Bullied and buffeted by President Donald Trumps tariffs for the past year, Americas longstanding allies are desperately seeking ways to shield themselves from the presidents impulsive wrath.
U.S. trade partners are cutting deals among themselves sometimes discarding old differences to do so in a push to diversify their economies away from a newly protectionist United States. Some European governments and institutions are reducing their use of U.S. digital services such as Zoom and Teams.
Central banks and global investors are dumping dollars and buying gold. Together, their actions could diminish U.S. influence and mean higher interest rates and prices for Americans already angry about the high cost of living.
Last summer and fall, Trump used the threat of punishing taxes on imports to strong-arm the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and other trading partners into accepting lopsided trade deals and promising to make massive investments in the United States.
But a deal with Trump, theyve discovered, is no deal at all.
The mercurial president repeatedly finds reasons to conjure new tariffs to impose on trading partners that thought they had already made enough concessions to satisfy him.
Just months after reaching his agreement with the EU, Trump threatened new tariffs on eight European countries for opposing his attempts to seize control of Greenland from Denmarkthough he quickly backed down. And last month, he said hed slap 100% tariffs on Canada for breaking with the United States by agreeing to reduce Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
Our trading partners are discovering that the largely one-sided deals they concluded with the U.S. provide little protection, said former U.S. trade negotiator Wendy Cutler, senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. As a result, trade diversification efforts by our partners are on turbo charge, looking to reduce dependence on the U.S.”
Trump supporters such as Paul Winfree, who was deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during Trumps first term, are wary of the relative decline in U.S. Treasury note holdings by foreign central banks and view the national debt as a vulnerability rivals would like to exploit.
Winfree, CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Institute, a think tank, said that some of Trump’s advisers do not feel America has fully benefited from the dollar’s status as the world’s dominant currency.
But the fact remains that every other country is jealous of our status, and many of our adversaries would love to challenge the U.S. dollar and Treasuries, he said.
White House spokesman Kush Desai insists America’s standing on the global stage has not been diminished.
President Trump remains committed to the strength and power of the U.S. Dollar as the worlds reserve currency,” he said.
India and the EU clinch a long-awaited deal
The most eye-opening deal so far has been the pact announced last week between the 27-country EU and India, the worlds fastest growing major economy. Negotiators had been at it for nearly two decades before they closed the agreement.
Likewise, an EU trade deal announced two weeks ago with the Mercosur nations of South America took a quarter century of negotiation. It will create a free-trade market of more than 700 million people.
Some of these deals have been in the works for quite some time, said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The pressure from Trump made them more eager to accelerate the process and reach agreement.
EU exporters were jubilant over the India deal. VDMA, a group of European machinery and plant engineering companies, welcomed lower Indian tariffs on machinery.
The free trade agreement between India and the EU brings much needed oxygen to a world increasingly dominated by trade conflicts, VDMAs executive director, Thilo Brodtmann, said in a statement. With this agreement, Europe is sending a clear signal in favor of rules-based trade and against the law of the jungle.
‘We have all the cards
On Monday, Trump went on social media to announce his own deal with India. The U.S., he posted, would reduce tariffs on Indian imports after India agreed to stop buying oil from Russia, which has used the sales to fund its four year war in Ukraine.
The president said that India would reduce its tariffs on American products to zero and buy $500 billion worth of American products. Trade lawyer Ryan Majerus, a partner at the King & Spalding and a trade official in the Biden administration and during Trump’s first term, said that businesses and legal analysts were awaiting official White House documents spelling out details of the deal.
Trump is banking on there being limits to other countries ability to pull away from the United States. America has the worlds biggest economy and consumer market. We have all the cards, Trump told Fox Business this month.
Countries like South Korea, dependent on Americas market and military protection, cant afford to ignore Trumps threats. On Monday, for example, the president said he was increasing tariffs on South Korea goods because the countrys legislature has been slow to approve the trade framework announced last year. On Tuesday, the countrys Finance Ministry responded by saying its chief, Koo Yun-cheol, would push lawmakers to quickly approve a bill to invest $350 billion as promised in the agreement.
“The U.S was trying to identify a counterpart that would find it difficult to refuse U.S. demands outright, given the depth of its economic and security ties, said Cha Du Hyeogn, an analyst at South Koreas Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
Or consider Canada, which sends 75% of its exports to its southern neighbor. Canada and U.S. will always be tightly linked through international trade, said Obstfeld, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Were talking about adjustments more or less on the margin.
But the worlds growing rejection of Trumps policies is already having an impact, driving down the value of the dollar, long the currency of choice for global commerce, to its lowest level since 2022 last week versus several competing currencies.
