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Financial markets are churning on Friday as investors try to figure out what President Donald Trumps new nominee to lead the Federal Reserve will mean for interest rates. The initial reactions were uneasy because of the uncertainty. U.S. stocks fell, with the S&P 500 down 0.8% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 507 points, or 1%, as of 1 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1% lower. The value of the U.S. dollar, meanwhile, climbed but only after swiveling a couple of times following Trumps nomination of Kevin Warsh. And some of the wildest action was again in precious metals markets, where the price of gold screeched lower following its stellar run over the last year. Whoever leads the Fed has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. Such decisions lift or weigh on prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control. Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates, which usually help goose the economy but can also cause higher inflation. A fear in financial markets has been that the Fed will lose some of its independence because of Trump. That fear in turn helped catapult the price of gold and weaken the U.S. dollars value over the last year. The longtime assumption has been that the Fed can operate separately from the rest of Washington so that it can make decisions that are painful in the short term but necessary for the long term. To get inflation down to the Fed’s goal of 2%, for example, may require the unpopular choice to keep interest rates high and grind down on the economy for a while. The big question is what Warsh’s nomination, which still requires approval from the Senate, means for the Fed’s independence. Warsh used to be a governor on the Feds board, so investors are familiar with him. That could also mean Warsh is familiar with and hopes to continue the institution of the Fed as an independent operator. And while with the Fed, Warsh criticized the central bank’s buying of bonds to keep interest rates low. Some on Wall Street took Warsh’s nomination as an encouraging signal for a still-independent Fed that will keep rates high, if necessary. But Warsh has also recently been critical of the Feds current chair, Jerome Powell, and has voiced support for lower rates. Indeed, Warsh is not the Feds guy, he is Trumps guy, and has shadowed Trump on monetary policy almost every step of the way since 2009, according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group. This doesnt necessarily mean that Warsh will push the Fed into rate cuts soon, but it could indicate he may be quicker to do so when the time comes. On Wall Street, stocks of metals miners tumbled as the price of gold dropped 8.9% to $4,878.80 per ounce. Gold’s price has suddenly run out of momentum following a tremendous rally where it roughly doubled over 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Monday and got near $5,600 on Thursday. Silver, which has been on a similar, jaw-dropping tear, fell even more. It plunged 23.5%. Prices for gold and other precious metals had been surging as investors looked for safer places for their money while weighing a wide range of risks, including a potentially less independent Fed, a U.S. stock market that critics say is expensive, political instability, threats of tariffs and heavy debt loads for governments worldwide. The dramatic halt in momentum may have been inevitable given how far and how fast metal prices had surged over the last year. Nothing goes up in price forever. Friday’s drops for metals prices helped send the stock of miner Newmont down 10.9%. Freeport-McMoRan, another miner, dropped 8.4%. Apple was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after sinking 1.4%, even though the iPhone maker reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Helping to limit the market’s losses was Tesla, which rose 4.3%. It bounced back after dropping on Thursday despite delivering better profit reports for the latest quarter than analysts expected. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.24%, where it was late Thursday. It got near 4.28% in the overnight and early-morning hours before falling back. A rise in a bond’s yield indicates that its price is weakening. Yields may have felt some upward pressure from a report released Friday showing U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was hotter last month than economists expected. That could put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates steady for a while instead of cutting them, as it did late last year. In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in much of Europe following a mixed performance in Asia. Stocks rose 1.2% in Jakarta after the CEO of Indonesias stock market, Imam Rachman, resigned Friday. Stocks had stumbled there in prior days after MSCI, an influential company in the investment industry that creates stock and other indexes, warned about market risks such as a lack of transparency. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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If you enter a query into Quili.AI on January 31, your question wont be answered by a large language model, but instead by residents from the Chilean community of Quilicura. The project aims to replace artificial intelligence with analog intelligence, to both highlight the environmental impact of AI, and to get people thinking consciously about their AI use. Were inviting people to have a day without AI, Lorena Antiman from Corporación NGEN, an environmental organization focused in part on protecting Quilicuras wetlands, says while speaking through a translator. Corporación NGEN spearheaded the project. Instead of going through a data center, each prompt into the chatbot will be answered directly by Quilicura residents. Artists, teachers, and others in the community will all meet in one place on Saturday, ready to respond to the queries. Quilicura and data centers The people of Quilicura, Chile are directly living with the impact of AI data centers. The community is located on the edge of Santiago, which is becoming a data center hub: 16 such facilities have been approved for construction there since 2012. Data centers both use immense amounts of energy, and lots of water to cool the servers. Understanding AI water use can be complicated, but some experts have tried to quantify it. A 2024 Washington Post article says that generating a 100 word email with GPT-4 requires 519 milliliters of water, or just over a bottle. Google opened its first Latin American data center in Quilicura in 2015. That facility uses 50 liters of water a secondor the same as 8,000 Chilean householdsthe New York Times reported in 2025, based on environmental records filed with the government. (Google says the sites used less water the year prior, about the same water use as a golf course.) This data center boom from tech companies is happening as Chile experiences a 15-year