DOGE team’s “wall of receipts” shows errors in tallying billions in savings
DOGE team’s “wall of receipts” shows errors in tallying billions in savings
After repeated delays, the Department of Government Efficiency on Monday released a “wall of receipts” — what it characterized as documentation of the money saved by the slashing cuts to jobs and contracts pushed by Elon Musk’s team at DOGE over the past several weeks.
The initial accounting was overstated by billions of dollars, a review by CBS News found.
Among the errors were contracts that DOGE identified for cuts, saying the move could save billions for taxpayers. But they were actually standard government funding vehicles called “indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity” contracts. The DOGE team misread these specialized contracts, experts told CBS News, and as a result overstated their push for savings by as much as $1.96 billion.
A closer inspection of another big so-called savings: the cancellation of a contract DOGE identified as worth $8 billion was in fact worth only $8 million. This single mistake slashed the receipts of savings DOGE said it had identified in half — to $8.4 billion.
That error involved an award for Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Equal Opportunity Employment Office, and the contract described the project as “Program and Technical Support Services for Office of Diversity and Civil Rights.” In his first days in office, President Trump signed executive orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal government.
The DOGE team led by Musk has become a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s early days in office, as members of the efficiency team set up shop in federal agencies to identify cuts of employees, grants and contracts. The president has praised the effort, which he says is a long overdue move to eliminate waste.
“They’re doing a hell of a job, it’s an amazing job they’re doing,” he said during remarks in the Oval Office on Feb. 11. “You know that force is building, I call it ‘the force of super geniuses.'”
DOGE’s accounting error involving indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts, known in government-speak as IDIQ, occurred because the team likely misunderstood how government contracting works, experts told CBS News. These contracts are designed to set a ceiling for the funding of a larger project.
Multiple contractors bid on tasks within that IDIQ. The ceiling for the project identified by DOGE was $655 million. But DOGE claimed savings of $654,990,000 three times. In actuality, the government spent less on the contract — around $400 million over the course of the past four years for 44 different sub-contracts — and the IDIQ is likely to have only minimal additional spending.
That specific contract was called USAID EVAL-ME II IDIQ and it provided “monitoring, evaluation and learning services to promote evidence-based decision making for adaptive management across USAID.” One of the contractors involved told CBS News that this program was directly responsible for ensuring that U.S. taxpayer money was spent in accordance with U.S. goals and interests.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the discrepancy, and DOGE also did not respond to a request for comment.
DOGE “may be more interested in inflating savings than in accurately reporting them,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight.
The New York Times, which first reported DOGE’s $8 billion accounting error, pointed out that a 2022 version of this contract was listed at $8 billion, and on Jan. 22 of this year, the figure was changed to $8 million. The contracting company, D&G Solutions, confirmed to CBS News that this was originally the result of an accounting error and that $3.8 million of the contract had already been expended.
On Wednesday morning, DOGE fixed the error, and the website now shows $8 million in savings for that contract, but the link they provide for the “receipt” is to the earlier $8 billion figure.
Musk recently admitted he knows DOGE isn’t perfect. Defending DOGE during an Oval Office appearance on Feb. 11, he said that “some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected.”
“Nobody’s going to bat a thousand. We will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes,” he added.
Beyond the ICE contract blunder, Amey described the numbers as underwhelming. Excluding the impact of USAID’s elimination, receipts of contract savings from other agencies appear to total $2 billion — a fraction of the federal budget, which stands at $6.75 trillion.
“If DOGE’s goal is to trim a trillion or two, it has a long way to go, and Congress has to do its job to cut spending, too,” Amey said. Musk has said he’d like to trim $2 trillion, putting DOGE at 0.1% of his goal.
Many of these contract cancellations, outside of the USAID cuts, appear to have been selected based on language in the agreements referencing diversity, equity, or inclusion, CBS News’ review found.
And at what cost? Among the receipts on the DOGE wall was funding for a Department of Education project that’s now been scrapped. The contractor described the real-world consequences in an interview: “Thirteen school districts across 11 states were set to receive more than $13 million to support over 1,070 youth with disabilities participating in the program.”
At USAID, savings touted by DOGE on X on Saturday included $10 million for “Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision” and $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills” amongst other cuts. Circumcision has been proved to reduce the spread of **** by as much as 60%. Programs like that have the potential to significantly lower costs for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, which provides antiretroviral treatment for people living with **** and AIDS and had been given a limited waiver to continue to operate at the end of January. It has been credited with helping to save 26 million lives. One 2017 estimate suggested that widespread circumcision efforts could avert 3.6 million new **** infections and save $16.5 billion.
DOGE has for weeks been promising an accounting of the unprecedented sweep through federal agencies that appears to have left hundreds of workers suddenly jobless.
Meanwhile, DOGE’s abrupt firings have set government agencies on edge. The government is now trying to rehire hundreds of workers in the U.S. nuclear weapons program after last week’s layoffs. Farmers across the U.S. remain in limbo after promised federal funds for healthy soil initiatives — amounting to thousands of dollars per farm — failed to materialize. Life-saving efforts across Africa have also been put on hold while service providers wait for clarity on whether court-ordered funds will resume.
Aaron Navarro
contributed to this report.
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U.S. fund KKR makes £4 billion management-buyout bid for Thames Water
U.S. fund KKR makes £4 billion management-buyout bid for Thames Water
Thames Water utility van in the Cty of London on 3rd December 2024 in London, United Kingdom. Thames Water Utilities Ltd is a large private utility company responsible for the water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London and surrounding areas in England. (photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Mike Kemp | In Pictures | Getty Images
Private equity investor KKR & Co. is offering about £4 billion ($5 billion) to take control of the U.K.’s struggling Thames Water utility in a management-led buyout, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Thames, Britain’s largest water utility serving some 16 million customers in London and the Thames River valley, is saddled with ballooning debt and has warned it will run out of cash by March 24. Privatized by the Thatcher government in 1989, Thames last summer began the process of raising additional capital, culminating in an announcement last week that it had received buyout proposals from a “number of parties.” Thames said it was studying each bid.
Thames Water needs to restructure its debt and capital structure as part of a broad turnaround, and would benefit from a single active owner, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC. Thames owed about £16 billion in debt as of last September.
KKR’s involvement would comprise a £4 billion management-buyout submission that would not result in the ***** of assets or a breakup of the utility, the source said.
Thames Water and KKR declined comment.
Bloomberg reported earlier Wednesday that KKR was offering to inject nearly £4 billion into Thames Water for a majority stake.
KKR is a longtime investor in the U.K., having funneled more than £20 billion into the country since 1996. The private equity firm launched a platform for infrastructure investments in 2008, seeking investments with a long-term investment horizon.
The U.K.’s high court on Tuesday approved £3 billion in emergency funding for Thames Water from existing shareholders, allowing the utility breathing room to restructure its debts and secure new investors.
Thames Water is part of a group of companies known as the Kemble Water Group that are owned by a consortium of institutional shareholders – mostly pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. The biggest shareholder is the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, one of Canada’s largest pensions.
The crisis-plagued utility has faced criticism for a sharp increase in sewage discharge into Britain’s waterways, including the 215 mile-long Thames, which flows through the nation’s capital.
– CNBC’s Jenni Reid and Sawdah Bhaimiya contributed to this report.
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Street Fighter Movie Is Still Alive, Finds New Director With A Comedy Background
Street Fighter Movie Is Still Alive, Finds New Director With A Comedy Background
A new Street Fighter movie has been in the works for some time, and now it’s moving ahead once again with a new director. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kitao Sakurai (Bad Trip, The Eric Andre Show) is signed on to direct the movie at Legendary Entertainment.