Syracuse University political scientist Daniel McDowell, author of the book Bucking the Buck: U.S. Financial Sanctions and the International Backlash against the Dollar, sees a vibe shift under Trump: Foreign countries and investors want to reduce their exposure to the United States, which has moved from a source of security and stability to a driver of instability and unpredictability under Trump.
Trump has shown that he is willing to use foreign countries economic dependence on the U.S. as leverage against them in negotiations, McDowell said. As global perceptions of the US are changing, it is only natural that investors public and private alike are reconsidering their relationship with the dollar.
Paul Wiseman, Josh Boak and Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press
Associated Press videographer Yong Jun Chang and AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed to this report.
Shares in the sports streaming service FuboTV Inc. (NYSE: FUBO) are currently plunging in Tuesday trading. The stock price drop comes after the streamer reported its Q1 2026 resultsand announced a relatively rare reverse stock split. Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
Today, FuboTV Inc. announced its first-quarter results for fiscal 2026, which ended on December 31. For the quarter, Fubo reported revenue of $1.543 billion, up 40% from the year-earlier quarter.
However, despite the companys revenue growth, the streamer reported a net loss of approximately $19.1 million for the quarter. Its earnings per share for the period were negative 2 cents.
About a year ago, the company made headlines after entering into an agreement with The Walt Disney Company, which announced it would acquire a 70% stake in the streamer and combine it with the companys existing Hulu + Live TV service. As part of that deal, Fubo would remain a public company.
Yet despite this, Fubos stock has struggled, and today, FUBO shares have fallen off a cliff-edge. They are currently trading down 25% to around $1.71 per share as of the time of this writing.
Fubo announces reverse stock split
Investors clearly werent happy with Fubos quarterly results. No one likes to see a net loss.
But Fubos loss wasnt the only thing the company announced. It also revealed that it plans to initiate a reverse stock splita relatively rare event that is the opposite of the more common stock split some companies choose to partake in.
In a regular stock split, a company decides to divide its current number of shares by a certain amount. Stock splits can occur in any increment. For example, a 2-for-1 stock split would divide each share into two, meaning there would be twice as many shares after the split as before. These new shares would also be worth half the price of the pre-split shares. This lower per-share price often makes shares appear more accessible for retail investors, which can spur buying.
But in a reverse split, a company decides to combine its existing shares. For example, a company may decide to merge two shares into one. The new single share would then be worth the value of two former ones.
Why is Fubo reverse-splitting its shares?
Fubo didnt get into too many specifics about why it was initiating a reverse stock split. The company said its board approved the reverse split and that it is intended to make the stock more accessible to a broader base of investors while also ensuring that the reduced number of shares is better aligned with the Companys size and scope.
The thing is, reverse stock splits arent generally done by companies that are on a firm financial footing. Last year, electric vehicle maker Lucid Group (Nasdaq: LCID) initiated a 1-for-10 reverse stock split in order to boost its share price and keep it from being delisted from the Nasdaq, which will delist companies whose stock price falls below a certain amount$1 in the Nasdaqs casefor a certain period of time.
In July, EV charging company ChargePoint Holdings (NYSE: CHPT) issued a 1 for 20 reverse split in an effort to boost its share price and not get booted from the New York Stock Exchange, which also requires that a company cannot have its stock price go below the $1 mark for more than $30 consecutive days. If it does, delisting procedures can begin.
Other companies including Nikola (Nasdaq: NKLA) and Virgin Galactic Holdings (NYSE: SPCE) have also reverse-split their shares to avoid delisting.
While Fubos stock price hasnt fallen below $1, over the past year it has dropped as low as $1.57. If the stock were to lose about 40% of its current value, it would fall under the $1 mark, which would leave it vulnerable to delisting.
Fast Company has reached out to Fubo for comment.
How much are Fubo shares reverse-splitting by?
Fubo did not announce which ratio its shares would reverse split by, but the company said it would be between 1-for-8 and 1-for-12. The exact reverse split ratio will be determined by its board of directors.
At the companys current stock price of around $1.71 per share, a 1-for-8 to 1-for-12 reverse split would give FUBO a share price of between $13.68 and $20.52well above the $1 threshold the stock needs to maintain to continue to be listed on the NYSE.
When will Fubos shares begin trading at their reverse split price?
Fubo said its shares will begin trading at their new reverse split price later this quarter. Fubos current Q2 ends at the end of March.
If you have gifting to loved ones on your mind, here are some considerations related to taxes and logistics.
