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On Friday, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar in the northern part of the country. Reuters reports the quake’s epicenter was about 17.2 km (about 10.6 miles) from Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city with a population of about 1.5 million people. The quake destroyed buildings, roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure in the country. So far, 1,700 people have been confirmed dead and 3,400 injured, but officials say the final death toll may pass 10,000. The quake also hit neighboring Thailand, bringing down a 33-story building with people inside. In Myanmar, the effects of the natural disaster are intensified due to the civil war the country has…

For most baseball fans, hope springs eternal on Opening Day. Many of those fans—more than you might think—are women. A 2024 survey found that women made up 39% of those who attended or watched Major League Baseball games, and franchises have taken notice. The Philadelphia Phillies offer behind-the-scenes tours and clinics for their female fans, while the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees offer fantasy camps that are geared to women. The number of women working professionally in baseball has also grown. Kim Ng made history in 2020 when she became the first woman general manager of an MLB team, the Miami Marlins. As of 2023, women made up 30% of central office…

It doesn’t take long for Christer Collin and Ola Wihlborg to assemble the newest credenza from Ikea. Collin is a 42-year veteran of the company, specializing in product development. Wihlborg is one of the company’s most senior designers, having created dozens of pieces of furniture sold by the retailer since 2004. The two Swedes are lifting parts and turning hex wrenches in a second-floor conference room in Trnava, Slovakia, just outside the capital, Bratislava. This is where Inter Ikea Group (one of two Ikea parent companies) operates one of its more than 30 furniture and furnishings factories through its subsidiary, Ikea Industry, and where a sizable number of the retai…

Floor tiles designed to block cellphone signals. Special window film to ruin the photos of overhead drones. A bevy of hidden electronic jamming devices. This might sound like the arsenal of a high-tech spy, but it’s actually just a few of the trappings required to keep a conclave secret in 2025. In the wake of Pope Francis’s death and funeral this weekend, the Catholic Church is now in a high-stakes race to prepare for the papal conclave, the traditional ceremony that will determine the next pope. On May 7, around 135 Roman Catholic cardinals will be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel for a series of ballot votes to decide who will inherit leadership of the church—a pr…

There are brief moments when Annisa Faquir forgets that the Little Red Hen Coffee Shop, the Altadena diner her grandmother founded a half century ago, burned down in the Eaton Fire. “You think, ‘I can go grab something—oh wait, it’s in ashes,’” said Faquir, who has worked at the shop since her mother, Barbara Shay, took over the family business seven years ago. The women want to rebuild the diner loved by neighbors for its shrimp and grits, catfish, and Shay’s secret house coffee blend. They knew they’d need help, but were surprised when Paris Hilton called to offer it to them. The Little Red Hen Coffee Shop is one of 50 women-owned businesses impacted by the …

While having lunch with a few fellow business owners recently, our conversation turned to the topic on every entrepreneur’s mind—artificial intelligence. It turns out that AI tools have quietly woven themselves into our daily routines, whether we’re brainstorming, researching, or synthesizing data, were also using it in slightly different ways. Tools like ChatGPT are like Swiss Army Knives for productivity and creativity. It’s no surprise that in the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65% of organizations reported regularly using AI—the technology is here to stay. That said, leaning too heavily on AI can go awry. If you delegate content creation to ChatGPT, for …

A U.S. influencer has united Australia—and much of the world—in outrage after filming and filming herself snatching a baby wombat from its mother and posting the clip online. The Montana-based content creator, known as “Sam Jones”, calls herself a “wildlife biologist and environmental scientist” on her now-private Instagram account. In a since-deleted video, shot in Australia, Jones is seen grabbing a baby wombat from its mother near a remote road at night. She runs back to her vehicle, holding the animal up to the camera, as the mother wombat runs after them. “I caught a baby wombat,” Jones exclaimed in the video. The animal appeared to be distressed in the clip…

Caroline Fleck, PhD, is a licensed psychologist, corporate consultant, and adjunct clinical instructor at Stanford University. She received a BA in psychology and English from the University of Michigan and an MA and PhD from the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke. Fleck has served as a supervisor and consultant for some of the most rigorous clinical training programs in the country, and has been featured in national media outlets, including the The New York Times, Good Morning America, and HuffPost. In her private practice, Fleck specializes in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and other cognitive behavioral treatments for mood, anxiety, and personality d…

Nearly 100 years ago, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Harland Bartholomew designed a master plan for the city of Los Angeles, drawing a ring around the river at its heart. The plan addressed their concern about the rapid urbanization of cities in the West, which was frequently pushing nature to the outskirts. By centering the river and allowing it to move freely amid fields and wetlands, the planners envisioned a public green space where distant neighborhoods could come together as one. But the plan was quickly dismissed as out of step with the industrialist vision of the 1920s and ’30s. Then, in 1938, after a devastating flood, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began t…

Over the past few years, experts have been sounding the alarm over how much time Americans spend alone. Statistics show that we’re choosing to be solitary for more of our waking hours than ever before, tucked away at home rather than mingling in public. Increasing numbers of us are dining alone and traveling solo, and rates of living alone have nearly doubled in the past 50 years. These trends coincided with the surgeon general’s 2023 declaration of a loneliness epidemic, leading to recent claims that the U.S. is living in an “anti-social century.” Loneliness and isolation are indeed social problems that warrant serious attention, especially since chronic stat…