Capcom, which owns the game franchise, is co-developing and co-producing the movie with Legendary. The movie will be distributed by Sony Pictures and is set for release on March 20, 2026.
Fans may recall how there already was a Street Fighter movie back in 1994 starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. It made almost $100 million at the box office back then. Kristin Kreuk starred in the reboot film, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, which bombed in theaters in 2009.
The new Street Fighter movie originally had the *********** twins Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me) lined up to direct but a scheduling conflict for their new movie, Bring Her Back, led to the brothers departing the movie.
The Street Fighter game series has sold millions of copies across its various installments over the years, with 2016’s Street Fighter V standing as the best-selling game in the series with 7.7 million copies sold. 2023’s Street Fighter 6, the newest entry in the series, has sold 4.4 million copies so far. The entire Street Fighter series, meanwhile, has surpassed 56 million copies sold.
While fighting game fans have to wait until 2026 for the Street Fighter movie, another movie based on a fighting game, Mortal Kombat 2, hits theaters this October.
In addition to Street Fighter, there are many other video game movies in the works now, with the next releases being A Minecraft Movie (April 4) and the Until Dawn movie (April 25). Check out the gallery below to see all the upcoming video game movies in the works.
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What’s Best, According to the Italian Mathematician Alessio Figalli
What’s Best, According to the Italian Mathematician Alessio Figalli
The words “optimal” and “optimize” derive from the Latin “optimus,” or “best,” as in “make the best of things.” Alessio Figalli, a mathematician at the university ETH Zurich, studies optimal transport: the most efficient allocation of starting points to end points. The scope of investigation is wide, including clouds, crystals, bubbles and chatbots.
Dr. Figalli, who was awarded the Fields Medal in 2018, likes math that is motivated by concrete problems found in nature. He also likes the discipline’s “sense of eternity,” he said in a recent interview. “It is something that will be here forever.” (Nothing is forever, he conceded, but math will be around for “long enough.”) “I like the fact that if you prove a theorem, you prove it,” he said. “There’s no ambiguity, it’s true or false. In a hundred years, you can rely on it, no matter what.”
The study of optimal transport was introduced almost 250 years ago by Gaspard Monge, a French mathematician and politician who was motivated by problems in military engineering. His ideas found broader application solving logistical problems during the Napoleonic Era — for instance, identifying the most efficient way to build fortifications, in order to minimize the costs of transporting materials across Europe.
In 1975, the Russian mathematician Leonid Kantorovich shared the Nobel in economic science for refining a rigorous mathematical theory for the optimum allocation of resources. “He had an example with bakeries and coffee shops,” Dr. Figalli said. The optimization goal in this case was to ensure that on a daily basis every bakery delivered all its croissants, and every coffee shop got all the croissants desired.
“It’s called a global wellness optimization problem in the sense that there is no competition between bakeries, no competition between coffee shops,” he said. “It’s not like optimizing the utility of one player. It is optimizing the global utility of the population. And that’s why it’s so complex: because if one bakery or one coffee shop does something different, this will influence everyone else.”
The following conversation with Dr. Figalli — conducted at an event in New York City organized by the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute and in interviews before and after — has been condensed and edited for clarity.
How would you finish the sentence “Math is … ”? What is math?
For me, math is a creative process and a language to describe nature. The reason that math is the way it is is because humans realized that it was the right way to model the earth and what they were observing. What is fascinating is that it works so well.
Is nature always seeking to optimize?
Nature is naturally an optimizer. It has a minimal-energy principle — nature by itself. Then of course it gets more complex when other variables enter into the equation. It depends on what you are studying.
When I was applying optimal transport to meteorology, I was trying to understand the movement of clouds. It was a simplified model where some physical variables that may influence the movement of clouds were neglected. For example, you might ignore friction or wind.
The movement of water particles in clouds follows an optimal transport path. And here you are transporting billions of points, billions of water particles, to billions of points, so it’s a much ******* problem than 10 bakeries to 50 coffee shops. The numbers grow enormously. That’s why you need mathematics to study it.
What about optimal transport captured your interest?
I was most excited by the applications, and by the fact that the mathematics was very beautiful and came from very concrete problems.
There is a constant exchange between what mathematics can do and what people require in the real world. As mathematicians, we can fantasize. We like to increase dimensions — we work in infinite dimensional space, which people always think is a little bit crazy. But it’s what allows us now to use cellphones and Google and all the modern technology we have. Everything would not exist had mathematicians not been crazy enough to go out of the standard boundaries of the mind, where we only live in three dimensions. Reality is much more than that.
In society, the risk is always that people just see math as being important when they see the connection to applications. But it’s important beyond that — the thinking, the developments of a new theory that came through mathematics over time that led to big changes in society. Everything is math.
And often the math came first. It’s not that you wake up with an applied question and you find the answer. Usually the answer was already there, but it was there because people had the time and the freedom to think big. The other way around it can work, but in a more limited fashion, problem by problem. Big changes usually happen because of free thinking.
Optimization has its limits. Creativity can’t really be optimized.
Yes, creativity is the opposite. Suppose you’re doing very good research in an area; your optimization scheme would have you stay there. But it’s better to take risks. Failure and frustration are key. Big breakthroughs, big changes, always come because at some moment you are taking yourself out of your comfort zone, and this will never be an optimization process. Optimizing everything results in missing opportunities sometimes. I think it’s important to really value and be careful with what you optimize.
What are you working on these days?
One challenge is using optimal transport in machine learning.
From a theoretical viewpoint, machine learning is just an optimization problem where you have a system, and you want to optimize some parameters, or features, so that the machine will do a certain number of tasks.
To classify images, optimal transport measures how similar two images are by comparing features like colors or textures and putting these features into alignment — transporting them — between the two images. This technique helps improve accuracy, making models more robust to changes or distortions.
These are very high-dimensional phenomena. You are trying to understand objects that have many features, many parameters, and every feature corresponds to one dimension. So if you have 50 features, you are in 50-dimensional space.
The higher the dimension where the object lives, the more complex the optimal transport problem is — it requires too much time, too much data to solve the problem, and you will never be able to do it. This is called the curse of dimensionality. Recently people have been trying to look at ways to avoid the curse of dimensionality. One idea is to develop a new type of optimal transport.
What’s the gist of it?
By collapsing some features, I reduce my optimal transport to a lower-dimensional space. Let’s say three dimensions is too large for me and I want to make it a one-dimensional problem. I take some points in my three-dimensional space and I project them onto a line. I solve the optimal transport on the line, I compute what I should do, and I repeat this for many, many lines. Then, using these results in dimension one, I try to reconstruct the original 3-D space by a sort of gluing together. It is not an obvious process.
It kind of sounds like the shadow of an object — a two-dimensional, square-ish shadow provides some information about the three-dimensional cube that casts the shadow.
It is like shadows. Another example is X-rays, which are 2-D images of your 3-D body. But if you do X-rays in enough directions you can essentially piece together the images and reconstruct your body.
Conquering the curse of dimensionality would help with A.I.’s shortcomings and limitations?
If we use some optimal transport techniques, perhaps this could make some of these optimization problems in machine learning more robust, more stable, more reliable, less biased, safer. That’s the meta principle.
And, in the interplay of pure and applied math, here the practical, real-world need is motivating new mathematics?
Exactly. The engineering of machine learning is very far ahead. But we don’t know why it works. There are few theorems; comparing what it can achieve to what we can prove, there is a huge gap. It is impressive, but mathematically it is still very difficult to explain why. So we cannot trust it enough. We want to make it better in many directions, and we want mathematics to help.
