ResidentialBusiness

Allegation comes as utility waits for Court of Appeal decision over £3bn emergency loanView the full article

Top executives collectively received $126.5mn for their work in 2024 as overall employee remuneration rose more modestly View the full article

A federal judge in Maryland ruled against the City of Baltimore's attempt to block cuts to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau program funding on procedural grounds. View the full article

Qatar will provide natural gas supplies to Syria with the aim of generating 400 megawatts of electricity a day, in a measure to help address the war-battered country’s severe electricity shortages, Syrian state-run news agency SANA reported Friday. Syria’s interim Minister of Electricity Omar Shaqrouq said the Qatari supplies are expected to increase the daily state-provided electricity supply from two to four hours per day. Under the deal, Qatar will send two million cubic meters of natural gas a day to the Deir Ali power station, south of Damascus, via a pipeline passing through Jordan. Qatar’s state-run news agency said that the initiative was part of an agreement between the Qatar Fund for Development and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of Jordan in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program and “aims to address the country’s severe shortage in electricity production and enhance its infrastructure.” Syria’s economy and infrastructure, including electricity production, has been devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war and crushing Western sanctions imposed on the government of former President Bashar Assad. Those who can afford it rely on solar power and private generators to make up for the meager state power supply, while others remain most of the day without power. Since Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December, the country’s new rulers have struggled to consolidate control over territory that was divided into de facto ministates during the war and to begin the process of reconstruction. The United Nations in 2017 estimated that it would cost at least $250 billion to rebuild Syria, while experts say that number could reach at least $400 billion. The United States remains circumspect about the interim government and current President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of the Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Washington designates HTS as a terrorist organization and has been reluctant to lift sanctions. In January, however, the U.S. eased some restrictions, issuing a six-month general license that authorizes certain transactions with the Syrian government, including some energy sales and incidental transactions. View the full article

Too many of this government’s proposals introduce the kind of regulation the PM professes to hateView the full article

The White House’s mishmash of radical policies is sapping confidence in America View the full article

We all know influencing can pay well—but just how well? Philadelphia-based influencer Brandon Edelman, known online as @bran_flakezz, recently went viral on TikTok after revealing he made $768,000 last year, primarily from brand partnerships and creator funds. After taxes and expenses, he pocketed net earnings of just over $300,000. Known for his self-described “feral party content,” Edelman discussed his TikTok career on Your Rich BFF, a finance podcast hosted by Vivian Tu. “So $768,000 is the top number, 20 percent of that goes to management, so we’re down to, like, what $550k? From $550k, $200,000 of that goes to taxes,” Edelman said. “Just the way it goes. Now we’re down to $330k. After the $330k, you have your expenses. I have a team now, so it’s like, lawyer, accountant, therapist . . . it’s insane.” After doing the math, the 28-year-old revealed he wound up pocketing, “probably about $300,000”—still a far cry from his previous $40,000 salary working in the fashion industry. “I grew up, literally, dirt poor, so this is insane,” he told Tu. “My parents made enough money to put food on the table, but they didn’t have savings. We lived paycheck to paycheck. I knew when I grew up, I wanted to be more financially secure.” (Fast Company has reached out to Edelman for comment.) Edelman’s transparency has encouraged a wave of salary disclosures across social media. Still, Edelman is the exception—not the rule. In 2023, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less, according to a 2024 report by the Wall Street Journal, pointing to figures from NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency. Just 13% made upwards of $100,000. There’s also the racial pay gap to account for. Influencers like @aliyahsinterlude and @claaaarke joined the conversation on TikTok, addressing pay disparities and the different expectations put upon creators of color in the industry. A 2024 report from SevenSix Agency, a British influencer marketing and talent management agency, revealed stark pay disparities based on ethnicity, with white influencers earning up to 50% more than their BAME counterparts. For example, when it comes to Instagram Reels, white influencers earn an average of £1,637.62 ($2,100.92) per post, while Black influencers make £1,080.41 ($1,386.07). South Asian influencers average £1,135.00 ($1,456.10), Southeast Asian influencers £700.63 ($898.85), and East Asian influencers £1,009.55 ($1,295.16). Edelman acknowledged this pay disparity in a follow-up video on his TikTok page. “This is why salary transparency is important,” he explained. “In every industry, in every walk of life. We don’t know what we don’t know. For us to be able to have open conversations about what we are making gives us the edge to then negotiate what we are actually worth.” View the full article

