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The U.S. auto safety regulator said on Wednesday it has opened a defect investigation into Tesla Model 3 compact sedans over concerns that emergency door release controls may not be easily accessible or clearly identifiable in an emergency. The Office of Defects Investigation said the probe covers an estimated 179,071 model year 2022 vehicles. The investigation was opened on December 23 after the agency received a defect petition alleging that the vehicles’ mechanical door release is hidden, unlabeled, and not intuitive to locate during emergencies. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company’s vehicles rely primarily on electro…

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping countless industries; education is no exception. As AI tools rapidly enter classrooms, there are concerns about fair access, effective implementation, and the risk of widening the still persistent digital divide. Who are the players best positioned to guide this transition in a way that truly benefits every student? I recently spoke with Alix Guerrier, CEO of DonorsChoose, an education nonprofit where teachers submit funding requests based on classroom needs. Ninety percent of public schools in America have teachers using DonorsChoose, which tackles funding gaps by focusing on the most granular level: individual teach…

The biggest brands pour creativity into being instantly recognizable. A logo you can spot at 20 paces. A color palette that becomes cultural shorthand (think Oreo blue or Coca-Cola red). That visual obsession runs through every corner of marketing. TV, social, out-of-home, retail, and packaging. Millions go into crafting imagery, with every frame revised until it perfectly reinforces the brand. So, of course visuals matter—they always will matter. But the best performing brands aren’t blinded by them. They understand that a cohesive sonic identity that spans campaigns and touchpoints ensures your brand is remembered long after someone closes their phone or wal…

In 2025, AI became officially unavoidable: It had been lurking in the background before, as early adapters experimented with it. But this year, companies invested more than $202 billion in AI, a 75% increase from $114 billion invested in 2024. Major tech companies fought bitterly over AI talent, offering astronomical pay packages. There was a groundswell of demand for talent, and unsurprisingly this spread to the demand for AI, data science, and engineering jobs, which increased 28% compared to 2024, according to data provided to Fast Company by IT staffing company Mondo. The firm also provided data on the top five jobs that took off in 2025, which we’ve listed by vol…

My working days often unfold in either Zoom minimalist workplaces or glass-walled conference rooms with sleek windows, filled with entrepreneurs pitching ideas. As a marketing executive and startup mentor, I lead strategies for companies of various sizes, guide founders at startup accelerators TechStars and Founder Institute, and serve as an awards jury member. My calendar overflows with executive consultations, brand campaign planning, and deadline sprints. But between Christmas and New Year’s, I trade those sterile spaces for museum halls alive with color and history. It wasn’t easy getting out the door the first time I did this in 2021. I was filled with fears.…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. I like pushing AI to be less predictable. When AI assistants are less bland and more bold, they challenge my blind spots and nudge me to rethink. So I asked one of the boldest AI experimenters I know, Alexandra Samuel, to share unconventional tips and tactics when she visited New York recently from Vancouver. Alex, who writes about AI for The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, surprised me with the scale of her AI efforts. She described creating 200-plus automation scripts and building a personal idea database that h…

Somewhere between endless meetings and half-finished projects, we all went looking for better ways to get things done this year. These are the 2025 titles that helped people stay organized, focused, and finally finish what they started. Learn something new every day with “Book Bites,” 15-minute audio summaries of the latest and greatest nonfiction. Get started by downloading the Next Big Idea app today! Move. Think. Rest.: Redefining Productivity & Our Relationship With Time By Natalie Nixon A creativity whisperer to the C-Suite keynote speaker teaches how to harness the power of everyday activities to stress less and be more productive. Listen to o…

Apple and Google would like to see your identification, please. With the former’s “Digital ID” launch last week, both companies now let you scan a digital version of your passport at more than 250 Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, using an iPhone or Android phone. A growing number of U.S. states already support digital driver’s licenses for the same purpose. But the push for these digital IDs isn’t merely about airport security (which still requires you to carry a physical license or passport anyway). It’s really part of a broader effort to verify who you are online, one that can finally start in earnest with passport-based digital IDs that are a…