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Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Preview – TheSixthAxis
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Preview – TheSixthAxis
TSA writes: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition will unite the whole franchise on the Nintendo Switch, as both a swansong and one last Wii U port.
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For Trump and Fox News, New Policies Are Simply ‘Common Sense’
For Trump and Fox News, New Policies Are Simply ‘Common Sense’
President Trump’s rapid-fire policy actions are reshaping the federal government, and to Fox News, they are simply pursuing “common sense.”
Enacting “bold and sometimes painful measures” is worth it, one Fox News host said, to arrive at “common sense.” Mr. Trump’s term so far, another Fox pundit concluded, could be summed up with that simple catchphrase: It’s a “restoration of common sense.”
“Trump isn’t radical — he’s just radically changing our country back to normal,” Jesse Watters said during Monday’s episode of “Jesse Watters **********.” He said Mr. Trump’s plans to “deport migrants” and cut waste were “all common-sense moves.”
The flood of “common sense” comments on Fox News echoes the language Mr. Trump and his new administration have used to justify his policies — many of which have deeply divided the country, polls have shown. The administration has deployed the slogan to support a range of actions, from banning paper straws to reversing efforts to stem climate change, and has described his first weeks as a “revolution in common sense.”
“It’s easy to do a good job when you are acting on common sense and you are speaking the truth,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, at a recent briefing.
The shared language reflects the deepening ties between the government and the right-wing media, especially Fox News, by far the nation’s most popular cable news network. Nearly 20 former Fox News alumni have joined the administration, including at the highest levels, with the former hosts Pete Hegseth taking over the Pentagon and Sean Duffy leading the Transportation Department. Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, has received her own show on the network.
Harrison Fields, the principal deputy press secretary for the White House, said that “common sense” was not a new term for Mr. Trump.
“No polling is needed to know that President Trump’s common sense, America First promises are wildly popular with the American people — the proof is in his historic victory,” Mr. Fields said.
The suggestion from Fox News and the White House is that Mr. Trump’s “common sense” policies are not only the right ones but also have wide support among the vast majority of Americans. Polling has offered a more complicated picture.
Mr. Trump’s efforts to ban diversity, equity and inclusion — known as D.E.I. — evenly divide the country, according a New York Times and Ipsos poll from January, before his inauguration: 48 percent want to eliminate such programs while 47 percent support them.
The same can be said for parts of Mr. Trump’s Middle East policy. (Mr. Trump has supported aid for Israel, while 53 percent in the same survey said the United States was spending too much to support the country.) Deporting all ******** immigrants, a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy, has a slim majority of support, with 55 percent backing the idea.
Some of Mr. Trump’s other policies are more popular: Most Americans — about 80 percent, including two-thirds of Democrats — said transgender women should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports, according to the January poll. (Mr. Trump signed an executive order barring their participation.) A larger share, about 87 percent, support deporting unauthorized immigrants with a criminal record, the poll found. (Mr. Trump signed a law in January that would deport undocumented immigrants charged with a variety of crimes, from shoplifting to *******.)
Other policies pushed as “common sense” by Mr. Trump and conservative media do not have recent polling to assess their popularity, including ending the penny and requiring a photo ID to vote.
The embrace of “common sense” has surged on Fox News, where the term was mentioned nearly 500 times in January, according to data from Critical Mention, a media monitoring company, an increase from around 200 per month in the years prior.
Some of the mentions on Fox News come from its own “Common Sense Department,” a segment that started airing during the Biden administration and features Trace Gallagher reacting to news based on what “common sense” would dictate.
As Mr. Trump moved to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development, which provides funding for humanitarian programs around the world, protests erupted and Democratic lawmakers held rallies in support of the group.
Mr. Gallagher dismissed the fracas during a segment by highlighting some programs funded by U.S.A.I.D.: “Common sense would not describe this as foreign aid but rather a domestic boondoggle, a multibillion-dollar boondoggle.”
Recent polling shows that a majority of Americans — about 60 percent — support focusing on problems at home rather than abroad, a shift from 2019, when Americans were evenly split on that question. (A poll on foreign aid spending, from 2014, also showed that 95 percent of respondents overestimated or didn’t know how much the United States spent on foreign aid. The correct answer: less than 1 percent of the federal budget.)
Mark Levin, a Fox News host and close ally of Mr. Trump, seemed to recognize the echo between the White House and Fox News when he raised the president’s catchphrase on his show.
“What Trump is proposing is not radical, it’s ‘common sense,’ as he puts it,” Mr. Levin said. “When he says ‘common sense,’ for many of us, it means conservative. Because conservative is common sense.”
Ruth Igielnik and Christine Zhang contributed reporting.
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Extended interview: Sen. Tom Cotton on the dangers of China
Extended interview: Sen. Tom Cotton on the dangers of China
Extended interview: Sen. Tom Cotton on the dangers of China – CBS News
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In a wide-ranging interview, Sen. Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil about the military, political and economic threats posed by China, and why he believes Taiwan is “the most dangerous flash point in the world.” The Republican senator from Arkansas has written a new book, “Seven Things You Can’t Say About China.” He talked about why he believes America needs “a clean break between TikTok and ********** China” and how he feels about the social media app still operating in the U.S. despite a new law. Dokoupil also asked about recent drone sightings over U.S. military installations and the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity initiatives.
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We may be able to trap climate pollution in ordinary rocks – The Washington Post
We may be able to trap climate pollution in ordinary rocks – The Washington Post
We may be able to trap climate pollution in ordinary rocks The Washington PostScientists discover promising solution for looming global crisis: ‘The potential is pretty large’ YahooClever chemistry can make rocks absorb CO2 much more quickly New ScientistThermal Ca2+/Mg2+ exchange reactions to synthesize CO2 removal materials Nature.comHow heating rocks could help solve the climate crisis The Independent
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OpenAI Rejects Elon Musk’s $97.4 Billion Bid for Control of the Company
OpenAI Rejects Elon Musk’s $97.4 Billion Bid for Control of the Company
OpenAI’s board of directors on Friday rejected a $97.4 billion bid by Elon Musk and a consortium of investors to gain control of the artificial intelligence company, deepening a feud between Mr. Musk and OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman.
In a statement, Bret Taylor, the chairman of the OpenAI board, said, “OpenAI is not for *****, and the board has unanimously rejected Mr. Musk’s latest attempt to disrupt his competition.” Mr. Taylor was referring to Mr. Musk’s own A.I. company, xAI.
OpenAI sent a letter on Friday to Marc Toberoff, the lawyer representing Mr. Musk and the investors making the bid, saying the offer was “not in the best interests of OAI’s mission,” which is to build artificial intelligence that benefits “all of humanity.”
Mr. Musk and other investors made their offer on Monday for the assets of the nonprofit that controls OpenAI. With the bid, Mr. Musk was meddling in a plan that Mr. Altman has made to change OpenAI’s corporate structure. Mr. Altman hopes to shift control of the company to OpenAI’s investors, including Microsoft.
Mr. Toberoff said in a statement to The New York Times: “This comes as no surprise, given that Altman and board chair Taylor already rejected Musk’s $97 billion bid while stating they had not yet received it. But we are surprised to see the board, which has strict fiduciary duties to carefully consider the bid in good faith on behalf of the charity, use the same kind of deflective double-talk Altman used in testifying to the Senate.”
Mr. Toberoff insisted that OpenAI was indeed putting the nonprofit’s assets up for *****. “They’re just selling it to themselves at a fraction of what Musk has offered, enriching board members,” he said, “rather than the charity in a classic self-dealing transaction.” He added, “Will someone please explain how that benefits ‘all of humanity’?”
Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Musk and Mr. Altman have been at odds for years. Mr. Musk helped create OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, along with Mr. Altman and others. In 2018, Mr. Musk left the organization after a battle for control of the company. Mr. Altman then attached OpenAI to a for-profit company so he could raise the billions of dollars needed to build A.I. technologies.
The nonprofit, though, retained control of the company. Last year, Mr. Altman and his colleagues began working on a plan to shift control of the company from the nonprofit to OpenAI’s investors.
Mr. Musk’s $97.4 billion bid could complicate that plan. To separate OpenAI from the nonprofit board, Mr. Altman and his allies must compensate it. OpenAI might pay the nonprofit a one-time fee, for instance, or give it a ********* stake in the company.
But the nonprofit’s assets have not been given a value, which was what Mr. Musk was trying to establish with his bid. His offer meant that OpenAI’s for-profit arm would have to spend more to gain independence from the nonprofit.
Mr. Musk also filed a lawsuit in federal court last year to block OpenAI’s plans to restructure.
Robert Bonta, California’s attorney general and a Democrat, said this week in an interview that the state was scrutinizing OpenAI’s plan to shift to a for-profit structure.
“There’s a way to do it right. There’s a way to do it wrong, and we’re monitoring to make sure they do it right,” he said, adding that his office was also closely watching Mr. Musk.
We are “monitoring everything he does,” Mr. Bonta said.
As Mr. Musk battles OpenAI, he is also raising money for xAI. The start-up, which makes a chatbot called Grok, is in talks for a new financing round that could value it at as much as $75 billion, up from about $40 billion just two months ago, two people with knowledge of the discussions said.
The talks are in the early stages, they said, and it’s unclear how much money will be raised. Bloomberg earlier reported the talks.
As recently as December, xAI had raised $6 billion, saying it would use the money to build infrastructure and accelerate research and development. BlackRock, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital and others investors participated in the funding.
(The Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.)
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The Woobles Launches Adorable Lord Of The Rings Crochet Kits
The Woobles Launches Adorable Lord Of The Rings Crochet Kits
Popular crochet kit manufacturer The Woobles just launched a new collaboration with The Lord of the Rings. The adorable lineup includes four characters from Tolkien’s classic fantasy novel, and there’s even a Collector’s Box that comes with the full set as well as some bonus merch. The Woobles Lord of the Rings Collector’s Box includes everything needed to crochet Gandalf, Frodo, Gollum, and a Balrog. The Woobles expects to ship preorders around May 15. It’s quite expensive at $195, but it’s worth noting you can buy each character separately or in a bundle without the extras for less.
Here’s a list of all of The Lord of the Rings Woobles products. Every product except for the Collector’s Box is available to ship now. Each of the character bundles includes an accessory that is otherwise sold separately.
Crochet Frodo, Gandalf, Gollum, and a Balrog
Inside the Collector’s Box, you’ll find tons of accessories and tools–but more importantly, you’ll get step-by-step video tutorials to help you through the entire process. Some of these projects are technically billed as “intermediate-level projects,” but with the comprehensive videos and Easy Peasy Yarn (designed to withstand snags and prevent fraying), most folks should be able to work through the bundle without an issue.
As mentioned, you’ll get to crochet four LOTR characters plus all of the tools needed to get started, such as custom hooks and tension rings. Since this is a collector’s edition, you also get some bonus merch, including an adorable drawstring bag to bring your creations with you wherever you go. Here’s what you’ll find inside the box:
1 Gollum Kit + Exclusive Crochet Hook
1 Frodo Kit + Exclusive Crochet Hook
1 Gandalf Kit + Exclusive Crochet Hook
1 Balrog Kit + Exclusive Crochet Hook
1 Tiny Gollum’s Fish Accessory Kit
1 Tiny Sting Accessory Kit
1 Tiny Gandalf Staff Accessory Kit
1 Tiny Balrog Whip Accessory Kit
1 Tension Ring and Pouch
1 Custom Tin
1 Custom Hook
1 Drawstring Bag
The Collector’s Box is marked as a “launch week *****,” so the price may climb or it could be unavailable to order after this week. The “Them All Bundle” is also a launch week deal. Normally $193, you can buy the bundle containing all four characters and accessories for $165.
Alternatively, you could purchase each character kit for $40-$45 each or $45-$50 each when bundled with each character’s accessory.
If you’re looking for more crochet fun, check out the Minecraft Total Block Star Bundle, which lets you stitch together three characters from Mojang’s blocky adventure game. Fans of classic arcade games will want to take a look at the Pac-Man Woobles lineup, which features Pac-Man and five ghosts, including one that glows in the dark. The Woobles also has collaborations with a bunch of other franchises, including Squid Game, Harry Potter, and Hello Kitty.
In other Lord of the Rings news, preorders are available now for The Middle-earth 6-Film Collection. The new 4K Blu-ray box set is set to release on March 18. In the meantime, you could pick up The War of the Rohirrim anime, which released on 4K Blu-ray this week.
The Woobles Lord of the Rings Collector’s Box
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We’re uncovering a radically different view of civilisation’s origins
We’re uncovering a radically different view of civilisation’s origins
Jonathan Chen/CC BY-SA 4.0
If the history of our species to date was represented as a single day, then civilisation would have begun in the final half-hour. At least, that’s assuming ***** sapiens emerged around 300,000 years ago and civilisation began 6000 years ago with the first cities in Mesopotamia. In this tale, civilisation represents a seismic cultural shift that traces its roots back to the start of farming, some 5000 years earlier, and flows inexorably through settlement, population expansion and social stratification to urbanisation.
These days, we tell a different story. For a start, we no longer see Mesopotamia as ground zero for urbanisation: cities were springing up in other places, including India, China, Egypt and central Europe, at around the same time. What’s more, agriculture wasn’t the catalyst for civilisation we once thought. Instead, it appears to have been an invention born of necessity when the traditional hunter-gathering life became untenable – and there are plenty of examples of groups reverting when farming didn’t work out. This means we must redraw the timeline that saw our ancestors shift away from the lifestyle that had worked well for most of human history. It also requires us to question the very definition of civilisation.
An obvious place to start looking for answers is Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey. Archaeologists digging there since 1995 have unearthed a series of circular enclosures containing huge, T-shaped stone pillars. Dating back almost 12,000 years, these are the oldest known megalithic monuments. Building them would have required cooperation between many workers, along with leaders to coordinate and…
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Prominent Cryptocurrency Investor Faces Senate Tax Inquiry
Prominent Cryptocurrency Investor Faces Senate Tax Inquiry
A Senate committee is investigating whether a prominent cryptocurrency investor violated federal tax law to save hundreds of millions of dollars after he moved to Puerto Rico, a popular offshore tax haven, according to a letter reviewed by The New York Times.
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent the letter on Jan. 9 to Dan Morehead, the founder of Pantera Capital, one of the largest crypto investment firms.
The letter said the Senate Finance Committee was investigating tax compliance by wealthy Americans who had moved to Puerto Rico to take advantage of a special tax break for the island’s residents that can reduce tax bills to zero.
The investigation was focused on people who had improperly applied the tax break to avoid paying taxes on income that was earned outside Puerto Rico, according to the letter.
“In most cases, the majority of the gain is actually U.S. source income, reportable on U.S. tax returns, and subject to U.S. tax,” the letter said.
The letter requested detailed information from Mr. Morehead about $850 million in investment profits he made after moving to Puerto Rico in 2020, noting that he “may have treated” the gains as exempt from U.S. taxes.
