California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed three bills Tuesday to crack down on the use of artificial intelligence to create false images or videos in political ads ahead of the 2024 election.

A new law, set to take effect immediately, makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes related to elections 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties.

“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation — especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said in a statement. “These measures will help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content, one of several areas in which the state is being proactive to foster transparent and trustworthy AI.”

Large social media platforms are also required to remove the deceptive material under a first-in-the-nation law set to be enacted next year. Newsom also signed a bill requiring political campaigns to publicly disclose if they are running ads with materials altered by AI.

The governor signed the bills to loud applause during a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at an event hosted the major software company during its annual conference in San Francisco.

The new laws reaffirm California’s position as a leader in regulating AI in the U.S., especially in combating election deepfakes. The state was the first in the U.S. to ban manipulated videos and pictures related to elections in 2019. Measures in technology and AI proposed by California lawmakers have been used as blueprints for legislators across the country, industry experts said.

With AI supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, lawmakers across the country have raced to address the issue over concerns the manipulated materials could erode the public’s trust in what they see and hear.

“With fewer than 50 days until the general election, there is an urgent need to protect against misleading, digitally-altered content that can interfere with the election,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, author of the law banning election deepfakes, said in a statement. “California is taking a stand against the manipulative use of deepfake technology to deceive voters.”

Newsom’s decision followed his vow in July to crack down on election deepfakes in response to a video posted by X-owner Elon Musk featuring altered images of Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The new California laws come the same day as members of Congress unveiled federal legislation aiming to stop election deepfakes. The bill would give the Federal Election Commission the power to regulate the use of AI in elections in the same way it has regulated other political misrepresentation for decades. The FEC has started to consider such regulations after outlawing AI-generated robocalls aimed to discourage voters in February.

Newsom has touted California as an early adopter as well as regulator of AI, saying the state could soon deploy generative AI tools to address highway congestion and provide tax guidance, even as his administration considers new rules against AI discrimination in hiring practices.

He also signed two other bills Tuesday to protect Hollywood performers from unauthorized AI use without their consent.

—Trân Nguyễn, Associated Press

A false claim circulating on social media that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris left a 13-year-old girl paralyzed after an alleged hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011 is the work of a covert Russian disinformation operation, according to new research by Microsoft.

Researchers found that the operation created a video, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, and spread the claim through a fake website for a non-existent San Francisco news outlet named “KBSF-TV”. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft dubs Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm.

The discovery is a sign of Russia ramping up its foreign influence efforts ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, Microsoft said.

A spokesperson for the Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

“Russian influence operations initially struggled to pivot operations aimed at the Democratic campaign following President Biden’s departure from the U.S. 2024 presidential race,” a blog published on Tuesday by Microsoft said.

“In late August, however, elements of prolific Russian actor Storm-1516 began producing content implicating Vice President Harris and Governor Walz in outlandish fake conspiracy theories,” Microsoft said, referring to Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz.

Storm-1516 is known for producing misleading videos featuring on-screen or voice actors who impersonate whistleblowers or journalists that share false, scandalous information, experts say.

A website for KBSF-TV was created shortly before publishing its first related article about the alleged driving incident, according to online registration records. The claim was circulated on social media platforms, including X.com, using the hashtag #HitAndRunKamala.

The video was also shared on Sept. 3 on X.com by Aussie Cossack, who describes himself as a “Registered foreign agent for Sputnik News,” with the message “make this go viral MAGA folks.” In total, it is estimated the video has been viewed more than 2.7 million times.

“Many entities within the pro-Russian ecosystem advanced the video and its claims,” said Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. “Storm-1516 relies on some of these personalities, such as Aussie Cossack, to drive amplification of its videos.”

Cossack did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month the U.S. Justice Department filed money-laundering charges against two employees of Russian state media network RT for what officials said was a scheme to hire an American company to produce online content to influence the election.

U.S. officials say Russia’s goal is to exacerbate U.S. political divisions and weaken public support for American military aid to Ukraine. Harris says if elected she will continue supporting Ukraine in its defence against Russia’s invasion.

—Christopher Bing, Reuters

The WNBA is headed back to Portland, with Oregon’s biggest city getting an expansion team that will begin play starting in 2026.

The team will be owned and operated by Raj Sports, led by Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal. They paid $125 million for the franchise.

“This is huge for Portland. We are so honored and humbled to be the vessel that delivers this WNBA franchise to Portland,” Lisa Bhathal said. “And that’s really how we consider ourselves. Portland is this incredibly diverse, enthusiastic community. We saw the passion first-hand when we started looking into the Portland Thorns and this is Basketball City. So we’re very excited about the future.”

