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Seven people have been arrested in the investigation of a stunning heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris, but the lavish, stolen jewels that once adorned France’s royals are still missing. In the days after the theft, a handful of experts warned that the artifacts valued at more than $100 million (88 million euros) could be melted or broken into parts. If done successfully, some say those smaller pieces could later go up for sale as part of a new necklace, earrings, or other jewelry, without turning too many heads. “You don’t even have to put them on a black market, you just put them in a jewelry store,” said Erin Thompson, an art crime professor at the John Jay Col…

Generative AI ranges from gimmicky to powerful, depending on its context. But the biggest shortcoming is that whatever you make isn’t really all that editable— you typically have to juggle several apps to get the outcome you want. Now, a new update to Canva, called Ask @Canva, makes just about everything you’re working on editable by AI with a tap and a request. Ask @Canva is built upon Canva’s first foundational model—an AI model it trained in-house specifically for its own purposes. Instead of generating static designs, it produces new projects as full, editable design templates. That means when Canva uses AI to generate your slide deck or social post, all of t…

The obesity rate in the U.S. is continuing its downward trend. The news comes three years after obesity rates hit a record high. In 2022, almost four out of 10 (39.9%) of Americans met the threshold for the classification, however, the number first began to shrink in 2023. Now, the rate of obesity is now down to 37%, according to new data from Gallup. The new findings are based on data from three nationally representative surveys of 16,946 U.S. adults. And while the numbers don’t seem massively significant, the report found that those three percentage points add up to around 7.6 million Americans who no longer meet the criteria for being obese. According to the n…

U.S. President Donald The President hailed a meeting with China’s Xi Jinping as “amazing” and “12” on a 10-point scale, but the agreement the two leaders reached appears to be no more than a fragile truce in a trade war with root causes still unresolved. The framework announced on Thursday—that includes China resuming soybean purchases, suspending its rare earths export curbs for a year, and the U.S. lowering tariffs on China by 10%—broadly rewinds ties to the status that existed before The President’s “Liberation Day” offensive triggered tit-for-tat escalation. But the deal exposes the fundamental mismatch between what Washington wants and what Beijing is willing…

Starbucks released its fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, October 30, finally providing an official figure for its recent wave of store closings. The Seattle-based coffee chain shuttered a total of 627 locations worldwide over the three months, ending up with a net closure of 107 stores. More than 90% of impacted locations were in North America, Starbucks said. In the United States, 520 stores were shuttered as part of the company’s turnaround efforts, Starbucks disclosed in an earnings release. Starbucks now runs 40,990 stores globally and 16,864 in the United States. Estimates of store closures varied widely In September, Starbucks announced the shutt…

For the past 30 years, the web browser has been the primary way humans navigate the internet. It makes sense, then, that as artificial intelligence becomes more humanlike in its capabilities, it would use the same tool. That’s basically the idea behind AI-powered browsers, which are definitely having an “it” moment now that OpenAI has launched Atlas, its own web browser that incorporates ChatGPT as an ever-present helper. Atlas follows Perplexity’s Comet, which arrived in the summer to quickly capture the imagination of what an AI browser could do. In both cases, the user can, at any time, call up an AI assistant (aka agent), able to perform multistep tasks—such as na…

For U.S. soldiers who find themselves at the front lines of a future conflict, it’s fast becoming gospel, due to the way warfare is rapidly evolving on the battlefields of Ukraine, that drones will be crucial to winning (or losing) the fight But the roughly 500 U.S. dronemakers can only build about 100,000 a year combined, according to Ryan Carver, communications manager for the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International. For comparison: One Chinese firm, DJI, can pump out millions of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) a year — 70% of the global supply. To ameliorate this challenge/problem, a number of startups believe 3D printing, specifically of drones,…

Last year Canva reworked its user experience and tools in a full-frontal attack on the productivity and enterprise markets now dominated by Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. Now the Australian company is going for Adobe’s jugular. Affinity—the British company Canva bought in 2024—is out with a new app that aims to sink Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign with a simple proposal: If you are a professional designer, here’s an integrated photo editing, vector illustration, and page layout studio seamlessly integrated into a single application, with a feature set comparable to Adobe’s apps and a fully customizable UI. For free. You know, free free. “Free for…

Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday, October 28, was one of strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the Atlantic ocean ever recorded. And it was supercharged by the effects of climate change. As it approached the Caribbean, Melissa—a Category 5 storm with winds of 185 mph—moved over exceptionally warm waters. The ocean was 2.2°F (or 1.2°C) warmer than average for this time of year—conditions that were “made up to 900 times more likely by human-caused climate change,” according to the scientists at the research nonprofit Climate Central. Carbon emissions from human actions trap heat in the atmosphere, but our oceans absorb most of tha…

Stablecoins might not send your digital wallet to the moon, but the less speculative side of cryptocurrency is definitely enjoying its moment in the sun. According to a new report from Fortune, credit card stalwart Mastercard wants to make a massive bet on infrastructure that links digital currencies to the normal financial world. Mastercard is in advanced talks to buy the stablecoin startup Zerohash for between $1.5 and $2 billion, Fortune reports. Zerohash, founded in 2017, provides banking companies a toolkit for providing their own cryptocurrency and stablecoin products. If the deal goes through, it would represent a major investment in cryptocurrency infrast…

Mark Walter is the majority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers after the NBA Board of Governors approved his purchase of a controlling stake from the Buss family. The Lakers and the league confirmed the next step Thursday in a transaction that is expected to close shortly. The sale of the NBA’s most valuable franchise was initially announced in June. Jeanie Buss will remain the Lakers’ governor under the deal for at least the next five years, and she will oversee day-to-day operations “for the foreseeable future,” the team said. Her father, Jerry Buss, bought the Lakers in 1979. But the Lakers are now primarily owned by Walter, the billionaire whose TWG Global in…

U.S. lawmakers have tried four times since September last year to close what they called a glaring loophole: China is getting around export bans on the sale of powerful American AI chips by renting them through U.S. cloud services instead. But the proposals prompted a flurry of activity from more than 100 lobbyists from tech companies and their trade associations trying to weigh in, according to disclosure reports. The result: All four times, the proposal failed, including just last month. Following a long-heralded meeting between leaders Donald The President and Xi Jinping, the sale of U.S. technology to China remains among the thorniest issues the U.S. faces…

Two prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill want the Supreme Court to allow a lawsuit to proceed against tech giant Cisco over allegations that the company’s technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong religious sect in China. In a Wednesday letter to the The President administration’s top Supreme Court litigator, D. John Sauer, Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey and John Moolenaar of Michigan urged the administration to side with the Falun Gong plaintiffs and press the court to allow the lawsuit to go to trial. Smith co-chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, while Moolenaar is the chairman of a special China committee set up in the Hous…

The market for obesity and diabetes treatments remains scorching hot, funneling billions in sales to Eli Lilly and fueling a bidding war over another drugmaker. Lilly said Thursday that its top-selling drugs, Mounjaro and Zepbound, brought in more than $10 billion combined during the recently completed third quarter. That made up over half of the drugmaker’s $17.6 billion in total sales. Separately, Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk announced plans to buy Metsera Inc. in a deal that could be worth up to $9 billion. That came more than a month after U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc. made a nearly $5 billion bid for Metsera, which has no drugs on the market but is developi…

Every single day, the average working person plays many roles: sassy coworker, office comedian, and deadline stickler, to name a few. The labor doesn’t stop when one gets home—with new job titles coming into play, such as mom, brother, pet parent, and more. On Halloween, you get to choose which character you want to inhabit instead of having society dictate your role. This frivolity requires forward thinking and planning. If you find yourself running out of time, popular culture and a few easy-to-obtain items can come to the rescue. Here are nine easy costume ideas that range from classic to timely. The Louvre museum robbers This one is perfect for last-min…

Improving your work life doesn’t always require sweeping changes. Sometimes, the most effective strategies are the simplest ones, whether that’s protecting time for personal care, restructuring your day for better focus, or carving out moments with family. These small adjustments can reduce stress, restore balance, and promote better productivity and focus. Here, Fast Company Executive Board members share the simple changes they’ve made that have significantly improved the quality of their work lives and why these shifts are worth considering. 1. DESIGNATING ‘OFF-LIMITS’ HOURS I protect my time, headspace, and energy. I have designated hours every day that are …

Imagine starting a new job where your onboarding feels personalized just for you, with an AI assistant guiding you through training, introducing you to teammates, and checking in on how you’re settling in. That level of personalization in the workplace isn’t just a concept for the future – it’s already here and happening more rapidly than many HR departments anticipate. AI is transforming HR in the workplace. In 2026, AI won’t just take over repetitive tasks, but it will fundamentally change how companies hire, onboard, coach, and retain employees. The result is HR teams that are more strategic, data-driven, and more human than ever. After more than a decade worki…

