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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…

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. …

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 hurr…

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…

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 …

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…

In Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, Martha Beck, PhD, writes that “anxiety always lies.” When I asked her why, she highlighted one of the book’s central teachings: When you seek the truth beneath your anxious thoughts, you discover that many of them aren’t real. This newfound awareness is transformative. It dismantles anxiety’s prevailing narrative that in order to be safe, you must live in fear. “So many people tell me: But, the world is in bad shape right now,” Beck shares. “I say: Yes, and doesn’t that require us to show up as our calmest, most committed, and competent selves?” “Anxiety does not do that, it just tells li…

If optimizing your social media privacy settings feels important but overwhelming, a company called Block Party may be able to help. Founder and CEO Tracy Chou has long been known for advocating for diversity in the tech industry. And like many diversity advocates, and women and people of color in technology, she’s experienced plenty of harassment online, along with outright stalking. She founded Block Party after realizing that tech platforms themselves didn’t make it particularly easy to optimize settings for privacy and security. The initial Block Party product focused on the platform then called Twitter, helping users easily filter out spam, harassment, and o…

Nothing strikes fear in a leader’s heart more than an upcoming announcement. Yet big changes and announcements are the turning point for many organizations. Whether its layoffs, acquisitions, launches, or reorganizations, the pressure to “get it right” is real. Company performance, team morale, retention, and public image are all on the line. Unfortunately, most leaders rely on advisers and experts when it comes to how, when, and what to communicate. Well-meaning attorneys, publicists, or CFOs typically water down the message, and the company ends up with something that is factual but uninspiring. Oftentimes, that message is also ambiguous with no plan, next steps, or…

As the 30th season of Major League Soccer (MLS) kicked off last month, the league unveiled an interesting new design addition: Each of its 30 teams sported a custom Apple TV logo on the left sleeve of its uniform featuring the colors and graphic elements of the team’s identity incorporated within the familiar Apple icon. For example, the Chicago Fire version includes the six-pointed star from the city’s flag and the team’s crest, while Atlanta United’s is filled with the characteristic five red and black stripes that adorn the club’s shirt. This effort, part of MLS’s 10-year deal with Apple to stream the league’s matches, represents an innovative step forward in its appro…

On the morning of January 14, 2025, just hours before my stress test during an annual physical, I received devastating news from a colleague at a global financial institution. A 45-year-old Black man, a highly respected managing director at our firm, had unexpectedly died from a heart ailment. While texts of grief poured in from mourning colleagues throughout the day, I was struck by a sobering realization. I had become disturbingly accustomed to hearing such tragic news about successful Black men in professional circles. Just a few months earlier, another industry peer—the first Black chief information officer of a major U.S. bank—suffered a debilitating stroke that …

Building a high-growth business is all about timing and making the right moves at the right moments. Whether it’s knowing when to expand into new retail spaces or recognizing a buzzy product that can skyrocket your brand, the journey is full of strategic decisions and challenges. As founders scale their businesses, they must navigate everything from cash flow management to mastering social media. Each of these elements plays a crucial role in determining how a business can not only grow but thrive in a competitive market. This past weekend at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW, Danielle Guizio, owner and designer of Guizio; Kat Hantas, cofounder of tequila brand 21Seeds;…

France just unveiled its charming new TGV Inoui trains, and they’re a jealousy-inducing reminder that America’s rail travel renaissance can’t come fast enough. The TGV Inoui is a high-speed rail system, running at around 200 miles per hour, that connects France’s major cities as well as providing connections into Italy, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. This Tuesday, the manufacturing company Alstom and the TGV’s operator, SNCF Voyageurs, revealed the brand-new fifth generation TGV Inoui interior design at Paris’s Gare de Lyon. [Photo: Alstom] The new train, which is slated to hit the rails in 2026, includes a delightfully colorful aesthetic, an ultra-s…

Getting invited to a first-round interview is exciting. It’s a chance to highlight your interpersonal skills, tell your story, and share how you would be an asset to their team. “The first interview is your chance to make a great first impression—but more importantly, it’s where you can build a genuine connection,” says Niki Jorgensen, general manager of client implementation at Insperity. To make the most of your first interview, experts recommend researching the company, practicing common interview questions so that you allow your personality to shine through, and create a connection with your interviewer. But here are some other ways to give yourself an extra edge—…

Consider a self-employed entrepreneur who racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills after a visit to the emergency department due to lack of employer-sponsored health insurance. Or the entrepreneur whose business never got off the ground—not because they lacked skill or demand, but because the burden of complicated taxes or owing money they didn’t expect made them walk away before they could even get started. This sentiment underscores how current policies can deter potential entrepreneurs from leaving traditional employment. Despite all of this, in recent years, solopreneurship—the practice of running a business without a team or employees—has grown drastically…

The AI industry is growing up fast. New model releases are now a regular event and premium AI features are quickly overtaken by free or freemium alternatives. Exhibit A: OpenAI unveiled its Deep Research tool, which can write reports on complex topics in minutes, as part of its $200-a-month Pro package, but rival Perplexity gives non-subscribers some access to its Deep Research assistant free of charge. (Yes, Google Gemini’s agentic research assistant is also called Deep Research.) With fewer fundamental breakthroughs, the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI are slugging it out over incremental improvements in search and reasoning performance. As AI pricing falls …

In today’s whiplash business environment of change and uncertainty, there are a few simple, timeless strategies that consistently rank among the best for accelerating growth. No reinventing the wheel required. One such strategy is test-to-scale—close cousin of the venerable test-and-learn approach that’s long been a startup staple. Both can play a key role, depending on the stage of your company, industry, size, growth curve, and—importantly—internal culture. Basically, test-and-learn uses small scale, iterative experiments to see what works best. Testing different messaging in a marketing campaign, for example, or perhaps different product features. The idea …

It’s the dynamic pulse that surges through our electrical lines, the unseen force that illuminates the dark, and the silent but commanding engine propelling the future of artificial intelligence. Though intangible, its influence is omnipresent in our daily lives. This invisible force is power. As the world shifts from fossil fuels to embrace renewable energy, power is emerging as an ultimate finite resource. The ever-growing demands on our electrical grid, driven by the explosion of data centers, electric vehicles, and the proliferation of AI are creating a race against time where needs outpace supply. Consequently, our insistence on tech innovation may be hindering e…

If you’ve got a smartphone, you probably spend too much time on it — checking Instagram, watching silly TikTok videos, messaging on WhatsApp or doomscrolling on X. It can be hard to curb excessive use of smartphones and social media, which are addictive by design. Reducing your screen time is often more than just a matter of willpower, especially for younger people whose brains and impulse control are still developing. If you’re a phone addict who wants to cut down on the hours a day spent looking at your device, here are some techniques you can try to free up more IRL time: Delete apps An easy first step is getting rid of any apps you’ve been wasting time …