The Bhathals started having conversations with the WNBA late last year after a separate bid to bring a team to Portland fell through.

“I think from our perspective, knowing that the league was interested in coming to Portland, gave us confidence that pursuing the opportunity would be well received by the league,” Alex Bhathal said.

“The idea of expanding our footprint in Portland and being able to create a platform focused on women’s sports in the Portland market and really being able to put the foothold and to put a stake in the ground in Portland and make the mark as the epicenter of a global women’s sport market is something that was really compelling and interesting to us and very deserving by the community of Portland.”

It’s the third expansion franchise the league will add over the next two years, with Golden State and Toronto getting the other two. The Golden State Valkyries will begin play next season and Toronto in 2026.

“It’s nice to have the Pacific Northwest kind of locked in now,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said.

Engelbert has said she hopes to have more teams by 2028 but doesn’t think that the league will be adding any more that will start playing before 2027.

Portland had a WNBA team, the Fire, from 2000 until 2002 when it folded. That franchise averaged more than 8,000 fans when games were played at the Rose Garden. The new franchise will play at the Moda Center — home of the NBA’s Trail Blazers. The Bhathals will build a dedicated practice facility for the team as well.

The Bhathal family brings more than 50 years of experience in professional sports, including serving as co-owners of the Sacramento Kings and the controlling owners of the Portland Thorns of the NWSL.

Portland has been a strong supporter of women’s sports from the stellar college teams at Oregon and Oregon State to the Thorns. The Bhathals bought the soccer team for $63 million earlier this year. The franchise is averaging more than 18,000 fans this season.

The city also had the first bar dedicated to women’s sports — The Sports Bra.
“When you look at our numbers, not just the Thorns’ off-the-charts attendance, which is incredible, what you’ve seen, in Eugene, what you’ve seen in Oregon State, we knew that this was going to be one of the great moments in sports for Oregon,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden said. “We saw, February of 2023, what was possible. So I can tell you that right now there are women playmaking in Portland. They’re rebounding in Roseburg, they’re hooping in Hermiston. Every nook and cranny of our state is into this.”

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

—Doug Feinberg, AP Basketball Writer

Grammy-winning superstar Lauryn Hill will headline Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new Warriors concept album, the Hamilton creator announced on stage Wednesday at the 10th annual Fast Company Innovation Festival. 

Miranda wrote the album, due out October 18, with award-winning actor and playwright Eisa Davis. Warriors is Miranda’s first full post-Hamilton musical. The Broadway megahit, which debuted almost a decade ago at New York’s Public Theater, also began as a concept album. “Concept albums are a series of songs that tell a story,” Miranda explained.

He pointed out that many Broadway shows started as albums, or are essentially enjoyed as albums by fans who don’t have access to the live shows. “If you are young and broke, it’s a way to see a Broadway show,” he said.

Concept albums are also, Miranda pointed out, a great way to get a star-studded cast of talented performers who otherwise would not commit to an eight-show-a-week Broadway performance schedule.

In Miranda and Davis’s retelling of the 1979 film The Warriors—about rival New York City gangs battling their way back to the Bronx from Coney Island—Hill portrays Cyrus, the gang leader. The Warriors gang is all women: played by Kenita Miller, Sasha Hutchings, Phillipa Soo, Aneesa Folds, Amber Gray, Gizel Jiménez, Jasmine Cephas Jones, and Julia Harriman.

Harassment as inspiration

Miranda revealed that the inspiration for the all-women casting came from 2017’s notorious “Gamergate” phenomenon, in which women had to deal with a level of “malevolent chaos.”

“These online trolls were doxing women’s addresses just because they had the gall to work in video games or want to talk about video games,” Miranda said. “I remember thinking that’s exactly what Luther does in Warriors. Luther shoots Cyrus, turns to the Warriors, and goes, ‘They did it.’ And then they have to deal with the consequences.”

The announcement of Hill as the lead comes as a surprise as Hill is notably hard to pin down. Miranda himself was surprised that they secured her for the project. In fact, he said that he wrote a Lauryn Hill lyric (“you might win some but you just lost one”) into Hamilton, but took it out because he didn’t think she’d allow it, only to find out that she was a fan.

There are currently no plans to turn the concept album into a Broadway show or movie, but much like with Hamilton, Miranda views the project as a way to test the waters with the public.

