he took the top job. Three of the world’s most powerful technology companies are now led by executives who built their careers largely from within.

Their careers counter one of the most persistent pieces of modern career advice: that getting ahead means moving around. For much of the last thirty years, we’ve been told that long-term employment was dead. As large employers moved from employment guarantees to frequent downsizing during the 1980s and 1990s, ideas of loyalty became passé. Career advice has frequently revolved around embracing free agency, taking charge of our own careers through regular mobility across employers. Career success is supposed to come from proactively moving to wherever your services would be most valuable. No sector has epitomized the image of easy come, easy go employment quite like tech. Yet our biggest tech companies are now being led by organization men, executives whose career paths look like they’ve come straight out of the 1950s.

I’ve been studying employment for over two decades now, and I’ve started to suspect that the way that we talk about modern careers may be all wrong. Yes, loyalty is dead and employment is now something of a marriage of convenience. But we haven’t moved to a world of hyper-mobility. People aren’t quitting their jobs any more than they were twenty-five years ago; layoff rates have actually come down; and we haven’t seen the surge in freelance work that we expected. There’s also growing evidence that building a career inside a firm continues to be a more reliable route to success than trying to plot a path across companies. The insider tech CEOs aren’t outliers. They’re a sign that we need to reconsider how people get ahead.

Consider, for example, an analysis of the careers of the top 10 executives in each Fortune 100 firm that my colleague Peter Cappelli published with his coauthors back in 2024. Although the average executive had moved around a little more than John Ternus, their stickability is nonetheless striking: the average executive worked at only three employers during the 28 years that it took them to reach the top. They had also been with their current employer for 13 years before accessing the executive suite. Those executives may be more mobile than they were back in 1980, but there remain, it seems, remarkably few job-hoppers in the top-ranks of corporate America.

When we have studied careers below the executive suite, we have found that upward mobility—moving into more senior jobs with more responsibility—is overwhelmingly more likely to happen through internal moves within the same company, rather than by moving to a different firm. Another study of Finns found that moving up into a more senior job was almost six times as likely to occur through an internal move compared to a move across firms. The reasons are not hard to understand: moving somebody up in their career, letting them take on a job that is bigger and more responsible than any they have held before, is always a risk for an employer. Employers are much more willing to take that risk on somebody they know well—an inside candidate—than an outside hire that they know little about. There is also ample evidence that those internal candidates tend to do better once they get the job, as new hires initially struggle to navigate an unfamiliar organization.

There are, of course, a lot of reasons why moving employers can benefit people in their careers. Many people are in jobs they don’t like; they should be looking for something better. It also makes sense to move around to learn about yourself and the kinds of work that you enjoy. And recruiters can be reluctant to hire people who have spent much more than a decade at the same firm, because of worries that those long-timers will struggle to adapt to a new employer. Even the rhetoric around free agency, which emphasizes the need to take charge of your own career, navigating across employers in search of the best opportunities, serves a useful purpose by reminding us that our employers rarely have our long-term interests at heart.

But we also need to rebalance our understanding of how modern careers really work. It turns out that the things that allow us to be successful in our careers – doing good work and getting access to new opportunities – still depend on the kind of familiarity and trusting relationships that are built through longevity within organizations. The advice that you have to “move out to move up” has it exactly backwards. Those who are hoping to become the next John Ternus, rising to lead a trillion dollar corporation, should understand that they can move out, or they can move up, but it is hard to do both at the same time.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune_._

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Who in US President Donald Trump’s inner circle will succeed him as president in 2028?

That appears to be the question on much of his cabinet’s mind, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and now Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth each weigh presidential runs.

However, voters this November may cut one, or all, of the three men’s political ambitions short.

Trump is placing a significant amount of pressure on Republicans to win the upcoming November midterms to maintain the party’s congressional majority.

Notably, the president is currently polling at a 33% approval rating, an August Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

Trump pressures Republicans to win midterms to maintain congressional majority

Trump has repeatedly said that Republicans have “got to win the midterms,” and has implied that losing them would lead to “very bad things” for US voters.

“I’m here because I love Iowa, but I’m here because we’re starting the campaign to win the midterms. Got to win the midterms,” Trump said in a January speech in Iowa.

“If we lose the midterms, you’ll lose so many of the things that we’re talking about, so many of the assets that we’re talking about, so many of the tax cuts that we’re talking about – and it would lead to very bad things.”

In a separate interview in January with Reuters, Trump expressed frustration that the GOP could lose control of the House of Representatives or the Senate, and cited historical trends that have seen the party in power lose seats in the second year of a presidency.

“It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

But even Trump, though he has tried before, cannot stop an election.

So the question remains: who will his successor be?

Trump has not directly endorsed anyone yet, though he has said he will when the time is right and has privately shared his preferences.

Trump has publicly egged on a contest for his endorsement between Vance and Rubio, and has said that the two running on the same ticket would be his “dream team.”

“By the way, I do believe that’s a dream team. But these are minor details. That does not mean you have my endorsement under any circumstance. But you know … I think it sounds like presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate,” he said in May.

Vance: MAGA heir apparent or Trump’s whipping boy?

Trump has praised and disparaged Vance in front of audiences, at times making him seem more like a whipping boy than an heir apparent. In one instance, he notably said he would blame Vance if a deal with Iran fails.

But Vance is still largely seen as the frontrunner to inherit the GOP, and Trump has reportedly said as much in private conversations.

Notably, The Washington Post reported in August that Trump privately told investors in the Oval Office that “at the end of the day, we need to elect JD.”

Some White House sources told the Washington Post that Trump will not endorse any candidate until much later, and that his mind is constantly changing on who to endorse.

Trump later denied the report, saying: “I think he’s great, but we’re way too early to even be thinking about that.”

A March Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 79% of Republicans held a favorable view of Vance, while 19% held a negative view. Some 71% viewed Rubio positively, while 15% viewed him unfavorably.

Vance is associated with MAGA’s younger wing, which helped get Trump into office in 2024 but is reportedly eroding over issues like rising inflation. He courted several Silicon Valley businesspeople for their support in the 2024 election and has continued to court business moguls to help fundraise for the Republican Party.

Additionally, he could attract more working-class voters, given his roots in Ohio and his familial ties to rural Appalachia.

Although his deal with Iran fell through, Vance told his advisers that he believed his role in the talks put him at a political advantage because he helped create a popular agreement to end an unpopular war, according to the Washington Post.

However, some voters have said that Vance is unlikeable and too much of a yes-man for his current role as vice president.

He notoriously called Trump “America’s Hitler” during the president’s 2016 run, before he became his political ally.

Rubio: Tenured international policy hawk who polls better than Vance

Marco Rubio, as previously mentioned, is besting Vance in some hypothetical matchups against Democrats. A May Emerson College survey put Vance with 36% of conservative voter support, with Rubio at 35%.

If Rubio decides to run, he could point to the myriad of global crises that he managed as proof of his leadership skills. In the first half of the term alone, Rubio has managed diplomatic relations regarding Iran and the US’s allies, assisted in rebuilding Venezuela after devastating earthquakes and the ousting of former authoritarian president Nicholas Maduro, and explicitly redefined the US’s foreign aid strategy.

According to the May Emerson College survey, he tends to receive support from older, more educated Republicans and Hispanic voters.

In terms of polls, conservative voters appear to prefer Rubio to Vance in hypothetical head-to-head races against Democrats. In a survey done by Emerson College, Rubio beat Vance in all but one hypothetical race.

Rubio defeated both former vice president Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in hypothetical races by the same margin, 48% to 43%. Vance, by comparison, narrowly defeats Ocasio-Cortez, 46% to 44%, but loses to Harris by four percentage points.

However, Rubio legally cannot run for president while serving as secretary of state or as a national security adviser.

He has indicated that he intends to finish out the rest of his term in the role; sources close to him told the Washington Post that he has no political campaign waiting in the wings.

Sources close to the secretary of state told the Washington Post that he had reduced his speaking availability to avoid talking about the 2028 election.

Wild card or Liability? Hegseth weighs presidential run

And then, there’s the administration’s current wild card: former Fox News anchor and current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

NBC reported on Friday that Hegseth has floated the idea to his close associates within the past few months. He reportedly believes that he has attributes that made Trump popular with his core voter base, like his tough-guy attitude and conservative stance on social issues.

“Pete Hegseth should consider running for president,” Chairman of the American Conservative Union Matt Schlapp told NBC. “He’s an impressive guy and has a tremendous amount of energy.”

However, his handling of the conflict with Iran, Signalgate, and conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln could potentially affect his polling with voters. Hegseth hasn’t been mentioned in any recent polls about the 2028 elections, since the NBC report came out on Friday.

“MAGA really loves Hegseth because they love the cut of his jib. But you’ve got to deliver the goods. If you want to be secretary of war, you’ve got to win wars,” one pro-Trump operative close to the White House told NBC.

Hegseth, along with Pentagon and White House officials, has discredited the rumors that he is weighing a presidential bid.

The secretary said on Friday that any reports of him weighing a presidential bid were “100% false,” adding that his “only job” was making the Department of Defense great.

Be that as it may, he is currently mobilized on the campaign trail during the middle of the US’s conflict with Iran, something that former defense secretaries have abstained from.

Three former defense secretaries, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, and William Cohen, told NBC that Hegseth’s partisan political appearances are something that they deliberately abstained from in the past.

“My God, we’re at war. We’ve got a huge problem,” Hagel, Obama’s defense secretary and former Nebraska senator, told NBC.

“We’ve got a global issue here that we’ve gotten ourselves into with this mess, and what are you doing going to Iowa and campaigning when you should be paying attention to your job?”

It is also worth noting that no defense secretary has ever been president, while several vice presidents and secretaries of state have later made the jump to be commander in chief.

Additionally, Hegseth had several scandals before he was confirmed as secretary of defense, including his drinking habits. 

What comes next?

For now, all three men appear to be shrugging off any questions about their candidacy. Rubio has repeatedly downplayed his presidential ambitions despite his previous run against Trump, and has said that he will not run in 2028 if Vance does.

Vance has said he would wait until after the midterm results, and that he doesn’t make decisions “until I absolutely must.”

Hegseth said that reports of him weighing a presidential run were “100% false,” but then campaigned for Republicans in Iowa and Kentucky during an active conflict.

Trump’s popularity has also taken hits for incidents that the three men were directly involved in. Most specifically, the White House’s handling of the war with Iran.

The war has rapidly reshaped the midterms and has affected thousands of Americans’ bank accounts because of the rising cost of gas.

One Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 31% of US voters approve of the Pentagon’s handling of the war, which has not technically ended.

Another Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 69% of Americans believe Trump had not clearly explained the goals of US military involvement in Iran.

Whoever inherits the mantle will not only have to answer for their role in the conflict, but also accept responsibility for others’ perceived mistakes in the administration. While Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth all successfully tied themselves closely to Trump in 2024, it might hurt their chances of running as individual candidates.

The midterms will help clarify which of these three men can effectively communicate to voters what the GOP looks like post-Trump, and who can distance themselves from the administration’s shortcomings or spin their mistakes in a marketable way.

The race to be the 2028 GOP nominee doesn’t technically start until after the midterms, but in effect, it already has.

Trump’s endorsement will have an enormous impact on the race, but it won’t come anytime soon. In the meantime, the president who remade the GOP in his image may discover that choosing who inherits it is more difficult than choosing who serves beneath him.

Idan Kweller and Reuters contributed to this report.

This post was originally published on here.

U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on the Strait of Hormuz in the first military action in a month on Sunday, according to a U.S. official, breaking a lull in fighting during an intermittent war that has lasted more than six months.

Forces with the Revolutionary Guard Corps were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the strait, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail sensitive military movements.

The U.S. military last week completed clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping routes.

Semiofficial news outlets in Iran reported sounds of explosions near Larak island on the strait. The Guard in a statement carried by Iran’s state broadcaster noted “the martyrdom and injury of several of our fighters and compatriots.”

The statement said the attack will “result in punishment of the aggressor.”

The fighting comes just days after the Trump administration said it would turn its focus to increasing economic pressure — rather than military action — to try to end its war with Iran. The shifting strategy centers on threats to punish any country or entity that continues to conduct business with Tehran.

The turn to using sanctions as the cudgel of choice comes as the administration weighs diminished munitions stockpiles after months of war, sparking concerns that the prolonged conflict could undermine U.S. military readiness in other parts of the globe.

As the conflict grinds on, Trump’s talk of finding a quick end to the war also appears to be fading. He stressed last week that he’s “not in a hurry” to get Iran back to the negotiating table, and he continues making the case that the Islamic Republic’s leadership is on the ropes.

Trump has consistently emphasized that the U.S. and Israel campaign has been devastating for Iran’s navy and air force. Iranian officials have said the country has suffered $270 billion in direct and indirect damage. Israeli military strikes in the first weeks of the war wiped out much of the theocratic government’s leadership structure.

But Iran has found leverage through its own strikes in the critical Strait of Hormuz where relatively few vessels carrying oil and liquefied natural gas are risking passage. Iran still has enough drones and missiles to fire at vessels transiting the vital energy waterway, through which 20% of the world’s oil normally flows, effectively controlling much of the traffic in the strait.

Trump has repeatedly declared that the “Strait of Hormuz is open,” saying 24 vessels passed through last week. But that’s a fraction of the roughly 130 vessels that passed through the vital waterway daily before the war began.

Earlier on Sunday, a multinational coalition overseen by the U.S. Navy said commercial traffic through the strait remained at “reduced levels.” And a monitoring agency run by the British military said an unknown projectile struck a tanker ship on Saturday north of Khasab, Oman, in the strait.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Organization said the ship had been moving inbound and no casualties or environmental impact had been reported. It cited unspecified military authorities. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Google Maps has begun displaying “Lake America” in place of Lake Ontario for users in the United States after President Donald Trump ordered the body of water renamed.

Google said the change began rolling out Saturday after the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) formally updated the lake’s name from Lake Ontario to Lake America.

“Since we update Google Maps to reflect name changes in official government sources, which is GNIS for the U.S., people using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Lake America,’ those in Canada will continue to see ‘Lake Ontario,’ and those outside of the U.S. and Canada will see both names,” Google said.

“These updates follow our long-standing policy for bodies of water with names that vary from country to country, and are starting to roll out now,” the company added.

White House communications director Steven Cheung highlighted the change on X on Sunday.

“It’s official! LAKE AMERICA on Google Maps,” Cheung wrote.

The update comes days after Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Interior Department to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America in the United States.

“The Lake will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping America’s future and the global economy,” Trump wrote.

“In recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people, I am directing that the Lake officially be renamed as Lake America.”

The president’s decision also comes amid escalating trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa.

U.S. tariffs of 50% on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods took effect Aug. 22 after trade talks collapsed. 

Canada retaliated with tariffs on roughly $20 billion in U.S. imports that are set to take effect Sept. 8, according to Reuters.

Google could not immediately be reached by FOX Business for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Work-life balance has become a major priority for Gen Z, with young workers increasingly placing a premium on maximizing time away from their jobs—even ranking it above pay in some surveys. But work-life balance has never been much of a priority for Panda Express cofounder Andrew Cherng. 

Even at 78, the self-made billionaire restaurateur has long embraced the demanding schedules and relentless work ethic that helped him build the largest Asian-American restaurant chain in the U.S.

“It was hard when I had no business, there was no income,” he said after recently being asked by NBC News on how to avoid burnout. “But even then, I wasn’t burned out because, you just work, go to work, and [if] you have a like a 12-hour day, you go home, you sleep well—I mean that’s life.”

And that mindset helped him and his wife, Peggy, turn a single family-run restaurant into a nearly $7 billion-a-year global chain over five decades. It has also helped propel their net worths to an estimated $6.6 billion collectively.

How two immigrants turned $60,000 into an empire serving 148 million pounds of orange chicken a year

Andrew Cherng was born in Yangzhou, China, in 1948. When he was 5, his family fled to Taiwan, and eight years later, they moved again, this time to Japan.

He eventually made his way to the U.S., enrolling at Baker University in Kansas to study mathematics. There, he met his future wife, Peggy, who was Burmese-born and would go on to become his business partner and now serves as Panda Express’ co-CEO. The couple later earned master’s degrees from the University of Missouri.

“Every holiday I had, I worked in New York, waiting tables in a restaurant,” Andrew recalled to Fortune in 2013. “My father was a chef but hadn’t owned his own business. I didn’t like that. In my heart of hearts, I knew I wanted to be in business.”

Peggy went on to pursue her PhD and work a brief career as an engineer for McDonnell Douglas and Comtal (acquired by 3M), while Andrew began pursuing his own path in the restaurant industry. He moved to California to work for his cousin, putting in seven days a week at the restaurant for $800 a month.

After a year, Andrew decided to strike out on his own with his parents. Together, the family scraped together $60,000 from savings and a Small Business Administration loan and opened Panda Inn in Pasadena, California, in 1973.

“The whole family—my parents, a brother and sister—all worked at the restaurant for free,” he recalled. “We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in San Gabriel and didn’t have any money. Peggy would come to visit, and we got married in 1975.”

The restaurant’s expansion was slow at first, but by 1983, the first Panda Express was opened in a shopping male in Glendale, California, and the concept gradually exploded. In 1985, Panda grew from five locations to nine in a single year.

Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images

Today, Panda has more than 2,600 locations around the world and employs over 55,000 people. In 2025 alone, the chain served up 148 million pounds of its signature orange chicken. But perhaps more remarkably, the Cherngs built the empire without ever taking money from outside investors.

Work-life balance is rejected by many of the world’s top founders

The Cherngs aren’t the only business leaders who have embraced an all-consuming approach to work—and credited that commitment with helping fuel their success.

Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang has similarly said that work-life balance is essentially nonexistent for him. Huang is constantly thinking about his chip-making business.

“I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. I work seven days a week,” Huang said in a 2024 interview with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison.

That relentless focus has helped transform Nvidia from a computer graphics company first conceived at a Denny’s into one of the world’s most valuable companies, with a market capitalization of more than $5.5 trillion. Huang’s personal net worth is estimated at nearly $190 billion.

Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington recently echoed that sentiment to Fortune, saying that she doesn’t believe people with truly engaging jobs can simply shut their laptops at 5 p.m.

“I don’t think there is anybody with an interesting job who can do that,” Huffington said. “For you, or me, or most people with interesting jobs, there is never a time when you have a natural ending to the day.”

The same idea extends beyond core business. Will.i.am, the Grammy Award-winning music artist previously shared with Fortune that if Gen Z want to aspire for success, they should forget about work-life balance.

“If you’re trying to build something that doesn’t exist, it’s about dream-reality balance,” he said. “Work-life balance means that you’re working for somebody else’s dream. You just have a job supporting somebody else’s dream, and you want to balance your work and your life.

“But if it’s dream-reality balance, then it’s not work,” Will.i.am added. “It’s a dream that you’re trying to put into reality, and you’re ignoring your current reality.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

NASA’s newest crown jewel blasted off Sunday to hunt for planets around other stars, explore secret dark energy and survey the cosmos like never before.

SpaceX launched the $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope shortly after daybreak aboard a triple-the-firepower Falcon Heavy rocket. Roman blazed toward an observation point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away that’s home to the Webb Space Telescope, one of NASA’s other big-ticket eyes in the sky.

The bus-sized telescope — named after the late Nancy Grace Roman,NASA’s first chief astronomer — will take more than three months to reach its destination. Once there, it will cast the widest gaze yet on the hidden parts of the universe from space, uncovering the unimaginable with unsurpassed speed.

“It’s going to find thousands of supernovae, tens of thousands of planets, billions of galaxies and tens of billions of stars,” said NASA science mission director Nicky Fox. “It’s going to be able to do things that we’ve never been able to do before with its massive field of view.”

3… 2… 1… Liftoff! And a call from the president

Several minutes after the thunderous launch from Kennedy Space Center, the rocket’s two reusable side boosters descended tail-first in a thrilling scene, producing sharp sonic booms as they landed back at Cape Canaveral. Soon afterward, the telescope separated successfully from the rocket’s upper stage, drawing applause from ground controllers.

Fox was in tears watching the action unfold. “It’s such a good day!” she said.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was in the middle of a news conference a couple hours later, predicting that the Roman Space Telescope would soon become a household name, when his cellphone rang. President Donald Trump was on the line, offering congratulations.

“Boy, it looked beautiful on television,” said Trump, fresh off his visit to Houston’s Johnson Space Center on Friday to honor the Artemis II moon crew. “You’re the hottest in space.”

Roman Space Telescope will provide a wider perspective

Roman’s field of view is more than 100 times wider than that of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, still churning out celestial glamour shots after 36 years in orbit. Webb joined the effort several years ago with an even narrower yet spot-on vision capable of zooming in on objects almost as old as the universe-creating Big Bang.

These three orbiting powerhouses will join forces — along with the European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft and the National Science Foundation’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile — to reveal some of the universe’s biggest secrets.

Inside the countless galaxies awaiting discovery are stars with planets. Once these new worlds are spotted by Roman, the more powerful and sensitive Webb will take aim to fill in the blanks.

“Roman’s vast reach will allow us to find the weird, the rare and the unusual,” senior project scientist Julie McEnery said on the eve of launch. “We’ll redefine what it means to find a needle in a haystack.”

Perhaps even more important, astronomers expect Roman to shed light on the dark matter and dark energy that make up most of the universe yet remain concealed. Roman’s catalog of galaxies will help scientists ascertain how quickly the universe is expanding due to these puzzling, unseen forces.

Roman will scan the sky 1,000 times faster than Hubble

Roman’s superpower is speed.

A month of Milky Way observations by Roman would take Hubble a century to complete, according to McEnery. Roman should make quick work of scanning the galactic bulge at dead center, she added, providing the deepest look yet into the heart of our galaxy.

Besides a wide-field infrared camera that matches Hubble’s sensitivity but is 1,000 times faster, Roman holds an instrument to block out starlight. This experimental, eclipse-creating coronagraph will allow Roman to directly image any planet, however faint, that might be orbiting the masked star.

While Roman isn’t designed to search for life, Fox said it will pave the way for future observatories to answer what NASA considers the biggest question: “Are we alone? Is there another Earth 2.0 looking back at me?”

The telescope is designed to be refueled, meaning if a robotic tanker becomes available in the coming decade, that could extend its life.

The telescope’s mirror has a surprising origin

Launching nearly a year ahead of schedule and within budget, Roman is NASA’s first space telescope to be named after a woman.

