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California is staring down a $12 billion budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday. The Democratic governor shared the number as he laid out his nearly $322 billion state spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year. He says the deficit is partly due to broad economic uncertainty, including ever-changing federal tariff policies and a volatile stock market. California relies heavily on revenue from a tax on capital gains. The shortfall is also due to a swelling Medicaid budget, and Newsom has proposed freezing enrollment in a state-funded health care program for immigrants in the country illegally starting in 2026 to cut down on costs. The shortfall will r…

Here’s a sentence that’s likely never been seen before in human history: The 2028 Olympic Games have an official air taxi. Archer Aviation, an electric air taxi company based in California, announced that it’s been named the Official Air Taxi Provider for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, as well as for the Paralympic Games and Team USA. Archer’s electric air taxis will be zipping around the skies in Southern California during and around the Olympics, shuttling VIPs, athletes, and anyone else who books a ride around various sites in the greater L.A. region. That includes Dodger Stadium, SoFi Stadium, Hollywood, and LAX airport. Archer’s CEO, Adam Goldstein, t…

Every year, millions of Muslims take part in observing Ramadan: a spiritual month dedicated to cleansing the soul and spirit, hallmarked by the practice of fasting. This means that for 30 days, from sunrise to sunset, practitioners abstain from eating food and drinking water, only breaking their fast once the sun disappears in their respective geolocation—a time that shifts up or down depending on the season. Yep, not even water. As someone who observes Ramadan, every year I am both amused and baffled by the awkwardness that surrounds the month in the workplace. Inquiries about what fasting entails are far and few, whether out of fear of disrespect, uncertainty, …

Get ready for several years of even more record-breaking heat that pushes Earth to more deadly, fiery and uncomfortable extremes, two of the world’s top weather agencies forecast. There’s an 80% chance the world will break another annual temperature record in the next five years, and it’s even more probable that the world will again exceed the international temperature threshold set 10 years ago, according to a five-year forecast released Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.K. Meteorological Office. “Higher global mean temperatures may sound abstract, but it translates in real life to a higher chance of extreme weather: stronger hurricanes, stro…

Almost seamlessly, the two sides of a scenic forest in Alberta, Canada, have been woven back together. Located between Calgary and Banff National Park, this stretch of the Canadian Rockies is sliced in two by the Trans-Canada Highway, one of the busiest roadways in the province. That’s had deadly consequences for the area’s abundant wildlife, as well as the tens of thousands of people who drive through it every day. But now, after years of mounting wildlife-vehicle collisions, the danger to animals and humans is being addressed with a stunning new wildlife overpass. The Bow Valley Gap wildlife overpass is a roughly 200-foot-wide cap over a four-lane highway, topped with…

There was a moment when Snapchat looked like it was destined to be a relic in social media history, losing users and missing its own revenue forecasts. Not today. Snap, the app’s parent company, announced $1.51 billion in revenue as part of its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, November 5. That figure was a 10% jump year-over-year (YOY) and beat Wall Street’s prediction of $1.49 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. Snapchat beat Wall Street’s expected global daily active users (477 million versus 476 million) and global average revenue per user ($3.16 versus $3.13). Both figures were also an improvement YOY. Snap also announced a stock…

Shares in Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) are up a modest amount after the company announced yesterday that it has agreed to be purchased by private equity firm Sycamore Partners. As of the time of this writing, WBA shares are up under 7% to $11.33. Here’s what you need to know about the buyout and share movement. Walgreens is going private After years of financial struggles, publicly traded Walgreens announced yesterday that it has accepted a deal from private equity firm Sycamore Partners to be bought and taken private. Rumors of the deal were first reported earlier this week. Under the agreement, Sycamore will take the pharmacy chain privat…

Pope Francis’ funeral mass will be held on Saturday morning in St. Peter’s Square, a large plaza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. Francis’ funeral will take place six days after he died of a stroke and heart failure at age 88. It comes after three days of public viewing at St. Peter’s Basilica, where tens of thousands of people flocked to pay their respects to the first Latin American pope. After the mass, the pope’s coffin will be taken to Rome and entombed at St. Mary Major Basilica, near his favorite Madonna icon, making him the first pope to be buried outside of the Vatican in over a century, according to NPR. (Leo XIII was the last pope burie…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Before there was Apple, Medtronic, or Tesla, there was General Electric (GE). Created in 1892 from the combination of Thomas Edison’s Edison General Electric and two other competitors, the American conglomerate was once the most powerful, valuable, and inventive company in the world. “At …

You’ve probably heard AI is coming for many of our jobs. But how would you feel about getting a medical diagnosis from an AI doctor? Would you trust a verdict delivered by an AI judge? A new study of 10,000 people in 20 countries, including the United States, India, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and China, found when it comes to artificial intelligence replacing human jobs, people are most concerned about AI replacing doctors and judges, and least concerned about AI replacing journalists. The findings, published in American Psychologist by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, focused on the study participants’ attitudes to AI taking over six occupations: doctors…

Nokia Bell Labs has a long, storied history of producing Nobel Prize winners, creating innovative new technologies, and bolstering critical infrastructure that underlies most of the devices we all use every day. This week, it held a special event at its Murray Hill, New Jersey campus to celebrate its 100th anniversary, featuring appearances by politicians like New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, business leaders, and even a robot named “Porcupine.” Fast Company was able to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the complex, and several of the projects and laboratories that are working on new and advancing technologies—labs that are typically shut away from the public eye. Nokia a…