On Wednesday, Alaska Airlines acquired Hawaiian Airlines in a historic merger. The acquisition is the largest merger between U.S. carriers in eight years.

“This is a historic day for Alaska Airlines as we officially join with Hawaiian Airlines,” Alaska Air Group CEO Ben Minicucci said in a statement. “Alaska and Hawaiian share tremendous pride in connecting communities with award-winning service, and we look forward to inviting more guests on board to experience what makes both brands unique.”

The $1.9 billion deal comes after the Department of Justice (DOJ) chose not to block it, marking a change in course after blocking previous consolidations under the Biden Administration. Previously, a U.S. judge blocked a $3.8 billion deal between JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines over concerns brought by the DOJ. The agency blocked the 2020 Northeast Alliance deal between American and JetBlue.

However, the new deal won’t come without some strict regulations. The Department of Transportation (DOT) said Tuesday that both airlines had to agree to “enforceable public-interest protections” before closing the deal.

The department also asserted that it would require the airlines “to protect the value of rewards, maintain existing service on key Hawaiian routes to the continental United States and inter-island, preserve support for rural service, ensure competitive access at the Honolulu hub airport, guarantee fee-free family seating and alternative compensation for controllable disruptions, and lower costs for military families.”

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said, “Our top priority is protecting the traveling public’s interest in this merger. We have secured binding protections that maintain critical flight services for communities, ensure smaller airlines can access the Honolulu hub airport, lower costs for families and service members, and preserve the value of rewards miles against devaluation.

Buttigieg continued, “This more proactive approach to merger review marks a new chapter of DOT’s work to stand up for passengers and promote a fairer aviation sector in America.” 

How will the airlines operate?

Alaska Airlines, which is based in Seattle, said it will work towards acquiring a single operating certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) so that it can operate as one carrier. For now, the airlines will keep separate websites and loyalty programs, but plans to consolidate them down the line.

The airline also noted that the expansion will allow the airline to cater to 1,200 travel destinations while maintaining hubs in Seattle, Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, San Diego, and Anchorage. It will also employ more than 33,000 people.

What will happen to frequent flyer miles and other loyalty benefits?

According to Alaska Airlines, flyers don’t have to worry about their mileage rolling over. “Your Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles retain their full value,” the statement says. The airline even asserted that post-merger, those points will become “more valuable than ever.”  The airlines will develop a single frequent flyer program but won’t release details until mid-2025.

However, later this month, flyers will be able to transfer miles between both airline’s frequent flyer programs “at a 1:1 ratio, for no charge,” the site states. “For example, if you have miles in a HawaiianMiles account and you want to redeem for a flight on Alaska or an Alaska Global Partner, simply transfer the miles to Mileage Plan at no charge and book your award travel at alaskaair.com.”

Alaska Lounge members can also access Alaska lounges even when flying on Hawaiian. New benefits for those who have flown one million miles or more on Hawaiian Airlines will also be introduced.

How will bookings work?

For now, bookings will stay the same; however, once the sites fully merge, customers can purchase Hawaiian flights on AlaskaAir.com, and vice versa. That means flyers will have far more destinations to choose from on each site. AlaskaAir will have more global destinations, and Hawaiian will have an increase in North and Central America locations. 

For a full explanation of the new benefits, customers can read more here.

The DOT also said the airlines will provide travel credits or frequent flyer miles for any disruptions that customers experience as a result of the merger.

YouTube is launching a new section within channels for fans to come together and share posts and pictures directly related to creators, the company said Wednesday.

The new “Communities” feature comes after creators and fans said they wanted more ways to connect with one another. Traditionally, YouTube users had to comment on threads under a creator’s video in order to start or keep conversations going. That meant the burden of fostering connection was on the creator, who had to upload a video in order for the fans to have a place to hold their conversations.

“We saw a real opportunity, which is we wanted a place where viewers and fans and creators could all chat with each other and that the viewers themselves could start a conversation,” says Aaron Filner, senior director for community products. 

Users will be able to access the Communities tab on a creator’s page, next to the playlist tab. 

​The announcement was part of a broader range of product releases shared during its Made on YouTube creator event. The company has been testing the feature with a fitness creator, a cooking creator, and a gaming creator. To start out, YouTube will continue to only allow subscribers to a small number of creators post on the Communities tab. YouTube doesn’t have any current plans to monetize the section either, it said. 

The creators will have access to YouTube’s broader content moderation tool and also have the ability to add additional guidelines on what they want to filter out. Creators can also delete posts as they see fit, which is standard with social media companies.