Retired NASA scientist Ed Weiler said the honor is long overdue. He coined the phrase “Mother of Hubble” for Roman, who hired him in 1978. Observatories above Earth’s obscuring atmosphere can see farther and better, she insisted after joining the brand new NASA in 1959. She died in 2018 at age 93.

“This is very, very fitting. I think Nancy would be very proud” that the namesake telescope will tackle some of the biggest, lingering questions about the universe such as dark energy, Weiler said.

Hubble launched in 1990 with a flawed mirror that required spacewalking astronauts’ dramatic intervention. Roman’s primary mirror is the same size as Hubble’s — nearly 8 feet (2.4 meters) in diameter — and is actually spy satellite surplus.

The National Reconnaissance Office donated two leftover mirrors to NASA more than a decade ago for repurposing. The second mirror is still in storage.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Joan Rubinger overcame a catastrophic biking accident that left her paralyzed to become an influential pain-relief specialist helping top-tier athletes get back on the field after acute and chronic injuries.

Her website touts a client list that includes 169 NFL Pro Bowl selections, 29 NBA and WNBA champions and 15 Olympic medalists. Among some of her most notable patients: NBA All Stars Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade, as well as MLB All Star Fernando Tatis Jr.

But behind the scenes, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration alleged in court filings, Rubinger doled out thousands of illegal prescriptions for highly addictive painkillers, a “covert and slinking” scheme the nurse practitioner likened to selling hamburgers at a fast-food restaurant. Over a four-year period, federal authorities said, the nurse practitioner prescribed 260,000 pills containing controlled substances to patients in more than 20 states.

Citing what an administrative law judge called egregious conduct, the DEA last month revoked Rubinger’s ability to prescribe opioids. That action followed Rubinger’s agreement in March to pay $1.4 million to settle a parallel Justice Department civil complaint that accused her of dispensing controlled substances like oxycodone, Percocet, and Xanax on hundreds of occasions without any legitimate medical purpose. Rubinger did not admit any wrongdoing as part of that settlement and agreed to never again prescribe controlled substances.

While authorities announced the settlement earlier this year, federal court papers unsealed at the request of The Associated Press provide new details of a medical provider who the DEA says was furtively enriching herself even as she put the health of her patients at risk.

The scheme, the DEA alleged in a seizure warrant, expanded over the years “from professional athletes” to a wide-range of other clients, including members of an Ohio-based street gang, a confessed New Jersey drug trafficker and a New York City model. Along the way, federal authorities alleged, the nurse practitioner took steps to avert DEA suspicion, coaching clients over an encrypted messaging app on ways to avoid having their prescriptions flagged by pharmacies.

The DEA described how two former athletes received illicit prescriptions from Rubinger, including former All-Pro Carolina Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis, whose wife alerted the agency to the nurse practitioner’s activities, according to the court records and an interview with the player’s now ex-spouse.

Rubinger started prescribing Davis opioids as he was bouncing between teams before he retired after the 2020 season, according to his wife. In all, authorities alleged, he received more than 13,000 oxycodone and Percocet pills between November 2019 and March 2024.

Davis did not respond to requests for comment and no one answered his door in North Carolina when visited by an AP reporter.

The DEA identified another former reserve NBA guard who, along with his wife, paid Rubinger more than $50,000 for illicit prescriptions well after he left the league. He could not be reached for comment.

Rubinger’s case did not result in criminal charges

A spokesman for Rubinger, Erick Mullen, did not answer questions about the nurse practitioner’s treatment of Davis or any other athlete, citing medical privacy laws.

“Joan’s case was not a criminal matter but a civil action,” he wrote in an email. “No raids with blue windbreakers carrying agency initials, and no loss of liberty at stake.”

He said “no administrative or disciplinary actions” had been taken by nursing boards in California and New York, where she is licensed to practice.

Mullen also did not address AP’s questions about Rubinger’s alleged ties to the Ohio-based Loyal to Brothers street gang but suggested they represented “actual harm” to his client. “You’ll have to imagine what kind of people threatened, intimidated, bullied and cajoled a paraplegic nurse practitioner and single mother into this kind of situation,” he wrote.

Federal prosecutors declined to comment on why they did not pursue criminal charges even as they accused Rubinger in court filings of violating federal drug statutes and regulations 900 times.

James Rafalski, a retired DEA investigator, said he worked many cases that ended in criminal charges and involved far larger volumes of pills. But Rubinger’s conduct stood out as especially flagrant, he said, adding he was surprised it did not result in a criminal prosecution.

“Most doctors who abuse their DEA registration just write scripts without a thorough examination of the patient,” said Rafalski, who reviewed court records in the case. “She knowingly took steps to evade detection by the DEA and instructed her clients to do the same.”

Prosecutors weigh a variety of factors in deciding whether to bring criminal charges, from the strength of the evidence to how a jury is likely to perceive a defendant.

Eric Grant, the U.S. attorney in Sacramento, said in a statement to AP that “the significant financial penalty” and ban on Rubinger prescribing controlled substances “grants the public meaningful protections against the unlawful dispensing of dangerous drugs.”

A nurse practitioner to the stars

Like many of her clients, Rubinger, 49, was once an elite athlete. As a child, she competed internationally in gymnastics. Years later she rowed and pole vaulted at Syracuse University.

After graduating, she coached women’s rowing at Indiana University, worked alongside elite NBA trainers and even assisted China’s Olympic volleyball team.

“My sculpted physique and bronzed, sun kissed skin were fruits of very hard labor,” she boasted in a personal blog. “Earned. Day after pavement-pounding day.”

She started All Pro Sports Medicine around 2010, describing her company as a niche service that offered athletes discrete medical attention at all hours of the day. In 2014, she was licensed as a nurse practitioner in California, which would’ve made it possible for her to prescribe medication.

Justice Department lawyers described her practice as “highly unorthodox” because it often operated out of hotel rooms, devoid of any medical records or a physician’s supervision.

Rubinger filled her website and social media accounts with testimonials from athletes praising her sports medicine practice. Among those she featured in her feeds were the NFL’s Drew Brees and Saquon Barkley, as well as the NBA’s Wade and Bryant. Major League Baseball’s Manny Machado also offered praise. There’s no suggestion in court records that Brees, Barkley, Bryant, Machado or Wade committed any wrongdoing or were even aware of Rubinger’s alleged prescription practices. Their statements of support all predated the Justice Department complaint. Representatives for the athletes did not respond to requests for comment. Bryant died in a helicopter crash in 2020.

Tatis, a teammate of Machado’s on the San Diego Padres, confirmed he had also been a client of Rubinger but was not aware she had been accused of issuing illicit prescriptions.

“We were always clear on what I wanted,” he told AP. “It was hydration and stuff to keep me on the field, and we were really professional and it was really clear on my side.”

The buzz surrounding Rubinger’s practice stemmed, in part, from “The Goo,” a pain-relieving gel she created. Rubinger marketed “The Goo” as a “wonder cream” and “Pro Athletes’ Best Kept Secret.” It contains the same active ingredients found in over-the-counter pain-relief gels like Bengay.

“I could literally submerge my whole body in a bathtub of Goo, man,” Davis, the linebacker, said in a 2022 video promoting the pain relief treatment.

Recovery from bike accident inspires top athletes

Rubinger’s life took a near tragic turn in 2015 when she plummeted 20 feet over the edge of a cliff while riding a mountain bike. The crash broke more than a dozen ribs, punctured her lungs and left her with spinal cord injuries that left her in a wheelchair.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” she wrote in the blog chronicling her recovery. “I’ve lost my identity. It terrifies me.”

She initially struggled with simple tasks like brushing her teeth. Nevertheless, she returned to work in just three months. Following Rubinger’s comeback, several NBA players, including Wade, wore orange wristbands in her honor on the court.

“You would look at Joan sitting quietly in her wheelchair and never know that she is the secret weapon behind the best athletes in the world,” Atlanta Hawks guard Buddy Hield wrote in one of several testimonials featured on her company’s website.

Hield did not respond to requests for comment made through the Hawks.

Nurse practitioner allegedly took steps to avert DEA attention

The DEA alleged that Rubinger went to great lengths to conceal her illicit operation.

New clients had to follow specific steps Rubinger outlined in a document she called “THE RULES,” court records show, threatening to cut off anyone who slipped up.

“I put these rules in place for a reason: to minimize the attention we attract from the DEA,” she told one prospective client, according to the seizure affidavit, which allowed agents to confiscate nearly $170,000 in what it deemed “crime proceeds” from her bank account.

Investigators say Rubinger collected hundreds of thousands of dollars through a digital money transfer app to provide clients with prescriptions for painkillers. She made them pay up front, the DEA said, distributing a price list for painkillers.

Getting a prescription, she told clients in “The Rules,” was “like at McDonald’s, you gotta pay for your burger before they hand it to you.”

In early 2024, the DEA said it inspected a Stockton, California, doctor’s office where Rubinger had registered her practice. The office belonged to an orthopedic surgeon Rubinger had shadowed years earlier. The surgeon told authorities he had no role supervising her work nor any knowledge of her prolific prescribing activity, according to the DEA order revoking her prescribing registration.

Many states, including California, require nurse practitioners in most circumstances to work under a physician’s supervision when prescribing opioids.

In social media posts, Rubinger and her athlete clients regularly refer to the nurse practitioner as “Dr. Joan.” Nurse practitioners, however, are not considered doctors.

Her website claims she holds a Ph.D., and her LinkedIn profile lists an unspecified “doctoral degree” from the Ohio State University.

A spokesperson for the university said it has no record of Rubinger attending or working at Ohio State. Mullen, her spokesperson, did not answer questions about her graduate studies.

Rubinger holds master’s degrees in nursing and kinesiology from Indiana University and The George Washington University.

Wife of NFL linebacker tips off DEA

The DEA began investigating Rubinger in 2022 after being tipped off by the wife of Davis, the former NFL linebacker.

Kelly Davis told authorities and the AP that she visited an emergency room in 2022 near her home in Charlotte, North Carolina, complaining of chest pains. As she was being evaluated, a doctor informed her she had been flagged for receiving excessive pain medication prescriptions.

Unbeknownst to her, Rubinger had written 23 oxycodone prescriptions for her husband over a two-year period listing her as the patient, according to the DEA and Kelly Davis.

In court documents, the DEA said Rubinger took such steps with her clients “to obscure her excessive prescribing and avoid law enforcement detection.”

“These individuals are not the intended recipients of the prescriptions, often do not even know they are being prescribed controlled substances,” the DEA wrote, “and have not been examined by Rubinger, much less have an established doctor-patient relationship with her.”

Kelly Davis said she was stunned by the revelation and immediately confronted Rubinger through Instagram.

“This is insane,” the football player’s wife wrote to Rubinger, according to the DEA’s revocation order. “You clearly know he has a problem. Why would you do this?”

Kelly Davis said the nurse practitioner was well liked by players and recalled running into another professional athlete the one time she met Rubinger while accompanying her husband to a 2020 appointment at a Marriott in Charlotte.

NFL has long struggled with painkillers

The NFL has well-documented problems with painkillers. A 2011 study found that 52% of the league’s retired players used opioids during their career. More recently came a 2020 investigation of the head trainer for the Washington Commanders for illegally distributing oxycodone to players. The trainer accepted a $10,000 fine under a deal with the Justice Department to avoid prosecution if he stayed out of trouble. An attorney for the trainer declined to comment.

The NFL has put in place more diligent accounting of drug prescriptions. Players are allowed to go outside their teams for medical care, though since 2019, they’ve been required to report any prescriptions they receive from outside their team.

Shortly after reporting Rubinger to the DEA, Kelly Davis shared her suspicions with the NFL Players Association and the California Board of Registered Nursing. The Players Association declined to comment; the NFL said it had no awareness of Rubinger; and the California nursing board said it does not discuss any disciplinary actions until they are finalized.

Kelly Davis said her husband’s use of opioids contributed to the demise of her marriage. The couple divorced last year.

In a May interview on The Pivot Podcast, Davis blamed his opioid abuse for wrecking his home life.

“There’s a lot of shame and guilt,” he said, holding back tears. “I’ve always been a person and a player that said that I would never allow anything to control me.”

___

Goodman reported from Miami, and Pells from Denver. Associated Press journalists Brett Martel in New Orleans, Rob Maaddi in Tampa and Michael Reo in Washington contributed reporting. Retired AP reporter Bernie Wilson contributed reporting from San Diego.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump intensified his criticism of Canada on Sunday, accusing the country of “ripping” the U.S. off “for decades” as he defended his tariff policies and urged Canadian companies to move their operations south of the border.

In back-to-back Truth Social posts Sunday afternoon, Trump first credited tariffs with strengthening the U.S. auto industry and keeping American manufacturing plants open.

“When I announced that I was running in the 2024 Presidential Election, right at the beginning, Ford was getting ready to close their Big Factory, in Detroit,” Trump wrote. 

Trump claimed the plant is now “running 24/7” and has become “one of the most profitable Car Plants in the World.”

“There are many other examples, for both Ford, General Motors, and others. I’ve revived, and indeed saved, the Automobile Business in our America. That’s because of what I’ve done with TARIFFS,” he said.

Trump then shifted his focus to Canada, describing the longtime U.S. ally as one of the country’s “worst” trade offenders.

“One of the Worst Abusers is Canada. I don’t want Canadian cars, I don’t want Canadian parts, I don’t want Canadian anything. They’ve been ripping us off for decades, and it’s going to stop,” Trump wrote.

“This should have happened long ago with other Presidents, just as stopping Iran should have happened long ago,” he continued. “They want to be treated like a State, but they aren’t one. I deal with the Leadership of many Countries, but I find Canada to be the worst. They are entitled no longer!”

Minutes later, Trump followed up with another post urging Canadian companies that do business with the U.S. to relocate their operations south of the border.

“Let all Canadian Companies that are doing business with America move to the United States, immediately. Many of them are Companies that moved out years ago due to stupid U.S. Leadership. When you move back, there are no TARIFFS!” Trump wrote.

The president’s comments come amid escalating trade tensions between the two longtime allies.

U.S. tariffs of 50% on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods took effect Aug. 22 after trade talks collapsed. Canada retaliated with tariffs on roughly $20 billion in U.S. imports that are set to take effect Sept. 8, according to Reuters.

The White House, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors did not immediately respond to requests from FOX Business for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Wall Street hadn’t heard a peep out of Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh for a month, until he walked on stage for his keynote speech at Jackson Hole today.

Warsh’s speech at the Fed’s annual gathering came with added scrutiny this year: Not only was it Warsh’s first as chairman, but he has also caused analysts some discomfort with his pullback from giving now-familiar forward guidance (in which the central bank indicated the general direction of travel for the base interest rate).

On forward guidance, Warsh stuck to his guns, saying: “You might know about my longtime discomfort with early pronouncements of future policy decisions … Forward guidance as a regular practice was adopted by my colleagues—and me—during the global financial crisis. It was essential at the time, and we introduced it with much fanfare.” 

“But as with other legacies of crises past, I believe the practice has outstayed its welcome. In normal times, the role of forward guidance should be limited and circumscribed; otherwise, it risks creating ambiguity in the name of clarity. Oversharing policy deliberations and overcommitting to future decisions can lead markets, businesses, and households astray, and I believe when policymakers make quasi-commitments on interest rates throughout the cycle, we inhibit our own freedom to make the right calls when it’s time to decide.”

His tone was firm: “We should not indulge a regime in which market participants are looking primarily to the Fed for their next trade.”

And while Warsh has repeated his commitment to the Fed’s dual mandate of inflation at 2% and maximum employment, neither he nor his central bank staffers are living under a rock: Bond yields tracked higher following Warsh’s July press conference, as markets digested a Fed on hold and the suggestion that markets may be doing some of the legwork for financial tightening that they had come to expect from the Fed.

But more alarmingly—for some corners of the street—were the questions hanging over the established frameworks the Fed uses to make decisions about the base rate. Analysts questioned if these frameworks might be subject to change, searching for answers on how policymakers were thinking, even if they didn’t know what action it might prompt.

Here, Warsh shared insights. While his outlook on the economy wasn’t necessarily rosy, it nevertheless described the balance of priorities within the Fed.

Price stability is front of mind, he suggested, in the balance of risks in the Fed’s mandate. He said: “But on the price-stability side of our mandate, the numbers are more concerning. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the 12-month change in the PCE price index, stands at 3.7%, while the six-month change is 4.1%.

“None of these measures are perfect, but they all tell a similar story: Inflation is running above our 2% target. So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.”

The employment side of the Fed’s mandate is doing “well,” he said, courtesy of a robust consumer and a “rematching” of employers and employees after the COVID pandemic. He added: “As of now, I believe the labor markets are broadly consistent with full employment, but on the price stability side of our mandate, the numbers are more concerning.”

With speculation swirling as to how actively the Fed will commit to its mandate, Warsh moved to nix concerns: “There is one signal nobody can miss: The responsibility for 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank. And that is where it belongs … I stand here today committed to a discipline, not to a decision. My Fed colleagues and I are hardly the first to hold these positions in a time of great consequence. We are determined to redeem the time by doing our very best work.

“We take our responsibility seriously, with humility and with resolve. So much depends on choices we make. Sound monetary policy helps households and businesses to prosper. When carried out effectively, it broadens and deepens the momentum of our economy . . . and helps to secure America’s leadership in the world. And I know that our country needs us to think carefully and act wisely.”

Warsh’s latest speech (at the time of writing) seems to have sidestepped any sharp reaction from markets: the price of gold—a safe-haven asset relied upon during times of volatility—dropped by approximately 1% during Warsh’s speech. The VIX volatility index also declined 1%, while longer-dated Treasuries also lowered. The CME FedWatch index, which tracks Fed fund futures, shows 57% of traders believe the Fed’s next rate move on September will be a hike of 0.25%, to the 3.75% level.

Early reaction from analysts suggests Warsh learned from the pushback earlier this summer. Eric Winograd, chief U.S. economist at AllianceBernstein, wrote that while the Fed chairman’s speech was light on details of central bank transformation, it did “correct a couple of mistakes he made at his last press conference, reinforcing that PCE is the target measure for inflation and that interest rates are the Fed’s primary tool. 

“Those corrections make the speech hawkish compared to his last remarks and should offer some relief to the back end of the yield curve, where some worries about Warsh’s willingness to act with rates to bring inflation down contributed to rising yields.”

‘The productivity pixie’

One thing some Wall Street analysts—unusually—didn’t want to hear too much about was AI. As UBS’s Paul Donovan quipped ahead of the speech: “The worst case would be a reiteration of Warsh’s belief in the productivity pixie, and platitudes about future higher growth. Technology’s impact on macroeconomic productivity is uncertain, and risks of a ‘brain drain’ from the U.S. and lower immigration also affect growth.”

The boomerang central banker hit on the topic early, but with questions rather than expectations as to how it might shape the Fed’s mandate. Warsh said: “We recognize that AI is a new variable—potentially a new factor of production—that will have consequences for both the economy and the conduct of monetary policy. It opens some major lines of inquiry: Will the application of AI cause a significant, sustained rise in productivity across the economy? And if so, when?”

“Among the other yet-unknowns is the resulting market structure. It’s not obvious where the returns on capital will land or on what timescale.”

He added: “We will be thinking through these matters with the help of a task force on productivity and jobs. My early check-ins with the leaders of that task force, and the four others, have been encouraging.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

More than 3,000 are missing after a massive flood hit northern Nepal and China’s Tibetan areas.

Work has begun on the $36 million transformation of Crown Heights’ historic Eastern Parkway Library. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday announced the start of the project, which will expand public space at the century-old Brooklyn Public Library branch at 1044 Eastern Parkway by more than 50 percent while preserving its historic architecture. Led by the city’s Department of Design and Construction, the project is expected to be completed in summer 2028.

Eastern Parkway Library in 2022. Image via WikiCommons

Established in 1914, the original two-story library was designed by Raymond F. Almirall and built as part of a $5.2 million gift from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to establish a comprehensive library system across New York City.

The Classical Revival-style building features a limestone facade and long, arched windows. Inside, double-height reading rooms offer ample natural light, with mezzanines overlooking the lower level.

Designed by Allied Works, the renovation will expand the library’s public space by 12,250 square feet and add a 13,400-square-foot, three-story wing along Schenectady Avenue, according to Yimby.

Renderings detail a material palette of untreated Belgian oak, coal terrazzo, perforated metal ceilings, and precast concrete that pays homage to the original architecture, according to e-architect.

A new, expansive glass facade will bring even more natural light into the library and make the building fully ADA-compliant, with a new elevator and entrance ramp.

The facility will also feature dedicated reading and learning spaces, including a multipurpose room with a projector, a main reading room, a teen zone, two children’s zones, a STEAM room, a community room, and a classroom in the building’s restored fireplace room.

The renovation will also add modern, energy-efficient lighting and upgrade the library’s plumbing, HVAC, and fire alarm systems. After the renovation, the library is expected to achieve LEED Silver certification.

Artwork by local artist Oasa DuVerney will also be displayed throughout the library through the Department of Cultural Affairs’ Percent for Art Program.

During construction, library services will continue at a temporary location provided by the Settlement Housing Fund, with furniture donated by IKEA and additional support for interim services provided by Amazon. When the temporary branch opens this fall, patrons will be able to check out books, attend programs, and use technology.

“The Eastern Parkway Library has served Brooklyn for over a century. The renovation—which will bring more natural light into the branch, add modern technology and create inspiring spaces—will ensure that Eastern Parkway Library can serve the community for another 100 years,” Linda E. Johnson, President and CEO of BPL, said.

The project is funded by the Office of the Mayor, the City Council, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and the state Assembly.

The Eastern Parkway Library’s transformation is the first of three projects that Allied Works is undertaking with the DDC. The others are EMS Station 17 in the Bronx and the Jackson Heights Library. The firm received a 2020 Excellence in Design Award from the city’s Public Design Commission, according to e-architect.

“Libraries are the beating heart of civic spaces in New York, providing essential spaces and services to every community,” Brad Cloepfil, principal and founder of Allied Works, said, as reported by e-architect.

“Our redesign of the Eastern Parkway Library honors the 112-year-old building and the people it serves, paying homage to the original Carnegie library building, while expanding its public spaces.”

RELATED:

• City Council unveils proposal to build affordable housing on top of libraries
• City breaks ground on new jade-colored public library in Rego Park
• Bensonhurst library to become new modern branch with 100% affordable housing

The post $36M renovation of historic Eastern Parkway Library breaks ground first appeared on 6sqft.