If you own a pair of AirPods, you might have quite the futuristic upgrade arriving later this year. That is, unless you're a former Google customer—otherwise this will seem a bit like old news. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is working on a live translation feature for AirPods with the release of iOS 19. Gurman's sources appear to be keeping as quiet as possible, as the feature is still quite secret, so it's not clear exactly which AirPods models are going to be compatible with this feature, should it arrive with the update. But seeing as most new AirPods features seem to hit the second-gen AirPods Pro these days, my guess would be those buds—maybe AirPods 4, if Apple is feeling generous. (I hope AirPods Max would be so lucky.) Gurman's sources did share how the feature will roughly work: When someone is speaking to you in another language, your AirPods will translate their words into your target language. Then, when you start to speak in reply, your iPhone will translate back into the other speaker's language and read those words out loud. Apple is not the first company to release a feature like this. In fact, Google's Pixel Buds have had live translation for years now through "Conversation" mode in the Translate app. If you have the proper buds and an Android phone, you can open the Translate app, and ask your Pixel Buds to help you translate something in another language. This will automatically kick on Conversation mode: When the other party responds, your Pixel Buds will play the translation in your ear for you. You don't need the Pixel Buds for Conversation mode to work, of course. You can rely on your phone's speaker to achieve the same result. But it's cool that you can be the one to hear the translation in your ear, and understand what the other person was saying. It's not clear from Gurman's limited information whether Apple's feature will work this way via its proprietary Translate app. The fact that your iPhone will speak its translation of your side of the conversation sounds like how Google handles this feature, so it does seem likely that you'll need the Translate app open in order for your AirPods to translate the other party's words, as well. Apple's app has its own Conversation mode too, so, like on Android, you can already have a live translation experience on iPhone. Give it a try if you want a taste of what the experience might be like once (or if) it arrives on AirPods. Apple will likely reveal iOS 19 and all of its new features in June at WWDC. The company will then spend the summer beta testing the software, before releasing it to compatible iPhones sometime in the fall. View the full article

Moscow has little reason to stop fighting unless it achieves its goals through other meansView the full article

Idea of displacing Palestinian population has been widely opposed, including by countries being approachedView the full article

The government recently shut down the program that would mail four free COVID tests to anyone who requested them, but a lesser-known program for community groups is still running. If you have a plan to distribute tests for free, you can request them by the hundreds. Individual COVID tests are no longer available by mail for freeJust to bring everyone up to speed: The government program that sent free COVID tests through covidtests.gov is not currently taking orders. A message on that page states that “Tests ordered before 8:00 PM EDT, Sunday, March 9, 2025, will be shipped.” This is the program that would send a package of four tests, per household, per round of the program. There were several rounds, the last one beginning in September 2024. There’s no indication of whether the program may resume at some later date. Some news articles had stated or speculated that the government’s stockpile of COVID tests was going to be destroyed, but so far there has been no confirmation that any usable tests are being destroyed. If you, personally, need a free test, you can try these locators to find places that provide government-funded COVID tests: HRSA health center locator Test-to-treat locations ICATT testing locations (free if you are uninsured and have been exposed to COVID) Community groups can request bulk orders of COVID tests for freeWhile the program for individuals has shut down, a lesser-known one for community groups is still going strong. There isn’t an official government website that explains the program or provides an order form, but mutual aid groups have been passing around a spreadsheet and instructions for requesting tests from a government email address. For example, this Instagram post from Clean Air KC includes several comments from groups who placed successful orders and are sharing information about the brands, expiration dates, and even the size of the boxes they come in. Reportedly, the minimum order is 300 tests. Clean Air KC has successfully placed orders of 3,000 tests, and a person from that group also showed me a thank-you note from someone who used their information about the program to place an order of, and receive, 360 tests. How to request free COVID tests in bulkOfficially, the way to get information about this program is by emailing tdx@hhs.gov. I didn’t get a response when I reached out to that address, but I did hear back from the media contact for the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which maintains COVID test stockpiles. They confirmed today (March 14, 2025) that the program is still running, and that any community group with a plan to distribute the tests for free “can request a one-time or recurring shipment of 400 over-the-counter tests for free distribution.” It's unclear if 400 is a new minimum, or just a recommended amount. My contact at Clean Air KC said that they placed an order for 3,000 this week, after the USPS individual test program shut down, and received confirmation that the requested tests are on the way. To order tests, send an email to tdx@hhs.gov with the following information: The number of tests you’re requesting The address to send them to Contact information for the person receiving the tests The name or purpose of your group Food banks, libraries, faith based organizations and others can request tests, but so can informal groups so long as they intend to distribute the tests for free. You cannot resell tests received through this program. Groups have been using this spreadsheet as an order form, although it’s not clear if the spreadsheet is strictly necessary. Older web pages from nursing home organizations (like this one) describe a similar program that required requesters to be long term care facilities with CLIA certification or a CLIA waiver, but this appears to be no longer necessary. ASPR confirmed to me that “any organization” that agrees to distribute the tests for free can order them. View the full article

