With financial stress mounting for many Americans, scoring deals may be all the more important during the holiday shopping rush.

AI is giving longevity research a new way forward: better tools to identify potential interventions, and better ways to investigate their effects in people. Two recent papers from our team and academic collaborators illustrate that progression. In Cell, we introduced open tools to evaluate AI models and help researchers identify potential drug targets in aging biology.

Microsoft is pushing back on reports that the tech giant is considering major cuts to its cloud division amid increased spending on artificial intelligence. 

Americans are growing richer on average—but not everyone, and not even a little bit equally.

Renee Wegrzyn spent her career building the future of American science—including the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, the White House agency created to accelerate health breakthroughs.

While kiosks have become fixtures in many restaurants, most people still prefer ordering from a human being, industry data shows.

The year is 1600. The sun has just set and you’re tucked up on your canvas sack on the floor. 

Tens of millions of Social Security recipients will be seeing a bump in their monthly checks come January.

An engineer at OpenAI has been charged with secretly installing a recording device inside a conference room in what officials said Tuesday was an effort to capture sensitive conversations about the company’s technology.

The employee, identified as a 35-year-old Saudi national named Abdulrahman Alfozan, was arrested Friday, a week after the ChatGPT maker discovered an audio recording device hidden inside a company conference room, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco.

The complaint did not identify the company, but the company confirmed in a separate statement that it had discovered a “sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices,” reported the finding to the FBI and fired the employee.

“We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest. The FBI’s investigation is ongoing and we will continue to support their work,” an OpenAI spokesperson said.

“At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated,” the statement said.

The complaint does not detail what Alfozan might have wanted to do with any captured communications, but the company said the device was sophisticated, designed to evade detection and featured advanced encryption and audio monitoring capabilities. OpenAI said it had evidence the employee planned to place other listening devices throughout other parts of the office building for the purpose of recording meetings.

“This alleged attempt by a Saudi national to steal sensitive communications from OpenAI was taken extremely seriously. Theft of intellectual property involving cutting-edge super intelligence technology poses a serious threat to our national security,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on X.

Alfozan made his first court appearance Tuesday on a charge of using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf. He is due back in court on Oct. 19.

The recording device was found September 30 concealed in toilet paper and inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room, according to the complaint.

Though the conference room where the recording device was found did not have a security camera at the time the object was installed, closed-circuit television footage inside the company’s offices revealed that Alfozan was near the conference room on nearly a dozen occasions last month despite not having any authority to access the space or participate in meetings there, the complaint says.

The company subsequently added a camera to the room that last week captured Alfozan entering and checking behind the television where the recording device had been installed, according to the FBI.

The complaint also alleges that he used a productivity tool to make multiple inquiries about the company’s building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars.

Days before his arrest last week, the complaint says, Alfozan left behind an unattended bag in a different room that, when opened by OpenAI personnel, was found to contain his wallet, identification and another recording device similar to the one placed in the conference room.

From added protein in virtually every item in the grocery aisles to a rise in popularity of electrolytes and fiber, the Ozempic era has changed how Americans eat. Now, it is coming for how they travel. 

Over four days last week, Ukrainian drones struck three data centers operated by Yandex, Russia’s largest technology company. Facilities went offline, disrupting services used by banks, retailers, and ordinary Russians. One of the sites, in Sasovo, housed tens of thousands of servers and two of the supercomputers used to develop Yandex’s AI models.

Bank of America has been fined over $1.2 billion for violating anti-money-laundering and sanction laws. 

U.S. inflation accelerated last month as gas, clothes, and air fares got more expensive, evidence that rising prices remain an economic challenge just a few weeks before the midterm elections that have focused heavily on issues related to affordability.

The consumer price index rose 3.7% in September compared with a year ago, the Labor Department said Wednesday, up from 3.4% in August. On a monthly basis, costs jumped 0.6% from August to September, the biggest gain in five months, up from a 0.4% increase the previous month.

The figures underscore the lingering impact of the Iran war on gas prices and the stubborn persistence of inflation, which fell sharply from a 9.1% peak in 2022 but this year has ticked higher since the war began in late February. The rise isn’t all linked to gas prices, as surging investment in data centers and AI has also pushed up prices for computer chips and the consumer electronics that also use them. Elevated inflation has posed political problems for Republicans in Congress and is a challenge for the Federal Reserve, which is required by Congress to seek stable prices.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 2.6% in September from a year ago, up from 2.4% the previous month. And they climbed 0.3% from August to September, an elevated pace that, if it continued for a year, would run well above the Fed’s 2% target.