“More than anything, we’re seeing these deeper conversations and lasting relationships forming very quickly, which is pretty exciting,” says Whitney Taylor, head of design for YouTube community. 

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday, kicking off what is expected to be a steady easing of monetary policy with a larger-than-usual reduction in borrowing costs that followed growing unease about the health of the job market.

“The committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are roughly in balance,” policymakers on the U.S. central bank’s rate-setting committee said in their latest statement, which drew a dissent from Michelle Bowman, a member of the Reserve’s Board of Governors, who favored only a quarter-percentage-point cut.

Policymakers see the Fed’s benchmark rate falling by another half a percentage point by the end of this year, another full percentage point in 2025, and by a final half of a percentage point in 2026 to end in a 2.75%-3.00% range.

The endpoint reflects a slight upgrade, from 2.8% to 2.9%, in the longer-run federal funds rate, considered a “neutral” stance that neither encourages nor discourages economic activity.

Even though inflation “remains somewhat elevated,” the Fed statement said policymakers chose to cut the overnight rate to the 4.75%-5.00% range “in light of the progress on inflation and the balance of risks.”

The Fed “would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge that could impede the attainment of the Committee’s goals,” with attention to “both sides of its dual mandate” for stable prices and maximum employment.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET (18:30 GMT) to discuss the policy decision and the economic outlook. The Fed’s policy meeting this week was its last before voters go to the polls in what is expected to be a close U.S. presidential election on November 5.

The size of the initial cut will likely raise questions about the Fed’s strategy, and whether policymakers were merely trying to account for the fast decline in inflation since last year or address concerns among some officials that the U.S. job market may be weakening faster than desired or needed to ensure inflation fully returns to the Fed’s 2% target.

It is currently about half a percentage point above that, and the new economic projections now show the annual rate of increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index falling to 2.3% by the end of this year and down to 2.1% by the end of 2025.

The unemployment rate is seen ending this year at 4.4%, higher than the current 4.2%, and remaining there through 2025. Economic growth is seen at 2.1% through 2024 and 2% next year, the same as in the last round of projections issued in June.

The Fed had held its policy rate in the 5.25%-5.50% range since July of 2023 as inflation fell from a 40-year high to a level that is now approaching the central bank’s target.

—Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir, Reuters

Amazon.com is raising the pay of its fulfillment and transportation staff in the United States by at least $1.50 an hour and handing out free Prime memberships as benefits, it said on Wednesday.

The company will spend more than $2.2 billion on the hikes that will take the base salaries of hourly workers to more than $22 an hour—or more than $29 an hour including benefits.

Amazon’s decision comes as one of the biggest employers in the U.S. faces pressure from warehouse staff for better contracts and improved working conditions.

In June, the Amazon Labor Union—the first group of company workers to organize at a U.S. warehouse—voted to affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest U.S. labor unions.

The hikes will roll out starting this month and could help Amazon hire and retain staff as it heads into the key holiday season, typically the busiest shopping period of the year.

The Prime membership will be added to the benefits package early next year.

Amazon employs more than 800,000 full-time and contract workers in fulfillment and transportation roles in the U.S., according to the company. In 2018, it paid these workers a starting wage of $15 per hour.

—Yuvraj Malik, Reuters

General Motors is now offering adapters to help its electric vehicle owners access Tesla chargers.

The Detroit automaker said Wednesday that it is opening up access to more than 17,800 Tesla Superchargers for its customers, with the use of a GM-approved NACS DC adapter. Customers in the United States will be able to buy the adapter for $225 through GM vehicle brand mobile apps.

By using the Tesla Supercharger network, GM EV owners will have access to more than 231,800 public Level 2 and DC fast chargers in North America.

“Enabling access to even more publicly available fast chargers represents yet another way GM is focused on further improving the customer experience and making the transition to electric more seamless,” Wade Sheffer, vice president of GM Energy, said in a statement.

Last year, the White House announced that Tesla would make some of its charging stations available to all U.S. electric vehicles by the end of 2024. The plan was to make at least 7,500 chargers from Tesla’s Supercharger and Destination Charger network available to non-Tesla EVs by this year, the White House said.

The plan to open the nation’s largest and most reliable charging network to all drivers is a potential game-changer in promoting EV use, a key component of President Joe Biden’s pledge to fight climate change. Biden has set a goal that 50% of new U.S. car sales be electric by 2030, and he has promised to install 500,000 chargers across America and build a network of fast-charging stations across 53,000 miles of freeways from coast to coast.

