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Data collected from 35 American cities showed a 21% decrease in the homicide rate from 2024 to 2025, translating to about 922 fewer homicides last year, according to a new report from the independent Council on Criminal Justice. The report, released on Thursday, tracked 13 crimes and recorded drops last year in 11 of those categories including carjackings, shoplifting, aggravated assaults and others. Drug crimes saw a small increase over last year and sexual assaults stayed even between 2024 and 2025, the study found. Experts said cities and states beyond those surveyed showed similar declines in homicides and other crimes. But they said it’s too early to tell what is p…

A new campaign launches today against AI’s sticky fingers on copyrighted material. The Human Artistry Campaign’s “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” movement launches today with over 800 signatories. Those include many Hollywood actors, including Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as well as writers such as Jodi Picoult and Roxane Gay, and musicians like Cyndi Lauper and They Might be Giants. The campaign has a simple message: “Stealing our work is not innovation. It’s not progress. It’s theft—plain and simple.” Many record labels, news outlets, and other creative entities have partnered with AI companies in recent years, despite—or possib…

Anxiety about costs and affordability is particularly high among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, even at a moment when economic stress is widespread, according to a new poll. About half of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults said they wanted the government to prioritize addressing the high cost of living and inflation, according to the survey from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted in early December. In comparison, a December AP-NORC poll found that about one-third of U.S. adults overall rated inflation and financial worries as the most pressing problems. The findings indicate t…

Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 1,667 feet (508 meters), Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. On Saturday morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a married …

Buc-ee’s, the popular, Texas-based mega gas station chain will be opening its first-ever locations in: Nebraska, Ohio (April 2026), Wisconsin (2027), North Carolina (2027), Arizona (June 2026), Arkansas (June 2026), Louisiana (2027), and Kansas (2027), according to multiple local news reports. When reached by Fast Company for confirmation, the chain had “no comment.” Founded in 1982, Buc-ee’s, which has a cult-like following, is known for its large scale gas stations and convenience stores, which include, as Fast Company previously reported, numerous gas pumps (more than 100 in some locations), award-winning bathrooms, and a fan-favorite BBQ brisket sandwich. (It…

2026 is already shaping up to be a brutal year for GameStop (NYSE: GME) stores. This month, nearly 500 locations have been marked for closure. The shutterings come as GameStop’s CEO Ryan Cohen doubled down on the company and bought another half a million shares in GME stock. Here’s what you need to know. GameStop is closing hundreds more stores Over the past year, it seems that GameStop has had one primary focus: reducing costs by shuttering stores. At the beginning of 2025, the video game chain had around 2,325 locations in the United States. But by December, it had shuttered 590 of them. The same month, the company announced plans to close a “significant numb…

Bags of ice-thwarting salt aren’t usually a hot item at Bates Ace Hardware in Atlanta, but store manager Lewis Pane sold all 275 he had in stock in one morning as residents braced for a major storm to deliver heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain on a broad section of the U.S. in coming days. Payne said he had 30 online orders for “ice melt” before 8 a.m. People sprinkle the salts on the ground before a storm to disrupt the formation of ice. “It’s impossible to get right now,” Payne said. “We have had to make special trips to our warehouse to pick up extra items because people need them.” The storm was expected to hit starting Friday, stretching from New Mexico to New En…

A new neighborhood under construction near Sacramento, California, in the rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, looks like a typical subdivision. But it’s one of the first developments designed at a neighborhood scale to withstand wildfires. Each house goes farther than California’s latest building requirements for high-fire-risk zones, from enclosed, ember-resistant eaves to dual-paned, tempered glass windows that can better withstand extreme heat in a fire. The design considers not just each house, but how homes interact, spacing buildings at least 10 feet apart and removing combustible features to prevent fire from spreading between them. Called Sto…

Most sales pitches fail for one simple reason: they try to say too much. It’s natural to be passionate about your product or service. Of course you want to showcase the features and benefits. But if you want your audience leaning in and listening, less is always more. We live in what I call an AHA world. AI-focused, hyper-connected, and always-on. Distractions abound. If you can’t capture your prospect and customers’ imagination immediately, you’ll lose them to their emails, Slack messages, and TikTok feeds. The good news is there’s a 90-second fix that will help you craft a pitch or presentation that keeps your audience on the edge of their seats. The structure…

The metallic fringe hanging down from the edge of Anishnawbe Health Toronto’s community health center near downtown Toronto is the biggest indication that something different is happening here. Created to provide centralized health care and traditional healing to the 90,000-strong Indigenous population of Toronto, the clinic is the centerpiece of a unique city block of development that was intentionally led by the Indigenous community and designed to reflect its culture. The wraparound fringe of more than 12,000 strands of stainless steel chain—the kind of aesthetic flourish easily targeted for elimination by the value engineers of a typical development—is ju…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. This bonus newsletter from Davos explores the strategic relationship between CEOs and chief technology officers. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. In my previous life as a technology journalist, I wrote and edited countless stories about corporate chief technology officers (CTOs) emerging as key partners to their counterparts in the C-suite. When marketing functions became more data-driven, chief marketing officers clamored for attention from product and engineering. Today, chief financial offic…

People know when a brand genuinely cares about well-being—for employees, customers, and humanity at large. In many cases, it’s an intangible truth they can simply feel—in how they’re treated, how decisions get made, and whether a company’s stated values actually show up in practice. Plenty of brands talk about purpose and people. Fewer live it. And the difference is increasingly obvious. That gap is why “brand well-being” is emerging as a meaningful framework for companies that want to build durable growth—not just short-term performance. At its core, brand well-being recognizes that a brand isn’t a logo or a campaign. It’s a living ecosystem made up of people, cultur…