Mr. Morehead said in a statement that he moved to Puerto Rico in 2021. “I believe I acted appropriately with respect to my taxes,” he said.
Mr. Wyden was chairman of the Finance Committee until Republicans took control of the Senate last month. During his tenure, the committee investigated several strategies that wealthy Americans have used to avoid paying taxes.
It is unclear what may come of the investigation. Under the Biden administration, federal regulators and Democratic lawmakers cracked down on the crypto industry and prominent tech figures. President Trump and Republicans in Congress have embraced crypto, promising less aggressive enforcement.
A spokesman for Mr. Wyden said the investigation was “ongoing” and declined further comment. A spokeswoman for the Finance Committee’s new chair, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, did not respond to a request for comment.
For more than a decade, wealthy Americans, including many tech entrepreneurs, have flocked to Puerto Rico to take advantage of Act 60, a tax break established in 2012 under a different name. Any capital gains income generated in the U.S. territory isn’t subject to local or federal income tax.
In recent years, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and lawmakers have investigated abuses of that system. The I.R.S. has said its criminal division identified about 100 people who may have committed tax evasion.
A former Goldman Sachs trader, Mr. Morehead founded Pantera in the early 2000s and turned it into one of the largest investment firms focused on crypto, backing more than 100 crypto companies over the last 12 years. Those include major U.S. crypto firms such as Circle, Ripple and Coinbase, which operates the largest marketplace for digital currencies in the United States.
After Mr. Morehead moved to Puerto Rico, Pantera sold “a large position” and generated capital gains “in excess of $1 billion,” according to Mr. Wyden’s letter. Mr. Morehead’s share of the gains totaled more than $850 million, the letter said.
The letter asked Mr. Morehead to share information related to those transactions, including the names of his tax advisers. It also asked him to share a list of any assets he sold while a resident of Puerto Rico, including cryptocurrencies.
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Solid dividend stocks to smooth your portfolio’s ride in rocky times
Solid dividend stocks to smooth your portfolio’s ride in rocky times
With 2025 expected to be a volatile one for the markets, investors may want to consider adding dividend stocks to help smooth the ride. The S & P 500 hovered near the flatline Wednesday after touching a fresh high. Still, concerns around inflation and President Donald Trump’s policies have already made for some rocky sessions so far this year. Tech stocks were also rattled in January by worries over China’s DeepSeek artificial-intelligence model . Equities with consistent dividends are often thought of as a ballast during times of volatility, with the income cushioning any price drops. Dividend aristocrats, in particular, can be appealing because they are companies that have raised their payouts for at least the past 25 consecutive years. CNBC Pro looked for names that not only have that history of dividend growth, but also have upside ahead, according to Wall Street analysts. The stocks are members of the ProShares S & P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF (NOBL) , have a buy rating from at least 51% of the analysts covering them and have an upside of 10% or more to the average analyst price target, per FactSet. The names also pay a dividend above the S & P 500’s 1.24%. Here are the stocks that made the cut. Global medical technology firm Becton Dickinson has 21% upside to the average price target — the highest of the group, according to FactSet. Investors also get a 1.8% dividend yield. Earlier this month, Becton Dickinson announced it planned to separate its biosciences and diagnostic solutions business from the rest of the company. The move came shortly after activist investor Starboard Value said it had taken a position in Becton Dickinson and called for the split. Shares are down fractionally so far this year. Energy giant Chevron , on the other hand, is up nearly 9% year to date. Last week, the company said it will cut up to 20% of its workforce as part of its plan to reduce costs by between $2 billion and $3 billion by year end. In January, Chevron reported fourth-quarter earnings that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Meanwhile, its $53 billion merger with Hess is still on hold, with its last hurdle being the resolution of a dispute between the two companies and Exxon Mobil . A hearing before a three-judge arbitration panel is set for May . Chevron pays a 4.3% dividend and has 12.5% upside to the average price target. Investors can also get a juicy dividend with Federal Realty Investment Trust , which yields 4.2%. The real estate investment trust owns, operates and redevelops retail-based properties in coast markets. The stock is down more than 6% so far this year and has about 18% upside to the average price target. Lastly, consumer staples giant Procter & Gamble has 10% upside to the average price target and a 2.4% dividend yield, per FactSet. Earlier this month, D.A. Davidson said the company was among those that are the most immune to Trump’s tariffs. The company, which manufactures products like Tide, Pampers and Crest, reported a fiscal second-quarter earnings and revenue beat in January. The stock is down about 1% year to date.
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Trump calls Zelenskyy a “dictator” after blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion
Trump calls Zelenskyy a “dictator” after blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion
Washington — President Trump attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator without elections,” echoing rhetoric from the Kremlin about the war in Ukraine and escalating a public feud between the two leaders.
In a post on Truth Social Wednesday, Mr. Trump lashed out at Zelenskyy, accusing him of duping the U.S. into providing billions in aid to Ukraine and misusing it.
“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump inflated the amount of assistance the U.S. has sent to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022. The U.S. has provided $66 billion in security assistance. In total, Congress has appropriated $175 billion in economic, humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine.
“He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle,'” Mr. Trump wrote. “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
Zelenskyy was elected president of Ukraine in 2019 with 73% of the vote. The country has delayed elections that were scheduled for early 2024 because of the war with Russia. One recent public opinion poll in Ukraine showed 57% of Ukrainians said they trust Zelenskyy, compared to 37% who said they don’t.
A senior administration official told CBS News that Mr. Trump’s attack on Zelenskyy was a direct response to the Ukrainian president saying that Mr. Trump appeared to be operating in a Russian-created “disinformation space.”
“We are seeing a lot of disinformation and that is coming from Russia,” Zelenskyy said Wednesday. “Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect… is living in this disinformation space.”
Zelenskyy’s comment came a day after Mr. Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, falsely claiming Ukraine was run by “neo-Nazis” who posed a threat to Russia and its neighbors.
U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia earlier this week about ending the war. Ukrainian officials were not included in the meeting.
On Capitol Hill, several Republican senators disagreed with Mr. Trump’s criticism of Zelenskyy. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she would “never refer to President Zelenskyy as a dictator.” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Zelenskyy is not to blame for Russia’s invasion “in any way.”
“To equate anybody or to suggest that anyone in Ukraine has responsibility for this war forgets the fact that Putin lied,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said. “He has lied every step of the way, and I believe any resolution in Ukraine that makes him feel like he won or just pushed to a tie is a bad idea.”
Grace Kazarian,
Alan He,
Laura Garrison,
Fin Gómez and
Eleanor Watson
contributed to this report.
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Caitlin Yilek
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
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SpaceX rocket debris crashes into Poland
SpaceX rocket debris crashes into Poland
Fireball spotted in sky over Pocklington East Yorkshire before the debris crashed into eastern Europe
At about 03:30 GMT on Wednesday, the sky across northern Europe was illuminated by a object zooming through the air in flames.
“I immediately thought of a sci-fi movie where it looked like a troop formation about to attack,” Simon Eriksson, a workman from Malmo, told the Swedish state broadcaster.
The pyrotechnics were in fact caused by a Space X Falcon 9 rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. There are reports of sightings in Denmark, Sweden and England.
Pieces of the rocket then crashed into Poland and, experts say, may also have landed in Ukraine.
At around 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT) this morning Adam Borucki was astonished to find what appeared to be a charred tank measuring around 1.5m by 1m behind his warehouse in Komorniki, Poland.
The debris appears to have damaged a light fixture in the warehouse’s yard.
Mr Borucki contacted the police, who working alongside the Polish space agency Polsa, determined that the unidentified object was debris from a Falcon 9 rocket, manufactured by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.