In his February 2025 cover story for The Atlantic, journalist Derek Thompson dubbed our current era “the anti-social century.” He isn’t wrong. According to our recent research, the U.S. is becoming a nation of homebodies. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we studied how people in the U.S. spent their time before, during, and after the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic did spur more Americans to stay home. But this trend didn’t start or end with the pandemic. We found that Americans were already spending more and more time at home and less and less time engaged in activities away from home stretching all the way back to at least 2003. And if you thought the end of lockdowns and the spread of vaccines led to a revival of partying and playing sports and dining out, you would be mistaken. The pandemic, it turns out, mostly accelerated ongoing trends. All of this has major implications for traffic, public transit, real estate, the workplace, socializing, and mental health. Life inside The trend of staying home is not new. There was a steady decline in out-of-home activities in the two decades leading up to the pandemic. Compared with 2003, Americans in 2019 spent nearly 30 minutes less per day on out-of-home activities and eight fewer minutes a day traveling. There could be any number of reasons for this shift, but advances in technology, whether it’s smartphones, streaming services, or social media, are likely culprits. You can video chat with a friend rather than meeting them for coffee; order groceries through an app instead of venturing to the supermarket; and stream a movie instead of seeing it in a theater. Of course, there was a sharp decline in out-of-home activities during the pandemic, which dramatically accelerated many of these stay-at-home trends. Outside of travel, time spent on out-of-home activities fell by over an hour per day, on average, from 332 minutes in 2019 to 271 minutes in 2021. Travel, excluding air travel, fell from 69 to 54 minutes per day over the same period. But even after the pandemic lockdowns were lifted, out-of-home activities and travel through 2023 remained substantially depressed, far below 2019 levels. There was a dramatic increase in remote work, online shopping, time spent using digital entertainment, such as streaming and gaming, and even time spent sleeping. Time spent outside of the home has rebounded since the pandemic, but only slightly. There was hardly any recovery of out-of-home activities from 2022 to 2023, meaning 2023 out-of-home activities and travel were still far below 2019 levels. On the whole, Americans are spending nearly 1.5 hours less outside their homes in 2023 than they did in 2003. While hours worked from home in 2022 were less than half of what they were in 2021, they’re still about five times what they were ahead of the pandemic. Despite this, only about one-quarter of the overall travel time reduction is due to less commuting. The rest reflects other kinds of travel, for activities such as shopping and socializing. Ripple effects This shift has already had consequences. With Americans spending more time working, playing and shopping from home, demand for office and retail space has fallen. While there have been some calls by major employers for workers to spend more time in the office, research suggests that working from home in the U.S. held steady between early 2023 and early 2025 at about 25% of paid work days. As a result, surplus office space may need to be repurposed as housing and for other uses. There are advantages to working and playing at home, such as avoiding travel stress and expenses. But it has also boosted demand for extra space in apartments and houses, as people spend more time under their own roof. It has changed travel during the traditional morning – and, especially, afternoon – peak periods, spreading traffic more evenly throughout the day but contributing to significant public transit ridership losses. Meanwhile, more package and food delivery drivers are competing with parked cars and bus and bike lanes for curb space. Perhaps most importantly, spending less time out and about in the world has sobering implications for Americans well beyond real estate and transportation systems. Research we’re currently conducting suggests that more time spent at home has dovetailed with more time spent alone. Suffice it to say, this makes loneliness, which stems from a lack of meaningful connections, a more common occurrence. Loneliness and social isolation are associated with increased risk for early mortality. Because hunkering down appears to be the new norm, we think it’s all the more important for policymakers and everyday people to find ways to cultivate connections and community in the shrinking time they do spend outside of the home. Brian D. Taylor is a professor of urban planning and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles; Eric Morris is a professor of city and regional planning at Clemson University, and Sam Speroni is a PhD student in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Netflix's streaming era began way back in 2007, right around the time the company had delivered its billionth DVD by mail (a copy of Babel to a woman in Texas). That’s the year when the company began development of an app that would allow you to watch video-on-demand content on your actual TV, rather than in a window on your PC via Internet Explorer—or whatever the hell browser you happened to be using during the George W. Bush administration. Internet speeds and interest built and, by 2011, the company had moved fully away from its DVD-by-mail business as streaming took on a life of its own. While distribution rights for streaming content were, and remain, wildly different than for physical copies, the potential of streaming was obvious: Netflix would offer something like the breadth and depth of its DVD library, minus the "mailing things back and forth" part. There was a value proposition there, too: As cable prices skyrocketed and we were all forced to pay for endless channels that we mostly didn’t watch, Netflix (and Hulu, which grew more slowly, but debuted around the same time), the promise of a vast library of movies to watch whenever you wanted was irresistible—and cheap: In 2011, you could get an all-streaming subscription for about $8 a month. Which was a good deal, even during the Obama administration. Despite a few caveats—you might've needed to bump your internet connection to a higher, pricier bandwidth, and you still needed a separate DVD subscription to watch some older movies, it seemed like the future was in sight, filled with endless possibilities. A decade and a half later, we all know that future was a lie—especially if you're a movie lover. The rise of "streaming originals"Netflix’s first foray into original programming was a straight-to-series order for the Kevin Spacey-led, David Fincher-produced political thriller House of Cards, which debuted in 2013. The decision to pursue the show—and to outbid every traditional cable and broadcast network for it—was almost entirely data-driven, and a harbinger for what would come: Netflix saw that viewers liked Kevin Spacey (it was a different era, obviously), and David Fincher movies! House of Cards had both. Data has always been the Holy Grail of entertainment programming, but Netflix had data that was better, more specific, and more current than any focus group could hope to provide. Gone were the days of extrapolating from surveys—Netflix knew who was watching what and when with unheard-of specificity, and thus the streamer’s ability to give people what they want would become unprecedented. It would also lead them to focus more on developing their own proprietary series and films, rather than negotiating massive licensing deals for stuff other studios owned. And the deals were massive—Netflix would spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to fill its servers with "content." But as time went on, and other studios launched their own streaming services, chasing cash they used to make selling movies to cable, Netflix's library started to shrink, going from 11,000 titles in 2015 to just 6,000 by 2022. The golden age of streamingStill, it was hard to complain too much when those Netflix rivals seemed willing to do anything to compete. Whereas Disney once kept tight control over its library, placing films into "the Disney Vault" so it could rerelease them to theaters and on video every decade or so, the launch of Disney+ in March 2020 saw the studio offering up hundreds of its classic films at once—a treat for