Many of the world’s top oil countries have state-run national champions, such as Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, Russia’s Rosneft, the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Brazil’s Petrobras, and Mexico’s Pemex.

But the U.S., which is the world’s biggest oil producer, doesn’t have one, leaving the task of pumping crude to private-sector giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron as well as the multitude of wildcatters across the Permian Basin.

The Trump administration’s deal for 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves, however, will give the federal government a stake in a new joint venture.

The country’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, has granted a private company a 100-year lease for prime oil fields, a U.S. official said, according to reports.

The federal government will control 55% of the company’s effective output via equity ownership and oil production. A private Venezuelan operator will have the remaining share. The U.S. official said the company will be the world’s second-largest corporate holder of proven reserves after Saudi Aramco.

For her part, Rodriguez said the deal will bring in more than $100 billion of investment and generate $209 billion for Venezuela’s government.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels. President Donald Trump’s deal to gain control of 65 billion barrels of that amount exceeds the U.S. proven reserve total of 46 billion.

The Trump administration’s majority stake in an oil company follows its investments in chipmaker Intel, rare earths miner MP Materials, mineral explorer Trilogy Metals, and dozens of other firms. It also has revenue-sharing agreements with AI chip leaders Nvidia and AMD for sales to China.

The latest deal comes nearly nine months after Trump ordered the military to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and bring him to the U.S. to face federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges.

A month after that operation, the U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran that resulted in the worst-ever energy supply shock in history, spiking prices higher and forcing countries to draw down crude stockpiles.

In the U.S., the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to 289.7 million barrels, its lowest level since November 1982. Some industry experts have warned that the SPR will soon reach operational minimums soon, wiping out any further cushion to offset the oil deficit from the Middle East.

The U.S. official told reporters that as the U.S.-Venezuelan company ramps up oil production, its output will help restock the SPR. But Venezuela’s oil sector has been in disrepair for decades, and production is now only 1.1 million barrels a day, down from a peak of 3.5 million barrels more than 20 years ago.

Boosting the country’s output to those levels again would require billions of dollars in investment and years before they reach fruition.

Meanwhile, global oil giants with the financial resources to make such investments must be convinced that it’s safe to do business in Venezuela again after their assets were nationalized by earlier governments.

Some are preparing the make the leap. Chevron is close to a deal to expand its longstanding operations in Venezuela, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Oilfield-services giant Halliburton is also in talks to bring equipment to the country, and executives from several oil-and-gas companies will sign production deals next week, the report added.

Italy’s Eni, which has a presence in Venezuela, announced Saturday that it’s working with authorities there to help revitalize the energy sector.

Still, many details about Trump’s new Venezuela venture are still unknown, and energy experts were skeptical about how much investment it could bring.

“For sure, and if Venezuela ever gets anything resembling a democratic government, the very first thing it will do is flush Trump’s deal down the toilet,” Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, posted on X.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In a country increasingly divided along political ideologies, partisan politics are coming together to answer the age old dynamic between privacy and security.

On Wednesday, the blue-leaning Tempe, Ariz. turned off its Flock automated license plate readers and said the city would not seek another company to replace the system. Three hours later, the nearby red-leaning town of Cave Creek did the same. The same day in Washington, D.C., Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, opened a formal investigation into the company, while independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders posted a lengthy statement pledging to introduce legislation against it.

Tempe’s police department had used Flock’s cameras to help solve crimes, and the city said its own audits, conducted monthly, turned up no misuse. But that wasn’t enough to keep the system running. “These cameras have helped our police officers do their jobs, and we don’t discount that,” Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said in a statement shared with Fortune. “But the risk of misuse is too great. We have to be able to provide public safety in a way that maintains the trust of our community. For Tempe, that means taking these cameras down.”

Tempe Councilmember Bobby Nichols said the decision was a matter of legal principle. “Any law enforcement tool used by the City must not pose a risk of infringing on residents’ civil liberties,” he said. “We have a responsibility to ensure that these technologies are only employed if they present a narrowly tailored solution to a compelling government interest.”

The city’s contract with Flock was worth $80,000; its cameras will remain in place until Flock removes them, though they have stopped collecting data. Any data that was previously collected is stored temporarily and then deleted automatically unless it’s tied to an open case. Tempe already cut off automatic data sharing with other law enforcement agencies earlier in August and launched a public transparency portal, which will now be discontinued.

“Every day, police departments across the country are solving countless serious crimes and making a measurable public safety impact with Flock technology, including as the city shared, in Tempe,” a Flock spokesperson told Fortune.

“When a tool that is actively helping solve violent crimes, locate suspects, and find missing people is removed, public safety moves backward. That has real consequences: cases will take longer to solve, organized retail theft crews will operate with fewer obstacles, an Amber Alert may not be returned home, and victims may wait longer, or indefinitely, for justice.”

The spokesperson added that misuse of Flock’s technology is unacceptable, and that every search is logged and reviewed through the company’s Audit Assistance tool, which flags unusual activity for administrators to review.

Cave Creek’s decision, three hours after Tempe’s, cited privacy concerns, cases of misuse elsewhere in Arizona and around the country, and the theft of one of its own Flock cameras from an intersection. Public works crews removed the town’s remaining cameras for safekeeping after the theft.

But the town’s core objection was structural: Flock’s networked design allows outside law enforcement agencies to search data collected locally, and town officials concluded there was no way to guarantee residents’ privacy once their information left Cave Creek’s jurisdiction.

The town manager and town attorney are set to formally address the decision at a Sept. 1 council meeting. Officials from Cave Creek have not yet responded to Fortune’s request for comment.

Reading between the [partisan] lines

Tempe leans Democratic: roughly 63% of its voters back Democrats, making it one of the more reliably blue cities in a state that has been a purple battleground lately. Cave Creek, a small, affluent town north of Phoenix, leans Republican by comparison. The two towns landed in the same place, becoming at least the ninth and 10th Arizona municipalities to drop or restrict Flock in the past year, following Chandler, Surprise, Pinal County, Sedona, Flagstaff, Sierra Vista, South Tucson and Apache Junction.

In the nation’s capital, Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, sent a letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley announcing an investigation into the company’s “collection, retention, and dissemination” of data gathered by its cameras.

The letter argued that Flock has built an “unprecedented national surveillance network” of more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states, scanning more than 20 billion vehicles a month, and that “Congress never authorized the network your industry has built.” He gave the company until Sept. 8 to turn over documents. A Flock spokesperson told reporters the company intends to cooperate.

Hours later, Sanders posted a statement of his own on X, describing Flock as part of a system that risks tipping the country into what he called totalitarianism. He also pointed to the number of Flock’s cameras, adding that newer versions of the technology can match images of people and vehicles against databases of phone numbers, relatives and court records.

“We must come together to stop Flock and AI mass surveillance,” Sanders wrote. “That is why I will soon be introducing legislation to do just that.”

Hawley and Sanders sit at opposite ends of the Senate’s ideological spectrum. Their statements arrived within hours of each other, echoing the same split-screen convergence playing out in Arizona.

Flock’s rapid expansion, and the scrutiny now following it, has moved fast. The company’s cameras have helped close roughly a million police investigations and locate about 10,000 missing people over the past year, by its own account.

But an August Washington Post investigation found more than 50 law enforcement officers had been accused, charged with, or convicted of misusing automated license plate readers, including cases where officers used the systems to track former partners. Anti-surveillance group DeFlock says more than 90 cities have moved to cancel or reject Flock contracts as of Wednesday.

Flock has since reduced its default data retention window from 30 days to seven and now requires officers to enter a case code before accessing stored data. Langley told Fox News the country needs “compromise” between privacy and safety concerns. Whether that compromise arrives before more cities, and more members of Congress, act on their own remains to be seen.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump is moving to give ranchers a new way around the powerful meatpacking companies that stand between their cattle and the grocery-store shelf, following backlash in farm country over his decision to allow more foreign beef imports.

Trump said Friday that he was authorizing legal documents to be drafted to give farmers and ranchers “the right to process their own food,” casting the move as an effort to break what he called a “nasty monopoly” in the meat industry.

The announcement came after cattle producers and some Republicans pushed back on Trump’s plan to temporarily allow tariff-free imports of up to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef, a move intended to ease pressure on consumers facing high prices at the meat counter.

For ranchers, however, the fight is not only about imports. It is also about who controls the path from pasture to plate.

Four companies — Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS USA and National Beef Packing Co. — control roughly 85% of the country’s meat-processing capacity. Ranchers have long argued that the concentration leaves them with too few buyers for their cattle and forces smaller producers to rely on distant, federally inspected slaughter facilities to bring beef to market.

Under current law, ranchers can slaughter and process animals for their own use, but meat intended for sale generally must be processed in facilities that meet federal food-safety and inspection requirements.

Trump has not released the legal details of his proposal, and it remains unclear how far an executive action could go in changing those rules. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the administration would begin unveiling beef-processing actions Monday, including steps to reduce red tape, support smaller processors and expand ranchers’ ability to sell meat across state lines.

The political pressure comes as beef prices remain elevated and the U.S. cattle herd sits at its smallest level in roughly 75 years. Drought, high costs and years of herd liquidation have reduced domestic supply, while rebuilding the herd can take years.

That reality has put Trump in a difficult position, finding a way to ease grocery bills without further undercutting the ranchers producing the country’s beef.

Still, the proposal gives him a new way to address the affordability challenge by shifting the focus from imported beef to the meatpacking giants ranchers say are driving a wedge between what producers earn and what consumers pay.

Larger groups are now permitted to attend the city’s free tours of the historic David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building following growing demand. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) Commissioner Yume Kitasei on Friday announced expanded access to “Centre 360,” a panoramic experience inside the Beaux-Arts government building’s 36th-floor cupola, increasing the maximum group size from five to eight. The move comes just months after the tours launched in June following a $6 million renovation, with reservations for the experience selling out in less than two minutes.

Credit: NYC DCAS

Designed by William K. Kendall of McKim, Mead & White, the firm behind the original Penn Station and Brooklyn Museum, the Municipal Building was constructed to serve the growing city following the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898, as 6sqft previously reported.

Influenced by the City Beautiful movement’s call for grand civic buildings, the structure features a towering classical exterior with Roman-inspired details, including a central arch modeled after the Arch of Constantine.

The first building in New York to incorporate a subway station at its base, the Municipal Building was designated an individual landmark by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1966. The station entrance was modeled after the arched entrance of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome and features vaulted Guastavino tiles.

David N. Dinkins Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street. Photo by Tony Hisgett on Wikimedia

“Civic Fame.” Photo courtesy of Jason Lee CC BY-SA 3.0. via Wikimedia

Perched atop the building is the “Civic Fame” statue, a gilded copper figure designed by Adolph A. Weinman. The 25-foot-tall statue carries a shield bearing the city’s coat of arms, a branch of leaves, and a mural crown with five points symbolizing each borough.

The building was renamed the David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal Building in 2015 in honor of the former mayor.

Mamdani first announced in February that the rooftop would open to the public following a $6 million restoration that repaired the cupola, installed glass safety barriers, and restored the rotunda landing. Though intended to be accessible to the public when the building first opened, the cupola had been off-limits for nearly 100 years.

Credit: NYC DCAS

Launched in June, the tour allows visitors to walk a full circle around the cupola for 360-degree views of the city from nearly 600 feet above the ground, with many famous landmarks visible in the distance. Reservations initially allowed groups of up to five people.

According to the city, the tours have been immensely popular, with reservations selling out within two minutes each month after they open. Groups of up to eight visitors will now be permitted, allowing as many as 2,000 people to visit the cupola each month.

To further expand access, DCAS will also offer first-come, first-served walk-in spots when last-minute cancellations or no-shows create availability.

“Since we opened the cupola this summer, New Yorkers have shown us just how much they want to experience this iconic landmark,” Mamdani said. “When demand is this strong, our job is to find a way to open the doors wider.”

“Today we’re doing just that by expanding reservation groups from five to eight and adding walk-in access when space becomes available, so hundreds more people can take in these incredible views each month,” he added.

Credit: NYC DCAS

DCAS offers eight tours Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Each session has two reservations available, with groups of up to four people permitted per reservation. Children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult and be at least 42 inches tall.

Visitors must reserve tickets through the online reservation system and present a valid photo ID upon arrival. Reservations open on the first day of each month. Learn more about the experience and make a reservation here.

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The post NYC expands free rooftop tours at historic Manhattan Municipal Building first appeared on 6sqft.

The Trump administration is exploring adding robot dogs to the expanding arsenal being used by federal immigration authorities as they seek to boost arrests and deportations across the country.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a market-research notice Friday saying the agency was looking into the purchase of “quadruped unmanned ground vehicles,” known as robotic dogs, along with a draft of the robot specifications.

The posting comes amid concerns from civil liberties groups about plans to increase funding for ICE as the agency faces questions over the use of force in President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportations drive. The agency has signaled it plans to boost spending on enforcement technology, including as much as $20 million to outfit ICE agents and officers with electric shock gloves, which deliver a debilitating shock to a person when used directly on the skin.

Read More: ICE Wants Agents to Have Electric-Shock Gloves for Detainees

According to NBC News, which first reported the agency’s interest in the dog-like quadruped robots, the government is looking to spend at least $2 million on the robots. ICE’s market research posting stipulates there’s no guarantee the government will solicit a future order. 

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“AIR FORCE VETERAN. SMALL BUSINESSMAN. TRUMP CONSERVATIVE.”

The all-caps headline on Texas Republican congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz’s website used to align him with President Donald Trump. Not anymore.

“NATIVE TEXAN. AIR FORCE VETERAN. SMALL BUSINESSMAN. PROVEN CONSERVATIVE,” it reads now.

De La Cruz’s campaign rejected any suggestion he was backing away from the president, whose knack for mobilizing his loyalists remains critical for Republicans in this fall’s midterm elections. The overwhelming majority of Republicans on the ballot this fall are embracing Trump despite his dismal approval ratings, an unpopular war with Iran and lingering inflation.

However, as the two-month sprint to Election Day begins, a small collection of Republican candidates have quietly begun to distance themselves in subtle ways from Trump now that they’ve won contested primaries in which his endorsement was often the most coveted prize. The shift is easy to miss, often only a few words or new pictures. And Republicans insist there is no shift at all.

Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called it a “manufactured storyline.”

“President Trump and House Republicans have delivered historic results for the American people, and our candidates are eager to take that record directly to voters alongside the President on the campaign trail,” he said.

But from California to Texas and Kentucky to Alaska, candidates in recent weeks have tweaked their campaign messaging to downplay their connection to Trump. A handful of others have highlighted their opposition to his policies.

It’s an extremely delicate balance for vulnerable Republican candidates, who must expand their appeal beyond Trump’s MAGA base to win in the general election this fall, but are also afraid to trigger a backlash from Trump or his hard core supporters if they create too much distance.

Trump’s unpopularity could weigh down his party

Most candidates are still wrapping their arms around Trump.

Republican allies of the president argue there is little upside for candidates to turn away from Trump, despite his weak polling numbers. Democrats will try to cast every Republican running as a Trump acolyte, regardless of their actual stances, they said, and midterm successes typically depend on turning out base voters. Trump remains the Republican Party’s best motivator.

“The whole Republican brand is that we’re aligned with Trump so you gain nothing from it,” said Jason Roe, a Republican who advises Rep. Tom Barrett, who is fighting for reelection in a competitive mid-Michigan district race.

It is typical for candidates from both sides to tweak their messages after primary elections. Some Democrats, for example, have begun pitching themselves as moderates after highlighting endorsements from progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders during their primaries.

Still, the slight shift among at least a half-dozen Republican congressional candidates could signal the beginning of a more significant move within the party as the weight of Trump’s unpopularity with the general public comes into view at a critical moment. Just 33% of adults approve of Trump’s job performance, according to Associated Press-NORC polling from July. And Trump gets relatively poor ratings on his handling of the economy, immigration and foreign policy.

Meanwhile, Trump will not make it easy for vulnerable Republicans to avoid him. As voters typically begin paying much closer attention to politics after Labor Day, the president will headline a two-day Republican convention in Dallas as he urges voters to act as if he were on the ballot.

“The problem that we have is they say that Trump does great when he’s on the ballot, but when he’s not on the ballot, his people don’t come,” Trump said as he recently stumped in South Carolina.

“So what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot,” he went on. “Just say that I’m on the ballot one more time.”

Shifting emphasis moving into the general election

A number of Republicans have removed or downplayed references to Trump from their websites after winning their primaries.

Eric Flores, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and Texas Army National Guard infantry captain running against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. in South Texas, once featured “SUPPORT PRESIDENT TRUMP’S AGENDA” as No. 2 in his list of priorities on his campaign homepage.

That item has now been replaced with “ LOWER THE COST OF LIVING,” a top issue for voters. Trump does not appear anywhere else on the website, aside from a list of endorsements that previously appeared on the homepage but has been moved to a separate page.

Flores’ campaign declined to comment.

In Kentucky, Ralph Alvarado, running to represent the overwhelmingly Republican 6th Congressional District, removed all references to Trump from his campaign homepage, as well as a photo of the two of them together after winning his primary in May. He now promises to offer “INDEPENDENT LEADERSHIP” after previously running as an “AMERICA FIRST FIGHTER.”

NBC News first reported the changes to Alvarado’s website. Campaign manager Andy Westberry noted Trump’s photo still appears elsewhere in a media gallery. “The socialists are going to have to do a lot better than this nonsense to win this district,” he said in a statement.

Some changes do not mean Trump has been erased.

While De La Cruz no longer touts himself as a “TRUMP CONSERVATIVE” at the top of his homepage, a video that is embedded lower down features the Air Force veteran speaking at a Trump rally.

He still calls himself a “TEXAS TRUMP CONSERVATIVE” on his bio page and lists “Supporting President Trump’s America First Agenda” as among his priorities on a “Mission” page.

But the bio section has also been tweaked. It once described him as “ready to be President Trump’s wingman in Congress.” That section now says he is running because he “believes America needs more servant leaders and fewer corrupt politicians” and “because he’s not finished serving the country he loves.”

De La Cruz campaign manager Jordan Pawlicki said in a statement that, during the primary, several candidates were claiming the president’s endorsement, so the campaign “put it front and center.”

“Carlos is honored to have President Trump’s support, which is why the President is featured prominently across our website,” Pawlicki said.

Republicans downplay any changes to their messaging

In Nevada, Republican congressional candidate Marty O’Donnell’s website featured Trump prominently in June. The very first thing visitors saw was a pop-up with a large picture of Trump and a smiling O’Donnell standing side by side. The words “President Trump endorsed Marty O’Donnell” were written beneath the image.

Two months later, the photo does not appear on the website. O’Donnell’s campaign said the photo was not intentionally removed; the change was simply the standard rotation of the “splash page.”

O’Donnell adviser Keith Schipper noted that O’Donnell, a music composer best known for his work on the “Halo” video game series, has not deviated from his steadfast support for Trump.

“Republicans are embracing President Trump on the campaign trail because they know he is the key to getting his voters out in November,” Schipper said. “The president has delivered on the agenda he promised voters in 2024 and Republicans are smartly using it to win this year.”

There was another subtle shift in Alaska’s House race, where Republican Rep. Nick Begich is running for reelection.

In June, he highlighted his relationship to Trump on the homepage of his website: “Alongside President Trump, we have made great gains for Alaska, putting us on a path to self-determination and generational success.”

This week, nothing in that section has been changed, except for the opening line that previously mentioned Trump. Now, that line reads, “We have delivered for Alaska, putting us on a path to self-determination and generational success.”

Begich’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Some are emphasizing their independence

Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who represents a district carried by Kamala Harris in the last election, appeared on stage with the president during a rally in his district just three months ago. But does he want Trump to return before Election Day?

“If he comes back, that’s fine, but ultimately this race is going to be decided by my record and my vision,” Lawler said in an interview.

Lawler supported Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill,” but he’s quick to highlight policy differences, especially on taxes. Trump does not appear on Lawler’s campaign website.

On Thursday, Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin who is closely aligned with Trump, publicly criticized the president’s decision to sign an order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” as part of his trade war with Canada.

“I believe the Great Lakes are the Great Lakes and should stay Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Ontario,” he said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Earlier this week, he came out against Trump’s plan to import cheaper ground beef in an effort to reduce prices.

Others want distance from Trump’s unpopular war with Iran.

In Michigan, Rep. Barrett, who flipped a Lansing-area district two years ago, has been highlighting his vote against Trump’s war in Iran on the campaign trail as he competes against William Lawrence, a self-described democratic socialist.

Barrett this year has repeatedly broken ranks with Republicans to join Democrats in voting for the War Powers Resolution to rein in Trump’s military campaign in Iran. And he has been promoting those votes, promoting a recent town hall with constituents, by saying he would “be having a discussion about the War Powers Act and my efforts to place congressional limits on the war in Iran.”

Roe, the Republican who advises Barrett, said the vote was not about some major break from Trump but a difference over a policy-specific issue. Barrett served in the U.S. Army for over two decades.

“He’s willing to be at odds with the White House on this issue,” Roe said. “It’s important to him.”

___

Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti reported from St. Joseph, Michigan.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

With an estimated net worth of $400 million, Kevin O’Leary could afford to never cook, clean, or grocery shop for himself ever again. But the Canadian businessman and Shark Tank investor isn’t one to pass up financial savings—no matter how small.

“I’m always looking for a great deal, that’s why I’m in Walmart,” he said in a recent Instagram video. “You know those fantastic black jeans I’m always wearing? That’s right—Walmart special, 29 smackaroos. That’s how you save dough.”

The 72-year-old added that his wife sent him to the store to buy some essentials, including batteries, butter, paper towels, and OxiClean laundry spray. But O’Leary wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to hunt for a saved buck.

“I want to save dough when it comes to paper towels. Check it out. Bounty—12+ rolls is like 18 small rolls—I’m going plus,” he said with a smirk.

O’Leary, who owns multimillion-dollar homes in Florida, Massachusetts, and Toronto, has made the point to shop at Walmart on numerous occasions—long arguing that there’s no reason to pay more for everyday essentials when a cheaper option will do. 

Plus, as O’Leary sees it, there’s no guarantee the money you spend today will still be there when you need it.

“I hate wasting money,” O’Leary told CNBC in 2021 after a Walmart run went viral. “I just don’t get why you would do that. It’s so hard to make it in the first place.”

From Warren Buffett to Scale AI’s Lucy Guo—even billionaires still look for ways to save

O’Leary is not alone among the ultrawealthy in keeping a frugal streak. Some of the world’s richest people have continued to hunt for bargains and avoid spending more than they need to, even as their fortunes have grown.