“We are investigating how the object ended up in this location, but the important thing is that no one was harmed,” police spokesperson Andrzej Borowiak said.
A similar piece of debris was discovered in a forest near the Polish village Wiry, according to Polish police.
Polsa has confirmed that “an uncontrolled re-entry of the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage occurred between 04:46 and 04:48 on February 19, 2025, over Poland”.
Adam Borucki
Adam Borucki discovered a piece of debris originating from a Space X rocket
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is used to transport people and payloads into the Earth’s atmosphere. It is designed to be reusable.
The rocket which created this debris was launched by SpaceX from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 1 February.
“It was supposed to renter the Earth’s atmosphere in a controlled manner and ****** into the Pacific Ocean,” Harvard University astrophysicist Dr Jonathan McDowell told the BBC.
“But the engine failed. We’ve seen it orbiting Earth for the past few weeks and we were anticipating an uncontrolled re-entry today, which is what people saw burning in the sky.
“The debris zipped over England at around 17,000 mph, then parts of Scandinavia then parts crashed into eastern Europe at a few hundred miles an hour.”
Getty Images
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral (file image)
Space debris from rockets and satellites renter the Earth’s atmosphere several times a month. Usually pieces of space debris are entirely burned up by Earth’s atmosphere but larger piece can fall to earth. According to Dr McDowell, an uncontrolled large rocket re-entry is rare and has the potential to be dangerous.
“So far, we’ve been lucky and no-one has been hurt but the more we put into the Earth’s orbit, the more likely it is that our luck will run out,” he said.
“This is the fourth incident recently with a SpaceX Falcon which is causing concern. It looks like glitches like this engine failure are becoming more common.”
So far large pieces of debris have been confirmed in Poland but Dr McDowell suspects that pieces have crashed into western Ukraine where the comet-like streaks of light in the sky “were clearly visible”.
“It’s quite the omen for how our civilisation is changing,” he added.
The BBC has approached Space X for comment.
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The Emperor Shall Have Your Heads, Space Marine 2 Players Using Xenos Armor Accessories Beware
The Emperor Shall Have Your Heads, Space Marine 2 Players Using Xenos Armor Accessories Beware
It’s been a while since the release of Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2, and the game has continued to grow and shift as developer Saber Interactive has brought tons of exciting updates to the game, which have added tons of things to keep players hooked.
Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 is one of the biggest success stories in the gaming sphere. (Image via Focus Entertainment)
One of the best parts about Space Marine 2 is that gamers can customize their armor to serve the Emperor with as much style as possible while still bringing glory to the Imperium. However, if you’re someone who’s using the Xenos accessories, the Emperor won’t forget you.
Drop your Xenos war trophies in Space Marine 2
Space Marine 2 gives gamers visceral, blood-soaked combat, but the chaos doesn’t stop gamers from customizing Space Marines. Beyond being a weapon of war, your marine is supposed to be a reflection of your unique style and personality.
Saber Interactive has given players tons of ways to customize their armor. Right from colors to emblems, there’s everything you need to make your Space Marine your own soldier. However, if you make the mistake of putting on Xenos accessories, it won’t be long before Imperium of Mankind abandons you.
If you’re unaware, the Emperor has a strong hate for all kinds of Xenos-related things in the Warhammer 40k universe. This race symbolizes nothing but impurity and heresy, which goes against the Imperium’s idea of human supremacy. Xenos technology and artifacts are corrupting influences and shouldn’t be anywhere on a Space Marine.
Comment byu/Evoxrus_XV from discussion inSpacemarine
Comment byu/Evoxrus_XV from discussion inSpacemarine
Comment byu/Evoxrus_XV from discussion inSpacemarine
Comment byu/Evoxrus_XV from discussion inSpacemarine
Comment byu/Evoxrus_XV from discussion inSpacemarine
Xenos accessories aren’t trophies of war like many might think. If you’re still committed to the Imperium of Mankind, take these disgraceful accessories off immediately.
Saber Interactive continues to elevate Space Marine 2
Space Marine 2 has a brand-new update. (Image via Focus Entertainment)
If you thought Saber Interactive was done updating Space Marine 2, then you’re wrong! The developer has recently dropped a brand-new update that shakes up the title in a number of ways.
The Battle Barge has received a brand-new expansion. Called the Datavault, gamers can now finish Ordeals in Operations, Campaign, and Eternal War modes to get their hands on a number of rewards. These include things such as armor parts, weapon skins, and much more.
We also have a Tech-Priest workshop in Amory. Players can now sell all of their armor data to obtain higher-tier weapons or simply sell it. The game also brings a new Extremis-tier enemy type called the Biovore, which is now available in all operations. Biovores can deploy spore mines that go off if stepped on.
The brand-new update also enhances the battle pass for Space Marine 2 and cosmetic additions, including a Salamander champion pack for the Sniper Class and a Raven Guard armor set. For online players, there’s also a new PvP map called “Tomb” alongside “Absolute” difficulty for PvE.
With that said, have you dared to use Xenos armor accessories in Space Marine 2? Let us know in the comments below.
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Interview: "Halo: Empty Throne" Author Jeremy Patenaude
Interview: "Halo: Empty Throne" Author Jeremy Patenaude
In this exclusive interview, the former lead writer for 343 Industries talks about this video game-inspired sci-fi space opera novel.
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Clever chemistry can make rocks absorb CO2 much more quickly
Clever chemistry can make rocks absorb CO2 much more quickly
Olivine rock naturally reacts with carbon dioxide, but it is a slow business
Renhour48 via Wikimedia/CC0 1.0 Universal
A new process could enable crushed rocks to capture carbon dioxide from the air much more quickly, turbocharging a carbon removal technique that is already being widely adopted.
Natural silicate minerals such as basalt react with water and CO2 to form solid carbonate materials, a process known as enhanced rock weathering (ERW). Studies suggest spreading crushed silicate rocks on agricultural land can increase the amount of carbon that soils can absorb, while also improving crop yields for farmers.
But Matthew Kanan at Stanford University in California believes the carbon benefits of ERW have been overblown, because natural silicates don’t weather quickly enough to extract meaningful amounts of carbon from the air. “The data is very clear: they do not weather at useful rates,” he says.
Converting silicates into more reactive minerals would increase the weathering rate, making ERW a viable climate solution, he says. Kanan and his colleague Yuxuan Chen, also at Stanford University, have developed a way to produce magnesium oxide and calcium silicate using a process inspired by cement production.
“You can take a calcium source and a magnesium silicate, heat them up, and you end up making a calcium silicate and a magnesium oxide,” says Kanan. “The core reaction is what we call an ion exchange, where we are swapping magnesium for calcium.”
“The reason that’s powerful is because now that calcium silicate is reactive and so is the magnesium oxide,” he says. “I put in one reactive thing and I get two out.” The materials weather thousands of times faster than standard silicates, says Kanan.
The kilns used in the process need to be heated to 1400°C for the reaction, with the energy likely to be provided by natural gas. This means the method would produce significant carbon emissions, but Kanan suggests these could either be captured at source or offset by reserving some of the reactive minerals to capture on-site emissions.
Once the emissions involved in producing the materials are accounted for, 1 tonne of reactive material removes about 1 tonne of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The researchers can currently make 15 kilograms a day of reactive rocks, but hope to turn the idea into a commercial venture by selling the materials to farmers to use on agricultural land.
Rachael James at the University of Southampton, ***, contests Kanan’s claim that conventional ERW doesn’t work, pointing out that there are many documented examples of successful enhanced weathering trials. But she welcomes any attempt to accelerate the weathering rate of silicates.