animation buffs and a boon to parents who no longer had to endure their kids watching the same handful of DVDs on repeat (in theory, anyway). Not to be outdone, when Warner Bros. launched what was then known as HBO Max in May 2020, it seemed like a pandemic-era gift: The studio went all-in on its massive catalogue—one of the largest and most enviable in Hollywood, encompassing classic films, more recent blockbusters, beloved animation, and shows culled from its array of cable networks. Alongside big gets—like securing the rights to all of the films from Japan's revered Studio Ghibli, something its cranky co-founder Hayao Miyazaki swore would never happen—Warner Bros. leaned into its history, loading the service with hundreds of classics from across the decades. For a while, perusing the lists of films coming to these services every month was a delight—sure, no one service offered every movie, but there was a decent chance what you wanted to watch was available somewhere, and monthly subscriptions were cheap enough that most people subscribed to a few of them. But this golden age of streaming proved to be short-lived. Shrinkflation comes for streamingEven during this period of explosive growth, streamers started to follow the Netflix model of investing more money in original content, and leaving catalogue as an afterthought. It's hard to build buzz around movies that are 50, 20, or even a decade old, after all, when you could instead promote something shiny and new. Still, the reckoning didn't truly come until 2022, when inflationary pressures, including rising interest rates, coupled with a surprising loss of subscribers, caused Netflix's stock value to crater, dropping from more than $600 to less than $200 over the course of a few months. Suddenly, every streaming service seemed concerned about the bottom line—and it seems the easiest way to cut costs, when it comes to digital offerings, is to reduce your library. Over the course of the next year, embattled entertainment companies announced plans to begin removing vast quantities of older content from their services—often even as they raised prices. Like spending more money for a smaller bag of chips at the grocery store, shrinkflation came for streaming too. Where did all those movies go?Remember the data I mentioned earlier? The downside is that the numbers apparently showed streamers that customers don't care that much about older movies—or at least, not enough about any one movie for a lack of them to move the needle when it comes to subscriptions. So why give people free access to stuff most wouldn't watch when you could instead make a little money? While some of these films have gone to ad-supported services like The Roku Channel and Tubi, watching a movie with a bunch of ad breaks is no cinephile's dream. Enter digital rentals: For five years I've been writing streaming guides for Lifehacker, suggesting movies you can watch based on your mood or to fit a particular theme. And, anecdotally but undeniably, these film lists are increasingly less about "streaming" and more about reminding you of things you can pay to rent. Whereas I used to be able to point you to a few dozen films spread across the major services, these days my recommendations tend to include a lot more rentals. Broad categories of films, usually anything more than a decade old, aren’t typically included with any streaming service. If you want to watch them, you're going to have to pony up around $4 for a digital rental. This holds true no matter how beloved the movie: As of this writing, the likes of Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, All About Eve, The Shining, Back to the Future, Malcolm X, and The Iron Giant are all rental-only, meaning you have to pay extra on top of whatever streaming fees you’re already paying. That list of movies is entirely off the top of my head—I looked them up based on my confidence that, being older than a decade or two, they would only be available for a fee. Netflix still has a classic movies section, but it's pretty anemic. While the rotation changes, the oldest movie currently in the lineup is 1957’s An Affair to Remember—not ancient by classic film standards, but certainly venerable. It’s tagged as “Leaving Soon.” Beyond that, there are but a dozen movies from the 1970s (almost all of them Bollywood classics), and a few more than that from the 1980s and ‘90s. Of the dozen or so 1980s movies offered, several are marked as “Leaving Soon,” including The Karate Kid films. (They do have a James Garner movie from 1984 that I’ve never heard of called Tank, if you have a couple of hours to kill.) New content has pushed classic movies to the backI’m picking on Netflix here, with its relentless focus on original “content” and newer releases that sees the streamer churning through shows and movies, often before they have time to register. But the picture at Hulu, Paramount+, MGM+, etc. is roughly the same, even if those others have slightly better libraries of current-ish movies. Max remains a bright spot, with a reasonably well-curated selection of movies dating back to the silent era—but even that has shrunk. The streamer used to prominently feature its association with classic-movie network TCM as its own category. It’s still there, but now you have to dig. No one’s tracking exact month-to-month numbers of older (meaning, sigh, the ‘90s or earlier) movies included in streaming, but, again, anecdotally: whenever possible, I try to recommend movies from a cross-section of streaming services. I figure it’s nice if any list of suggestions includes options for everyone, and I know that for me, personally, that extra rental price (on top of all the streaming fees) is a big barrier—no matter how much I want to see a particular movie. And that's a lot harder than it used to be. A culture of relentless, exhausting new-ness has evolved around streaming, one in which shows and movies are considered out of date once the first-week drop window has passed. So we're left with a (very) limited selection of old movies, or we're stuck with rental fees on top of streaming charges. It's hard out there for a cinephile. The best streamers for movie fansMaxThough I still mourn the loss of HBO Max, Max—the app that replaced it—is still the mainstream streamer with the best classic film library, including a broad range of Warner Bros. stuff, from Casablanca to Goodfellas to Lord of the Rings; it includes popular favorites alongside some more artsy fare, including those Studio Ghibli films. A recent partnership with A24 films has also made it the destination of choice for the modern cinephile crowd. Cost: starting at $9.99/month with ads, or $99.99/year. The Criterion ChannelAn offshoot of boutique film distributor Janus Films, The Criterion Collection has billed itself as a purveyor of "important classic and contemporary films" for decades. The Criterion Channel streaming service is, thus, unsurprisingly the destination of choice for anyone who wants to watch movies older than the Reagan administration. It has a rotating library of a couple of thousand films, including many foreign and classic American films. You may never heard of many of them, which could be either a pro or a con, but it’s not all snooty art films. Last year, for example, the Channel ran a month of Razzie-nominated movies including Showgirls, Gigli, The Blair Witch Project, and even Freddy Got Fingered. Cost: $10.99/month or $99.99/year. MubiAnother boutique streamer, Mubi is similar in some ways to The Criterion Channel, but with a key difference: Since Mubi has more of a focus on its role as a distributor of newer films (including recent Oscar nominee The Substance), the catalog tends to be a bit newer, and a bit smaller, but with a steady and smartly curated rotation. Cost: $14.99/month or $119.88/year. TCM (Turner Classic Movies)TCM is the gold standard in classic film, particularly when it comes to Hollywood, and the curation is solid. TCM has introduced me to more classic films that I otherwise never might have heard of than any other service, but finding it is more complicated. Max has a limited selection of TCM-branded films but, to get the full experience, including “live” movies, interviews, host segments, etc., you need to either suck it up and subscribe to cable, or a rough equivalent: YouTube TV offers TCM as part of its lineup, including on-demand content, as do Hulu with Live TV and Sling TV. Sticker shock with these options is real, however. Cost: Sling TV: starts at $45.99/month, YouTube TV: starts at $82.99 per month; Hulu+Live TV starts at $82.99/month. View the full article