Warren Buffett, whose net worth currently sits at about $144 billion, has long embraced a famously frugal lifestyle. The 95-year-old still lives in the same five-bed, two-and-a-half-bath home in Omaha, Nebraska, that he purchased in 1958 for $31,500. Today, the house is worth over $1.3 million.

He also famously used to stop at McDonald’s on his way to the Berkshire Hathaway office—and let the stock market dictate his order. When markets were down, he’d spend $2.61 on two sausage patties. On better days, he’d splurge $3.17 on a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, according to a 2017 HBO documentary.

Ikea’s late billionaire founder Ingvar Kamprad had a similar love for savings. Despite at one time having an estimated $58.7 billion fortune, Kamprad bought second-hand clothes and drove an old Volvo.

“I don’t think I’m wearing anything that wasn’t bought at a flea market,” Kamprad said in a 2016 documentary on Sweden’s TV4. “I want to set a good example.”

Kamprad also continued working at Ikea until he was 87, more than three decades after he became a billionaire. He died in 2018 at 91.

One of the newest members of the billionaire club, Scale AI cofounder Lucy Guo, is a more recent example of someone whose spending habits have remained relatively modest as her fortune has soared. The 31-year-old has long embraced the FIRE (financially independent, retire early) movement by going to extremes to save money, including buying discounted clothing, skateboarding to work, and booking flights she would later cancel so she could eat for free in American Express airport lounges.

“Everything I wear is free or from Shein…Some of them aren’t going to be that great quality, but there’s always like two pieces or so that really work out, and I just wear them every day,” the billionaire founder previously told Fortune. “I still literally buy buy-one, get-one-free on Uber Eats.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Excavations at the Tell Abu Saifi archaeological site may have uncovered evidence of the lost Pharaonic city of Mesn, the Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Ministry announced earlier in August.

Tell Abu Saifi is located in the city of Qantara East, in Egypt’s Ismailia Governorate along Egypt’s eastern border with the Sinai desert. 

During ongoing excavations to uncover the historic Way of Horus military route, which leads from Egypt into ancient Canaan, archaeologists discovered a large, inscribed sandstone lintel broken into two pieces. 

Inscribed on three sides of the lintel are the titles of Ramesses II (“Ramesses the Great”), who is believed by many to have been the pharaoh in the biblical story of the Exodus.

But it is the second inscription that caught archaeologists’ eye: a reference to restoration work being carried out on a statue belonging to the deity “Horus, Lord of the City of Mesn.”

Dr. Hisham Hussein, head of the Central Administration for Lower Egypt and Sinai and director of the archaeological mission, said that the inscription represents “highly significant evidence” in studying the identity of the site.

However, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Dr. Hisham El Leithy noted that while the newfound is significant, further excavations and research are underway in attempt to uncover additional evidence to conclusively determine the matter.

Remains of temple destroyed by Romans unearthed

Alongside the lintel, archaeologists unearthed the remains of a temple believed to have been destroyed by the Romans during the legion’s quarrying efforts.

A massive mudbrick wall belonging to the temple’s outer wall, its gateways, interior rooms, and various layers, were found at the site, as well as storehouses, service rooms, and a sanctuary area.

Study of the excavations indicate that the site underwent several stages of reconstruction and development. 

According to researchers, the temple reached its height during the Ptolemaic (Greek) period of ancient Egypt before parts of the site were reused for the construction of Roman military barracks, known as a “Castra,” during the third century CE.

Two large circular kilns built over the corners of the temple’s sanctuary area and bearing traces of burnt limestone point to the site’s later transformation into a lime production quarry during the late Roman period.

Ancient roads uncovered at site

The remains of two successive stone roads leading from outside the fortified area into the temple were also discovered, dating back to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods respectfully. 

Mahmoud Galal, director of the General Administration of Sinai Antiquities and director of the mission, added that archaeologists had also discovered a collection of artifacts with both administrative and military significance at the site.

The artifacts included a 26th Dynasty schist statue depicting an army scribe carrying a broken shrine, a headless and footless statue dating to the Late Period, the torso of a royal basalt statue, and fragments of falcon statues made of basalt and limestone.

The discoveries made at the site highlight the “strategic and cultural role the area played in protecting Egypt’s eastern borders throughout history,” said Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy. 

He added that the continuation of Egyptian excavations at sites connected to the Way of Horus contributes to “reconstructing the historical picture of the route and its stations,” while also emphasizing the importance of “scientific investment in archaeological excavation and documentation to uncover new aspects of ancient Egyptian history.”

This post was originally published on here.

A federal judge has ruled in favor of artificial intelligence company Anthropic in its legal battle against the Pentagon after the government labeled the company as a supply chain risk earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a written order Thursday night that the Pentagon acted illegally by punishing the AI company for its criticism of the Department of Defense’s views on AI use. The government is expected to fight the ruling.

The dispute between the AI company and the government broke out in February when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones.

Lin wrote that the government’s actions “were based on a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government, not based on any articulable basis to believe that Anthropic would actually sabotage its model.”

An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement that they welcome the judge’s ruling: “We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the 59-page ruling, Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote that neither the Constitution nor the federal statute the government invoked allows them to “impose sweeping penalties based principally on Anthropic’s critique of the Administration’s views.”

Anthropic sued the Pentagon over the supply chain risk designation in March for what it called an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

The legal challenge intensified an unusually public dispute over how AI can be used in warfare and mass surveillance. Anthropic’s primary tech industry rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, made its own deal to work with the Pentagon just hours after the government punished Anthropic for its stance.

Anthropic and OpenAI are each ramping up for buzzy initial public offerings.

Anthropic has also filed a separate and narrower case that is still pending in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. That case involves a different rule the Pentagon is using to try to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk.

Earlier in the legal proceedings, Lin had temporarily blocked the Pentagon from labeling the company as a supply chain risk and blocked enforcement of Trump’s social media directive ordering all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and its chatbot Claude.

In a hearing July 30, Lin had said that the government’s position was “really troubling” to her and that it seemed “at odds to me with the First Amendment.” She also said she believed the record had “gotten worse for the government” over time.

In that same hearing, Department of Justice lawyers argued that the nature of AI models is “so staggeringly enormous and opaque” that the Defense Department cannot evaluate it in the same way it would a physical piece of hardware.

Anthropic lawyer Michael Mongan said in that hearing that the government’s actions “profoundly harm Anthropic” and that they “threaten more broadly to chill speech and debate on a very important issue.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Fuel surcharges were created for a simple reason: when diesel or jet-fuel prices rise sharply, carriers need a way to recover those extra costs without rewriting every shipping contract.

But the system is now doing something more complicated.

Some transportation companies are collecting more in fuel surcharges than they are actually spending on fuel, turning what customers may assume is a pass-through expense into an additional source of profit.

Union Pacific is one of the clearest examples.

During the second quarter, the railroad collected $91.1 million more in fuel-surcharge revenue than it spent on fuel. That difference translated into an estimated $83.2 million boost to operating profit.

That does not mean Union Pacific is improperly charging customers. Fuel surcharges are generally determined by formulas written into contracts, often tied to published fuel-price indexes and adjusted with a lag.

That lag is where the economics become important.

When fuel prices rise quickly, surcharges climb. But if fuel prices later fall faster than the surcharge formula resets, a carrier can continue collecting elevated fees even though its actual fuel expense has already declined.

For manufacturers, retailers and small businesses, the distinction matters because transportation costs ultimately flow through the economy.

A retailer paying a higher freight bill may raise prices.

A manufacturer may pass the cost to distributors.

A small business shipping packages may absorb the increase in its margin or charge the customer more.

The issue is not limited to railroads.

Residential-package fuel surcharges at UPS and FedEx are now above 24%, compared with roughly 9% in 2021.

The sharp rise in energy prices tied to the Iran conflict has given carriers a legitimate reason to increase surcharges. But because many of those formulas do not move perfectly in real time with actual fuel expenses, periods of volatility can widen the gap between what carriers collect and what they spend.

That creates a second-order inflation problem.

Oil does not have to remain permanently high for transportation bills to stay elevated. A surcharge can remain in place even after the underlying fuel price has begun falling.

For businesses negotiating shipping contracts, the practical question should therefore no longer be simply, “What is the fuel surcharge?”

It should be:

How is the surcharge calculated, how quickly does it reset, and does it actually track the carrier’s fuel cost?

For investors, there is another lesson.

Just as one-time accounting benefits can make corporate earnings look stronger, favorable fuel-surcharge economics can also temporarily lift transportation-company margins.

The money is real.

But investors still need to ask whether it is repeatable.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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Attacks are disrupting the ports that load a major share of the world’s wheat, and prices are responding.

Chicago wheat futures closed Thursday at $7.60¾ a bushel, up 1.7% and their highest level since July 2023. The contract had surged to its daily trading limit Wednesday and has gained approximately 18% since the beginning of August.

The reason is straightforward. Russia and Ukraine normally account for nearly 30% of globally traded wheat, making the Black Sea one of the most important corridors in the international food system. Both countries are now struggling to move grain through that corridor.

Ukrainian attacks damaged two major grain terminals at Novorossiysk, Russia’s largest Black Sea grain-export port. The affected facilities have combined annual capacity exceeding 14 million metric tons.

Russian strikes have meanwhile sharply curtailed operations at Ukraine’s principal Black Sea ports, forcing exporters toward smaller Danube River routes. As many as 70 ships were recently waiting near the Sulina Canal, where air-raid interruptions, pilot shortages and limited capacity have slowed vessel movements.

The effect on Ukrainian shipments could be severe. Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry reduced its projected agricultural exports for the 2026-27 marketing year to approximately 29.6 million metric tons—54% below its previous forecast. Its wheat-export projection was cut 53% to 8.3 million tons.

Russian shipments have also slowed, although estimates vary as analysts assess terminal damage and possible alternative routes. Agricultural consultancy SovEcon recently projected approximately 2.2 million tons of Russian wheat exports in August, compared with 4.5 million tons one year earlier.

American farmers are receiving the benefit of higher market prices, but that has not yet translated into stronger export volumes.

U.S. wheat export inspections totaled 425,668 metric tons during the week ended Aug. 20, down from 514,363 tons the previous week and approximately 1.05 million tons during the comparable week last year. Marketing-year inspections also remain well below last season’s pace.

For shoppers, the effect will be slower and less dramatic than the futures chart. Raw wheat accounts for only part of the cost of a loaf of bread, with labor, packaging, transportation and retail expenses making up much of the final price. A jump in wheat therefore reaches supermarket shelves gradually rather than overnight.

The wider concern is that wheat is not rising alone. The United Nations food-price index reached its highest level in more than three years in July, while its cereal component climbed 3.4% from June. Global wheat prices rose 5.8% during that month as Black Sea disruptions and difficult growing weather tightened expectations.

A restoration of safe shipping lanes or stronger harvests elsewhere could interrupt the rally. Ukraine has proposed an agreement protecting civilian grain vessels in the Black Sea, but Russia has demanded that any arrangement also restrict Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure.

Until the ports and shipping routes become more dependable, grain buyers are likely to keep paying a premium for supplies that may not arrive on schedule.

JBizNews Desk | Chicago

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A bet is a bet, no matter what the app calls it.

That was the finding of a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 28, which ruled unanimously that Nevada’s gaming regulators may oversee the prediction market Kalshi. The decision hands states the power to police prediction platforms the same way they police sportsbooks, and it lands hard on a business that has grown by arguing it is something else entirely.

Kalshi sells contracts on the outcome of events, including games. Buy a contract that a team wins, and it pays out if the team wins. The company’s position has been that those contracts are financial instruments called swaps, traded on a market that answers only to the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and therefore beyond the reach of any state gaming board.

Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson, writing for the panel, rejected that. He wrote that what Kalshi offers is sports gambling regardless of the label the company puts on it, and that federal commodities law does not push state gaming rules aside. Judges Kenneth Kiyul Lee and Bridget Bade joined him. All three were appointed by President Trump, who has backed prediction markets and favored exclusive federal oversight of them.

The case grew out of a lawsuit the Nevada Gaming Control Board brought earlier this year accusing Kalshi of running unlicensed gambling in the state with the largest gaming revenue in the country. Board Chair Mike Dreitzer said the ruling confirms the state’s position that this is sports betting and belongs under state regulation.

Kalshi said it will seek further review. A spokeswoman said the company still reads the federal rules as permitting sports contracts and noted that the commission is working to clarify them.

The ruling now collides with an April decision from the Third Circuit, which let Kalshi keep operating in New Jersey while its appeal moves ahead and found the company likely to win its federal preemption argument. Two appeals courts have now reached opposite conclusions, which is the classic setup for the Supreme Court to step in.

Until it does, the map is split. Twenty states are in active litigation over whether they can regulate these platforms, and last month 44 states signed a letter telling the commission it has no authority over sports-related event contracts. Friday’s decision makes it easier for the states pressing that case to move.

For anyone trading on these apps, the practical question is now geography. What is a federally regulated contract in one state may be unlicensed gambling in the next, and the answer will vary by jurisdiction until the Supreme Court settles it.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

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The court that issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu can no longer get its own officials into a bank.

On Aug. 18 the United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s president, Japanese judge Tomoko Akane, along with senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye of Senegal. The measures freeze any assets they hold in U.S. jurisdictions or that touch the American financial system, and bar Americans from doing business with them. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the two had worked to investigate or prosecute officials of governments that never accepted the court’s jurisdiction.

Nine of the court’s 18 judges are now under U.S. sanctions, along with both deputy prosecutors and the former chief prosecutor. The practical effect is closer to a commercial blacklisting than a diplomatic protest. One sanctioned Canadian judge lost the use of her credit cards. Fearing that Microsoft would cut ties, the court dropped Microsoft Office for a German open-source system that has slowed its daily work, officials told The Wall Street Journal.

The pressure campaign is doing what it was designed to do. Washington opened a diplomatic offensive in July urging partner countries to quit the court, and Chad and Venezuela have already announced they are leaving. That brings to five the number of countries pulling out within the past year, though each withdrawal takes a year to become final.

The institution was also gutted from the inside. On July 24, member states voted 82-to-13 with 15 abstentions to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan for serious misconduct and a serious breach of duty — the first removal of a sitting chief prosecutor in the court’s 24-year history. Khan, who denies wrongdoing, is the prosecutor who sought the Netanyahu warrant.

Enforcement was thin even before the sanctions. The court has taken 23 people into custody under its warrants while 35 remain at large. Putin has since visited two member states, Mongolia and Tajikistan, and neither arrested him. European governments have signaled they may not act on the Netanyahu warrant either.

Built in The Hague in 1998 as the heir to Nuremberg, the court was always missing the biggest players. The United States, Russia, China and India never ratified the treaty, and neither did Israel.

The court says it is not folding. It called the latest sanctions an attack on judicial independence, Akane has said judges are replaceable and the work is not, and human rights groups have gone to U.S. courts to challenge the sanctions program. Member states must now elect a new chief prosecutor — the choice that will decide whether the court keeps pursuing great-power cases or retreats to the ones nobody contests.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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LOS ANGELES — The cost of moving goods across the United States is climbing again, and this time the pressure is coming from fuel surcharges layered onto shipping bills.

UPS and FedEx have both pushed those charges sharply higher in recent years. An analysis by AFS Logistics cited Friday puts the surcharge on everyday packages at roughly 24.25% for UPS and 23.75% for FedEx, compared with about 9% for UPS in 2021.

Those fees are added on top of base shipping rates.

For retailers, manufacturers and small businesses, that means every package costs more to move. And those higher transportation costs rarely stay confined to the shipping department.

They eventually work their way into delivery charges, product prices and the overall cost of doing business.

The increase is not limited to parcel delivery.

Container-shipping fuel surcharges have risen by as much as 75% this year, even though marine fuel costs increased by roughly 30%, according to VesselBot data.

That gap is drawing attention because fuel surcharges were originally designed to help carriers recover higher energy costs.

Critics now argue that in some parts of the transportation industry, those fees are generating profits beyond the underlying increase in fuel.

Union Pacific provides the clearest public example. The railroad collected $91.1 million more in fuel-surcharge revenue than it spent on fuel in the second quarter, boosting profit by $83.2 million.

UPS has said fuel surcharges had only a modest effect on its overall operating profit. FedEx said the charges were not a material driver of adjusted operating income.

Still, the broader trend is clear.

The transportation system is becoming more expensive at nearly every level — rail, trucking, parcel delivery and ocean freight.

For consumers, the impact may not appear as a line item marked “fuel surcharge.”

Instead, it can show up as a higher online delivery fee, a more expensive appliance, a higher grocery bill or a small-business owner quietly raising prices to cover logistics costs.

That is why the surge matters.

Fuel prices are not just hitting drivers at the pump.

They are increasingly working their way through the entire supply chain — and ultimately into the price consumers pay at checkout.

JBizNews Desk | Los Angeles

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Dolly Parton helped transform Pigeon Forge from a small mountain town into a global tourism destination, creating jobs, fueling local businesses and giving back to the East Tennessee community she called home, City Manager David Wear told FOX Business.

“Pigeon Forge and Dollywood kind of grew up together,” Wear said. “After that, it really just took off and made a huge economic impact in our area.”

The country music icon died in Nashville on Aug. 25 at age 80 following a “brief battle with cancer,” her team confirmed to Fox News Digital. Her death prompted global tributes and has deeply affected the community where the star’s influence is woven into the local economy.

Parton partnered with the operators of Silver Dollar City, an existing Pigeon Forge theme park, to open Dollywood in 1986. The attraction helped put Pigeon Forge “on a world map,” drawing visitors from across the U.S. and around the world, according to Wear.

“[Dollywood] is a wonderful place. It has kind of put Pigeon Forge not just on the map, but on a world map where people know that Dolly is from here and that’s what they think about when they come to this area,” Wear said.

That visitor traffic has generated a ripple effect for businesses across the region. Dollywood is also Sevier County’s largest employer, according to Wear, creating jobs and paychecks for local families.

From the beginning, Parton wanted to ensure “her people” could find work and build lives in the community where she grew up, Wear said.

“She always referred to her Sevier County home as ‘my people,’” he said.

Although Pigeon Forge welcomes millions of visitors annually, Wear said it remains a tight-knit town of about 6,300 residents. 

In the days following Parton’s death, locals have been sharing personal stories about the entertainment icon and her impact on their lives.

“If you’re from here, you’ve got a Dolly story,” Wear said. “Everybody is really just sharing their experiences, honoring her and, I think, probably trying to live a little better – live a little bit like Dolly.”

Wear said Parton’s philanthropy may ultimately be even more impactful than her role in building the local tourism economy.

“The economic impact is huge. However, I think the larger impact to Sevier County and to Pigeon Forge is her philanthropic work and her charity work,” Wear said.

Wear said he experienced her generosity firsthand through the Buddy Program, which the country star launched in the early 1990s to combat Sevier County’s high school dropout rate. Seventh- and eighth-grade students paired with a “buddy,” and Parton promised each student $500 upon graduating from high school, according to the website for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

Wear participated in the program and later returned to his hometown to work in local government.

“That was my first experience with her,” he said. “It’s just amazing that I got to experience that charity, get to know her a little bit and then come back here to my hometown.”

Parton again came to the region’s aid after devastating wildfires swept through East Tennessee in 2016.

Through the My People Fund, Parton’s Dollywood Foundation provided financial assistance to families whose homes were destroyed or left uninhabitable.

“Dolly came in, raised a lot of money and gave it out to her people,” Wear said. “That changed the trajectory of our recovery significantly.”

Those efforts represent only a fraction of Parton’s contributions to East Tennessee, he said.

“Her impact is significant in our economy, but her impact in this community and to the people here is even more significant,” Wear said.

Fox News Digital’s Janelle Ash contributed to this report.

Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez on Saturday touted a “historic” oil agreement with the United States announced by President Donald Trump.

Speaking during an evening address, Rodriguez celebrated the agreement, saying it would help revive Venezuela’s economy. She said the deal would remain in effect for 25 years and initially target crude production of more than 1.5 million barrels per day while preserving the South American country’s sovereignty over its natural resources.

“This 25-year bilateral project envisages the development of 17 strategic oilfields with a production target of more than 1.5 million barrels per day,” Rodriguez said on state broadcaster VTV.

“That figure relates solely to the bilateral agreement between Venezuela and the United States,” she added.

Rodriguez’s comments came after Trump announced the agreement on Truth Social on Friday, saying the U.S. had secured majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves, which are the largest in the world.

“The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” Trump wrote.

The agreement was reached through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Rodriguez and private businesses “at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” Trump said.

“This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future,” Trump said.

Rubio called the agreement a “huge win” for both countries, saying it would secure “stable reserves and low-cost oil” in the Western Hemisphere while lowering U.S. gas prices.

He added that the deal would also bring nearly $100 billion in private investment to Venezuela, support thousands of high-paying jobs and help rebuild the country’s economy.

Rodriguez said the production target was only an initial goal, with broader plans to develop eight greenfield oil blocks as part of a wider energy expansion.

On Saturday, the interim president predicted that the agreement could generate more than $200 billion in revenue for Venezuela.

She also said her country retained “ownership of and sovereignty” over its natural resources, “while leveraging capital, technology and operational expertise to support the recovery of a strategic industry that has been severely affected by sanctions.”

The deal was met with praise from some members of the oil industry, including oil trader Phil Flynn.

Speaking on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Flynn praised the agreement, arguing it could lower prices for years and that U.S. technology could transform Venezuela’s oil industry.

“I think this is a win. It’s a generational win for Americans because it is [going to] lead to a generation of low prices,” Flynn told host Kayleigh McEnany.

FOX Business’ Jasmine Baehr and Reuters contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump says the United States has secured majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves through a sweeping new partnership with the country’s interim government and private American businesses.

The oil is not being transferred to the United States, and America will not immediately receive 65 billion barrels. Venezuela will retain legal ownership of its natural resources, while American interests gain majority control over the development, production and commercial operation of oil fields containing those reserves.

That distinction matters—but so does the enormous scale of the agreement.

Sixty-five billion barrels would equal nearly nine years of total U.S. oil consumption at current levels. It also represents more proven oil than the United States currently holds within its own borders, giving American companies potential access to one of the largest concentrated pools of petroleum anywhere in the world.

Trump said the arrangement was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in cooperation with Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodríguez. He described it as coming at no cost to American taxpayers because the investment and development work would be handled through private businesses.