Ongoing inflation has taken a toll on Trump’s standing with U.S. voters. A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 17% of U.S. adults approve of his handling of the cost of living issue. And only 26% approve of his handling of the economy overall, a new low.

Federal Reserve officials are watching inflation data closely to determine whether they need to raise their short-term interest rate further, and by how much.

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh said last month that inflation isn’t moving quickly enough back to the central bank’s target, causing the Fed to hike rates for the first time in three years, to about 3.9%.

Yet some key Fed officials have suggested the central bank can wait before increasing rates again. The Fed has a policy meeting Oct. 27-28, but most Wall Street investors expect it to hold rates then, and potentially implement another hike in December. Fed officials have penciled in just one more rate hike this year.

By raising borrowing costs, the Fed hopes to slow spending and growth and cool price increases. Yet much of the current inflation comes from supply shocks, such as the Iran war’s disruption to oil and gas supplies, and higher interest rates can’t address those bottlenecks.

Warsh has said his goal is to keep the gas price spike from seeping into more areas of the economy. It’s already pushed up the price of air fares about 22% from a year ago.

Gas prices jumped more than 9% from August to September, Wednesday’s report said. Rising gas costs are a highly visible sign of inflation and often drive down measures of consumer sentiment about the economy.

Prices at the pump have ticked lower in the past two weeks to a nationwide average of $4.33 a gallon, according to AAA, though they remain higher than a month ago.

Those costs raise shipping and other expenses for many large and small businesses, some of which are forced to pass the cost to consumers. Last week, PepsiCo said that it will raise prices for its snack foods, including Doritos, Ruffles, Sun Chips, and some sodas to offset higher costs for fuel, aluminum, and food ingredients.

The artificial intelligence buildout has also sharply elevated the cost of semiconductors, computer equipment, and electrical components, which have been passed on to consumers in the form of more expensive electronics such as gaming devices, laptops, and smartphones.

Goldman Sachs estimated in a report Tuesday that the AI buildout has added about a half-percentage point to the annual inflation rate, according to the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge.

On September 1, Nintendo increased the price for its Switch 2 gaming system by 11% to $499.99. And Apple’s newest iPhone, the iPhone 17, cost about 10% more than its previous upgrade, though some of that likely reflects greater capabilities.

The horrific death of a man who was ejected from a Six Flags roller coaster in Georgia is drawing attention to the safety of amusement park rides that have become increasingly faster and steeper in their quest for the biggest thrill.

Even so, deaths on roller coasters are still extremely rare, and Georgia officials have said little about what happened Monday when Hassan Jihad Ibn Kariem, 42, was thrown from his seat while riding the Goliath at Six Flags Over Georgia before striking other patrons and then landing below the ride.

Goliath uses a sheer drop from 200 feet (61 meters) to reach top speeds of 70 mph (112 kph) and focuses on velocity and downhill plunges rather than turning riders upside down through loops or corkscrews. It has operated at the park for two decades.

Six Flags temporarily closed nine similar coasters across North America following the death, saying it was doing so out of an abundance of caution.

Ride manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard said it is “actively investigating the incident and will not comment further until we have a better understanding of what happened.”

The school calls in the middle of the workday. Your child is sick. That means you have to leave the meeting, cancel the rest of your afternoon, and rearrange appointments for tomorrow. Research shows that when this happens to a father, he has a childcare problem. But when it happens to a mother, she can become the childcare problem.

A sweet treat can turn a bad day around and make a good one great.

Artificial intelligence has finally given B2B marketers what they’ve always wanted more of: capacity. More content, personalization, audience segments, campaign variations, and ways to push an idea across more channels.

Away’s aluminum carry-on sells for $625, but right now you can snag one for $436. A medium suitcase in navy usually goes for $345, but you can get it for $293. There’s a catch, though: Some of these bags may have a little scuff here or a dent there.

When team members disengage, most leaders instinctively tighten the reins. It’s an understandable response, but rarely an effective one. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that 70% of the variance in team engagement stems directly from the manager.

Your old Barbies could be turned into speakers, power banks, and more.

Gomi, a sustainable U.K. design studio, put out a call for old Barbie dolls for its Childhood Memories Collection, a new collaboration with the Mattel-owned brand to give old plastic dolls a second life as tech products.