Microsoft has announced that it's pulling the old Microsoft Remote Desktop tool that you could get in the Microsoft Store. The company is advising users to move over to the shiny new Windows App instead, which takes care of a lot of the same functions—including connecting to PCs remotely, and accessing Windows 365 computers in the cloud. The Windows App provides several improvements over Microsoft Remote Desktop, Microsoft says, such as multi-monitor support, dynamic display resolutions, customizable home screens, and a more unified interface. It's designed so you can access the same Windows machines remotely across multiple devices. If you're a user of Microsoft Remote Desktop, you need to move over by Tuesday, May 27. However, it's not quite as easy as one app fully and completely replacing another—Microsoft has other similar tools available as well, and there are currently some caveats to using the Windows App. What is and isn't changingMicrosoft is retiring a single, specific utility here: Microsoft Remote Desktop in the Microsoft Store. The Windows App is essentially its new and modern replacement. However, while the Windows App does cover most of what Microsoft Remote Desktop did, it doesn't cover everything on every platform. What isn't going away is the Remote Desktop Connection feature that's included in Windows: You can still use this as normal. You can also still download and use the more advanced Remote Desktop client for Windows tool, which is aimed at IT administrators and professionals, and comes with features suitable for organizations. The Microsoft Remote Desktop app is being retired. Credit: Microsoft Confused yet? While the Windows App for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android does allow remote desktop connections at the time of writing, the Windows App for Windows doesn't. For Windows-to-Windows connections, Microsoft recommends using built-in Remote Desktop Connection, "until support for this connection type is available in Windows App"—though it doesn't say when that support is going to roll out. The Windows App is a good idea, in theory, but it's still a work in progress: Microsoft even has an official known issues and limitations page that you should check if you're moving over from the Microsoft Remote Desktop program (the one that's being retired). It also requires a work or school Microsoft account, so it's not something individual users can access (at least not for now). How to set up remote connectionsYou can check out our full guide to the Windows App for more details on what this software package is and what it can do, but if you're moving over from Microsoft Remote Desktop, then you're likely to be most interested in setting up remote PC connections. You can do this by clicking the + (plus) button in the top-right corner of the Devices tab, then choosing Add PC from the list. You then need to provide a host name or IP address for the computer you're connecting to, as well as setting up the rest of the connection configuration—including how the remote PC is displayed on screen, and which folders are shared with the local PC. When all that's done, click Add to put the computer on your Devices screen, then double-click its thumbnails to establish the connection. The new Windows App, on Windows. Credit: Lifehacker There's plenty more to the Windows App as well, including the ability to stream Windows machines running on the Windows 365 platform in the cloud. This is a feature that's aimed at business and organization use, though, and to date Microsoft hasn't said anything about letting ordinary consumers run Windows from the cloud. If you're connecting to a Windows PC from a Windows PC, then you need to use the old-school method, which is Remote Desktop Connection. First, you need to set up the computer you want to connect to, which must be running a Pro version of Windows. From Settings, choose System and Remote Desktop, then turn on the feature and make a note of the PC name displayed on screen. The old Remote Desktop Connection tool lives on. Credit: Lifehacker Over on the computer you're connecting from, type "remote desktop connection" into the search box on the taskbar, then choose the Remote Desktop Connection app when it appears. You'll be prompted for the PC name that was displayed on the other machine, and then the connection is established. It's all a bit patchy, with multiple tools offering slightly different feature sets and at different stages in their development, but the Windows App is clearly going to be the future—eventually. If you find Microsoft's approach to remote desktop access too confusing, there are plenty of third-party options around as well—including TeamViewer and Chrome Remote Desktop. View the full article