Rodríguez said the energy agreement will remain in effect for 25 years and preserve Venezuela’s sovereignty over its resources. The plan covers the redevelopment of 17 strategic oil fields and eight additional blocks that have not yet been fully developed.

The initial target is to raise Venezuela’s production to 1.5 million barrels per day, compared with approximately 1.25 million today. That would still be far below the more than 3 million barrels Venezuela produced daily before years of political turmoil, mismanagement, sanctions and neglected infrastructure crippled its oil industry.

American companies would be expected to provide the capital, equipment and technical expertise needed to repair pipelines, reactivate wells and rebuild refineries and export facilities. Chevron, already the largest American oil company operating in Venezuela, is expected to play a significant role as additional companies negotiate exploration and production contracts.

For Trump, the deal is about far more than oil.

Bringing Venezuela’s energy sector into an American-controlled commercial system would weaken the influence China, Russia and Iran built there during years of hostility between Washington and Caracas. It could also redirect more Venezuelan crude toward American refineries, many of which were specifically designed to process the country’s heavy oil.

Over time, increased production could expand global supplies and place downward pressure on oil and gasoline prices. However, the effect will not be immediate. Venezuela’s infrastructure requires extensive repairs, and developing tens of billions of barrels will take decades and require enormous private investment.

The biggest unanswered question is what Trump means legally and financially by “majority U.S. control.” The complete agreement has not been publicly released, leaving unclear which companies will hold the rights, how profits will be divided, what authority Washington will exercise and what protections investors will receive if Venezuela’s political leadership changes.

The announcement therefore represents a potentially historic shift in global energy power—but the 65 billion barrels remain underground. The true value of the deal will depend on whether American companies can successfully extract, transport and sell that oil under terms strong enough to survive the next 25 years.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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A swarm of giant cockroaches may sound like the stuff of nightmares, but Australian researchers say the insects could one day be used by search-and-rescue teams to deliver lifesaving drugs to people trapped after disasters.

Scientists from the University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales have developed paramedic cyborg cockroaches, dubbed “paraborgs,” equipped with miniature injection devices and cameras.

They hope the insects could help keep victims of earthquakes and building collapses alive by providing basic medical assistance in narrow, debris-filled spaces before rescuers arrive.

“A lot of people might not like the sight of a giant cockroach scurrying towards them, but if you’re trapped in rubble or stuck in a cave and need help, it could make a real difference between life and death,” said PhD candidate Hai Nhan Le, co-author of the study published in the journal Advanced Science.

Research teams fitted North Queensland giant burrowing cockroaches, the heaviest cockroach species in the world that measure up to 8.5 centimeters, with backpacks containing syringe cylinders and cameras.

Scientists hijack cockroach nervous systems for steering

The study said the research went beyond earlier work on cyborg insects, which has focused only on using them to locate victims rather than treat them.

Researchers used real cockroaches because no robot could match their agility, resilience, and low power requirements.

Implanted electrodes let operators stimulate the insects’ nervous systems and steer them.

“We start with anesthetizing the insect, immobilizing them so that we make sure that they cannot feel anything during the implementation process,” said biorobotics engineer and study co-author Thang Vo-Doan.

“Once we implant an electrode into the insect, we can apply a small electrical signal to activate or stimulate the nerve system so that they can respond to our command.”

The study used one “observer” cockroach equipped with a camera to locate targets for operators, and a second cockroach carrying the drugs to be remotely triggered.

The study recorded a 100% success rate in reaching designated checkpoints during tests and an overall drug-delivery success rate of 72%.

When the injection was launched from within 15 centimeters of a target, success rates rose to as high as 95%.

Swarms of cockroaches could aid in locating disaster victims

Such a system could eventually be used to stabilize victims in situations where minutes mattered, including snakebite emergencies and severe allergic reactions, the study said.

“In the future we want to have maybe a swarm of (cockroaches) go deep into collapsed structure… we need to have a network of many of them, so that we can easily find the victim as soon as possible,” Vo-Doan said.

The experiments used silicone targets and pig skin under controlled laboratory conditions.

The study said further testing would be needed to address challenges operators would face in real-world applications, including complex terrain, signal loss in collapsed structures, and injection safety.

Ethical guidelines for research on insects are not yet standardized, but the cockroaches were kept in a “suitable living environment” and fed dry gum leaves and apples, the study said.

This post was originally published on here.

Small boats stand idle on cracked ground in a shriveled side channel of the Danube River in northern Serbia, where the water has receded into a couple of shrinking ponds under pressure from extreme drought and heat. Fish circle in the shallow waters.

“This is all we have, these two little ponds that are full of juvenile fish,” fisherman Dusan Jovanovic said. He said the fish are in danger because there is too little water and its temperature is over 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

“If they start to die, they will all die at once,” Jovanovic said.

Persistent drought and scorching heat this summer have ravaged ecosystems and businesses across the region, from a lake in Slovenia and the side channel of the Danube in Serbia, to fish farms in Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary.

The fish industry has been hit especially hard, with damage estimated in the millions of euros (dollars). This is adding to the already high toll caused by problems with energy and water supplies, devastated crops, losses in river traffic and trade.

Finding themselves unprepared for this year’s crisis, countries and businesses are now pondering ways to minimize the effects of future extreme weather events that scientists have tied to human-induced climate change.

Hungary’s fish die as entire country faces extreme drought

Around 99% of Hungary’s lands are currently under severe or extreme drought conditions, according to the national meteorological service. Desertification, a process where vegetation recedes because of high heat and low rainfall, threatens much of the Great Hungarian Plain.

Among the most affected are Hungary’s roughly 27,000 hectares (67,000 acres) of fish ponds. The country’s Agriculture and Food Economy Ministry said last week that “persistent heat and water shortages” had led to 1,588 hectares (3,924 acres) of those ponds drying out, causing the deaths of nearly 280 metric tons of fish at 20 farms.

The estimated revenue loss from the damage was 1.3 billion forints ($4.2 million), the ministry said. Producers say replacing lost fish could take years. Sometimes, operators were forced to drain one pond and divert its water to save fish in another, the Hungarian Aquaculture and Fisheries Inter-branch Organization said in early August.

Repeated drought over years hurts Romanian fish farmers

For fish farmers in Romania, especially those cultivating carp, this year’s blistering heatwave follows severe droughts in 2023 and 2024, the effects of which are still being felt, says Catalin Platon, president of ROMFISH National Association of Fish Producers.

In carp production, Platon said, the production cycle is three or four years.

“So what we lost in 2023 has (had an) impact every year since,” he explained. Water-use policies that prioritized irrigation for agriculture during the previous droughts, “left us with no water for the fish,” Platon complained.

Czech fish farmers take emergency measures

Fish farmers across the Czech Republic have taken various emergency measures: reducing or suspending feeding to reduce oxygen use, aerating the ponds or draining them when necessary.

The Czech Fishing Association officials say sustained rainfall could ease the immediate crisis, but long-term measures are needed to retain more water in the landscape.

Jan Sokolik, a technician at the Rybarstvi Trebon fishery, explained that “some ponds that were actually low on water have already been fished, but they were all marginal ponds.”

“Now we’re just starting to plan what to do with the big ponds,” he said.

Bosnian trout breeders ‘looking to survive summer’

Veljko Budjen owns a trout farm near Trebinje in southeast Bosnia. He said hot and dry summers have brought serious problems in the mainly mountainous country famous for its trout restaurants.

“Trout is a cold water fish, which requires cold water with a lot of oxygen,” he said. “So during the summer you are forced to reduce trout production and feeding so the business can just barely survive.”

One option, he said, is to add liquid oxygen to the water during summer months. Otherwise, he said, “you wait for the first rain.”

Slovenians pump water into a lake in an attempt to save fish

Emergency teams have been pumping water into Lake Pristava in eastern Slovenia, a favorite spot for fishermen, to try to prevent a mass suffocation of fish from lack of oxygen and water chestnut overgrowing to cover the lake surface.

Firefighters have pumped in 8 million liters (2 million gallons) of water but they still fear it’s not enough.

“We are surprised that any fish has survived at all,” Danijel Fras, from the Pesnica Lenart Fishing Association, told public broadcaster RTV Slovenia.

In Serbia, fishermen said the only solution for the endangered fish in the Danube side channel in Novi Sad is to move them to another location.

“The temperatures this year are extreme,” Jovanovic, the Serbian fisherman, said. “No one can remember anything like this.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Even in the contentious months before an election, Israel keeps being handed reminders of the values and bonds that hold the country together. Last week it was the return of Yehuda Katz, one of the soldiers lost in southern Lebanon 44 years ago.

In his homecoming, Israelis were reminded of an eternal principle: no matter who you are or where you fall, Israel will never give up on bringing its children home.

This week it is the surfacing of the Altalena – and the message it carries is far more important.

The ship, named for the ideological father of the Revisionist Zionist movement, carried fighters, immigrants and Holocaust survivors, along with a smuggled cache of weapons into the new state. Waiting on the beach to meet it was Menachem Begin – leader of the opposition and head of the Irgun militia.

Begin wanted a share of the weapons routed to his own organization, including its still-independent force in Jerusalem. David Ben-Gurion, prime minister of the young state, demanded every rifle be handed to the IDF, reading the whole affair as the seed of “an army within an army.”

The cabinet, meeting in Tel Aviv, resolved to force the issue. When the ship came to rest off the Tel Aviv beach – in full view of the city, foreign journalists and UN observers – Ben-Gurion ordered it taken by force, and it was shelled with his chief political rival still aboard.

‘Do not raise a hand against a brother’

Yet even after the ship burned and 16 Irgun members lay dead, Begin told his followers: “Do not raise a hand against a brother, not even today. It is forbidden for a Hebrew weapon to be used against Hebrew fighters.” There were bigger enemies to fight – the Arab world was still determined to crush the fledgling state – but more than that, a brother must not fight a brother.

The Altalena is usually remembered as the closest Israel has ever come to civil war, though the judicial-reform protests and the strain of a long war have, in recent years, produced serious contenders for the title.

IT IS often felt – and the October 7 massacre proved it anew – that what has held Israel together is the presence of enemies who want it eliminated. I only half-exaggerate when I paraphrase Voltaire: if the threat of Israel’s annihilation did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. Strip the external enemy away, and watch how quickly the label “greatest threat to the state” gets pinned on a fellow Jew. 

Democrats leader Yair Golan has called Netanyahu exactly that; Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has turned the same charge back on Golan, casting him – not Hamas, not Iran – as the danger, even as the real enemies go on trying to kill Israelis of the right and the left alike.

But I refuse to believe that all that keeps Israel together is that our enemies want to kill us more than we want to kill each other.

The 2026 election is undoubtedly one of Israel’s most pivotal – and though there has rarely been an election not hailed as definitive, few have placed the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) draft, the future of the judiciary, and a commission of inquiry into Israel’s worst security failure in 50 years on a single ballot.

But the State of Israel is bigger than any one election, no matter how pivotal. It is the project of all the people of Israel, no matter their political persuasion, no matter the ruling party at the time.

The debate over the Altalena has always turned on two questions: was Begin right to demand preferential treatment for the Irgun, and was Ben-Gurion right to fire?

Ben-Gurion never doubted his own answer. He dubbed the artillery piece that shelled the ship the “Holy Cannon,” and said it should stand beside the Temple, were it ever rebuilt. But no historian, however revisionist in sympathy, has argued that Begin should have fired back – because, as is plain in hindsight, some principles matter more than who holds the right in the moment.

Personally, I cannot say whether Ben-Gurion’s decision was correct in its moment. But I am certain it would not be today. In our current climate, we cannot rely on a magnanimous Begin-like figure deferring to the larger principle when it matters. Knowing that, issuing ultimatums and drawing lines in the sand risks far too much.

I cannot help reading the ship’s return, in this contentious chapter of Israel’s history, as a sign. Whatever the outcome of this election, do not give up on the project of Israel.

Remember why Begin held his fire – not merely because larger enemies loomed, nor because the other side was justified, but because of the truth that has bound this country together in war and in peace, through every contentious election: a brother must not fight a brother.

The writer serves as the English director of the Ribo Center and the editor of Amit Segal’s newsletter, It’s Noon in Israel_._

This post was originally published on here.

The Foreign Ministry on Thursday sharply criticized a joint statement by 15 countries and the European Union condemning Israel’s entry into a UNRWA training center in Kalandia and the seizure of the agency’s facilities in eastern Jerusalem two days earlier.

The countries called on Israel to “honor its commitments” and immediately stop what they described as interference with UNRWA’s operations.

The statement, signed by the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Spain, Japan, and other countries, reaffirmed their support for UNRWA and argued that Israel’s entry into the facilities was illegal. They said UN facilities are protected under international law and called on Israel to allow UNRWA to carry out its work without obstruction.

In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said: “Your facts are wrong. You support an organization that is a breeding ground for terrorism, and you prefer to attack Israel with baseless accusations instead of acting for the benefit of Arab children in Kafr Akab. This is a disgrace.”

The ministry also claimed that, according to a report by the USAID Office of Inspector General, which US President Donald Trump referenced on Thursday, more than 100 UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 Hamas attack.

UNRWA never had permission to use site, ministry claims

“UNRWA employees served as terror operatives, and UNRWA facilities were systematically used for terror purposes,” the ministry said.

The Foreign Ministry said this was the reason UNRWA operations in Israel were banned, adding that “all Israeli actions were carried out in accordance with Israeli law and international law.”

The ministry further claimed that UNRWA never had property rights over the compound and that the organization had been using the site unlawfully. According to the ministry, the compound is planned to become a school and community center for children in the Kafr Akab neighborhood.

The dispute comes two days after police forces raided a UNRWA training compound in Kafr Akab , following an announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “in accordance with my directive and following the law we passed, the evacuation of the UNRWA compound in Kafr Akab in Jerusalem begins today.”

Netanyahu later clarified: “The State of Israel will not allow an organization whose employees were involved in terrorism and the October 7 massacre to operate in its territory and will act against it using all available tools.”

According to statements from both sides, the compound targeted in the raid was a “training compound.” UNRWA said the site housed refugees and hosted workshops and classes. Following the raid, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the Jerusalem Municipality had already begun work at the site to convert it into an educational center.

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee previously approved legislation aimed at ending UNRWA’s operations in Israel. The laws stipulate, among other measures, that UNRWA will not be permitted to operate a representative office, provide services, or conduct activities within Israel’s sovereign territory.

The legislation also calls for revoking the organization’s diplomatic status and canceling diplomatic visas for UNRWA personnel.

This post was originally published on here.

Among the many potential downsides for letting the national debt get too high was that the federal government would suck up so much capital that businesses wouldn’t be left with enough.

Today, U.S. debt is at $40 trillion, the federal budget deficit is on track to reach $2 trillion this fiscal year, and debt servicing costs alone are $1 trillion a year.

That’s a lot money that the Treasury Department has to raise from the bond market, which is also a key source of financing for corporate giants.

But AI hyperscalers, so far, are still able to issue plenty of their own debt in the mad dash to buy chips, build data centers and lay down other infrastructure.

In fact, even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has billed himself as America’s top bond salesman, has noted the eagerness with which AI companies are offering debt—no matter the cost of borrowing.

“We are also seeing big corporate issuance. And a lot of that corporate issuance, I would say, is almost yield-agnostic, because the build-out for AI, the returns on that, the companies believe they’re going to be so high. They don’t really care what they’re paying,” he said recently.

U.S. investment-grade corporate bond issuance totaled about $1.7 trillion in the year to date through July, about 27% above last year’s pace and on track to exceed $2 trillion for the first time, according to Wall Street veteran Ed Yardeni.

A flood of corporate debt that massive would typically require yields to offer a bigger premium over risk-free bonds in order to attract enough buyers.

But in the case of AI-related bonds, demand has been so high that the yield spread has remained compressed, barely widening for an additional premium, he pointed out in a note on Monday.

“As a result, the market has adjusted not through higher corporate borrowing costs relative to Treasuries but through higher Treasury yields themselves. Capital flowing into corporate bonds is capital not flowing into Treasuries, and Treasury yields have had to rise to clear the market,” Yardeni explained. “In short, the AI revolution is producing a classic crowding-out effect, causing Treasury yields to rise.”

Higher yields could eventually fuel a feedback loop where rising debt-servicing costs expand deficits further and further add on to the pile of U.S. debt, which in turn pushes yields up further.

To be sure, the rise in Treasury yields has been attributed to a variety factors, in addition to the AI debt orgy. They include massive federal budget deficits with no end in sight, higher oil prices due to the Iran war, and a robust U.S. economy continuing to put upward pressure on inflation.

But Yardeni noted that international capital-flow data show that net purchases of U.S. corporate bonds by private-sector foreign buyers have exceeded their purchases of Treasury debt over the past year.

Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity Investments, said on X that “The reverse crowding out in the corporate bond market has even gotten the Treasury Secretary’s attention.”

It has gotten Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh’s attention too. In his speech as the Jackson Hole conference on Friday, he nodded to the debt boom, saying “Ever-expanding pools of capital are pouring into AI-related infrastructure of all sorts.”

That’s as private credit is financing the AI boom as well, while chipmaker Nvidia is even leveraging its balance sheet to back AI deals. So-called hidden borrowing has also exploded, with one tally putting it at $1.65 trillion.

But markets are showing some signs of fatigue, after absorbing the flood of debt in such a short time, S&P Global warned last month, pointing out that hyperscalers are paying a higher premium compared with yields on risk-free bonds.

“Market participants are growing leery of quickly rising leverage from issuers previously characterized by strong and reliable cash flow,” the report said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which featured Kevin Warsh’s first speech as chairman, is winding down Saturday. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the conference:

Warsh Emerging

Warsh used a keynote speech to hammer home a message that curbing inflation is the central bank’s top priority.

While parts of the speech served to double down on his stated determination to avoid offering guidance to financial markets on the direction of interest rates, Warsh did finally provide some insight into how he views the economy. That helped relieve some frustration among investors and added drama to the Fed’s next policy meeting.

The new message immediately triggered a jump in expectations for a near-term rate increase. In the wake of his remarks, attention turned to the next round of consumer inflation data, due Sept. 11, just days before policymakers gather in Washington on Sept. 15-16.

While Warsh didn’t signal explicitly his support for a hike, he warned inflation isn’t meaningfully slowing and that policymakers must be confident it is. Otherwise, he said, they had “work to do.” 

Financial conditions, he added, weren’t restraining the economy, and he described interest rates as the Fed’s “predominant tool” for achieving its mandate.

“Here is my standard: We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do. That’s our job,” he said.

Warsh also dispelled fears that he intended to alter the Fed’s inflation goal. He said 2%, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures price index, or PCE, is a “firm, fixed target.”

Euro Worries

Policymakers from the euro area who spoke on the sidelines of the conference also sent a warning about inflation. 

European Central Bank Governing Council member Primoz Dolenc told Bloomberg that resilience in the region’s economy and the persistent conflict in the Middle East suggest the need to hike rates in September. That’s widely expected by investors.

“With the new data coming in, we see that the inflation situation doesn’t resolve itself,” Dolenc said, who is also the head of the Slovenian central bank.

Martin Kocher, governor of the Austrian central bank and another ECB rate-setter, also highlighted that there’s “more momentum” in the economy. On inflation, which analysts estimate reached 3.3% in August, he said there’s “alertness, there is no complacency.”

Bailey in No Rush

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey had a slightly different message suggesting no urgency to increase rates. 

“We’re seeing quite subdued second-round effects. I think we’ve seen a softening labor market for some time now,” Bailey told Bloomberg TV. “I’ve taken the view that I think we can watch this situation for the moment.”

Those were Bailey’s first public remarks on monetary policy since July 30, when he voted with the majority in a 6-3 vote to keep interest rates on hold. 

No Shows

There were a few prominent absences at this year’s gathering. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda skipped Jackson Hole. Each are planning to attend a meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors Monday and Tuesday in Asheville, North Carolina.

Read More: Finance Chiefs Get Short Shrift From Bessent’s Other Priorities

The only Fed policymaker not to attend was the former chair, Jerome Powell. He bucked tradition to hold onto his seat on the Board of Governors after his term as chair expired in May, but has since, as he pledged to do, remained out of the spotlight.

Tech Challenges

While the chair’s speech and the sideline chatter about economic and political events frequently dominate news from the symposium, Jackson Hole is also an important forum for high level debate on economic research. Papers presented this year revolved around the theme of financial innovation and its implications for payments and monetary policy.

The papers served to underline how central banks are struggling to keep up with challenges introduced by technology. In their discussions, economists and policymakers debated the regulatory challenges in a world where tokenization is revolutionizing how financial assets are held and transferred.

Lisa Cook

On the eve of the Jackson Hole conference, attendees got a reminder that President Donald Trump’s attacks on the central bank have not entirely ceased since his appointee, Warsh, took the Fed’s helm.

The White House has recently renewed its efforts to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, and on Wednesday Cook’s lawyer responded with a letter calling the allegations “unfounded and untrue.” The White House didn’t immediately comment on Cook’s letter. 

Trump narrowly lost his initial bid to oust Cook at the Supreme Court, partly on procedural grounds.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Citing the importance of the First Amendment, a federal judge in California says the U.S. government is unconstitutionally silencing critics of Israel’s war in Gaza and others as part of the Trump administration ‘s quest to deport noncitizens who it says disrupted college campuses while expressing their views.

Judge Noël Wise, in a ruling Friday, delivered a victory for The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which has said some international students were afraid to speak out because of the deportation threat.

“Freedom of speech is illusory if we are only ‘free’ to express complementary views about the government and its leaders,” the judge wrote.

The decision largely piggybacks on findings from nearly a year ago by a U.S. district judge in Boston, who ruled that the Trump administration violated the Constitution when it targeted people who are not citizens for deportation solely for supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel.

Wise wrote that the freedoms of speech and the press are “foundational to America’s enduring democracy.” The judge cited free-speech and vagueness flaws that violate the First Amendment and Fifth Amendment as she struck down portions of the provisions that the federal government follows regarding deportations.

Wise cited retaliation in March 2025 by U.S. immigration authorities against people who engaged in speech supporting the Palestinians and against Israel’s actions — which a growing number of experts, including those commissioned by a U.N. body, have said amount to genocide. The judge also cited retaliation against people who were critical of Charlie Kirk after the Turning Point USA co-founder was assassinated last September.

“Tomorrow, or perhaps even today, targets may include anyone in the United States who exercises their freedom of speech to simply express opinions the government does not like,” the judge in San Jose said.