The consulting firm Accenture recently laid off 11,000 employees while expanding its efforts to train workers to use artificial intelligence. It’s a sharp reminder that the same technology driving efficiency is also redefining what it takes to keep a job. And Accenture isn’t alone. IBM has already replaced hundreds of roles with AI systems, while creating new jobs in sales and marketing. Amazon cut staff even as it expands teams that build and manage AI tools. Across industries, from banks to hospitals and creative companies, workers and managers alike are trying to understand which roles will disappear, which will evolve, and which new ones will emerge. I researc…

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when most of the U.S. “gains” an extra hour of sleep as we “fall back” from daylight savings to shorter days, colder nights, and standard time. This Sunday, November 2, at 2 a.m local time, we will turn back our clocks to 1 a.m—and that will last until March 8, 2026 (when we will once again usher in daylight saving time). Although getting an extra hour of sleep sounds like a win, here’s what really happens to your health when the clocks change. Darker nights disrupt the body’s natural clock Darker evenings actually disrupt our body’s natural circadian rhythm, our mood, and our metabolism, according to Dr. Zaid Fadul, CEO …

A year ago, direct air capture—technology that pulls CO2 from the air—seemed ready to quickly scale in the U.S. Project Cypress, a massive undertaking in Louisiana designed to capture more than a million tons of CO2 each year, won $50 million in funding from the Department of Energy in early 2024. In Texas, another major direct air capture hub also won funding. Together, the projects were eligible for as much as $1.1 billion from the DOE, part of $3.5 billion Congress set aside for DAC hubs in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Climeworks, a pioneer in the industry and one of the partners on the Louisiana project, was hiring a U.S. team, scaling up a new plan…

Walk into any grocery store to stock up for Halloween and you will discover that, for chocolate treats, you have two basic choices: Will it be Mars or Hershey? I often buy both, but that is beside the point. The point is that the two giants compete for market share, but both enjoy robust sales. In other words, a relatively stable duopoly defines the U.S. chocolate candy market. But it wasn’t always like this. Before the 1960s, the Hershey Chocolate Corp. reigned supreme as the undisputed chocolate king. It was in that decade that Mars went for Hershey’s jugular. Hershey Chocolate’s response brought lasting change to its candy business, the local community,…

The news that Microsoft is making 9,000 workers redundant this year, with a focus on jettisoning managers, has sent ripples through the business world. Andy Jassey, Amazon’s CEO, explicitly said this summer that AI advances will lead to job cuts. So it’s no wonder that workers all over the world, including one in five Gen Z workers, are “very concerned” that AI will take their job in the next two years (with Americans being more concerned than Europeans), and 32% of U.S. workers believe that AI will lead to fewer job opportunities. AI has advanced to encompass a vast range of skills, not only data-driven ones such as coding and debugging, but also more managerial task…

When the new Chevy Bolt arrives early next year, it will start at $29,995, making it one of the most affordable new EVs in the U.S. It’s thousands of dollars cheaper than Tesla’s “affordable” new versions of its Model 3 and Model Y. It’s also significantly less expensive than the average gas car, and like other EVs, it’s cheaper to operate. GM faces major headwinds with the loss of the $7,500 tax credit for electric cars, and it’s scaled back production plans and cut jobs in response. But the new Bolt is so affordable that it could win over consumers even without the incentive. “We wanted to get that under-$30,000 number,” says Jeremy Short, chief engineer on GM’…

It’s widely known that social media can quickly turn into a toxic cesspool of hate speech and ragebait, particularly during times of political turmoil. Across social media platforms, amplified by the algorithm, hate often breeds hate. But what exactly makes toxicity so contagious? It turns out, the problem may be coming from within. A study published this month in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, co-authored by Alon Zoizner and Avraham Levy, looked at how social media users react when they’re exposed to toxic posts from people on their own political side, defined as the “ingroup,” compared with those from the opposing side, the “outgroup.” Hig…

Elon Musk is the kind of entrepreneur who likes to have an enemy as motivation—traditional carmakers, the mainstream media, the “deep state.” His newest undertaking, launched October 27, is no exception: Grokipedia is positioned as an alternative to Wikipedia, which Musk claims is biased and “woke.” A product of Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, Grokipedia’s inner workings are unclear, but the pitch is that it’s an AI-generated compendium of what Musk calls “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” One major factor that makes Grokipedia different from Musk’s other rival-fueled enterprises is that Wikipedia is quite popular, well-liked, and widely …