Gucci announced Thursday that the Balenciaga artistic director Demna will take over the creative direction of the Italian luxury fashion house, starting in July. Gucci and its French parent Kering said in a statement that Demna “has redefined modern luxury, earning global recognition and cementing his authority on the industry.” Demna, who goes by one name, has been at Kering-owned Balenciaga for a decade. He brings with him the title of artistic director. “I am truly excited to join the Gucci family,” he said in a statement. “It is an honor to contribute to a house that I deeply respect and have long admired.” Demna showed his latest and last Balenciaga ready-to-wear collection four days ago in Paris, dialing down the theatrics for a more saleable vision. The announcement ends speculation about Gucci’s creative future after Sabato De Sarno’s sudden exit just 2 1/2 weeks before the presentation of the Fall-Winter 2025-26 collection during Milan Fashion Week last month. De Sarno took over from Alessandro Michele, who revolutionized Gucci with gender-fluid, eclectic and romantic collections that rewrote the brand’s codes. De Sarno’s more essential collections failed to excite consumers. View the full article

Thirty-eight TD Bank locations and 24 Flagstar branches are set to shut down. Both banks are coming out of tumultuous periods. View the full article

Twelve people were taken to hospitals after an American Airlines plane landed at Denver International Airport on Thursday and caught fire, prompting slides to be deployed so passengers could evacuate quickly. All of the people transported to hospitals had minor injuries, according to a post on the social platform X by Denver International Airport. Flight 1006, which was headed from the Colorado Springs Airport to Dallas Fort Worth, diverted to Denver and landed safely around 5:15 p.m. after the crew reported engine vibrations, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. While taxiing to the gate, an engine on the Boeing 737-800 caught fire, the FAA added. Photos and videos posted by news outlets showed passengers standing on a plane’s wing as smoke surrounded the aircraft. The FAA said passengers exited using the slides. American said in a statement that the flight experienced an engine-related issue after taxiing to the gate. There was no immediate clarification on exactly when the plane caught fire. The 172 passengers and six crew members were taken to the terminal, airline officials said. “We thank our crew members, DEN team and first responders for their quick and decisive action with the safety of everyone on board and on the ground as the priority,” American said. Firefighters put out the blaze by the evening, an airport spokesperson told media outlets. The FAA said it will investigate. The country has seen a recent spate of aviation disasters and close calls stoking fears about air travel, though flying remains a very safe mode of transport. Recent on-the-ground incidents have included a plane that crashed and flipped over upon landing in Toronto and a Japan Airlines plane that clipped a parked Delta plane while it was taxiing at the Seattle airport. View the full article

As Trevor Murphy pulls up to his dad’s 20-acre (8-hectare) grove in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, he points to the cookie-cutter, one-story homes encroaching on the orange trees from all sides. “At some point, this isn’t going to be an orange grove anymore,” Murphy, a third-generation grower, says as he gazes at the rows of trees in Lake Wales, Florida. “You look around here, and it’s all houses, and that’s going to happen here.” Polk County, which includes Lake Wales, contains more acres of citrus than any other county in Florida. And in 2023, more people moved to Polk County than any other county in the country. Hit in recent years by hurricanes and citrus greening disease, which slowly kills the trees, many growers are making the difficult decision to sell orange groves that have been in their families for generations to developers building homes to house the growing population. Others, like Murphy, are sticking it out, hoping to survive until a bug-free tree or other options arrive to repel the disease or treat the trees. Mounting concerns When Hurricane Irma blasted through the state’s orange belt in 2017, Florida’s signature crop already had been on a downward spiral for two decades because of the greening disease. Next came a major freeze and two more hurricanes in 2022, followed by two hurricanes last year. A tree that loses branches and foliage in a hurricane can take three years to recover, Murphy said. Those catastrophes contributed to a 90% decline in orange production over the past two decades. Citrus groves in Florida, which covered more than 832,00 acres (336,698 hectares) at the turn of the century, populated scarcely 275,000 acres (111,288 hectares) last year, and California has eclipsed Florida as the nation’s leading citrus producer. “Losing the citrus industry is not an option. This industry is … so ingrained in Florida. Citrus is synonymous with Florida,” Matt Joyner, CEO of trade association Florida Citrus Mutual told Florida lawmakers recently. Nevertheless, Alico Inc., one of Florida’s biggest growers, announced this year that it plans to wind down its citrus operations on more than 53,000 acres (21,000 hectares), saying its production has declined by almost three-quarters in a decade. That decision hurts processors, including Tropicana, which rely on Alico’s fruit to produce orange juice and must now operate at reduced capacity. Orange juice consumption in the U.S. has been declining for the past two decades, despite a small bump during the COVID-19 pandemic. A prominent growers group, the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, closed its doors last year. Location, location, location Pressure on citrus farming is also growing from one of the state’s other biggest industries: real estate. Florida expanded by more than 467,000 people last year to 23 million people, making it the third largest state in the nation. And more homes must be built to house that ever-growing population. Some prominent, multi-generational citrus families each have been putting hundreds of acres (hectares) of groves up for sale for millions of dollars, or as much as $25,000 an acre. Murphy owns several hundred acres (hectares) of groves and says he has no plans to abandon the industry, though last year he closed a citrus grove caretaking business that managed thousands of acres for other owners. However, he also has a real estate license, which is useful given the amount of land that is changing hands. He recently sold off acres in Polk County to a home developer, and has used that money to pay off debt and develop plans to replant thousands of trees in more productive groves. “I would like to think that we’re at the bottom, and we’re starting to climb back up that hill,” Murphy says. A bug-free tree A whole ecosystem of businesses dependent on Florida citrus is at risk if the crops fail, including 33,000 fulltime and part-time jobs and an economic impact of $6.8 billion in Florida alone. Besides growers, there are juice processors, grove caretakers, fertilizer sellers, packing houses, nurseries and candy manufacturers, all hoping for a fix for citrus greening disease. Tom Davidson, whose parents founded Davidson of Dundee Citrus Candy and Jelly Factory in Lake Wales in 1966, says the drop in citrus production has impacted what flavor jellies the business is able to produce and the prices it charges to customers. “We’re really hoping that the scientists can get this figured out so we can we can get back to what we did,” Davidson says. Researchers have been working for eight years on a genetically modified tree that can kill the tiny insects responsible for citrus greening. The process involves inserting a gene into a citrus tree that produces a protein that can kill baby Asian citrus psyllids by making holes in their guts, according to Lukasz Stelinski, an entomology professor at the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Citrus Research and Education Center. It could be at least three years before bug-resistant trees can be planted, leaving Florida growers looking for help from other technologies. They include planting trees inside protective screens and covering young trees with white bags to keep out the bugs, injecting trees with an antibiotic, and finding trees that have become resistant to greening through natural mutation and distributing them to other groves. “It’s kind of like being a Lions fan before the Detroit Lions started to win games,” Stelinski says. “I’m hoping that we are making that turnaround.” Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP. —Mike Schneider, Associated Press View the full article