“This downward spiral is antithetical to our Constitution that recognizes our right to speak freely,” she added. “Here you can simultaneously hate the content of a person’s speech and love the country that cherishes the freedom to allow it. Zealous protection of our Constitutional right to free speech is a provocative demonstration of our country’s powerful lack of fear.”

The Justice Department did not respond Saturday to a message seeking comment on the decision.

George Porteous, the editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily, responded to the ruling by saying on X: “The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation. Today’s victory means they won’t have to.”

Conor Fitzpatrick, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which brought the lawsuit, praised the ruling.

“In America, free speech doesn’t just belong to the people who say things the government agrees with,” Fitzpatrick said in a release.

In her decision, Wise said it was clear that the government’s tactics has had an effect on college campuses.

“The government has offered a chilling message regarding protected speech — speak out against Israel or in support of Palestinians and we will revoke your visa and deport you. Behave. Noncitizen students heard the warning and heeded. And, as the idiom goes, the silence is deafening,” the judge wrote.

At The Stanford Daily, lawfully present noncitizens at the paper have quit, withheld articles, refused assignments, requested articles be taken down, and asked for anonymity due to fear of adverse immigration consequences, Wise noted.

She said noncitizens have the same First Amendment rights as citizens and yet were left to guess what the U.S. foreign policy was at any given moment and on any given subject.

“This is an incomprehensible standard,” she said. “While the Court understands that the government has been granted considerable discretion on foreign policy and immigration matters, that discretion must nevertheless still ensure that ordinary people can understand what the law permits and prohibits.”

Wise added: “Our Constitutional right to freedom of speech guarantees people the right to express — through their words, actions, or assembly — opinions that may be repugnant, views that run counter to prevailing political norms, or beliefs that otherwise challenge the country’s domestic or foreign policy, military engagement, or war.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

US sanctions are increasingly damaging Iran’s ability to obtain hard currency and function economically, Professor Uzi Rabi told 103FM radio on Thursday, while warning against drawing a quick conclusion that an economic collapse would inevitably lead to the fall of the regime.

“The economic path is not certain,” he said.

Rabi, head of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, spoke with Barak Seri and Eli Ohana on 103FM radio about the economic war the US has declared against Iran and analyzed its potential impact.

US blockade on Iran raises questions over whether it will achieve its intended goals

“This blockade is theoretically the best thing to do. If the US is determined, if the US is consistent, it should work,” Rabi said.

“There is a question here with China, Turkey, Pakistan. How long will the US continue? [Regarding] the ‘D-Day method,’ I think that for the first time the US understands that this is not about attacking Iran’s economy, but rather going to the outer layer. Let’s see how much they will listen and how much they will restrict Iran. There is one thing that is undisputed. Iran has been forced in recent weeks to manage with fewer and fewer dollars. When it lacks hard currency, it cannot even operate its agriculture and industry.

“From the day Iran was established as an Islamic republic, it has not managed a normal economy; it has managed a resistance economy,” he added. “But there are sanctions, and there are sanctions. I think these sanctions are much more persuasive, but still, being within our own society, who knows what will happen tomorrow if suddenly the Omanis and Iranians come with an agreement, the Pakistanis tell [US President Donald] Trump that there is something to discuss, and he starts loosening things here and there.”

Rabi said that while the economic campaign is a strategic tool, it does not guarantee the regime’s collapse.

“The Strait of Hormuz is not what it used to be. At the beginning of the war, we saw the great damage caused to Hormuz. Many players understood that if they do not develop alternative routes, they are truly heading toward disaster. We are seeing Saudi Arabia exporting its oil through the Red Sea.”

“The Americans are extracting oil where the Iranian radar does not stop, ultimately penetrating or breaking through because of the blows it has taken,” Rabi said. “Iran is a battered country. But I do not want this interview to create the logic that if the economy collapses, then the regime falls. Iran has another economy, the regime’s economy. In supermarkets, people are suffering deeply in ways they never knew before, even when their situation is difficult. The question is what will happen with smuggling and cryptocurrency. The US is going to choke all the pipelines, the economic route to Iran. Let’s give this its due.”

‘The threat here is not only against Israel but against the entire free world’

Rabi also warned against relying on a diplomatic agreement with Tehran.

“An agreement with Iran is a blessing in disguise, giving them time to gain,” he said.

“If we had a real world that truly wanted to defend itself and understood what kind of regime exists there, they would have acted differently from the beginning,” Rabi said. “They would have understood that the threat here is not only against Israel but against the entire free world.

“If you remove this regime, it would be a great blessing, but it would not be easy. The economic path also does not provide a 100% guarantee; rather, it suggests that this regime will ultimately lose its vitality and power and that, given the circumstances, we may face a different reality that helps bring about the regime’s downfall. This must be taken carefully.”

This post was originally published on here.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out plans for an “economic D-Day” against Iran on Monday,  seeking to further isolate the regime from the rest of the world.

The U.S. will expand its use of secondary sanctions against entities and countries that engage with Iran. Bessent also said any country that helps Iran will be removed from the dollar-based financial system.

In addition, he targeted five of Iran’s “most vital lifelines”: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping.

But Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and CEO of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think tank, said those are actually lifelines for the Iranian people, not the regime.

“Digital assets and gold are how ordinary Iranians protect their savings from inflation,” he explained in a post on X. “Technology keeps Iranians connected with the world. Aviation keeps Iranian families connected with loved ones across borders. Shipping is how essential goods, including food and medicine, reach Iran.”

The sanctions come as the Trump administration has pivoted away from resuming all-out war, hoping that economic warfare will accomplish what bombs and missiles couldn’t.

The Treasury Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

To be sure, crypto currencies, technology and front companies in shipping are also ways the Iranian regime skirts Western sanctions, allowing it to continue earning valuable revenue.

But the United Arab Emirates also shut down all trade and transactions with Iran earlier this month, cutting off a vital for engagement with the global economy.

Meanwhile, the U.S. war and naval blockade have inflicted a catastrophic toll on Iran’s economy, which was already in shambles before the conflict started.

Inflation has soared above 80%, with prices for certain food staples up 100%. The currency, which triggered nationwide protests late last year after it collapsed, has lost a further 30% of its value this year.

The International Monetary Fund said in April Iran’s economy will shrink 6.1% this year, the worst contraction in decades. And a labor ministry official estimated that more than 1 million jobs had been lost by late May.

The naval blockade has not only prevented Iran from exporting oil via its ports, it has also kept out imports of refined fuels that Iran needs despite being a major oil producer.

That has created shortages and long lines at gas stations, made worse by deep subsidies that encourage excess consumption. But the government is reluctant to hike prices and slow demand, fearing more public anger over inflation.

Amid the growing stress, some moderate officials have signaled that time is running out to obtain some economic relief as the U.S. and Iran remain in limbo with no sign of diplomatic progress.

“No matter how strong we are militarily, if the people are hungry and we do not have financial circulation, economic growth and domestic production, we will not endure,” parliamentary speaker and Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said while visiting Iraq earlier this month.

In fact, some protests have started breaking out, though not at the massive scale that was seen in January, when the government slaughtered thousands in a brutal crackdown.

On Monday, oil and gas workers in Asaluyeh staged a protest, saying they shouldn’t have to suffer a cost-of-living crisis while keeping oil production online, state media said, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Earlier, about 100 laid-off workers protested at the Shadegan steel complex in western Iran, petrochemical workers in costal city of Bandar-e Mahshahr protested their layoffs, and teachers union members have publicly complained about not getting paid.

Experts have cautioned that Iran’s repressive regime is unlikely to be swayed by the suffering of ordinary citizens and is prepared to wait out economic hardship longer than Americans can endure high gas prices.

Still, officials continue to acknowledge the strains ordinary Iranians face, while clashing with hardliners who oppose any negotiations with the U.S.

“The country today faces great, complex, and multiple open and hidden challenges,” Ghalibaf said on Wednesday. “Our duty at this moment is to devote all our time and energy to resolving the people’s problems, increasing Iran’s economic power, and preserving the achievements of resistance.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Following an international outcry about a memo advising reporters to not refer to 9/11 as ‘terrorism,’ CBC has announced it has revised its editorial guidelines on the matter.

As previously reported by The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) circulated a memo last week to reporters and editors instructing them not to refer to the attacks as “terrorist attacks.”

The memo was authored by Basem Boshra, senior director of journalistic standards and public trust at CBC News, and sent to reporters and editors.

CBC spokeswoman Kerry Kelly told the Post that it is the practice of the CBC to “exercise extreme caution before using the words terrorist and terrorism” and that the memo was a reminder of the “longstanding practice that favors the use of these terms with attribution in our reporting.”

CBC News will adjust its 9/11 language guidance 

However, on Friday, Chuck Thompson, Head of Public Affairs at CBC, informed the Post that CBC News will adjust its 9/11 language guidance.

In a new editor’s blog, Boshra (the author of the original memo), noted that “CBC News finds itself once again in a swirl of confusion about how our journalists use the words ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism,’ this time about the al-Qaeda attacks on New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.“

He noted that the memo caused significant concern, anger and hurt for people who “believe CBC News seeks to minimize or obscure the horror of that day and who was behind it,” but said that “that is the last thing we want to do.”

“CBC News has never said what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was not terrorism, as some commentators have stated in recent days. We have reported fully and accurately on the reasons and motivations for those attacks as determined by police, governments and an independent commission.”

“CBC’s reporting on terrorism, wherever it occurs, has always been guided by the principle of attribution, and like other major news organizations, it has been our practice for decades,” he said

Future reporting on other events will continue to require attribution

However, following the uproar, Boshra said that “after reviewing our current language guidance, we have decided to adjust it to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism.”

“We are doing so to remove what has unfortunately (and unintentionally) become an impediment to clarity and public understanding,” he said.

Future reporting on other events will continue to require attribution; the new guidance only changes the rule for 9/11.

This post was originally published on here.

On the outskirts of Phoenix, a small town with a huge reliance on the Colorado River has capped growth, revived old wells and struck water deals.

But Cave Creek Mayor Robert Morris can’t shake the real possibility that it’s not enough to keep the desert community of about 5,000 people afloat well into the future. And a recent federal plan to address a deepening crisis in the river basin won’t help.

Cave Creek gets nearly all of its water from the river, which serves 40 million people across the U.S. West and has been dwindling because of climate change, demand and overuse. The town already was forced to make cuts this year and it stands to lose more under a new federal plan.

Morris likened the situation to planning for a meteor strike.

“You can see it coming, but you can’t get out of the way and you don’t know what the damage is going to be,” he said.

The uncertainty stretches across seven U.S. states, tribal nations and Mexico. Farmers are deciding which crops are worth the investment. Phoenix could lose some municipal and industrial water for the first time and turn to backup supplies. And residents could face even more costly water.

Nevada raised the stakes this week by suing the Interior Department and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, saying basic needs in the Las Vegas region will go unmet if the area has to absorb planned reductions of up to 70% of its Colorado River water in the next decade.

The bureau said Thursday it does not comment on litigation.

“The uncertainty is going to continue to build in the wrong direction,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources.

Western reservoirs see record lows

In the U.S. West, water is stored primarily in reservoirs, aquifers and snowpacks. But a record snow drought means there’s far less water to recharge those sources.

The two largest reservoirs in the country serve as barometers of health for the Colorado River system: Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Both hit record lows this month.

Eight other reservoirs operated by the Bureau of Reclamation recently recorded the lowest levels in at least the last 30 years. Among them is Elephant Butte Lake in New Mexico that’s critical for supplying water for crops in southern New Mexico, Texas and Mexico. The Green Mountain Reservoir serves the western part of Colorado, and the Guernsey Reservoir in Wyoming funnels water to farmers in the eastern part of the state and western Nebraska.

Under the Bureau of Reclamation’s plan, California, Nevada and Arizona will collectively reduce water use by 1.25 million acre-feet (about 1.54 billion cubic meters) — enough to fill over 600,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — annually in the next two years, with the possibility of larger cuts depending on conditions. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico are not required to make cuts for now but could voluntarily reduce water.

While El Niño could bring intense moisture to the northern Rockies and the Southwest in the coming months, it won’t erase decades of drought.

“Drought is a slow-moving phenomena and it can take some time to come into it and also come out of it,” said David Mocko, senior research scientist who authored a recent U.S. Drought Monitor map.

Farmers are reluctant to plant

John Boelts grows vegetables, melons, durum wheat and other crops in Yuma, Arizona — a region that produces about 90% of leafy greens eaten in North America during the winter.

Farmers there have high-priority rights and may avoid cuts to their Colorado River supply over the next two years but, Boelts said, the reprieve isn’t enough to make longer-term plans. That makes farmers reluctant to plant new acreage.

Citrus, date and other orchard crops that thrive in the region take years to become commercially productive, he said.

“There’s no food that we grow in a hurry,” said Boelts, the Arizona Farm Bureau president. “Beef takes years to produce. The lettuce you eat today? A farmer was working on how they would grow that crop six plus months ago.”

Ray Martinez grows alfalfa on a reservation that’s home to the Colorado River Indian Tribes. The tribe holds some of the river’s oldest rights, and while its Arizona allocation is huge, an old irrigation system and the lack of infrastructure have kept much of the water out of reach.

Martinez and the water department are concerned about having enough water to finish this growing season. He has left some fields unplanted for years to help prop up Lake Mead. If the reservoir keeps dropping, he said, surface water coming to him and neighboring farms will be further limited.

“Unfortunately, Mother Nature has its own way of doing things, and we have no control of that,” he added.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Beach towns in Delaware are attracting a growing number of retirees as the region emerges as an alternative destination to more prominent locations like Arizona and Florida, and it’s straining local resources.

A new report by Bloomberg notes retirees are flocking to Sussex County in southern Delaware, which has seen an influx of 40,000 new residents since 2020 with a growth rate of 17%, about five times the national average.

The growth in Sussex County has also given Delaware a faster growing population of residents age 65 and up than any other state, topping other states that are popular with retirees with a 23% growth rate among that cohort since 2020, which the report notes tops all 50 states.

Older generations have historically sought out warmer climates in places like Florida and Arizona as they entered retirement, but southern Delaware has become a compelling option – particularly among those leaving colder locales in the North.

Delaware offers notable tax advantages over its peers in the Northeast like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, which can be compelling for retirees looking to relocate.

The First State, as Delaware is nicknamed, has a top income tax rate of 6.6%, no sales tax, and generally lower property taxes than those larger Northeastern states, according to Tax Foundation data. Delaware also has no estate tax, which can be an important consideration for retirees.

Brad Travis Jr., a financial planner who grew up around Sussex County, told Bloomberg that, “Everybody wants to be the last person to move here,” noting that “property tax refugees” from New Jersey could see those costs fall from $18,000 to more like $1,500.

Communities like Lewes and Rehoboth Beach, which is known for former President Joe Biden having a home there, have seen significant growth as retirees move to the region.

Census estimates show the median age of Sussex County rose to 53.2, nearly 14 years higher than the national average and an increase of five years since 2015.

The report noted that the new residents often have higher incomes, with the latest IRS migration data from 2022 indicating families moving to the region had an annual income of more than $136,000 compared to under $92,000 for existing residents.

While the influx of new residents has helped boost the area’s economy, it has also strained resources like healthcare and education, as well as local roads and stores.

Bloomberg reported that schools are having to install modular classrooms to accommodate growing student populations – a sign that the growth isn’t limited to retirees.

Joe Pika, a 79-year-old former professor at the University of Delaware, told the outlet he had to wait nine months for a colonoscopy and 18 months for a dental visit, while he drove 40 miles to visit a dermatologist.

Pika said that while he only moved to the area four years ago, he’s among the residents concerned about Sussex County growing too rapidly, telling Bloomberg there was “an appalling lack of planning” for the issues that have coincided with its growth.

A White House teleprompter operator who used advance access to President Donald Trump‘s speeches to bet on what the president would say has been ordered to pay nearly $173,000 and stop trading for three years, federal regulators announced Friday.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Gabriel Perez, Trump’s teleprompter operator since 2016, misappropriated material, nonpublic information obtained through his government job to trade event contracts on Kalshi, a prediction market platform, for his personal benefit.

Perez, who was placed on paid administrative leave in July amid the investigation into his conduct, was ordered to surrender $107,539 in trading profits and pay a $65,000 civil penalty.

The CFTC also imposed a three-year trading ban and ordered Perez to cease and desist from further violations of federal commodities laws and regulations.

The CFTC found that between December 2025 and February 2026, while working as a White House teleprompter operator, Perez traded “presidential mention market contracts,” which reflected words or phrases Trump might use during his speeches.

The event contracts paid out based on whether Trump used specific words or phrases during his public remarks.

According to the CFTC, Perez had access to presidential speeches before they were delivered and “misappropriated” that information in “breach of his duty of trust and confidence” to make the trades.

Perez generated more than $107,500 in profits, according to the agency.

His $65,000 civil penalty represented a “substantial discount” because of his “exemplary cooperation” with the investigation, the CFTC said.

Robert DeNault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, reacted to the enforcement action, saying traders who violate the company’s rules must be held accountable.

“A Kalshi surveillance investigation caught a White House staffer engaging in prohibited trading activity,” DeNault wrote on X.

“Today this individual was subjected to penalties by the CFTC and by our exchange,” he continued. “It doesn’t matter who you are: violate our rules or federal law and you will face the consequences.”

The trading activity first came to light months ago after Kalshi’s surveillance systems flagged a series of unusual trades involving markets tied to words and phrases expected to appear in Trump’s public remarks.

Kalshi previously said the trades stood out because they did not follow typical trading patterns and also drew complaints from market makers through the platform’s whistleblower channels.

After reviewing account information, the company said it identified the trader as a federal employee who worked as a White House teleprompter operator.

Kalshi froze the account before Perez could withdraw most of the profits, the company previously said, and referred the matter to federal regulators.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed Perez’s conduct during a White House press briefing in July, saying Trump had been briefed on the matter.

“Obviously, I’m aware of the report. The president is, too. I spoke with him about it,” Leavitt said. “He believes it’s deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace.”

FOX Business has reached out to the White House for comment and an update on Perez’s employment status.

Fox News Digital’s Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.

Walmart has agreed to pay a $50 million settlement over allegations its pharmacies were illegally filling thousands of prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The government complaint, first filed at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term and amended during former President Joe Biden’s term, accused Walmart of violating the Controlled Substances Act.

“Today’s settlement proves this department is committed to putting Americans’ flourishing first,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a statement. “Congress enacted laws to promote responsibility and accountability for companies who dispense controlled substances to protect Americans. 

“This department will never shy away from vigorously enforcing pharmacies’ obligations to comply with those protections, ensuring that potential profits never justify aiding our nation’s opioid epidemic.”

The complaint alleged that Walmart had been filling invalid prescriptions with the knowledge of pharmacists and its compliance team since June 2013.

Some Walmart pharmacists reported the alleged illegal activity to Walmart’s corporate compliance team, including through thousands of “refusal-to-fill” forms, the DOJ said.

“The compliance team, however, prioritized other goals over CSA compliance,” the DOJ said. 

“As one director on the compliance team acknowledged in an email, rather than analyzing the refusal-to-fill reports, the compliance team viewed ‘[d]riving sales and patient awareness,’ as ‘a far better use of our Market Directors and Market manger’s time.’”

Pharmacists also allegedly knowingly filled invalid prescriptions from “pill mill” prescribers or prescriptions that had red flags, such as dangerous opioid and nonopioid “cocktails,” repeated early fill requests of frequently abused drugs or high-dosages of opioids, according to the DOJ.

As part of the settlement, the DOJ said Walmart had entered into an agreement to establish a hotline for employees and patients to report suspected illegal activity.

The company must also proactively monitor pharmacy dispensing patterns.

Walmart did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.

President Donald Trump announced a major oil agreement with Venezuela on Friday, saying the U.S. has secured majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of the country’s proven oil reserves.

“The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump said the agreement was reached through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez and private business “at no cost to the American Taxpayer.”

“This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future,” Trump said.

The White House did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.

This is a developing story; check back later for updates.

WASHINGTON — The FDA has approved updated COVID-19 vaccines for the 2026–27 respiratory-virus season, clearing new formulations from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax-Sanofi ahead of the fall vaccination campaign.

The updated shots are designed to target the XFG variant, the strain selected for the new season.

The approved vaccines include Moderna’s mNEXSPIKE and Spikevax, Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty, and the protein-based Novavax-Sanofi vaccine.

The decision gives pharmacies, physicians and health systems the green light to begin preparing for another fall vaccination push as respiratory illnesses typically rise when colder weather returns.

The update matters because COVID-19 vaccines are reformulated periodically as the virus changes, much like seasonal flu shots are adjusted to better match circulating strains.

For consumers, the practical question will be which product is available locally and whether insurance covers it without out-of-pocket cost.

The protein-based Novavax option may also appeal to people who prefer a vaccine that does not use mRNA technology.

The FDA’s approval does not mean every person will necessarily be advised to receive the updated shot. Recommendations on who should get vaccinated and when typically depend on federal public-health guidance, age, health status and individual risk.

Older adults, people with weakened immune systems and those with underlying medical conditions generally face the greatest risk of severe COVID-19 illness.

The updated vaccines are expected to begin reaching pharmacies and healthcare providers ahead of the fall respiratory season.

For families planning flu and COVID vaccinations together, the approval provides clarity that the next generation of COVID shots is ready for distribution.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Friday produced major business developments across food, employment, interest rates, payments, artificial intelligence, healthcare, autos and emerging technology.

Washington moved toward changing how American beef can be processed and sold. New employment revisions showed private-sector hiring was weaker than previously believed. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh kept another rate increase firmly in play. PayPal lost nearly 13% after a $53 billion takeover effort collapsed. Anthropic won a significant court victory against the Pentagon. Walmart settled a long-running federal opioid case. Toyota reported a 24% collapse in China sales. And a quantum-computing company with only about $19 million in annual revenue reached a roughly $2 billion public valuation.

Food & Agriculture — Washington Targets the Beef-Processing Bottleneck

A potentially significant change is coming to the way American beef gets from a ranch to a supermarket.

President Donald Trump said Friday that he is preparing a legal order aimed at giving farmers and ranchers greater ability to process and sell their own meat rather than relying on the handful of enormous companies that dominate U.S. beef processing.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the administration intends to begin making major beef-processing announcements on Monday, August 31, including measures designed to make interstate sales easier, expand opportunities for smaller processors and rescind regulations the administration considers outdated.

The concentration is enormous.