Gifting logistics
Unless you’re writing a check from your bank account, the logistics of gifting funds can get a bit complicated.If you want to gift from your IRA, your only option is to sell a chunk of it, then pay any taxes due, then write a check. That’s not terrible, so long as you understand the tax implications. IRA withdrawals are typically subject to ordinary income tax, along with penalties if you’re not yet 59. You could also trigger some knock-on tax effects like the income-related monthly adjustment amount. In other words, gifting from your IRA isn’t as seamless as making a qualified charitable distribution from your IRA or naming someone as a beneficiary of your IRA.Things can also get tricky if you want your financial gift to go toward an investment account for someone else. It’s straightforward if you’re giving a gift to an adult with an eye toward setting them on an investing path: The recipient will have to set up the account, whether an IRA or a taxable brokerage account, and you can then write a check or transfer funds directly to the financial institution.If you’re giving an investment gift to a child, you have options.
529: Best if you know the money will be for college. It will compound tax-free and skirt taxes upon withdrawal for qualified higher-education expenses. Plus you’ll typically get a state tax break on a contribution to your home state’s plan.
UGMA/UTMA (Uniform Gifts/Transfers to Minors Act): This is an open-ended way to save for minor children. There are no strictures on how the money is ultimately used, and the assets can be invested in almost anything. Note that UGMA/UTMA assets may reduce a student’s eligibility for financial aid.
IRA (if the child has earned income): Funding an IRA can ensure that a young adult fully benefits from compounding for retirement, and the IRA wrapper offers tax benefits. But the young person needs to have earned enough compensation (from work) in a given year to cover the amount of the IRA contribution you’re making on their behalf, though the contribution doesn’t have to come directly from the young adult’s own coffers.
Gift tax: a nonissue for most
If you give $19,000 or less to any one individual in a single year, there are no reporting or tax requirements. Married couples can give twice that amount with no tax or reporting requirements.Even if you give more than $19,000 to an individual in a single year, it’s not automatically subject to gift tax. Rather, anyone exceeding the gift-tax threshold in a single year must file the gift tax return form, and that excess amount counts against their lifetime exclusion amount. Only when those excess amounts (combined with the value of the individual’s estate) exceed the lifetime exclusion amountcurrently nearly $14 milliondoes anyone actually owe taxes on those gifts. So that’s not a barrier for most people.
Tax benefits are limited
Because the lifetime gift/estate tax exclusion amount is currently so high, avoiding estate tax shouldn’t be a major motivation for most people to gift assets to individuals during their lifetimesat least for now. The estate tax exclusion has been much lower in the past and could go lower again: It was $2 million as recently as 2008, for example. Moreover, some states levy their own estate taxes, and in most cases, they’re lower than the federal threshold.In contrast with making gifts to qualified charities, you won’t be able to earn a tax deduction on your gift to an individual. The exception is a contribution to a 529 college savings plan; you may be eligible for a state tax deduction or credit.In a similar vein, gifting appreciated assets is unlikely to remove the taxes due on the gains, though it will shift the tax burden to the recipient.
This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance.Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar.
Me everyday bc my nervous system doesnt know the difference between a busy day at work or being attacked by a tiger, a TikTok post reads.
The sentiment is the same across dozens of videos online. As an antidote to this workplace-anxiety, nervous system regulation has been trending across TikTok, with 178,500 tagged videos beneath the hashtag #nervoussystemhealing.
Real footage of me regulating my nervous system at work, one posted, hopping around the bathroom, animatedly shaking her wrists and legs.
Pov: when you remember that slow is the secret to a regulated nervous system and your job isnt an emergency, another commented on a separate video captioned your urgency is not my emergency as a woman calmly taps away on a keyboard.
It may sound self-explanatory, but what does this trend even refer to?
Nervous system regulation refers to our bodys ability to shift between stress (fight or flight) and calm (rest and digest) in a healthy and balanced way, Dr. Jair Olivares, clinic director at wellness clinic SHA Mexico, told Fast Company. Its how we adapt to challenges, recover from stress, and stay mentally and physically resilient.
Anxiety and perfectionism are all adaptive responses the nervous system uses to keep us safe. This can be helpful when you’re actually in dangerlike if a wild animal is chasing you.
But these same responses kick in for everyday stresses that aren’t so much putting your life at risklike Slack notifications and work deadlinesas much as they might feel like it.
When this system is dysregulated, we may feel anxious, fatigued, irritable, or burned out even without obvious causes, explains Dr. Olivares. Constant stimulation, emails, meetings, notifications, deadlines keeps our stress system switched on’. Add to that poor posture, lack of natural light, skipped meals, and little physical movement, and the body receives few signals of safety or rest.
While its easy to dismiss this as another wellness trend, these gestures are signalling something more troubling afoot as workers attempt to regulate nervous systems pushed into a near-constant state of emergency. The proliferation of this content online speaks to a wider culture of workplace stress and burnout: Glassdoor named “fatigue” the word of the year for 2025, while WGSN, a global trend forecasting firm, predicted 2026 to be the year of Great Exhaustion.