It’s normal—perhaps even biological—to slow down at the end of the year. Winter weather brings less sunlight, causing our bodies to produce more melatonin and less Vitamin D. Humans have to fight the urge to hibernate like bears because of the exhausting holiday season. If you find yourself behind and needing to cross off some last-minute items on your to-do list, here’s a handy guide to your options on Christmas Day 2025. Are banks open on Christmas? No. Christmas is a federal holiday, so brick-and-mortar locations are closed. Online banking and outdoor ATMs are available. Is mail delivered on Christmas? The United States Postal Service will not delive…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. There’s no doubt about it: Housing market softening across the Sunbelt—the epicenter of U.S. homebuilding—has caused homebuilders to lose pricing power over the past year. Amid the additional margin compression, some giant homebuilders are adjusting their strategies. Lennar is finally easing up a little on its market share, taking volume-over-margin strategy, while KB Home—a homebuilder ranked No. 526 on the Fortune 1000—said on December 18 that it plans to lean even harder into built-to-order (more on that below). At the end of last week, KB Hom…

Packages of grass fed ground beef are being recalled over possible E. coli contamination. The affected packages were distributed in at least six states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). What ground meat is recalled? The USDA made the announcement in a Dec. 27 recall notice, explaining that the recall includes 2,855 pounds of raw ground beef produced on Dec. 16 from Mountain West Food Group, LLC. The at-risk product is the company’s 16-oz. (1-lb.) vacuum-sealed packages of FORWARD FARMS GRASS-FED GROUND BEEF. The packages have a use or freeze by date of 01/13/26. The product also has the establishment number EST 2083 printed on the side of the…

If you’re a millennial or simply a fan of sci-fi, you likely remember 2010’s smash hit Inception, written and directed by Christopher Nolan. The story follows Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), a professional thief who specializes in stealing privileged secrets from people’s minds while they dream. He uses advanced technology to enter another person’s subconscious while they’re asleep and take whatever information he wants. The problem DiCaprio’s character faces is that the line between reality and dreams become blurred, making it increasingly difficult to tell what’s real. In many ways, especially for retail investors, that’s a picture of the modern market. A pl…

A wild winter storm was expected to bring strong winds, heavy snow and frigid temperatures to the Great Lakes and Northeast on Tuesday, a day after a bomb cyclone barreled across the northern U.S. and left tens thousands of customers without power. The storm that hit parts of the Plains and Great Lakes on Monday brought sharply colder air, strong winds and a mix of snow, ice and rain that led to treacherous travel. Forecasters said it intensified quickly enough to meet the criteria of a bomb cyclone, a system that strengthens rapidly as pressure drops. Nationwide, more than 153,000 customers were without power early Tuesday, more than a third of them in Michigan, accord…

Shares opened mixed in Europe on Tuesday after slipping in Asia as some regional markets wrapped up trading for the year. Crude oil prices edged higher and gold and silver resumed their ascent. U.S. futures were flat. In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi rang out the final session for 2025 in a traditional year-end ceremony. “By realizing a Japanese economy that earns the trust of investors around the world, we will create a virtuous cycle in which global capital flows into Japan,” Takaichi said. The benchmark Nikkei 225 shed 0.4% to 50,339.48, its first year-end close above 50,000. It ended 2025 up nearly 25%. With just two trading days left before the y…

A veteran jazz ensemble announced on Monday it was canceling its New Year’s Eve performances at the Kennedy Center, the latest group to withdraw from the Washington arts institution after it was renamed to include U.S. President Donald The President. “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice. Some of us have been making this music for many decades, and that history still shapes us,” the Cookers jazz ensemble said in a statement. The Kennedy Center had promoted two New Year’s Eve performances by the Cookers as an “all-star jazz septet that will ignite the Terrace Theater …

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the global workforce and rapidly expanding the expectations placed on today’s learners. The World Economic Forum predicts that technological advancements like AI, alongside economic and demographic factors, will lead to a net increase of 78 million global jobs this decade. Educational institutions now face a pivotal moment. They must evolve how students learn, how instructors teach, and how technology supports each step of that journey. For decades, the education sector adopted new technologies cautiously. However, the profound impact of AI on the workforce has accelerated interest and experimentation. Our latest research at Cengag…

When internet services platform Cloudflare suffered an outage in November, it took a big chunk of the online world down with it. Major platforms like ChatGPT, X, and Canva became unreachable. So did digital services offered by countless banks, retailers, and many other businesses. During the six-hour meltdown, as many as 2.4 billion users could have felt the impact. Software outages like this have always been and always will be part of online life. But today our systems are more interconnected than ever, so a single failure can ripple outward. AI only amplifies that risk. Yet, too many companies still lack protection against such disasters. In an era when ou…