Four companies — Cargill, Tyson Foods, JBS USA and National Beef — control roughly 85% of U.S. meat processing.

That means a cattle rancher can raise the animal but often still needs access to a federally inspected processor before the beef can be sold broadly to consumers.

If Washington can legally create more room for smaller processors, it could give ranchers another route to market and create opportunities for regional slaughterhouses, refrigerated logistics companies and independent food distributors.

Whether it lowers supermarket prices is much less certain.

Large meatpacking plants achieve efficiencies precisely because of their scale. Industry groups are also warning that loosening processing requirements cannot come at the expense of federal food-safety inspection.

So Friday’s announcement is not yet a new meat system.

But it could become the beginning of an important fight over who controls the middle of America’s food supply chain — and how much of every beef dollar stays with the farmer versus the processor.

Jobs & Economy — America Had 178,000 Fewer Private Jobs Than Previously Estimated

A quieter government release Friday contained an important correction to the employment picture.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said its preliminary annual benchmark indicates that total U.S. payroll employment in March was 79,000 lower than previously estimated.

That overall adjustment is relatively small — just 0.1% of total employment and below the average absolute benchmark revision of 0.2% over the past decade.

But underneath the headline, private employment was revised down by a larger 178,000 jobs.

The difference was partly offset by approximately 99,000 additional government jobs.

For employers and investors, the private-sector number is more revealing because it suggests businesses had been hiring somewhat less aggressively than the monthly jobs reports indicated.

Retail employment was substantially weaker than previously estimated, as were parts of manufacturing, wholesale trade, professional services, education and healthcare. Transportation and warehousing, financial activities and several other sectors were revised higher.

These figures are preliminary. BLS will not alter the official historical employment series until the final benchmark is incorporated in February 2027.

The timing matters because the Federal Reserve is deciding whether the economy can tolerate higher rates.

Warsh sees a labor market close to full employment. Friday’s benchmark says the overall picture remains relatively strong, but private hiring was softer than previously believed.

That makes next Friday’s August employment report considerably more important.

Rates & Consumers — Warsh Keeps Another Rate Hike in Play

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh used his Jackson Hole address Friday to make clear that the central bank is not declaring victory over inflation.

Warsh said inflation remains significantly above target, with the Fed’s preferred PCE measure running 3.7% over the past 12 months and 4.1% on a six-month basis.

He described the labor market as broadly stable and said overall financial conditions do not appear particularly restrictive.

His message was straightforward: the Fed must be confident inflation is moving clearly and sufficiently quickly toward 2%. Otherwise, policymakers still have work to do.

Warsh stopped short of promising a September rate increase, but investors took the speech as a warning that another hike remains possible.

That matters directly to businesses and consumers.

Another rate increase would mean continued pressure on mortgages, commercial real estate loans, credit cards, vehicle financing and small-business borrowing.

Consumer confidence also remains weak.

The University of Michigan’s final August Consumer Sentiment Index fell to 51.7 from 55.2 in July, leaving confidence 11.2% below a year ago. Thirty-six percent of consumers now identify inflation as the more serious economic hardship, up from 23% at the beginning of the year.

Payments & M&A — PayPal Loses Its $53 Billion Buyer

One of Friday’s largest individual stock moves came from a deal that did not happen.

A consortium led by private-equity firm Advent International and payments giant Stripe abandoned its pursuit of PayPal.

The group had offered approximately $60.50 per share, valuing PayPal at more than $53 billion.

PayPal shares collapsed 12.7% Friday as investors removed the takeover premium from the stock.

The story is remarkable when viewed against PayPal’s history.

At the height of the pandemic-era digital-payment boom in 2021, the company was worth approximately $360 billion.

Its problem today is not that online payments disappeared. It is that competition became much stronger.

Apple Pay, Shop Pay, Google Pay and other payment options increasingly sit directly between merchants and customers. PayPal must now prove that its enormous customer network, Venmo business and checkout infrastructure can grow strongly enough on their own.

New CEO Enrique Lores is reorganizing PayPal around checkout, consumer financial services — including Venmo — and payments and cryptocurrency.

The abandoned takeover means investors will now judge that turnaround without a buyer waiting in the wings.

For business owners accepting digital payments, this is another indication that the payments industry is entering a new competitive phase. The company that once largely defined online checkout is now fighting to defend its place at the register.

AI & Government — Anthropic Wins a Major Fight With the Pentagon

A federal judge delivered an important victory Friday to Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin blocked the Pentagon from designating Anthropic a national-security supply-chain risk, calling the government’s action unlawful.

The dispute arose after Anthropic refused to permit Claude to be used for certain U.S. surveillance activities or fully autonomous weapons. The Pentagon subsequently placed the company under an obscure procurement designation normally associated with supply-chain threats.

Anthropic argued that the label could cost it billions of dollars in business and reputational damage.

The significance extends well beyond one AI company.

Washington is becoming one of the world’s largest buyers of artificial intelligence. At the same time, AI developers are trying to decide what limits they place on how their systems can be used.

If refusing a particular military use meant losing access to government contracts across an entire company, Washington would have enormous leverage over those restrictions.

Friday’s ruling establishes an early judicial limit on that power.

A separate Anthropic case involving another government designation that could affect civilian contracts remains unresolved.

For the rapidly growing AI industry, this could become an important precedent in determining who ultimately controls the permissible uses of commercial artificial intelligence: the technology company, its customer or the government writing the contract.

Healthcare & Legal — Walmart Ends a Major Federal Opioid Case

Walmart quietly removed a significant legal threat Friday.

The retailer reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over allegations that its pharmacies unlawfully dispensed opioid prescriptions in violation of the Controlled Substances Act.

The federal government filed the case in 2020 and alleged violations stretching back to 2013.

The financial terms of Friday’s settlement were not disclosed.

That is important because the potential penalties had once run into billions of dollars.

A federal judge narrowed the case in 2024 but allowed major government claims to continue, including allegations that Walmart pharmacists filled prescriptions even when company compliance personnel allegedly knew they were invalid.

This case is separate from the $3.1 billion settlement Walmart agreed to in 2022 with state and local governments over opioid-related claims.

For Walmart, settlement removes another long-running uncertainty from a pharmacy business that serves millions of customers.

For every company operating in healthcare, the broader lesson is about compliance risk.

A profitable transaction completed today can produce litigation years later if regulators conclude the company should have identified warning signs.

Autos — Toyota’s China Sales Collapse 24%

Toyota delivered another warning Friday about how dramatically the global automobile market is diverging by region.

The world’s largest automaker said global vehicle sales fell 4.8% in July to 856,125 vehicles, while global production declined 2.1% from a year earlier.

China was the biggest problem.

Toyota sales there plunged 24.3%, marking the company’s sixth consecutive monthly decline. Production in China fell an even steeper 32.7%.

U.S. sales slipped 0.8%, while Middle East sales collapsed 44.5%.

Japan moved in the opposite direction, with sales rising 11% and production increasing 12.4%.

Toyota has relied heavily on hybrids while many Chinese competitors moved aggressively into battery-powered electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

Higher gasoline prices are now making that positioning more difficult in China, at exactly the moment domestic manufacturers are competing intensely on price and technology.

For suppliers, dealers and investors, Toyota’s report shows why talking about “the auto market” as one business increasingly makes little sense.

The same manufacturer can be growing double digits in Japan while losing nearly a quarter of its sales in China.

Quantum Computing — A $19 Million Business Reaches a $2 Billion Valuation

The next speculative technology boom officially reached Nasdaq Friday.

French quantum-computing company Pasqal surged on its first day of public trading after completing a merger with Bleichroeder Acquisition Corp II.

The transaction valued Pasqal at approximately $2 billion and delivered about $360 million in new cash to expand the company.

Its shares rose as much as 73% intraday and were still roughly 40% higher later in the session.

Here is what makes that valuation striking: Pasqal generated only approximately €16.5 million, or $19 million, in revenue during 2025.

Investors are therefore not paying for today’s business.

They are paying for what quantum computing might become.

Traditional computers process information in bits that are either 0 or 1. Quantum systems use quantum states that can represent and manipulate information in fundamentally different ways, potentially allowing certain extremely complex calculations to be solved much faster.

Pasqal uses neutral atoms as the physical foundation for its machines and is targeting applications including drug discovery, finance and industrial optimization.

It has deployed only seven quantum computers so far, although its factories in France and Canada can currently produce as many as 13 machines annually. Saudi Aramco is among its customers.

That makes Friday’s debut both exciting and risky.

Commercial quantum computing remains extremely early. Error rates remain a major problem, and nobody yet knows when quantum machines will consistently outperform conventional computers on commercially valuable work.

Yet investors just placed a multibillion-dollar public valuation on one of the companies trying.

That tells businesses and investors where some of the capital searching for the “next AI” is beginning to move.

Energy — Oil Ends a Difficult Week Below $90

Oil prices slipped again Friday.

Brent crude settled at $89.31 a barrel, down 39 cents, while West Texas Intermediate finished at $83.40, down 13 cents.

For the week, Brent fell more than 5% and WTI lost more than 4%.

The decline came despite continued uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz.

Markets are weighing signs that alternative flows and diplomatic efforts could improve supply against the fact that actual shipping through the strait remains severely disrupted.

Warsh’s hawkish Fed message added another downward force because higher interest rates can weaken economic demand and strengthen the dollar.

For businesses, oil below $90 provides some relief for transportation and fuel costs.

But the geopolitical discount remains fragile.

A meaningful reopening of Hormuz could drive energy costs lower. A renewed deterioration could reverse that move quickly.

Markets — Major Movers Reflect the Day’s Biggest Business Stories

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 53,559.99, down 9.45 points, or 0.02%.

The S&P 500 fell 19.23 points, or 0.25%, to 7,711.76, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 138.93 points, or 0.52%, to 26,402.42.

The Russell 2000 fell 41.97 points, or 1.4%, to 2,972.37.

Among the biggest movers, Nvidia fell 4.6%, Marvell Technology plunged 10.3%, and PayPal dropped 12.7%.

Alphabet rose about 1.7% and Salesforce gained approximately 1.6%.

Despite Friday’s decline, the major indexes still finished the week higher, with the S&P 500 and Dow each gaining roughly 0.5% and the Nasdaq up around 0.8%.

The Russell 2000 fell about 1.5% for the week, reflecting renewed pressure on smaller businesses from higher interest-rate expectations.

What to Watch Next

There is no U.S. stock-market session Saturday, August 29, so the next major moves will come from developments over the weekend and Monday’s opening.

The first issue to watch is the Strait of Hormuz. Any confirmed agreement that materially increases shipping could push oil lower when futures reopen. A breakdown in talks could quickly send prices the other way.

Then on Monday, August 31, watch Washington’s promised beef-processing announcements. The exact legal mechanism will determine whether the administration is creating a meaningful new opening for independent processors and ranchers or something much narrower.

China also releases another important read on manufacturing. A continued factory contraction would matter for commodities, machinery, autos, luxury goods and American multinational companies selling into China.

Next week then quickly becomes a U.S. labor-market week.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases July JOLTS job-opening data Tuesday, September 1 at 10:00 a.m. ET, followed by the August Employment Situation Friday, September 4 at 8:30 a.m. ET.

After Warsh’s Friday message, that jobs report could become one of the most important economic releases of the month.

Strong employment could give the Fed more room to raise rates to fight inflation.

A visibly weakening labor market could make that decision considerably more difficult.

Friday’s broader business message was spread across very different industries.

Food policy could change how ranchers reach consumers. Employment revisions showed private hiring was softer than believed. Interest-rate risk remains elevated. PayPal showed how quickly a takeover premium can disappear. Anthropic’s court victory could shape the relationship between AI companies and government. Walmart removed a major legal risk. Toyota showed how difficult China has become for foreign automakers. And Pasqal demonstrated how aggressively investors are betting on quantum computing.

The common thread is capital, competition and control — who owns the customer, who controls the technology, who reaches the market, and who carries the risk.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said Friday that inflation is still too high and suggested the central bank may have to raise interest rates in the coming months to bring it down, a clearer signal than he had sent previously about his economic outlook.

In his first high-profile speech at the Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Warsh acknowledged that recent U.S. reports show that inflation has cooled a bit, but “they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

“We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed,” Warsh said. “Otherwise, we have work to do.”

Comments from the new Fed chair appeared to reassure Wall Street that fighting inflation remains the priority for the central bank. Warsh did not imply that a rate hike is imminent, but he appeared to dismiss perceptions that inflation is no longer a threat.

He pointed to data showing that inflation remains stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target. Warsh replaced Jerome Powell in late May after his predecessor’s term ended.

The U.S. stock market held steady after the speech, but expectations are building in the bond market for the Fed to hike interest rates. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do with its federal funds rate, moved from 4.22% to 4.30%, a sign that investors expect short-term yields to move higher.

Longer-term yields on 10-year and 30-year Treasuries were mostly flat, suggesting investors aren’t worried that higher rates will be needed for a long stretch of time to fight inflation.

Jon Faust, an economist at Johns Hopkins and a former adviser to Powell, said Warsh succeeded in conveying a tougher approach on inflation while avoiding the kind of detailed guidance from the Fed that he has disparaged.

“He found a way to convey that if necessary he would support raising rates, which is one thing people were concerned about,” Faust said.

Yet Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Fed chair has talked tough on inflation before without hiking the Fed’s key rate. His Friday remarks don’t provide any clearer guidance on the timing of any Fed moves, he added.

The Fed chair faces high stakes with his speech as questions swirl around Wall Street about his focus on fighting inflation.

Those concerns may have contributed to rising bond yields, which can increase the cost of borrowing for the government and everyone else. Yet Warsh has said he doesn’t want to provide what analysts call “forward guidance” about whether the Fed will hike or cut rates or stay on hold at upcoming meetings. He argues that it limits the Fed’s flexibility by committing it to a specific policy.

Yet some economists have argued that he could say more about his views on Fed policy without tipping his hand about future actions.

Warsh on Friday reiterated his skepticism about providing such guidance or even outlining his broad approach to interest-rate policy.

But he did suggest that interest rates currently aren’t restricting economic activity, pointing to robust business investment in AI equipment and infrastructure and strong consumer spending. As a rule of thumb, interest rates often need to be high enough to limit borrowing and spending to cool inflation.

The Fed next meets Sept. 15-16, and Warsh’s remarks don’t necessarily signal that the central bank will raise rates then. But his speech indicated that rates may not be high enough to bring inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target.

Warsh said inflation data “are more concerning” than trends in the job market, where the unemployment rate is low. He also argued that inflation is unlikely to move back to the target on its own.

Warsh noted that in the past year, 54% of goods and services tracked by the government have seen price increases of 3% or higher. While that is down from the pandemic peak, it is “well above” the 32% that saw such increases in the two decades before the pandemic.

Inflation cooled in June and July after spiking in May from soaring gas prices, yet it remains above the central bank’s target. According to the Fed’s preferred measure, it was 3.7% in July.

Warsh also sought to clear up some areas of confusion that arose after his remarks at a July 29 news conference. He specified that short-term interest rates are the “predominant tool” the Fed can use to lower inflation.

Previous Fed chairs have often used speeches at Jackson Hole to address broad questions about interest-rate policy and the economy, or to signal upcoming changes in their approach. In 2022, with pandemic-era inflation having soared to 9.1%, Powell signaled the Fed would continue to sharply raise interest rates in a fight against runaway prices, and he acknowledged that such maneuvers would bring “pain” to consumers and businesses.

Wall Street investors now see the chances of a rate hike at the Fed’s Sept. 15-16 meeting as basically a coin flip, according to futures pricing tracked by CME FedWatch, up from about one-third before Warsh spoke.

Questions about Warsh’s approach have intensified amid President Donald Trump’s continued calls for lower interest rates. While Trump has continued to defend Warsh, whom he appointed, the president has criticized other Fed officials for supporting higher rates.

Trump has also renewed his efforts to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden. Replacing Cook would enable Trump to appoint a majority of the seven-member board. Trump tried to fire her last year but was temporarily blocked by the Supreme Court.

Longer-term rates have steadily risen in recent weeks because of a range of factors, including burgeoning U.S. government deficits and outsize borrowing by tech firms building AI infrastructure.

The rate on the 30-year Treasury bond reached the highest level in 19 years last week, prompting an unusual effort by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to buy back bonds and push yields lower.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Markets & Interest Rates — Stocks Slip, but Bonds Send the Bigger Warning

Wall Street ended Friday modestly lower after Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh made clear that the Fed remains focused on bringing inflation back toward its 2% target.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 53,559.99, down 9.45 points, or 0.02%.

The S&P 500 fell 0.25% to 7,711.76, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.52% to 26,402.42.

The declines were relatively small, but the bigger reaction came in interest-rate expectations.

Investors increased bets that the Federal Reserve could keep rates elevated longer — or potentially raise them again — if inflation fails to cool sufficiently.

That matters directly to businesses because higher-for-longer rates keep pressure on commercial loans, mortgages, credit cards, real-estate financing and corporate borrowing.

Among Friday’s major movers, Gap surged about 13.5%, while PayPal fell roughly 12%, Marvell Technology dropped about 10%, and Nvidia declined around 4% following Thursday’s powerful AI-driven rally.

Health & Pharmaceuticals — Mounjaro Gets a Much Bigger Medical Opportunity

The FDA approved Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke in adults with type 2 diabetes who are at high cardiovascular risk.

That takes Mounjaro beyond simply lowering blood sugar.

A major clinical trial showed the drug reduced serious cardiovascular events more effectively than Lilly’s older Trulicity treatment.

Mounjaro is already one of the fastest-growing medicines in the world, with quarterly sales approaching $10 billion.

The approval could strengthen Lilly’s argument to insurers, employers and government health programs that GLP-1 medicines can prevent expensive medical events rather than simply treat diabetes or obesity.

That could materially expand insurance coverage and the long-term size of the GLP-1 market.

Biotech — BioNTech Cancer Vaccine Suffers a Significant Setback

BioNTech stopped a mid-stage trial of its personalized mRNA colorectal-cancer vaccine after an independent monitoring committee concluded the treatment was unlikely to improve survival.

Investigators also observed a numerical imbalance in survival between the vaccine group and the control group.

BioNTech shares fell sharply following the announcement.

The result does not mean mRNA cancer vaccines cannot work. Other companies have shown encouraging results in different cancers.

But it is a reminder that the enormous investment flowing into personalized cancer vaccines remains scientifically risky.

For investors, it is a meaningful read-through across the emerging mRNA-oncology industry.

Quantum Computing — Pasqal Surges in Nasdaq Debut

French quantum-computing company Pasqal jumped sharply in its first day of Nasdaq trading, after climbing as much as 70% during the session.

Its SPAC combination valued the company at roughly $2 billion and provided approximately $360 million in cash for expansion.

The comparison between valuation and current business size is striking.

Pasqal generated only about €16.5 million in revenue in 2025, yet investors are already assigning the company a multibillion-dollar valuation.

The excitement reflects growing expectations that quantum computing could eventually solve problems conventional computers struggle with, including drug discovery, financial modeling, materials research and complex optimization.

The risk is equally clear.

Investors are placing enormous values on businesses whose commercial revenues remain tiny.

Global Capital Markets — Jio Moves Closer to Historic India IPO

India’s securities regulator approved Jio Platforms’ planned $3.8 billion IPO, potentially setting up the largest public offering in Indian history.

Jio has more than 533 million mobile subscribers and has expanded beyond telecommunications into cloud computing, artificial intelligence and enterprise services.

Its ownership also makes the deal globally important.

Meta owns roughly 9.9% and Google owns about 7.7%.

Most of the IPO proceeds are expected to help repay debt at Reliance Jio Infocomm.

A successful offering would put a public-market valuation on one of the world’s largest digital platforms and provide another major test of international investor appetite for India.

It would also give Meta and Google a clearer market value for investments they made years ago.

Google & Online Business — Europe Forces a Change in Search Enforcement

Google announced that it is changing how it enforces part of its search-spam policy across the European Economic Area following pressure from regulators.

The dispute centered on Google’s site reputation abuse policy, which targets third-party commercial content placed on established websites partly to benefit from those sites’ stronger Google rankings.

Publishers argued that Google was also penalizing legitimate commercial partnerships.

Beginning August 30, certain manual demotions under that policy will no longer affect users in the European Economic Area.

The policy remains unchanged elsewhere.

For online businesses, this matters because search rankings determine enormous amounts of revenue for publishers, affiliate businesses, retailers and marketers.

It also shows how European regulation can force Google to change the actual mechanics of its products — not simply pay fines.

Consumers — Confidence Falls Again

The University of Michigan’s final August consumer-sentiment reading came in at 51.7, down from 55.2 in July and significantly below where it stood a year earlier.

Consumers remain concerned about inflation and their future financial situation.

Year-ahead inflation expectations remained around 4%, while longer-term expectations stayed above the Federal Reserve’s target.

For retailers, restaurants and service businesses heading into the fall, that means consumers may continue spending — but they are becoming increasingly selective about where the money goes.

Lower- and middle-income households remain especially sensitive to food, fuel, housing and borrowing costs.

Labor Market — Job Growth Was Even Weaker Than Previously Reported

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ preliminary benchmark revision indicated that the U.S. economy created fewer jobs during the 12 months through March than previously estimated.

That comes after recent employment reports already showed weaker hiring momentum.

The revision creates a difficult situation for the Federal Reserve.

Inflation remains high enough to argue against easier monetary policy, while the labor market is beginning to show more weakness.

For business owners, a softer hiring market could reduce some pressure finding workers.

For investors, it means every major employment report now carries even more weight.

Investor Money — Billions Flow Out of U.S. Stock Funds

Investors withdrew more than $22 billion from U.S. equity funds during the latest weekly reporting period, the largest weekly outflow in months.

Large-cap funds saw particularly heavy withdrawals, while smaller-company funds attracted some money.

Bond funds continued receiving inflows.

The headline stock indexes remain near record territory, but money underneath the market is becoming more defensive.

That does not necessarily predict a major selloff.

It does show that investors are increasingly looking for income and protection while becoming more selective about highly valued large-cap stocks.

What to Watch This Weekend and Monday

U.S. stock and bond markets are closed Saturday, but developments from Jackson Hole could still affect markets when futures reopen Sunday evening.

Investors will be watching for additional comments from Federal Reserve officials about inflation, interest rates and the strength of the economy.

Oil and Iran also remain important weekend risks.

Any escalation affecting the Strait of Hormuz or Iranian energy exports could immediately move crude prices and inflation expectations.