megadrought. The country is expected to lead the world in terms of water stress by 2040. Community activists in Quilicura have highlighted the impact of these data centers by showing before and after photos of the regions wetlands, appearing dry even during the rainy season. [Photo: Quili.AI] How Quili.AI works Up to 50 community members will be participating in the day without AI, ready to respond to Quili.AI prompts over the 24 hours of January 31 only. Each of them will bring their unique skills to the task. Prompt Quili.Ai to make a certain image, and a local artist will draw it. Ask Quili.AI for a recipe, and someone will share their own. Or need something explained to you like youre 5? a community member says in a video promoting the action. Ask Mateo. Hes 5. Instead of servers and cloud computing, community members will use their own experiences, their cultural knowledge, and their human judgment. Responses may not be immediate, but Antiman says theyll do their best to reply to as many queries as they can. And though the humans powering this analog intelligence are local to Quilicara, the organizers say anyone can use the tool. Instilling better AI habits Antiman hopes the action helps people think more responsibly about what they turn to AI for, and if their prompts are worth the resources they require. Just like were taught to turn off lights when we leave a room, or to not run water while we brush their teeth, she hopes people can learn better AI habits. Many people may simply not be aware of the impacts of using AI. Antiman is a teacher, and she says her students are surprised when she highlights those effects. They dont know the consequences of the way theyre using AI, she says. The day without AI is also an invitation, she adds, for people to look to their own neighbors or communities for knowledge. Maybe your neighbor knows how to change a tire, or another already has a recipe for cupcakes, so you dont need to ask ChatGPT. This connection between real people is what makes the Quili.AI project so exciting to Antiman. The most magical thing about it is the community is the one working on it, she says. Theyre all coming together to make this happen.
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Federal prosecutors cant seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a federal judge ruled Friday, foiling the Trump administrations bid to see him executed for what it called a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America. Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding it technically flawed. She wrote that she did so to foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury” as it weighs whether to convict Mangione. Garnett also dismissed a gun charge but left in place stalking charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison. To seek the death penalty, prosecutors needed to show that Mangione killed Thompson while committing another “crime of violence.” Stalking doesn’t fit that definition, Garnett wrote in her opinion, citing case law and legal precedents. In a win for prosecutors, Garnett ruled they can use evidence collected from his backpack during his arrest, including a 9mm handgun and a notebook in which authorities say Mangione described his intent to wack an insurance executive. Mangiones lawyers had sought to exclude those items, arguing the search was illegal because police hadnt yet obtained a warrant. During a hearing Friday, Garnett gave prosecutors 30 days to update her on whether they’ll appeal her death penalty decision. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is prosecuting the federal case, declined to comment. Garnett acknowledged that the decision may strike the average person and indeed many lawyers and judges as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law.” But, she said, it reflected her “committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case. The law must be the Courts only concern. Mangione, 27, appeared relaxed as he sat with his lawyers during the scheduled hearing, which took place about an hour after Garnett issued her written ruling. Prosecutors retained their right to appeal but said they were ready to proceed to trial. Outside court afterward, Mangione’s attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said her client and his defense team were relieved by the incredible decision. Jury selection in the federal case is set for Sept. 8, followed by opening statements and testimony on Oct. 13. The state trial’s date hasnt been set. On Wednesday, the Manhattan district attorneys office urged the judge in that case to schedule a July 1 trial date. That case is none of my concern, Garnett said, adding that she would proceed as if the federal case is the only case unless she hears formally from parties involved in the state case. She also said the federal case will be paused if the government appeals her death penalty ruling. Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Groups annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say delay, deny and depose were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used by critics to describe how insurers avoid paying claims. Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan. Following through on Trumps campaign promise to vigorously pursue capital punishment, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors last April to seek the death penalty against Mangione. It was the first time the Justice Department sought the death penalty in President Donald Trumps second term. He returned to office a year ago with a vow to resume federal executions after they were halted under his predecessor, President Joe Biden. Garnett, a Biden appointee and former Manhattan federal prosecutor, ruled after hearing oral arguments earlier this month. Besides seeking to have the death penalty rejected on the grounds Garnett cited, Mangiones lawyers argued that Bondis announcement flouted long-established Justice Department protocols and was based on politics, not merit. They said her remarks, followed by posts to her Instagram account and a TV appearance, indelibly prejudiced the grand jury process resulting in his indictment weeks later. Prosecutors urged Garnett to keep the death penalty on the table, arguing that the charges were legally sound and Bondis remarks werent prejudicial, as pretrial publicity, even when intense, is not itself a constitutional defect. Prosecutors argued that careful questioning of prospective jurors would alleviate the defenses concerns about their knowledge of the case and ensure Mangiones rights are respected at trial. What the defendant recasts as a constitutional crisis is merely a repackaging of arguments rejected in previous cases, prosecutors said. None warrants dismissal of the indictment or categorical preclusion of a congressionally authorized punishment. Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister, Associated Press
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