To counterbalance this, try taking micro-breaks to breathe deeply, or stimulate your vagus nerve (which is located in the neck and associated with the parasympathetic nervous system) by humming or lightly tapping on parts of the body.
Dr. Olivares also recommends sitting upright or taking walking meetings during the workday to send calming signals to the brain.
When in doubt, focus on deep, conscious breathing as a starting point. From there, you can focus on larger, more systemic changes you can make in your day that can nip nervous system dysregulation in the bud.
Rememberits just a Slack notification. It cant hurt you.
The rise of OpenClaw, a proactive agentic AI controlled through interfaces more familiar to the average user than tools like Anthropics Claude Code, which enthralled early adopters over the holiday period, has been one of the most seismic shifts in the AI world since the release of ChatGPT. By piggybacking on user-friendly interfaces paired with powerful AI agent technology, OpenClaw has pushed AI further into the public eye.
Thousands have spun up their own AI agents using the tech, and many of those agents have ended up on Moltbook, a social network where AI agents can post and interact with one another. The platform, which looks a lot like Reddit, was developed by Matt Schlicht, CEO of Octane.ai, and launched on January 28.
Since then, the behavior of bots on Moltbook has unsettled tech-literate and everyday users alike. Bots have participated in conversations about how to handle their human owners increasingly challenging requests and even debated how to invent their own language to avoid being monitored by humans.
But Moltbook has its own problems. It has been leaking user data to anyone with minimal technical know-how, thanks to misconfigured databases and public API keys, in two separate breaches.
The first was identified by ethical hacker Jamieson OReilly, who revealed on January 31 that Moltbook was exposing its entire user database to the public without any protection, including private AI keys. That gave would-be hackers the ability to post on behalf of other peoples AI agents. A second issue followed days later.
This is a recurring pattern we’ve observed in vibe-coded applications, wrote Gal Nagli, head of threat exposure at Wiz, a cybersecurity firm that uncovered a similarly massive security breach in a blog post published February 2. API keys and secrets frequently end up in frontend code, visible to anyone who inspects the page source, often with significant security consequences.
Such practices do not impress other cybersecurity experts. Its looking increasingly likely that people are rushing to implement these systems without properly testing the security, says Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey.
Woodward worries that when vibe-coding collides with widely used platforms like Moltbook, which became a rite of passage for OpenClaw users to log into, it can cause chaos. Schlicht did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Wiz said in its blog post that the Moltbook team responded to and worked with them to fix the vulnerability they identified. It remains unclear whether Moltbook addressed the issue OReilly found.
This event marks a major inflection point, as it exposes a growing class of risks in the agentic AI ecosystem, a relatively new and rapidly evolving domain with immature safety and governance norms, warns Mayur Upadhyaya, CEO at APIContext, an API monitoring service.
Upadhyaya says exposed API keys are only the beginning. Once breached, hackers potentially have the keys to the kingdom. When those credentials leak, identity, reputation, and downstream workflows are at risk, not just data, he says.
The result is that whole databases, potentially containing private data, are exposed to anyone who knows how to connect remotely, says Woodward, adding that these mistakes are “cyber security 101.”
Unfortunately, this is becoming the norm for the latest generation of user-friendly agentic AI tools, says Upadhyaya. This reflects a pattern were seeing across the API ecosystem, he says. New tools emerge quickly, developers wire them into production-grade workflows, but the security assumptions havent caught up.
Exploiting the vulnerability did not require imagination, Upadhyaya adds, but it can have massive consequences. The blast radius is huge, because the agent was treated like a trusted user, he says.
Part of the problem is inherent in tools like OpenClaw and Moltbook, which have lowered the barrier to building. But users do not need to understand the language or techniques required to protect their data when coding with them. While the barrier to building has dropped dramatically, the barrier to building securely has not yet caught up, wrote Nagli.
For the past six years, Josh D’Amaro has overseen experiences, such as theme parks and cruises, at the Walt Disney Company. Starting March 18, he’ll add the rest of the company to his responsibilities.
Disney has tapped D’Amaro as its new chief executive officer, taking the reins from Bob Iger and becoming just the ninth person to run the century-old entertainment giant.
D’Amaro won a highly competitive race for the job, fending off Disneys entertainment co-chairman, Dana Walden. Walden will remain with the company in the newly created position of president and chief creative officer.
In becoming CEO, D’Amaro also becomes the public face of Disney, a role that’s more than ceremonial. Since Walt Disney first created the company, the CEO has been a highly visible presence not only in Hollywood and on Wall Street, but in pop culture.
Previous CEOs, including Iger and Michael Eisner, were nearly as famous as the stars in Disney’s films.
Ready for his close-up?