Looking into next week, investors will increasingly focus on employment data, the next round of corporate earnings and whether the strong AI trade can continue after the volatility surrounding Nvidia and other major technology companies.

The bigger message from Friday is that the economy is becoming increasingly divided.

Consumers are under pressure, hiring is cooling and financing remains expensive — while extraordinary amounts of capital continue flowing into AI, pharmaceuticals, quantum computing and other high-growth industries.

That divide is likely to remain one of the defining business stories heading into September.

JBizNews Desk | Wall Street

© JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.

Federal regulators on Friday cleared Juul Labs to sell a new version of its e-cigarette that can be locked until the user verifies that they are old enough to buy it.

The Food and Drug Administration’s decision allows Juul to introduce an updated device in the United States for the first time since the original launched more than a decade ago.

The Juul2 will be sold with updated tobacco- and menthol-flavored cartridges. Its age-verification feature is optional: users can activate it through an online app, requiring the device to remain locked until the verification process is completed.

The legal age to purchase e-cigarettes in the United States is 21.

The technology is central to Juul’s attempt to rebuild its business after years of controversy over teenage use. The company laid off hundreds of employees and agreed to pay roughly $3 billion to settle government and private lawsuits. In 2019, it stopped selling the fruit and candy flavors that had become especially popular among teenagers.

Regulators emphasized that Friday’s decision is a marketing authorization—not an FDA approval or endorsement. The agency continues to warn that people who do not already use tobacco products should not begin using Juul or any other e-cigarette.

The FDA’s finding is narrower: adult smokers who switch completely from combustible cigarettes to Juul products may reduce their exposure to carcinogens and other harmful chemicals produced by burning tobacco.

Company studies reviewed by the agency found that between 20% and 50% of smokers using Juul products had stopped smoking cigarettes after six weeks, depending on the flavor, nicotine strength and measurement used.

The commercial challenge is more complicated.

Juul is no longer America’s best-selling vape brand. That position belongs to Vuse, made by Reynolds American, the tobacco company behind Camel and Newport. Teen vaping has also declined overall, while many young users who continue vaping have shifted to unauthorized disposable products imported from China and sold in the fruit and candy flavors Juul abandoned.

That is the competitive problem the age lock does not solve. Unauthorized disposable vapes generally do not require digital identity verification, face little meaningful FDA oversight at the point of sale and often undercut authorized products on price.

The clearance also comes amid a changing regulatory climate. In May, the FDA authorized the first fruit-flavored e-cigarettes intended for adult smokers—a significant shift following months of lobbying by the vaping industry directed at President Donald Trump and his administration.

For retailers, the practical question is whether consumers will choose an app-connected device with optional age controls over a roughly $15 disposable vape that works immediately out of the package.

JBizNews Desk | Washington, D.C.

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Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh on Friday delivered his first keynote address at the annual Jackson Hole Symposium on monetary policy, outlining his views of the economy and his perspective on why he thinks the central bank’s forward guidance should be reined in.

Warsh emphasized that the Fed is focused on returning inflation to the central bank’s 2% target, acknowledging that bringing the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index to that level is the “firm, fixed target” for policymakers. In July, PCE inflation remained at 3.7% compared with last year, which Warsh called “concerning” and said should be the focus of monetary policy.

The Fed chair also discussed the employment side of the dual mandate, saying that limited growth in labor supply is lowering monthly jobs figures, but that labor market data is “broadly consistent with full employment.”

Fed watchers have been critical of Warsh’s moves to clamp down on forward guidance about future interest rate moves, which he believes should be limited to when there are economic or financial crises – though his speech helped clarify those views for some.

Seema Shah, chief global strategist for Principal Asset Management, said that “Warsh untangled much of the ambiguity left by the July FOMC press conference, presenting a clearer picture of a Fed that remains laser-focused on returning inflation to target and is prepared to raise rates if progress stalls.”

“Although we expect incoming data to improve, the risk of a September hike has increased. The positive market reaction highlights that investors place a premium on policy clarity, even when that clarity carries a more hawkish message,” Shah added.

Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, noted that Warsh’s speech came against a backdrop in which the Federal Reserve’s credibility and commitment to its price stability mandate was being questioned amid his resistance to providing forward guidance or discussing economic fundamentals.

“Nearly 100 days into his term as Fed chairman, Warsh delivered some long-awaited humility during his first address at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole Symposium, saying ‘we take our responsibility seriously, with humility and resolve,'” Daco said.

“It appears Chairman Warsh realized that he couldn’t appear as the monetary policy maestro that he aspires to be without leading the orchestra to a flawless symphony first,” he said. “As such, he took up the task and delivered on three fronts that are basic principles for any central banker.”

“First, he provided a clear, fact-based and nuanced assessment of the U.S. economy, employment and inflation. Second, he reaffirmed PCE inflation as the gauge for the Fed’s 2% target and the fed funds rate as the main policy tool. Third, he suggested a reaction function indicating readiness to tighten should inflation fail to move sufficiently rapidly toward the 2% target,” Daco said.

Bret Kenwell, U.S. investment analyst at eToro, said that “Warsh has been adamant that the Fed should communicate less frequently, viewing forward guidance as inappropriate outside of a crisis.”

“That approach could result in more surprises for investors, and in turn, increased volatility. That’s particularly true if the Fed adopts Warsh’s view that there are ‘no excuses’ for failing to keep inflation in check,” Kenwell said.

Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, explained that he believes, “We are entering a new era of monetary policy, one defined by less signaling, greater emphasis on real-time data, and a willingness to rethink economic first principles as AI reshapes the economy’s productive capacity.”

“The distinctly hawkish speech gave support to the dollar as the chairman appears comfortable keeping policy higher for longer,” Roach added.

WASHINGTON — Mortgage rates barely moved this week, leaving would-be homebuyers stuck with borrowing costs that remain high enough to keep monthly payments elevated.

Freddie Mac said the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.66% as of August 27, up slightly from 6.65% a week earlier and above 6.56% a year ago. The average 15-year fixed rate rose to 5.98%, from 5.95% the prior week. 

The bigger story is not the one-basis-point move.

It is how stubbornly mortgage rates remain in the mid-to-upper 6% range.

For a buyer taking out a $300,000 mortgage, a rate around 6.5% produces a principal-and-interest payment of roughly $1,896 a month. At 7%, that rises to about $1,996 — roughly $100 more every month before taxes, insurance or homeowners association costs are included. 

That difference becomes much larger on a $500,000 or $700,000 mortgage.

Freddie Mac said the broader economy remains resilient, while more homes coming onto the market and slower price growth in some regions are giving buyers more choices.

But affordability remains the obstacle.

A buyer can negotiate on the price of a house.

It is much harder to negotiate away the cost of financing it.

Mortgage rates are influenced heavily by movements in the bond market, inflation expectations and investor views about future Federal Reserve policy. Even when the Fed eventually cuts short-term interest rates, mortgage rates do not automatically fall by the same amount.

That is why buyers waiting for a dramatic drop have largely been disappointed.

Rates have moved around during the summer, falling as low as 6.43% in early July before climbing back toward their current level. 

For existing homeowners with mortgages locked in at 3% or 4%, today’s market also creates another problem.

Selling a home often means giving up that cheap mortgage and replacing it with one carrying a rate closer to 7%, discouraging some owners from putting properties on the market.

More inventory is beginning to ease that pressure in parts of the country, but financing remains expensive enough to keep many transactions from happening.

For consumers, the message is straightforward.

Mortgage rates are not surging this week.

They are simply refusing to come down enough to materially improve affordability.

JBizNews Desk | Washington

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Gap shares surged after the retailer moved to address weakness at Old Navy while raising its annual profit outlook.

The company named Michael Francis as chief executive of Old Navy, putting an experienced retail executive in charge of Gap’s largest brand at a moment when its performance has become one of the biggest obstacles to the company’s turnaround.

Old Navy comparable sales fell 4% during the quarter, their first decline in 12 quarters.

That weakness stood in sharp contrast to the Gap brand, where comparable sales rose 10%.

Overall quarterly revenue fell 2% to roughly $3.65 billion, while adjusted earnings came in stronger than Wall Street expected.

Gap raised its full-year adjusted earnings outlook to $2.35 to $2.45 a share.

But there is another important number buried inside the quarter.

Gap recorded approximately $417 million in net tariff recovery tied to IEEPA duties.

The company says its adjusted outlook excludes the impact of that recovery, meaning investors should not simply treat the $417 million as evidence that Gap’s underlying retail operation suddenly became dramatically more profitable.

The market reaction reflects both sides of the story.

Shares jumped sharply because investors see stronger performance at the Gap brand, improved pricing discipline and a concrete attempt to fix Old Navy.

But Old Navy still matters enormously.

It is Gap’s largest banner, and the company’s broader turnaround will be difficult to sustain if Old Navy continues losing sales momentum.

The quarter therefore provides another example of why investors increasingly need to separate operating performance from temporary tariff-related financial benefits.

The real question for Gap is not how much tariff money came back.

It is whether the new leadership at Old Navy can get customers buying again.

JBizNews Desk | San Francisco

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CUPERTINO, Calif. — Friday, August 28, 2026

Apple is raising the price of Apple TV again, taking the streaming service to nearly three times what it cost when it launched in 2019.

The monthly subscription now costs $14.99 in the United States, up $2 from $12.99. The annual plan rises from $99 to $119, a $20 increase.

Apple also raised the Apple One Individual bundle from $19.95 to $21.95 per month. That package combines Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Arcade and 50GB of iCloud+ storage.

The Apple One Family and Premier plans remain at $27.95 and $39.95 per month, respectively. Those two packages were already increased by $2 last month when Apple raised its music-subscription prices.

The latest changes take effect immediately for new customers. Existing subscribers are expected to receive notice before the higher rate reaches their next billing cycle.

For consumers, paying for Apple TV monthly will now cost $179.88 over a full year. The $119 annual subscription saves nearly $61 compared with paying month to month, making the yearly plan considerably cheaper for customers who intend to keep the service.

Apple TV originally launched at $4.99 per month in 2019. Its price later rose to $6.99, then $9.99, $12.99 and now $14.99 as Apple expanded its original programming and live-sports offerings.

The increase adds another expense for households already juggling multiple streaming subscriptions and gives customers another reason to review whether they are paying separately for services that might cost less when bundled.

JBizNews Desk | Cupertino, California

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Nepal is monitoring two lakes upstream of the flood zone where hundreds died on Wednesday, an official with Nepal’s Disaster Management Authority said.

Flood risks will remain until the two lakes have fully drained, the official added, as one of the two lakes began overflowing on Friday.

Satellite images showed the two lakes near the site where a glacier collapse was believed to have pushed ​rock, ice, mud and debris into river systems on Wednesday, causing flood waves that leveled houses and tore away bridges.

The formation of one of the two lakes had been captured ⁠in aerial footage by a Chinese rescue team on Thursday.

Footage shows water accumulating in basin, lake increasing in size

The footage on Thursday showed masses of brown water accumulating in a basin. By Friday, water was draining from that lake, according to new satellite imagery.

The imagery also showed another lake upstream that appeared to be growing in size and was bigger in surface area than the first lake, without any visible outlet as of Friday morning, meaning that water pressure may still be building there.

Nepalese authorities are relying on satellite imagery to track conditions, though monitoring is limited by the availability of images, the Nepalese official said.

Nepal plans to install cameras and sensors downstream, including near the border town of Timure, and is assessing deployment options by helicopter, he said.

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Sweden‘s military will participate in the surveillance and protection of Finland‘s territory with Gripen fighter jets and a corvette warship, at least until the end of 2026, Finland’s defense forces said on Friday.

“The Swedish equipment strengthens air surveillance in particular, releasing the Finnish Defense Forces’ own resources for repelling violations and incidents, if need be,” Finland’s military said in a statement.

The neighboring countries, NATO’s two newest members, already have close bilateral defense cooperation. Finland has a 1,340-kilometer (833-mile) long eastern border with Russia.

“Sweden has responded to a request from Finland to strengthen its air defense due to the deteriorating security situation,” Sweden’s Defence Minister Pal Jonson told Reuters, adding that the Swedish armed forces may under the agreement, if necessary, help Finland repel violations of Finnish territory.

Besides fighter jets and vessels with drone combat capabilities, Sweden may also contribute ground-based anti-drone systems, he said.

Countries fear Russia-Ukraine war is spilling over borders

Military drones straying into the airspace of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are stoking concerns that the war in Ukraine is spilling over into NATO’s northern borders with Russia. As Ukraine steps up attacks on Russian Baltic Sea oil shipping ports, some of its drones have missed their targets and led to security warnings in neighboring countries.

Sweden’s SAAB SAABb.ST, the maker of Gripen, said separately on Friday it had won a 1.2 billion crown ($126 million) order from Finland for its RBS 70 NG portable air defense missile system.

This post was originally published on here.

Israel’s largest bus operator is going into business with a Chinese state-owned manufacturer designated by the Pentagon as a Chinese military company and restricted under separate U.S. transit-procurement legislation.

Egged Group and Auto Chen Mobility, part of the Belilios Group, announced Thursday that they are forming a joint venture with CRRC to import, market and sell the Chinese manufacturer’s buses. Egged said the goal is to build a full, long-term operation around CRRC products in Israel while working with the company to enter additional European markets.

Despite how the agreement has been described, this is a distribution and service venture—not a bus-manufacturing operation, at least for now.

The scale of the Chinese partner is the headline. CRRC was created in 2015 through the merger of CNR and CSR and now operates in more than 100 countries through 46 subsidiaries, employing more than 150,000 people.

The state-owned company generated approximately $38 billion in revenue last year, earned about $2 billion in profit and invested roughly $3 billion in research and development. It has sold more than 85,000 buses since entering the segment in 2006 and produced approximately 6,000 during 2025 alone.

Each partner brings a specific advantage. Auto Chen has delivered more than 4,000 Golden Dragon buses in Israel over the past decade and understands the country’s import, sales and service infrastructure.

Egged contributes experience operating large transportation fleets in Israel and Europe. Its European holdings include Mobilis in Poland, EBS in the Netherlands and a majority stake in Lithuania’s TOKS, giving the new venture an existing operational base from which to pursue European contracts.

CRRC vehicles are already beginning to reach Israel. Its electric-vehicle division has shipped minibuses to the country, while a 26-meter bi-articulated bus is expected to arrive under a Transportation Ministry tender. The vehicle is scheduled to be operated by Superbus on the Haifa Metronit system.

Executives involved in the partnership have also identified autonomous vehicles as a longer-term opportunity.

The complication is CRRC’s ownership and status in Washington.

The company is owned by the Chinese government and appears on the Pentagon’s list of Chinese military companies. Under Section 805 of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department is prohibited from entering into, renewing or extending certain contracts with companies on that list.

Congress separately enacted the Transportation Infrastructure Vehicle Security Act in 2019, restricting the use of federal transit funding to purchase buses and rail cars from Chinese state-owned or controlled manufacturers.

CRRC’s growing role in Israeli transportation has previously drawn scrutiny. In 2022, Chinese companies lost a major Tel Aviv light-rail contract amid reported American pressure and security concerns raised in both Israel and the United States. CRRC later became involved in a separate controversy surrounding the procurement of trains for Jerusalem’s Blue Line.

This agreement is different because it is being formed by commercial transportation operators and initially involves buses rather than the construction of a government rail network. U.S. transit-procurement restrictions do not govern purchases made for Israeli fleets without American federal funding.

Nevertheless, modern electric buses contain connected systems—including cameras, telematics and remotely updated software—that Israeli regulators may examine as the venture expands.

For Egged, the commercial calculation is straightforward: Chinese electric buses are competitively priced, readily available and increasingly capable, while European transportation tenders are often decided heavily on cost.

The unanswered question is whether Israeli regulators—and American officials monitoring the transportation infrastructure of a close ally—will view the partnership strictly as a commercial venture or as part of a broader strategic concern surrounding Chinese technology.

JBizNews Desk | Tel Aviv

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From growing up poor and fatherless in a tough Italian neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, likened to that of the film “Goodfellas,” to building a Burger King franchise empire in the mountainous West of Utah, John Gullo’s story is a quintessential example of the classic rags-to-riches tale.

Yet for this entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, the “riches” never equated to the money he made. Gullo innately knew early in life that it was about giving back.

“It’s more important to be happy than it is to make money. And that’s a belief of mine. And when you ask me about my business, I never got into it to make money,” he told Fox News Digital.

Now 82, Gullo, who during his career opened a total of 54 franchises in Utah, Arizona and Wisconsin — including the first-ever Burger King attached to a gas station, in Hurricane, Utah — is sharing his life’s journey.

From his first stint as a night manager at the fast-food chain to establishing the nonprofit American Dream Foundation with seed money from his business success and becoming the designated “Father of Professional Pickleball,” it’s all in his memoir, “Extraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Man.” 

Gullo refers to the title as “the caption for my life.” He wrote the book, which can be found on Amazon, with the help of author Bridget Cook-Burch.

The reason he decided to sell his restaurants, he said, was because he wasn’t working with the kids anymore.

“I wasn’t actively involved in the day-to-day operation, and I missed that,” he said.

“Everything I do with kids is a life lesson, so when I wrote the book, I did life lessons after each chapter with the hope that kids are going to read this thing and people are going to see it, and they’re going to learn from it,” Gullo added, noting his belief that, for some reason, he has been spiritually inspired all of his life.

“Giving is just very important to me — it’s very rewarding to me,” he said, noting that the philanthropy piece of his life has always been there. “…Maybe it’s because when you have nothing, you appreciate everything so much more.”

As documented in the recent Deseret News article “How Utah’s Burger King king became the king of giving back,” Gullo has, for the last quarter-century, focused strictly on helping people and organizations that help people. In essence, his projects have served children, teens, families, classrooms, firefighters and those with disabilities.

His philanthropic efforts have gone to dozens of charitable endeavors and organizations, including Prevent Child Abuse and the Children’s Justice Center. He’s been behind the Ogden, Utah-based Enable Industries, which serves people with disabilities, as well as the American Fallen Fire Memorial, Youth in Transition, the Ogden Police Department’s Let’s Play Program, and the Treehouse Children’s Museum.

The latter includes the American Freedom Trail, which every fifth-grader in Weber County can take a field trip to. It’s just one piece of what Gullo’s American Dream Foundation has funded since 2002, with more than $2 million going toward charitable causes.

Gullo is all about emphasizing the freedom to have your own opinions and the opportunities this nation has afforded him, which he’s expressed in patriotic videos featured on his foundation’s website.

“I think it’s important that the kids know the price that was paid to give them the right to burn the flag. The patriotism that existed at that time, the love of country at that time, it’s disappearing,” he explained. “We’re so segmented right now, and I do everything I can to offset that.”

Gullo himself said he has a lot of friends on both sides of the political aisle, but regardless of their beliefs, they’re able to remain friends.

“We disagree, that’s OK,” he said.

He specifically noted his friendship with former NBA player Thurl Bailey, who now does color commentary for the Utah Jazz and wrote the foreword for Gullo’s book. The two have collaborated for 20 years on charitable events.

“What this country needs more of is to have a relationship like ours,” Gullo said, noting that the two are totally different but are “brothers from another mother” and are united in how they care about people.

“We care about things and we work together. And there’s just not enough of that in the United States anymore,” Gullo said, noting his pursuit to bring organizations and people together.

Bailey called meeting Gullo at a charity event where Gullo purchased an auction item that involved Bailey giving a keynote speech at an Ogden youth program for underprivileged kids “fortuitous.”

“That’s when I really started to find out what a charitable man he was — a man successful in business in his own right, but you would never know it because he’s just so giving,” Bailey told Fox News Digital.

Later, during some country music concerts in Ogden sponsored by Gullo, the two would realize they had parallel lives growing up.

“We clicked on a lot of levels when it came to our backgrounds, even though mine turned into sports and his into business and philanthropy. We both connected on the giving side,” he said.

So where does pickleball come into Gullo’s story?

He has credited the sport with saving his life after heart failure and first discovered the game while recovering from quintuple bypass heart surgery in 2008.

It helped him lose 100 pounds and inspired him to get courts built throughout Northern Utah — hundreds of them, in fact. He went on to found the Professional Pickleball Federation and the Tournament of Champions, a national event with prize money donated from his own pocket.

All of that has led to his induction into the Pickleball Hall of Fame in 2024 for his contributions to the growth of the sport, which has skyrocketed in popularity. He’s officially been dubbed the “Father of Professional Pickleball.”

“This is the most social game ever invented. You just got to show up. You don’t have to get three guys to play golf or tennis or anything like that,” Gullo said. “…What other sport do you know where a guy like me can partner with a 24-year-old kid in a tournament and be part of it? That’s what makes this sport so great.”

A proud father of two sons, Gullo continually emphasizes the difference between positive mistakes and negative ones to the younger set.

“A positive mistake is when you’re trying to do something and you make a mistake. I can live with that. A negative mistake is when you screw up because you don’t do anything. It’s that simple,” he said, noting he also tries to keep his own grandkids on track.

“After COVID, I sat down with them and said, ‘What did you learn?’ And after some discussion, I said, COVID taught you the difference between wants and needs. What did you go without that you really don’t need in your life? Because when I was a kid, everything was a want, everything was a need because we had nothing.”

He credits the Jaycees, a civic and leadership training organization for young adults, with bringing him out of his shell and instilling in him the importance of leadership through community service.

“When I joined the Jaycees, I was an introvert, but the Jaycees really turned me around… and that’s where I learned a lot about my business and charity life because all of a sudden you’re in charge of a project and you have to get people to help you,” he said. “You’re not paying them, and you might not even like them, so I learned that part of human relations through that process …”

Now, as he undertakes a program with Thurl at Ogden High School featuring his book and leadership training, Gullo looks back and is still amazed at what he’s been able to accomplish, sometimes even making fun of certain triumphs, like being the first to put a fast-food restaurant in a gas station of any kind.

“…I went to Russia and I saw McDonald’s and a gas station and I said, ‘Father, forgive me, I know not what I do,’” he quipped.

Mostly, it’s when he realizes his American Dream Foundation has donated more than $2 million since 2002 that he stands in disbelief. In true Gullo style, all the proceeds from his book will go to charity.

“I didn’t go to college, barely got out of high school… you’re talking to a guy that grew up in poverty,” Gullo said. “I realized it took the same amount of energy to cry as it does to laugh, and the choice is mine.”

“The power of one means one person can do a lot,” he added.

“John’s a man who cares about a lot of things, but is passionate about giving,” Bailey added. “He’s a giver. The world needs more John Gullos.”