A century ago, work was unsafe and openly adversarial. Strikes were common. Turnover was extreme. Productivity suffered. HR—then called personnel—was created to manage this instability. Its job wasn’t to make work fulfilling. It was to reduce friction between employees and the company, keep people on the job, and protect output. As companies matured, so did HR. The function expanded to include hiring, pay, benefits, training, grievance handling, and legal compliance. On paper, this evolution gave HR a broad view of how people experienced work—and the potential authority to shape it. But that authority was never fully claimed. Instead, HR generally settled into adminis…

Gold Zone, NBC Sports’ whip-around coverage of the Olympics, didn’t debut with the 2024 Summer Games in Paris. As far back as the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, the network had experimented with the format—using multiple screens to cover simultaneous live events, a technique that had been popularized since 2005 by RedZone coverage of the NFL. But Paris did mark the first time that Gold Zone had run on NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock, providing real-time coverage of all 39 sports with zero embargoes. Gold Zone will return on Peacock for the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Games in February. Molly Solomon: We decided to create a new class of Olympics programming. We …

Several times during the men’s final of the Madrid Open tennis tournament between Casper Ruud and Jack Draper last spring, TV viewers were treated to a remarkable camera perspective. They watched the match from just behind the baseline, effortlessly following the player’s movement step for step and glimpsing his perfect angle on the ball with every shot. With no discernible blur or delays, the smoothly flowing live footage had the hyper-real feel of a video game. Tennis TV “I love the footwork by the cameraman,” wrote one YouTube commenter. The company now uses the comment in its investor pitch deck. In reality, these uncanny tracking shots didn’t i…

Electric bills are climbing almost everywhere—and in some states, the increases have been staggering. If you live in the Bay Area, your average utility bill from PG&E went up nearly 70% over the last five years. Between 2024 and 2025, alone, bills grew by double digits everywhere from Utah to Massachusetts to Tennessee. The surge in AI data centers often gets the headlines as the main cause of the increase, but they’re just one of many factors. Here’s what’s driving soaring utility bills, and what could help fix it. It’s not necessarily data centers—yet In a Berkeley National Lab report published last year that looked at trends in electric rates from 2019 t…

Chances are, you have an opinion about Palantir. “With any person, company, or concept, the general public really only has space in their head for one characteristic of it,” says Palantir alum Marc Frankel, cofounder, board member, and former CEO of Manifest, which creates software and AI “bill of materials”—think ingredient labels for critical software. “Biden: old. AI: scary. Palantir: secretive.” Frankel worked at Palantir from 2013 to 2018, and whether the one idea in your mind about Palantir is secretive or something else, it likely exists somewhere in this band of public opinion from the past year. Believers: Palantir’s a “category of one” company, accordi…

It’s Friday afternoon, and a potential client just emailed, asking about your services. You scramble to find your pricing. (Where did you save that document?) You dig through old emails for a proposal you sent six months ago that you could adapt. You piece something together and curse your past self for not being more organized. This scenario plays out constantly for solopreneurs. Most chalk it up to the chaos of running a business alone. But constantly scrambling will start to cost you as your business grows—and eventually hold you back. Most solopreneurs think that “operations” is something only real companies need: businesses with employees, office managers, a…

In the midst of economic uncertainty, polarizing politics, global conflict and a future that is largely out of focus, many consumers are continuing to fight the good fight when it comes to using their dollars to drive positive change. It’s the 13th year that I have helped run an annual survey on the momentum of socially responsible spending, nonprofit giving, and earth friendly practices, called the Conscious Consumer Spending Index. This year we found that despite a worsening view of the state of the world, consumers are holding firm in their support of conscious brands: A majority of respondents said they were actively supporting purposeful companies, while roughly…

Below, Melissa Bernstein shares five key insights from her new book, The Heart of Entrepreneurship: Crafting Your Authentic Recipe for Success. Bernstein founded a toy company, Melissa & Doug, with her husband, in 1988. In 2021, they launched their second company, Lifelines, a wellness brand offering sensory products to manage stress and enhance well-being. She is the entrepreneur-in-residence for the Inner MBA certification program created by Sounds True, LinkedIn, and Wisdom 2.0. She is also cofounder of Duke University’s Melissa & Doug Entrepreneurs program. What’s the big idea? As we age, many of us lose touch with the childlike curiosity and wonder…

Every season, the Next Big Idea Club editorial team reviews dozens of upcoming books to curate a selection of the most exciting, must-read nonfiction titles. We start with a broad pool of nominees from which we identify a small handful of finalists and, ultimately, an official season selection. Today, it’s our pleasure to share our list of five finalists for Season 29! Without further ado, the new books we’re most excited about right now are . . . The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World By Brad Stulberg Publication Date: January 27, 2026 A practical guide to realizing our potential amid the chaos of mode…

If you’re in an unfulfilling job or are dissatisfied with your work, it’s possible to get a fresh start no matter what the season. In fact, there are a few strategies that can help you find meaning and enhance your experience even as you slog forward. A lack of fulfillment in your job can have intense effects. It can derail your motivation, your energy, and even your performance. And these, in turn, get in the way of your happiness at work and can impact your overall happiness outside of work too. For many people, it’s hard to find meaning at work. In fact, half of workers in the U.S. reported that they lacked satisfaction in their work, and 38% said their job was…