“Anything we can do to speed up weathering rates would be hugely beneficial, because the climate crisis needs action now,” she says. “Weathering is an inherently slow process and, frankly, I’d rather see meaningful carbon dioxide removal on timescales of 10 years than 50 years.”
However, she warns that the team is likely to face issues with scaling up production and deployment. Using the minerals in an agricultural system may not guarantee all the captured carbon is locked away permanently, she says.
Phil Renforth at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, ***, says the proposal is a clever idea, but much more research is needed to understand how it should be deployed. “They essentially produce cement minerals, which may not be ideal candidate minerals for the addition to agricultural soils,” he says.
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The Cryptocurrency Scam That Turned a Small Town Against Itself
The Cryptocurrency Scam That Turned a Small Town Against Itself
In the Wichita courtroom, Hanes offered his only public reflection on the bank collapse. Wearing a gray suit, he walked up to the lectern, glancing nervously at his former friends in the gallery. “I’m sorry,” he told the judge. Until the very end, he explained, he thought he was involved in a legitimate business deal. In January 2024, he told the court, he made a futile attempt to recoup the lost money, flying to Perth, Australia, where some of his nonexistent business partners had supposedly been based. He was in touch with them until the moment he landed at the airport. But no bailout materialized. It was only then, months after the bank shuttered, that he accepted he had been tricked. “I’ll forever struggle understanding how I was duped,” Hanes said. “I should have caught it, but I didn’t.”
After Hanes finished speaking, Judge Broomes rocked backward in his chair and turned to face the shareholders. “The best thing for you is to forgive this man,” he said. “Leave matters of retribution to me. That’s my job, and I’ll see that it’s done.” He sentenced Hanes to 24 years and 5 months in prison, a punishment even greater than federal prosecutors had requested. A chorus of yeses echoed from the shareholders.
Hanes’s shoulders slumped. As two U.S. marshals approached him, he undid his tie, slipped off his suit jacket and emptied his pockets. Behind him, the shareholders went quiet. Hanes’ sister and one of his daughters clung to each other, their sobs breaking the silence. Hanes looked at them once, quickly, before the marshals handcuffed him and led him out of the room.
One day last October, Tucker got a call from an investigator at the F.B.I. It was good news: Federal officials had recovered $8 million of the stolen funds, which had been hidden in an account full of Tether, a popular cryptocurrency. The stash was a small fraction of what Hanes stole, but it would be enough to reimburse the shareholders for nearly all the money they had invested in the bank.
The jubilation Tucker might have expected to feel was tempered by sadness. His father had been in and out of the hospital, and a doctor warned that he had only days left to live. That night, Tucker went to his father’s hospital room and shared what he had heard. Bill Tucker blinked a few times and then said, “Oh, my.” He died a week later.
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Apple will need to raise iPhone prices by 9% to offset Trump’s tariffs, Bank of America says
Apple will need to raise iPhone prices by 9% to offset Trump’s tariffs, Bank of America says
Apple will need to hike prices by around 9% to mitigate the impact of tariffs put into place by President Donald Trump, according to Bank of America. The firm projected that the tech giant will have to increase prices on iPhones, iPads and other products by that amount, with the assumption that all of the products will be subject to at least a 10% tariff. Analyst Wamsi Mohan warned that the company’s earnings could take a hit no matter how it responds. Wamsi’s analysis comes as Wall Street and Main Street alike scramble to predict the ramifications of Trump’s sweeping plans for levies on imports. Those concerns were ratcheted up after the president last week signed a memorandum imposing “reciprocal tariffs” on foreign nations. Apple has been under the microscope amid the ongoing tariff discussions. Shares fell earlier this month after Trump announced 10% tariffs on China, the country where Apple assembles most products. Bank of America’s Mohan reviewed scenarios where Apple either keeps pricing the same in the U.S. or raises them as a result of tariffs boosting costs. If Apple doesn’t lift prices, he said there would be a loss of 26 cents in earnings per share, or 3.1%, in calendar year 2026. Meanwhile, an increase of about 3% to prices would result in a per-share earnings drop of 21 cents, which equates to a 2.4% slide, over the same *******. This is because the analyst assumes higher prices would reduce the number of devices Apple sells by 5%. However, if the higher price tag doesn’t reduce sales, the tariff hit could be even smaller, Mohan said. With this in mind, Mohan said a 9% price hike would be needed to offset the burden of the tariff, combined with the potential hit to sales volume. Trump’s plan for reciprocal tariffs nixed a potential workaround for Apple to avoid some of the levies slapped on China, according to Mohan. While most iPhone models can now be manufactured in India, the reciprocal tax is expected to be higher than the 10% fee faced by China, he said. About 15% of iPhones are currently produced in India after years of shifting manufacturing to the country, the analyst said. Despite these calculations, Mohan reiterated his buy rating on Apple, saying the tariffs seem “manageable.” His $265 price target implies 8.4% upside over Tuesday’s close. Shares rose slightly in Wednesday’s session, bringing its year-to-date loss to 2.3%. Apple on Wednesday announced a cheaper iPhone 16e model that is powerful enough to run artificial intelligence. AAPL YTD mountain Apple, year to date
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The Humane AI Pin debacle is a reminder that AI alone doesn’t make a compelling product
The Humane AI Pin debacle is a reminder that AI alone doesn’t make a compelling product
The demise of Humane is perhaps the most predictable tech story of 2025. The company tried to build some buzz around its AI Pin in late 2023, marketing the device as a tiny replacement for smartphones and playing up the fact that Humane’s co-founders were former Apple employees. The problem was that it wasn’t really clear what the AI Pin would do to justify its $700 asking price (plus a $24/month subscription).
It didn’t take long for things to spiral out of control. The AI Pin was released in April of 2024 to some of the worst reviews I’ve ever seen for a consumer tech product. Just a month after launch, reports surfaced that the company was already trying to be acquired — for the positively ludicrous sum of $750 million to $1 billion dollars. At the same time, it was rumored that Humane sold only 10,000 Pins, a far cry from the 100,000 they had planned for. HP was named as a potential suitor last May, and the company smartly waited until they could pluck Humane for a comparatively paltry $116 million.
As it turned out, waving your hands and shouting about the promise of AI doesn’t make it any easier to build compelling hardware — we slammed its high price, terrible battery life, slow performance, excessive heat and hard-to-use projected display. (And Engadget was far from the only publication to eviscerate this device.)
Hayato Huseman for Engadget
For a device whose main interface was conversational, the challenges the AI Pin had answering questions or executing commands made it a non-starter. Even when it did what was asked, it did it in some strange ways, like sending generic texts instead of letting you dictate what exactly you wanted to say. Its camera rarely worked as intended; after taking photos and viewing them on the projector, the Pin would get extremely warm and sometimes just shut down entirely. Speaking of that projection screen, it was nearly impossible to actually see it outdoors, even on a cloudy day. And interacting with it made our reviewer Cherlynn Low want to “rip [her] eyes out.”
Oh, let’s not forget that its extended battery case was recalled because it was a full-on fire hazard!
The whole debacle is an illustrative example of how most consumer-grade AI isn’t ready for prime time. Google and Apple may be trying to shove Gemini and Apple Intelligence down our throats on nearly every product they make, but those tools are additive, built on top of the strong foundations of each company’s existing platforms. In Humane’s case, there was nothing to fall back on. And the combo of terrible voice responses and recognition paired with a projector display that was not at all ready for prime time (not to mention the other hardware failings) was far too much to overcome.
There was simply no intelligence to be found here, artificial or otherwise.