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued a warning that more than a million taxpayers are still eligible to receive a share of more than $1 billion in refunds—but they need to act quickly. Here’s what you need to know. Over $1 billion in refunds still to be claimed The refunds are due to people who have yet to file their 2021 tax return. The IRS says the total potential value of the refunds still to be claimed is estimated to be $1,025,336,800. As many as 1,142,000 taxpayers are eligible for part of that payout and the median refund amount is estimated to be $781 per taxpayer, the agency says. That means half of the people who are due refunds will receive more than that amount and half less. The 2021 tax season was an especially chaotic one, as the COVID-19 pandemic had hindered both IRS operations and people’s ability file their taxes on time. The increased burden of pandemic-era stimulus checks, which fell on the IRS to distribute, added to the chaos. April 15 deadline to claim refund is fast approaching The average taxpayer’s 2021 tax return was due in 2022, but as of the IRS’s notification earlier this week, 1.1 million taxpayers still need to file that return. However, if they file the return later than three years after it is due, they will lose their right to claim any tax refunds due to them. “Under the law, taxpayers usually have three years to file and claim their tax refunds,” the IRS notes. “If they don’t file within three years, the money becomes the property of the U.S. Treasury.” And the three-year deadline for claiming tax refunds associated with a 2021 return is about to pass. That deadline is April 15, 2025—just one month and one day away from the time of this writing. The IRS also notes that these people may be missing out on more than just a refund of taxes paid or withheld during 2021. By not having filed their tax returns, they could also be missing out on other refunds, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which could be worth as much as $6,728 for those taxpayers with qualifying children. Refunds due across all 50 states The estimated $1.1 billion pot of refunds still due to taxpayers for the 2021 tax year includes people in every state, according to the IRS. The agency has broken down the estimated number of individuals still due the refund per state as well as the estimated median potential refund due. Full list: State-by-state breakdown of tax refunds still owed The state with the highest estimated number of individuals due a refund is Texas, with 102,200 individuals thought to be due for the refund. The median potential refund in Texas is $810. The state with the highest median potential refund due is New York, which has a potential refund due of $995 per individual. In New York, it is estimated that as many as 73,000 individuals are still due the refund. You can read the IRS’s full advice for claiming the refund due here. View the full article

If you’ve bought bottled water from Trader Joe’s, you’ll want to be aware of a recent recall published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). That’s because the recall involves water in glass bottles that present a laceration risk. In total, about 61,500 bottles are included in the recall. Here’s what you need to know. What is being recalled? The recall involves select lots of Gerolsteiner brand sparkling water sold at Trader Joe’s. The water was manufactured by Gerolsteiner Brunnen GmbH & Co. KG in Germany. Here are the details of the recalled product: Product name: Gerolsteiner 750ml Sparkling Water Bottles Lot numbers: 11/28/2024 L or 11/27/2024 L According to the CPSC notice, the recalled units were sold individually for about $3 per bottle and also sold in cases of 15 bottles. Around 61,500 bottles are thought to be impacted. The large glass bottles can be identified by the white, blue, and red label with the name “Gerolsteiner” on the front of it. The lot number of the bottle can be viewed on the lower part of the label. According to a separate notice on the Gerolsteiner website, the best-before dates on the products are December 2027. Why is the bottled water being recalled? The reason for the bottled water recall doesn’t have to do with the water itself. Instead the recall has been issued because there is a defect with the glass water bottle the sparkling water comes in. That bottle can crack, leading to a laceration hazard. While there is a risk to individuals handling the recalled bottles, the CPSC says that so far, no incidents or injuries have been reported. Where and when were the recalled bottled waters sold? The recalled bottled waters were sold at Trader Joe’s stores in 12 states between December 2024 and January 2025. Individual bottles retailed for about $3. The 12 states where the bottled water was sold are: Alabama Arkansas Colorado Florida Georgia Kansas Louisiana New Mexico Oklahoma South Carolina Tennessee Texas What do I do if I have the recalled bottled water? If you have the recalled bottled water, you should immediately stop using the bottles, says the CPSC. Instead, you should return the bottles to their place of purchase. The CPSC notice notes that you will not need to have your proof of purchase but that the bottle of the product is required in order to receive a refund, which may be in the form of credit or cash. View the full article