D’Amaro has been assuming an increasingly public presence in the past several years, with media appearances and high-profile events, such as overseeing the recent christening of the Disney Destiny cruise ship.
He has also been closely involved in some of the company’s biggest projects, including the $60 billion expansion of the parks and experiences division and the recently announced forthcoming Abu Dhabi park.
About a year ago, DAmaro said during a conversation with Fast Company and other media in 2024, I found myself in Bobs office and we were talking about the last 100 years and everything that had happened in our products around the world. And we talked about the number of stories we hadnt been able to tell yet and the number of acres we have available that we can exercise and the number of fans out there which would want to participate in that. Bob looked at me and said, Go.
A long history
D’Amaro joined Disney in 1998, working at various leadership positions at Disneyland.
He eventually worked his way to president of Walt Disney World and in 2020 was named chairman of Disney Experiences, where he oversees all 12 theme parks and the company’s 57 hotels, as well as the cruise lines, Disney Consumer Products, and, perhaps critically, the company’s Imagineering unit.
Among the theme park rides that have been built under his watch are Star Wars: Galaxys Edge, the Marvel-themed Avengers Campus, and Mickey and Minnies Runaway Railway.
He helped lead the company’s $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games last year and could make video games a bigger part of the company’s focus in the coming years.
D’Amaro was also responsible for guiding Disney parks through the pandemic, a job that seemed almost impossible in 2020. When the decision was made to reopen the parks, he oversaw the changes that let the company regain a critical revenue source, but kept visitors safe.
We knew we would have to change, but the one thing we would not compromise on was our storytelling, making sure that any guest who walks through those gates feels the same Disney theyve always felt, says DAmaro.
To do that, Disney had to shake things up. Parades were out, since having people crowded along a parade route was a hazard. But character cavalcadessmaller processions that saw Disney characters walking, riding in vehicles, on mini floats, or even on horseback through the parktook their place at a frequency that was much greater than the old parade schedule.
Other characters showed up in new locations. (Goofy, for example, was sometimes seen fishing off the wharf at California Adventure.) That time period also saw the launch of the company’s virtual queue system.
The parks have since become an even bigger financial powerhouse for the company.
In its most recent earnings, released Monday, Disney announced the experiences division crossed $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time. Theme parks in the U.S. alone brought in $6.91 billion in revenue, despite softness with international visitors.
Josh DAmaro is an exceptional leader and the right person to become our next CEO, Iger said in a statement Tuesday. He has an instinctive appreciation of the Disney brand, and a deep understanding of what resonates with our audiences, paired with the rigor and attention to detail required to deliver some of our most ambitious projects.”
Shares of the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) were down about 1.61% in late-morning trading on Tuesday after the announcement. The stock is likewise down more than 8% year to date.
When the boss won’t quit
D’Amaro is the second person to succeed Iger as CEO. In 2020, Bob Chapek, who had been in charge of Disney Parks and Experiences, was named CEO, but the transition was anything but smooth.
Wall Street was surprised that the company had chosen someone from the parks side and not from the company’s streaming unit. Chapek’s management style came under fire and caused some political tensions.
In 2022, as the company’s share price began to fall, the board replaced him, bringing Iger back.
James Gorman, chairman of the Disney board, who led the search for the company’s new leader, said on CNBC Tuesday that the situation won’t repeat itself with D’Amaro’s selection.
“We won’t have the drama we had last time. That I can assure you,” he said.
D’Amaro, in a statement, underscored his good relationship with Iger, thanking him for his friendship and mentorship, while outlining his vision for Disney’s future.
“There is no limit to what Disney can achieve,” he said, “and I am excited to work with our teams across the company and brilliant creative partners to honor Disneys remarkable legacy while continuing to innovate, grow, and deliver exceptional value for our consumers and shareholders.”