When Bianca Jones, a 33-year-old special education teacher in Memphis, Tennessee, decided a couple of years ago that she wanted to buy a house, she started digging into her Experian credit report. She was shocked by what she found. Her student debt had been double-counted, making it look as though she owed a quarter of a million dollars and putting home ownership out of reach. Jones disputed the items with Experian, one of the major credit reporting agencies, multiple times in writing and over the phone, but got nowhere. “They kept saying it’s been verified, it’s been verified…They never investigated. They never tried to remove it,” Jones said in an interview. …

The White House cannot lapse in its funding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal district court judge ruled on Tuesday, only days before funds at the bureau would have likely run out and the consumer finance agency would have no money to pay its employees. Judge Amy Berman ruled that the CFPB should continue to get its funds from the Federal Reserve, despite the Fed operating at a loss, and that the White House’s new legal argument about how the CFPB gets its funds is not valid. At the heart of this case is whether Russell Vought, President Donald The President’s budget director and the acting director of the CFPB, can effectively shut down the a…

Every January, millions of people set ambitious New Year’s resolutions. They do this with genuine enthusiasm, hoping to transform their lives. Yet research indicates that by January 8th, just one week into the year, a quarter of these resolutions have already failed. By the end of the year, most individuals return to their familiar patterns, and the promises they made to themselves are often abandoned. My life doesn’t permit me the luxury of being part of that statistic. I operate at the intersection of three distinct and demanding identities: a PhD scholar at Oxford researching outer space financing, the founder of a career advancement platform called Network Capital…

The Walt Disney Company has agreed to pay a $10 million civil penalty as part of a settlement to resolve allegations it violated child privacy laws, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. A federal court order in the case involving Disney Worldwide Services Inc and Disney Entertainment Operations LLC also bars Disney from operating on YouTube in a manner that violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the department said. The order requires Disney to create a program that will ensure it properly complies with the privacy law on YouTube in the future, it added. The law requires websites, apps, and other online services aimed at children under 13 to…

The U.S. Federal Reserve agreed to cut interest rates at its December meeting only after a deeply nuanced debate about the risks facing the U.S. economy right now, according to minutes of the latest two-day session. Even some of those who supported the rate cut acknowledged “the decision was finely balanced or that they could have supported keeping the target range unchanged,” given the different risks facing the U.S. economy, according to the minutes released on Tuesday. In economic projections released after the December 9-10 meeting, six officials outright opposed a cut and two of that group dissented as voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee. …

I’ve done it, you’ve done it, we’ve all done it. With the best of intentions, we set big goals for our future: get a work promotion, lose 20 pounds, run a marathon. And too often, we give up a few months later, realizing we bit off more than we could chew. Why? We get enamored with the idea but the execution? Not so much. Goals can seem straightforward, but without a specific plan or realistic milestones, they quickly fizzle out. The Appeal and Problem of Big Goals Big goals can quickly inspire us and make us feel like we’re putting effort into forward progress. But goals are only as good as the plans that support them. You can’t build your dream house without an a…

In artificial intelligence, 2025 marked a decisive shift. Systems once confined to research labs and prototypes began to appear as everyday tools. At the center of this transition was the rise of AI agents – AI systems that can use other software tools and act on their own. While researchers have studied AI for more than 60 years, and the term “agent” has long been part of the field’s vocabulary, 2025 was the year the concept became concrete for developers and consumers alike. AI agents moved from theory to infrastructure, reshaping how people interact with large language models, the systems that power chatbots like ChatGPT. In 2025, the definition of AI agent…

In a year defined by companies pouring shocking sums of money into AI, one more deal squeaked in just before 2026. Meta just made a play on Manus, the buzzy Singapore-based company with Chinese roots that turned heads earlier this year when it showed its AI agents executing complex tasks, like hunting for real estate and sorting through resumes. The deal is sure to turn heads too. Manus and its parent company Butterfly Effect are now based in Singapore but were founded in China – a country with a fraught relationship to the U.S tech industry – and maintain operations there. Facebook’s parent company will reportedly pay more than $2 billion to acquire the startup,…