From security and privacy concerns to good old-fashioned cringe, there are all kinds of reasons you might want to delete your old social media posts. And there are plenty of tools for the job out there. The problem: most tend to focus on one or two social media networks. Redact, however, is a paid tool with support for deleting posts on 28 different services. You can use it to scan for old posts and choose what to delete, or you can search for posts that mention specific topics. It can also be used to delete posts on a schedule—this is perfect if, for example, you wanted to delete all Bluesky posts a month after you post them. It's a lot of power, basically, and it runs locally on your computer, meaning you're in control. The services supported are broad, including retro social networks you haven't thought about in ages alongside common work tools. The complete list of supported networks is Bluesky, Bumble, Deviantart, Discord, Disqus, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Gyazo, email (anything that supports IMAP), Imgur, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Medium, MyAnimeList, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, Skype, Slack, Stack Exchange, Steam, Telegram, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, Wordpress, and Yelp. That's a broad cross-section of the social web, ranging from dating apps to business tools. How to use Redact To get started, you'll need to download the application and create an account. After that you can start signing into the services you want to delete posts from, then choose which posts you want to delete. If you use Chrome, there's support for grabbing all the sites you're currently logged into from there. Unless you pay for a subscription you will quickly notice all kinds of limitations—the free plan only supports Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and Reddit, and even for those networks there are limits on how far back you can scan for messages and how many message you can delete. The free version is really only useful for getting a feel for the service. You will need a paid plan for most features—plans start at $7.99 per month, which works out to $95.88 per year (there is no annual discount). That adds up for ongoing use, granted, though if you're just emptying out old posts from a bunch of accounts you might only need to pay for a single month. The Ultimate plan is necessary if you want to delete files from "work" accounts including Slack, Github, and Stack Exchange—that plan starts at $14.99 per month, which works out to $179.88 per year. Credit: Justin Pot The process works the same for most social media networks and service: You sign into your account and can then start scanning for and deleting posts. There are four main modes: Preview, which lets you scan for posts and browse them; Deletion, which deletes everything without asking any questions; Select & Delete, which lets you check off the posts you want to delete before proceeding; and Schedule Deletion, which lets you automatically delete posts on an ongoing basis. Note that, for scheduled deletion to work, you will need to leave the application installed and running on your device. Credit: Justin Pot It's worth noting that every application supported has an Easy and an Advanced form. How this works depends on which social network you're using. Reddit's advanced form, for example, lets you filter posts by subreddit, the kind of post, keywords, the NSFW tag, and more. You can even opt to not delete posts that have a certain amount of karma. There are similar advanced rules for every network, meaning you can really take control of what you want to delete. There are numerous options to explore here, all tailored to the specific social network you're trying to clear out. The user interface explains what everything does and, when there are limitations, what those limitations are. If you're looking for a way to wipe your posts from a bunch of different social networks, all with one tool, Redact is worth trying out. View the full article

State officials are warning Americans not to respond to a surge of scam road toll collection texts. The texts impersonating state road toll collection agencies attempt to get phone users to reveal financial information, such as credit or debit cards or bank accounts. They’re so-called smishing scams — a form of phishing that relies on SMS texts to trick people into sending money or share sensitive information. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she received one purporting to be from the statewide GeauxPass toll system. “It is a SCAM,” Murrill posted on Facebook this week. “If you ever receive a text that looks suspicious, be sure to never click on it. You don’t want your private information stolen by scammers.” Even states that don’t charge drivers tolls have noticed an uptick. “We do not have tolls roads in Vermont but travelers may mistake these scams for actual toll operators in other states,” Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark said in a video public service announcement posted on Instagram. Cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks said last week that a threat actor has registered over 10,000 domains for the scams. The scams are impersonating toll services and package delivery services in at least 10 U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario. While Apple bans links in iPhone messages received from unknown senders, the scam attempts to bypass that protection by inviting users to reply with “Y” and reopen the text. A warning last April from the FBI said the texts used nearly identical language falsely claiming that recipients have an unpaid or outstanding toll. Some threaten fines or suspended driving privileges if recipients don’t pay up. The FBI at the time asked those who received the scams to file a complaint with its IC3 internet crime complaint center and to also delete the texts. The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for updated guidance Thursday. ————————— The story has been corrected to reflect that the FBI did not issue a fresh warning this week on road toll text scams. The FBI warning was issued in April 2024. View the full article

Decision follows Hungary’s threat to block restrictions on more than 2,000 individuals sanctioned over Ukraine warView the full article

Deal paves way for the flagship defence and infrastructure package to be adopted by parliament next weekView the full article

‘Large minority’ of ministers protested about planned spending reductions in their own departmentsView the full article