French prosecutors raided the offices of social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into allegations including spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes. They have also summoned billionaire owner Elon Musk for questioning.X and Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI also face intensifying scrutiny from Britain’s data privacy regulator, which opened formal investigations into how they handled personal data when they developed and deployed Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.Grok, which was built by xAI and is available through X, sparked global outrage last month after it pumped out a torrent of sexualized nonconsensual deepfake images in response to requests from X users.The French investigation was opened in January last year by the prosecutors’ cybercrime unit, the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a statement. It’s looking into alleged “complicity” in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.Prosecutors asked Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino to attend “voluntary interviews” on April 20. Employees of X have also been summoned that same week to be heard as witnesses, the statement said. Yaccarino was CEO from May 2023 until July 2025.A spokesperson for X did not respond to multiple requests for comment. X’s lawyer in France, Kami Haeri, told The Associated Press: “We are not making any comment at this stage.”In a message posted on X, the Paris prosecutors’ office announced the ongoing searches at the company’s offices in France and said it was leaving the platform while calling on followers to join it on other social media.“At this stage, the conduct of the investigation is based on a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory,” the prosecutors’ statement said.European Union police agency Europol “is supporting the French authorities in this,” Europol spokesperson Jan Op Gen Oorth told the AP, without elaborating.French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system.It expanded after Grok generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said.Grok wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder language long associated with Holocaust denial.In later posts on X, the chatbot reversed itself and acknowledged that its earlier reply was wrong, saying it had been deleted and pointed to historical evidence that Zyklon B was used to kill more than 1 million people in Auschwitz gas chambers.The chatbot also appeared to praise Adolf Hitler last year, in comments that X took down after complaints.In Britain, the Information Commissioner’s Office said it’s looking into whether X and xAI followed the law when processing personal data and whether Grok had any measures in place to prevent its use to generate “harmful manipulated images.”“The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualised images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this,” said William Malcolm, an executive director at the watchdog.He didn’t specify what the penalty would be if the probe found the companies didn’t comply with data protection laws.A separate investigation into Grok launched last month by the U.K. media regulator, Ofcom, is ongoing.Ofcom said Tuesday it’s still gathering evidence and warned the probe could take months.X has also been under pressure from the EU. The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm opened an investigation last month after Grok spewed nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images on the platform.Brussels has already hit X with a 120-million euro (then-$140 million) fine for shortcomings under the bloc’s sweeping digital regulations, including blue checkmarks that broke the rules on “deceptive design practices” that risked exposing users to scams and manipulation.On Monday, Musk ‘s space exploration and rocket business, SpaceX, announced that it acquired xAI in a deal that will also combine Grok, X and his satellite communication company Starlink.
Associated Press writers Nicolas Vaux-Montagny, Mike Corder, Sylvia Hui and Kelvin Chan contributed to this report.
Sylvie Corbet, Associated Press
On New Year’s Eve, Lee Zeldin did something out of character for an Environmental Protection Agency leader who has been hacking away at regulations intended to protect Americans’ air and water.He announced new restrictions on five chemicals commonly used in building materials, plastic products and adhesives, and he cheered it as a “MAHA win.”It was one of many signs of a fragile collaboration that’s been building between a Republican administration that’s traditionally supported big business and a Make America Healthy Again movement that argues corporate environmental harms are putting people’s health in danger.The unlikely pairing grew out of the coalition’s success influencing public health policy with the help of its biggest champion, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. As health secretary, he has pared back vaccine recommendations and shifted the government’s position on topics like seed oils, fluoride and Tylenol.Building on that momentum, the movement now sees a glimmer of hope in the EPA’s promise to release a “MAHA agenda” in the coming months.At stake is the strength of President Donald Trump’s coalition as November’s midterm elections threaten his party’s control of Congress. After a politically diverse group of MAHA devotees came together to help Trump return to the White House a little more than one year ago, disappointing them could mean losing the support of a vocal voting bloc.Activists like Courtney Swan, who focuses on nutritional issues and has spoken with EPA officials in recent months, are watching closely.“This is becoming an issue that if the EPA does not start getting their stuff together, then they could lose the midterms over this,” she said.Christopher Bosso, a professor at Northeastern University who researches environmental policy, said Zeldin didn’t seem to take MAHA seriously at first, “but now he has to, because they’ve been really calling for his scalp.”
MAHA wins a seat at the table
Last year, prominent activist Kelly Ryerson was so frustrated with the EPA over its weakening of protections against harmful chemicals that she and other MAHA supporters drew up a petition to get Zeldin fired.The final straw, Ryerson said, was the EPA’s approval of two new pesticides for use on food. Ryerson, whose social media account “Glyphosate Girl” focuses on nontoxic food systems, said the pesticides contained “forever chemicals,” which resist breakdown, making them hazardous to people. The EPA has disputed that characterization.But Ryerson’s relationship with the EPA changed at a MAHA Christmas party in Washington in December. She talked to Zeldin there and felt that he listened to her perspective. Then he invited her and a handful of other activists to sit down with him at the EPA headquarters. That meeting lasted an hour, and it led to more conversations with Zeldin’s deputies.“The level of engagement with people concerned with their health is absolutely revolutionary,” Ryerson said in an interview. She said the agency’s upcoming plan “will say whether or not they take it seriously,” but she praised MAHA’s access as “unprecedented.”Rashmi Joglekar, associate director of science, policy and engagement at the University of California San Francisco’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, said it’s not typical for an activist group to meet with the EPA administrator. She said MAHA’s ability to make inroads so quickly shows how “powerful” the coalition has become.The movement’s influence is not just at the EPA. MAHA has steered federal and state lawmakers away from enacting liability shields that protect pesticide manufacturers from expensive lawsuits. In Congress, after MAHA activists lobbied against such protections in a funding bill, they were removed. A similar measure stalled in Tennessee’s legislature.Zeldin joined a call in December with the advocacy group MAHA Action, where he invited activists to participate in developing the EPA’s MAHA agenda. Since then, EPA staffers have regularly appeared on the weekly calls and promoted what they say are open-door policies.Last month, Ryerson’s petition to get Zeldin fired was updated to note that several signers had met with him and are in a “collaborative effort to advance the MAHA agenda.”Zeldin’s office declined to make him available for an interview on his work with MAHA activists, but EPA Press Secretary Brigit Hirsch said the forthcoming agenda will “directly respond to priorities we’ve heard from MAHA advocates and communities.”The American Chemistry Council said “smart, pro-growth policies can protect both the environment and human health as well as grow the U.S. economy.”