Starbucks competitor Dutch Bros saw its stock price rise in premarket trading on Friday after the coffee chain posted double-digit revenue growth in its most recent quarter. However, shares were flat as of late morning, with the stock (NYSE: BROS) hovering at just over $50 a share. Perhaps even more important for the stock—and for those investors who are long on it—is the coffee chain’s announcement that it is on track to nearly double its store footprint by 2029. Here’s what you need to know. Dutch Bros has a record Q4 2025 Dutch Bros was founded in 1992, but it’s only in recent years that the coffee chain started to become a household name, thanks to its ev…

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Disruption has become our new workplace reality. For managers, navigating change is an everyday responsibility, not an occasional responsibility. Gallup reports that 72% of employees recently experienced workplace disruptions, and nearly a third of leaders experienced extensive disruptions. Today, no disruption is as prevalent as the rise of artificial intelligence. Yes, as sophisticated as AI migh…

The hottest parties right now are happening in the metaverse. VRChat, a video-game-like social platform hosted in virtual reality, saw more than 130,000 people in attendance on New Year’s Day 2025, according to a VR culture blog. Before 2020, VRChat had hardly seen more than 20,000 concurrent users, according to Wired. While virtual clubbing began in the early 2000s on platforms like Second Life, VRChat, and AltspaceVR, the COVID-19 lockdowns brought a new wave of virtual ravers as traditional nightclubs closed and people looked for online alternatives. Today, VR clubbers line up each week for dozens of fully immersive virtual parties hosted across the U.S., Europ…

Paula Davis is the founder and CEO of the Stress & Resilience Institute. She is a globally recognized expert and adviser regarding burnout prevention at work and building resilient teams. Previously, she practiced law, and then during her postgraduate training for her psychology master’s degree, she was selected to be part of the University of Pennsylvania’s faculty teaching resilience skills to soldiers for the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program. What’s the big idea? To increase well-being, motivation, engagement, resilience, or the many words that describe thriving teams, we must understand that leadership behaviors drive employee experie…

Ignaz Semmelweis was a physician working in a maternity ward in the 1840s. He noticed something disturbing: women giving birth in the ward staffed by doctors and medical students died from “childbed fever” at rates of 10-35%, while a nearby ward staffed by midwives had death rates under 4%. The key difference was that doctors were coming straight from performing autopsies to delivering babies, without washing their hands. They would dissect cadavers in the morning, then examine pregnant women in the afternoon with just a quick rinse. In 1847, Semmelweis instituted a policy requiring doctors to wash their hands with a chlorine solution between the autopsy room and the …

The acting chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday he has directed staff to look at ways to abandon a plan that would have widened the definition of alternative trading systems to include some cryptocurrency firms. The SEC in 2022 proposed requiring some crypto firms to register as alternative trading systems, drawing criticism from the sector in the face of potentially heightened oversight and additional rules. Acting Chairman Mark Uyeda told an audience of bankers he has instructed staff to look at ways to abandon that portion of the plan, which has yet to be finalized. It was an expansion of an earlier effort aimed at trading of Trea…

To ban or not to ban cellphones in school, that is the perennial question facing parents and educators across the country. A new study published in The Lancet lends credence to the latter camp, finding no evidence that restricting student access to cellphones improved either well-being or grades in reading and math. The study examined 30 schools in the U.K., 20 of which restricted cellphones in some capacity, 10 which did not. “In restrictive schools, phones were not allowed to be used during the school day for recreational purposes, and were required to be kept off inside bags, stored in lockers, kept in a pouch, handed into the school reception, or phones were…

In an era where trust is currency and sustainability is a non-negotiable, shoppers are demanding more than just green labels and vague promises. They want proof. Enter digital product passports (DPPs), a game-changing tool that gives consumers instant access to a product’s entire journey, from materials sourcing to sustainability credentials. That means, whether they’re buying a pair of running shoes or the latest smartphone, DPPs are making it easier to for them to shop smarter, cut through greenwashing, and support brands that truly walk the talk. The future of shopping is transparent Consumers often wonder where their clothes were made, how much carbon their…

When Calvin McDonald was appointed CEO of Lululemon in 2018, the activewear brand was a cult brand. But it had the potential to become a retail giant. Chip Wilson founded Lululemon in Vancouver in 1998 as a yoga brand. When he left the CEO role in 2005, the company was generating $80 million a year. In the decade that followed, Lululemon grew steadily, boosted by the broader athleisure trend. But it was McDonald—who previously spent five years delivering double-digit growth as CEO of Sephora Americas—who transformed Lululemon into one of the biggest clothing companies in the world. Over the course of his seven-year tenure, McDonald more than tripled the company’s annua…

After federal funding for renewables evaporated this year, the future path of the energy sector has been unclear. But even in uncertain times, companies are advancing the technology needed to push for a clean-energy transition—while also accommodating for a new grid that needs to keep up with the huge power demands of the wave of data centers coming online. From new battery tech to all-day solar power to better ways to track emissions and more, these innovations can help see the sector through this precarious period. Exowatt For generating solar power even when the sun isn’t shining Exowatt’s P3 unit is a power plant in a 40-foot-long shipping container. The unit uses so…

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Despite the popular image of a strong leader as one who makes bold decisions and sticks with them, great leadership actually requires adapting to changing circumstances. A course of action that seemed like a great idea on one day may be a clear losing proposition when additional information becomes available. A complexity with changing your mind as a leader is that your previous choices and plans affect a number of other people’s lives. People who work for you are currently working to implement the plan you laid out. Others, like clients or suppliers, may be planning future e…