To be fair to Humane, building hardware is notoriously difficult; first-generation products often have glaring flaws, even when you’re talking about massive companies like Apple. The first iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch may have shown huge promise, but they also had strange omissions and performance issues that made them hard to recommend to everyone.
Some companies manage to figure that out; Pebble is a great example of a hardware startup that survived some early issues to find some success. It beat Apple, Samsung and Google to the smartwatch market, and did it in a way that has yet to be imitated (maybe that’s why the company is being resurrected). The Pebble wasn’t exactly the most elegant piece of hardware, but both the watch and its software worked well enough that it paved the way for the more advanced smartwatches we have today. Of course, that wasn’t enough to keep Pebble alive, as the company eventually filed for insolvency and had its assets picked up by Fitbit (which was later purchased by Google, if you’re keeping track).
Humane’s situation at launch wasn’t entirely different — it was trying to build a new type of hardware altogether, and history tells us that the first products in a new space are going to be far from perfect. But, if there had at least been a glimmer of useful software, Humane might have survived to improve on those hardware problems with a future version. But its assistant was so bad that it killed any potential that the AI Pin had. There was simply no intelligence to be found here, artificial or otherwise.
My takeaway from the Humane disaster is that it’s too soon to spend your hard-earned money on the promise of AI — the marketplace isn’t solidified at this point, and trusting a brand-new company like Humane to get this sort of thing right is several bridges too far. (If you’re not convinced, look at the similarly flawed Rabbit R1.) Apple Intelligence is still half-baked at best, but at least you can turn it off and ignore it. But the AI Pin, well, relied completely on AI, and it wasn’t just “not ready” — it was one of the worst devices we’ve ever tried in our nearly 21 years as a publication. For some thousands of early adopters, that means their Pin will be a brick in just a few days, with no financial compensation coming their way. But hey, at least it will still be able to tell you its battery level.
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Pelican News
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The world’s glaciers have shrunk more than 5 per cent since 2000
The world’s glaciers have shrunk more than 5 per cent since 2000
The Rhône glacier in the Swiss Alps in 2024
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
Glaciers worldwide have shrunk by more than 5 per cent on average since 2000, according to the most comprehensive assessment yet. This rapid rate of melting has accelerated by more than a third in the past decade as climate change continues apace.
“Any degree of warming matters for glaciers,” says Noel Gourmelen at the University of Edinburgh, ***. “They are a barometer for climate change.”
The new numbers come from a global consortium of hundreds of researchers called the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise. The group aimed to reduce the uncertainty around how much the planet’s 200,000 or so glaciers have melted by using a standard procedure to assess different measures of their change in size. This includes gravity and elevation measurements from 20 satellites as well as ground-based measurements.
Between 2000 and 2011, glaciers were melting at a rate of about 231 billion tonnes of ice per year on average, the researchers found. This melt rate increased between 2012 and 2023 to 314 billion tonnes per year, an acceleration of more than a third. 2023 saw a record loss of mass of around 548 billion tonnes.
These numbers are in line with previous estimates. But this comprehensive look “provides a bit more confidence about the change that we see on glaciers”, says Gourmelen, who is part of the consortium. “And there’s a clear acceleration.”
Altogether, the thawing of around 7 trillion tonnes of glacial ice since 2000 has raised sea levels by almost 2 centimetres, making this melt the second biggest contributor to sea level rise so far, behind the expansion of water due to warming oceans.
“This is a consistent story of glacial change,” says Tyler Sutterley at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Regions that have had glaciers since time immemorial are losing these icons of ice.”
Glaciers in the Alps have lost more ice than any other region, shrinking by nearly 40 per cent since 2000. In the Middle East, New Zealand and western North America, glaciers have also seen reductions of more than 20 per cent. Depending on future emissions, the world’s glaciers are projected to lose between a quarter and half of their ice by the end of the century.
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Apple Unveils Lower-Priced iPhone 16e With A.I. Features
Apple Unveils Lower-Priced iPhone 16e With A.I. Features
Less than a year after introducing its artificial intelligence capabilities, Apple is bringing the feature to its most affordable iPhone.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled an iPhone that will cost $599 and feature an A.I. system it calls Apple Intelligence. The device brings A.I. features like notification summaries and writing recommendations in English to the company’s lowest-priced iPhone model as it prepares to expand those features to other languages in the coming months, including ********, Portuguese and localized English for India.
The new phone, which Apple is calling the iPhone 16e, does not feature a home button or Touch ID, which have been phased out. Instead, the phone is unlocked with a facial recognition system, Face ID, which has been available on most iPhones since 2017.
The iPhone 16e is the first update to the company’s lowest-priced smartphone line since 2022, replacing the company’s iPhone SE. The cheaper phones have helped Apple get its signature product into the pockets of price-sensitive customers, who often trade up for more expensive models the next time they buy a phone.
Apple is introducing the new iPhone at a critical juncture. The company’s iPhone business has been in a slump, with sales down 2 percent from their peak of $205.5 billion in 2022. Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, has chalked up some of the iPhone’s struggles to the limited availability of Apple Intelligence, which was announced months before it became available and is offered only on the company’s newest models in English-speaking markets like the United States. In a call with analysts last month, Mr. Cook said the new A.I. features drove iPhone sales in markets where it was available.
But surveys have found that A.I. hasn’t been a major reason that people are buying new phones, said Jeff Fieldhack, research director at Counterpoint Research, a market research firm. “People are buying phones for the same reasons they always have: The battery isn’t recharging or the phone is aging and not working,” he said.
Apple’s business also stands to benefit from raising the price of its introductory model. The iPhone 16e is 40 percent more expensive than the last iPhone SE, which cost $429. The increase means that Apple stands to collect $170 more on each of the lowest-priced iPhones it sells. That will lift total sales at a time when the number of phones it sells has been relatively stable, at about 230 million phones a year.
The higher price comes after President Trump imposed a 10 percent tariff on all imports from China. Apple makes a majority of its iPhones in China, but its decision to increase prices on its lowest-priced iPhone is probably unrelated, said Richard Kramer, partner at Arete Research, a stock research firm.
“These decisions are made months before action is taken,” Mr. Kramer said. “This is the start of Apple lifting prices across the range at a time when volume growth is pretty moribund.”
Extending the availability of Apple Intelligence is critical to the company’s efforts to fend off rivals and expand sales overseas. In China, Apple’s second-most-important market, the company’s share of smartphone sales fell 2.4 percentage points last year to 15.5 percent, as rivals like Huawei gained ground, according to Counterpoint Research.
In India, one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets, the iPhone 15 was the best-selling smartphone in the final three months of last year, Counterpoint said. The device’s popularity helped Apple increase its market share in India by two percentage points to 11 percent.
With the iPhone 16e, Apple is introducing its first custom-designed modem chip, the C1. The chip provides 5G connectivity and replaces the modem chips provided by Qualcomm. Apple has been developing the chip since 2019, when it settled a lawsuit against Qualcomm over the chipmaker’s licensing fees and bought Intel’s modem business.
Ben Bajarin, chief executive of Creative Strategies, a tech research firm, said the new modem chip wouldn’t have all the features of Qualcomm’s modems, but would allow Apple to test the component before incorporating it into future iPhone releases. Eventually, he said, Apple’s custom modem will improve the battery performance of iPhones and bring wireless connectivity to other Apple products.
“Is it going to come to an iPad? Is it going to come to a Mac? How far can they take this?” Mr. Bajarin said.
Apple introduced the iPhone 16e with less fanfare than usual. The company posted a 13-minute film on its website with Mr. Cook describing the new phone. When it introduced the iPhone SE in 2022, it held a one-hour event at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
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