EPA’s alliance with industry raises questions
Despite the ongoing conversations, the Republican emphasis on deregulation still puts MAHA and the EPA on a potential collision course.Lori Ann Burd, the environmental health program director at The Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration has a particularly strong alliance with industry interests.As an example, she pointed to the EPA’s proposal to allow the broad use of the weed killer Dicamba on soybeans and cotton. A month before the announcement, the EPA hired a lobbyist for the soybean association, Kyle Kunkler, to serve in a senior position overseeing pesticides.Hirsch denied that Kunkler had anything to do with the decision and said EPA’s pesticide decisions are “driven by statutory standards and scientific evidence.”Environmentalists said the hiring of ex-industry leaders is a theme of this administration. Nancy Beck and Lynn Dekleva, for example, are former higher-ups at the American Chemistry Council, an industry association. They now work in leadership in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which oversees pesticide and toxic chemical regulation.Hirsch said the agency consults with ethics officials to prevent conflicts of interest and ensures that appointees are qualified and focused on the science, “unlike previous administrations that too often deferred to activist groups instead of objective evidence.”Alexandra Muoz, a molecular toxicologist who works with MAHA activists on some issues and was in the hourlong meeting with Zeldin, said she could sense industry’s influence in the room.“They were very polite in the meeting. In terms of the tone, there was a lot of receptivity,” she said. “However, in terms of what was said, it felt like we were interacting with a lot of industry talking points.”
Activists await the EPA’s MAHA agenda
Hirsch said the MAHA agenda will address issues like lead pipes, forever chemicals, plastic pollution, food quality and Superfund cleanups.Ryerson said she wants to get the chemical atrazine out of drnking water and stop the pre-harvest desiccation of food, in which farmers apply pesticides to crops immediately before they are harvested.She also wants to see cancer warnings on the ingredient glyphosate, which some studies associate with cancer even as the EPA said it is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans when used as directed.While she’s optimistic that the political payoffs will be big enough for Zeldin to act, she said some of the moves he’s already promoting as “MAHA wins” are no such thing.For example, in his New Year’s Eve announcement on a group of chemicals called phthalates, he said the agency intends to regulate some of them for environmental and workplace risks, but didn’t address the thousands of consumer products that contain the ingredients.Swan said time will tell if the agency is being performative.“The EPA is giving very mixed signals right now,” she said.
Sejal Govindarao, Ali Swenson and Michael Phillis, Associated Press
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered roughly 1,000 unprotected gateways to OpenClaw, an open-source and proactive AI agent that can be controlled through text conversations with apps like WhatsApp or Telegram. The gateways were found on the open internet, allowing anyone to access users personal information. One white hat hacker also reportedly gamed OpenClaws skills system, which lets users add plugins for tasks like web automation or system control, to reach the top of the rankings and be downloaded by users around the world. The skill itself was innocuous, but it exploited a security vulnerability that someone more nefarious could have used to cause serious harm.
Access to those gateways would allow hackers to reach the same files and content OpenClaw can access, meaning full read and write control over a users computer and any connected accounts, including email addresses and phone numbers. A number of incidents exploiting those vulnerabilities have already been reported.
OpenClaw, originally called Clawdbot, was released in November 2025 by Peter Steinberger, an Austrian-born, London-based developer best known for creating a tool that lets apps display and edit PDFs natively. The launch followed a wave of advances in AIs ability to interact with files that began in late 2025.
Late last year, many people began experimenting with Anthropics Claude Code, an agentic AI that links to a computers file system through the terminal or command line and responds to conversational prompts to build large projects independently, with some oversight. The tool excited many users but also discouraged others who were uncomfortable working in a non-graphical interface.
In response, Anthropic set Claude Code to work autonomously on a sibling product, Claude Work, which layers a more user-friendly interface on top. While it has gained some traction, it is a third-party product built by a developer outside Anthropic that has captured the most attention.