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. That means campaigns about anxiety, burnout, depression, and trauma will pop up in schools, offices, billboards, and magazines across the country. But few of those campaigns will mention a force that fuels all of those conditions—a force so normalized, it hides in plain sight. That force is Car Brain. Car Brain is an affliction that causes people to justify or ignore antisocial behavior that involves an automobile. It’s when someone who respects others in nearly every context suddenly becomes selfish, reckless, or even hostile just because a car has become part of the interaction. Once you start looking, you’ll see it everywhere, …

Struggling chipmaker Intel has hired former board member and semiconductor industry veteran Lip-Bu Tan as the latest in a succession of CEOs to attempt to turn around a once-dominant company that helped define Silicon Valley. Tan, 65, will take over the daunting job next Tuesday, more than three months after Intel’s previous CEO, Pat Gelsinger, abruptly retired amid a deepening downturn that triggered massive layoffs and raised questions about the chipmaker’s ability to survive as an independent company. This won’t be Tan’s first time running a semiconductor company, nor his first association with Intel. He spent more than a decade as CEO of Cadence Design Systems, whic…

Within three months of becoming CEO of the Honest Company in 2023, Carla Vernón slashed 25% of its eco-friendly goods. That seems tame in comparison to what happened when Brad Charron joined Aloha as CEO in 2017: He killed off every product category. Now on the other side of major rebrands and company pivots, these CEOs say there wasn’t necessarily a playbook to follow when they joined their respective companies as outsiders. While assuming the role of turnaround CEO proved difficult—and not one either would like to undertake again—there are many lessons learned, which they shared during a discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. When Charron was initially ap…

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke shared an internal memo on X on Monday that stressed the importance of using AI effectively in daily tasks. In fact, he wrote, using AI is now a “fundamental expectation” of Shopify employees. Spotify product designers are now expected to use AI tools to do all platform feature prototypes. The results, Lutke says, are more exploratory and faster to produce and share. Shopify already provides employees with access to various AI coding tools from Github (Copilot), Cursor, and Anthropic (Claude code). “Our task here at Shopify is to make our software unquestionably the best canvas on which to develop the best businesses of the future,” Lutke wr…

Ukraine’s war with Russia—sparked by Russia’s invasion in the spring of 2022—is now entering its fourth year. So too is Sine.Engineering, a company born amid the conflict. CEO Andriy Chulyk founded the company in April 2022, pivoting from running a standing-desk business in the Lviv region to supporting his country’s defense efforts through various drone technologies and components. The 150-person-company has scaled rapidly over the past three years; its parts are now used in drones made by more than 50 manufacturers worldwide. “Everyone thought something might change, that [war] would stop,” Chulyk says. “But we see clearly now that the situation is only getting har…

Donatella Versace has been replaced as creative director of the fashion house founded by her late brother Gianni Versace, assuming the new role of chief brand ambassador, Versace’s U.S. owner Capri Holdings announced on Thursday. Versace will be replaced by Dario Vitale, who most recently was design director at the Miu Miu brand owned by the Prada Group. His appointment is effective on April 1. The creative shift comes amid speculation that the Prada Group is in talks to buy Versace from Capri Holdings, which paid 2 billion euros (currently $2.2 billion) for the fashion house in 2018. The U.S. group also owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo. Miuccia Prada acknowledged inte…

In the short time since Graza’s 2022 launch, the wunderkind olive oil slinger has become a standout in a crowded market with its dynamic duo of extra-virgin olive oils: Sizzle for cooking and Drizzle for finishing—cleverly packaged in matte-green squeeze bottles. On Tuesday, Graza introduced its third product to the lineup, the high-heat cooking oil Frizzle. It’s being sold online as well as in select Whole Foods locations nationwide in squeeze bottles and a company-first nonaerosol spray bottle. Made from the remaining pressed olives from Graza’s flagship oils, Frizzle is extracted and refined without the use of chemicals or solvents. The natural refinement proc…

Today, February 25, is a make-or-break day for Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) and its stock, which trades on the Nasdaq under the SMCI ticker. That’s because by the end of today, the beleaguered server company needs to file its delinquent Form 10-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If it fails to do so, the company’s shares may be delisted from the Nasdaq. Here’s what you need to know about its stock price ahead of the deadline and the possible outcomes should Super Micro Computer fail to meet its requirements. SMCI stock price sinks ahead of filing deadline As of the time of this writing, in early trading SMCI’s stock price is down…

Your flights will probably get noticeably bumpier over the next few years, according to new research on how climate change is affecting turbulence. Paul Williams is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in England who has researched turbulence for more than a decade. In a presentation at the European Geosciences Union conference last week, Williams shared his research showing how global warming is likely leading to an uptick in something called “clear-air turbulence,” or turbulence that can’t be seen on an airplane monitor or from the cockpit. Based on Williams’s research, severe clear-air turbulence has increased by 55% since the 1970s…

After 16 years of experiments to bring Photoshop apps to the phone, Adobe is launching its most convincing attempt yet. Called Photoshop Mobile and available in the App Store today, it’s Adobe’s first earnest attempt to build a Photoshop on mobile with the same unique powers that have made it so popular on desktop. This new Photoshop has been built from the ground up specifically for the phone, where it can sync seamlessly with Photoshop versions on the web and desktop. (An Android version is due this summer.) Pros will appreciate a few big technical headlines: You can have an unlimited number of layers, and there is no restriction on file sizes. (Vector drawing tools are…