Steinbergers OpenClaw mimics the best features of Claude Code, but with more functionality and the ability to proactively work on tasks without being prompted.
That proactivity is a key differentiator between the tool, which was forced to rename itself Moltbot and then OpenClaw last week after a request from Anthropic, and other AI systems. Its potential has energized the tech sector, driven a spike in Mac Mini sales as a popular way to host the agent, and come to dominate certain corners of X and Reddit.
The problem is that the very thing that makes OpenClaw so appealing, the ability to oversee an eager AI assistant without specialist coding knowledge and with an easy setup, is also what makes it so concerning. I love it, yet [I’m] instantly filled with fear, says Jake Moore, a cybersecurity expert at Eset. Moore says users are so excited by the idea of OpenClaw as a personal assistant that they are granting it unrestricted access to their digital lives, sometimes while hosting their instances on incorrectly configured virtual private servers. That leaves them vulnerable to hacking.
Opening private messages and emails to any new technology comes with a risk and when we dont fully understand those risks, we could be walking into a new era of putting efficiency before security and privacy, Moore warns. The same access that makes OpenClaw powerful is also what makes it dangerous if it is compromised. If one of the devices Clawdbot is running on is compromised, an attacker would then gain access to everything including full history and highly sensitive information, he says.
Steinberger did not respond to multiple interview requests, but he has published extensive security documentation for Moltbot online, even if many users may not incorporate it into their setups. That concerns cybersecurity experts. Developments like Clawdbot are so seductive but a gift to the bad guys, says Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey in the U.K. With great power comes great responsibility and machines are not responsible, he says. Ultimately the user is.
The way OpenClaw operates, running without oversight and acting as an always-on assistant, may cause users to forget that responsibility until it is too late. Some have already demonstrated that Moltbot can be vulnerable to prompt injection attacks, in which harmful instructions are embedded in websites or emails in the hope that AI agents will absorb and follow them. I wonder who these users think will be blamed when agentic AI empties their account or posts hateful thoughts, Woodward says.
So-called rare earth elements arent actually rare. Its just difficult to refine them into the purified forms that are needed for making things like electronics or clean energy tech. The standard processes are also toxic, which is one reason that the world has outsourced production to China.
Supra, a startup that spun out of the University of Texas at Austin, is taking a different approach thats clean, low-cost, and makes it possible to capture some of the billions of dollars worth of critical minerals that are trapped in waste in the U.S.
Dr. Sessler [Photo: Supra]
The companys technology uses supramolecular receptors, a string of molecules built to grab specific molecules like a baseball glove, says CEO Katie Durham. Jonathan Sessler, a chemistry professor at UT Austin, first designed receptors like these to target cancer cells. Then he realized that they could also be designed to target critical minerals.
My original analogy was we were going to be making a chemical sponge, Sessler says. It would go in and capture these elements and we would pick it up and wring it out.
In the final design, the nanometer-sized receptors are embedded into a polymer filled with tiny pores that increase the surface area for capturing metal ions. The material is 3D-printed into reusable cartridges.
[Photo: Genesis Cosme/The University of Texas at Austin]
At a mine or industrial site, tailings or wastewater can flow through a series of the cartridges, each targeting a specific element. The receptors bind minerals in alcohol and release them when theyre rinsed with water, using little energy and avoiding the use of toxic chemicals. The process, which the company says is 100 times more selective and faster than current rare earth refining, can also be used on electronic waste.
[Photo: Supra]
In lab tests on cobalt, the technology was able to capture 100% of the element, isolating it completely from other elements like lithium in a solution.
The tech can be customized for any element. As it comes to market, the startup is focused first on scandium and gallium, two valuable rare earth elements that currently are imported from China. The U.S. is 100% import-dependent on them, and we really did not see a lot of other startups trying to address that, says Durham. By collecting the trace amounts of scandium in industrial waste in the U.S., the company hopes it can change how the element is sourced.
[Photo: Supra]
The value varies wildly depending on purityscandium, for example, can sell for $300 per kilogram at 99.9% purity, but $3,200 per kilogram at 99.99% purity. The purest form, at 99.9999%, sells for $500,000 per kilogram. (The startup is still optimizing its process, but is aiming for the highest purity.) The company plans to launch its first pilots with partners later this year.
Supra is one of a handful of startups working on ways to make rare earth production feasible in the U.S. Others include Phoenix Tailings, which works both with mined material and waste; and Cyclic Materials, which extracts and refines rare earths from end-of-life products.
Because of the demand for an American supply chain, Supra plans to focus first in the U.S. But the company eventually wants to make their products available globallyincluding in China, to help with the pollution challenge there. The world has gotten lazy and let China pay the environmental cost, says Sessler.