GM said that approved NACS DC adapters will be made available to U.S. customers first, followed by Canadian customers later this year.

The company is not the only automaker to start using Tesla’s network. In February, Ford announced that its EV owners could use much of Tesla’s network, as long as they used an adapter that the company provided for free and began shipping in March. Rivian said in 2023 that it would be joining Tesla’s network this year, with existing vehicles needing an adapter. The company said at the time that vehicles made in 2025 and beyond would come standard with a Tesla charging port.

—Michelle Chapman Associated Press business writer

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined Wednesday to endorse Kamala Harris or Donald Trump for president, saying neither candidate had sufficient support from the 1.3 million-member union.

“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters president Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges.”

Vice President Harris met Monday with a panel of Teamsters, having long courted organized labor and made support for the middle class her central policy goal. Trump also met with a panel of Teamsters and even invited O’Brien to speak at the Republican National Convention, where the union leader railed against corporate greed.

The Teamsters said Wednesday that internal polling of its members showed Trump with an advantage over Harris.

The Teamsters’s choice to not endorse came just weeks ahead of the November 5 election, far later than endorsements by other large unions such as the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the United Auto Workers that have chosen to back Harris.

The Teamsters detailed their objections to the candidates in a statement, starting with their objection to a contract implemented by Congress in 2022 on members working in the railroad sector.

The union wanted both candidates to commit to not deploying the Railway Labor Act, to resolve contract disputes, and avoid a shutdown of national infrastructure, but Harris and Trump both wanted to keep that option open even though the Teamsters said it would reduce its bargaining power.

Harris has pledged to sign the PRO Act, which would strengthen union protections and is something the Teamsters support. She also criticized states that enact laws making it more difficult to unionize. Trump, in his January roundtable with the Teamsters, did not promise to veto a proposal to make it harder nationwide to unionize.

Other unions have shown trepidation about offering an endorsement for one of the two presidential candidates. The United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America on Friday ultimately endorsed Harris with a caveat that “the manner in which party leaders engineered Biden’s replacement at the top of the ticket with Vice President Kamala Harris was thoroughly undemocratic,” union leadership said in a statement.

But the Teamsters lack of endorsement also suggests an indifference to the Biden-Harris administration, which signed into law a measure that saved the pensions of millions of union retirees, including many in the Teamsters.

As part of its 2021 pandemic aid, the administration included the Butch Lewis Act to save the underfunded pensions of more than 1 million union workers and retirees’ underfunded pensions. The act was named after a retired Ohio trucker and Teamsters union leader who spent the last years of his life fighting to prevent massive cuts to the Teamsters’s Central States Pension Fund.

—Josh Boak and Tom Krisher, Associated Press

Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday by five unnamed participants, MrBeast is accused of creating “unsafe” employment conditions, including sexual harassment and misrepresenting contestants’ odds at winning his new Amazon reality-show’s $5 million grand prize.

The filing alleges that the multimillion-dollar company behind YouTube’s most popular channel failed to provide minimum wages, overtime pay, uninterrupted meal breaks, and rest time for competitors—whose “work on the show was the entertainment product” sold by MrBeast.

A spokesperson for MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, told the Associated Press in an email that he had no comment on the new lawsuit.

Donaldson’s Beast Games show was touted as the “biggest reality competition.” It was supposed to put the North Carolina content creator in front of audiences beyond the YouTube platform where his record 316 million subscribers routinely watch his whimsical challenges that often carry lavish gifts of direct cash.

But its initial Las Vegas shoot began facing criticism before it even wrapped. Donaldson’s companies cast 2,000 people in an initial tryout this July where half could advance to the actual show’s filming in Toronto.

Contestants only learned upon their arrival that the Las Vegas pool surpassed 1,000 competitors, according to the lawsuit, which significantly reduced their chances of victory. The lawsuit argues the “false advertising” violated California business laws that prohibit sweepstakes operators from “misrepresenting in any manner the odds of winning any prize.”

The five anonymous competitors also said that “limited sustenance” and “insufficient medical staffing” endangered their health.

The filing alleges that production staff created a “toxic” work environment for women who faced “sexual harassment” throughout the contest. Those sections are heavily redacted in an effort to comply with “confidentiality provisions” signed by the competitors, according to a press release from their lawyers.

The lawsuit adds to the complaints—circulated by online influencers in the shoot’s immediate aftermath—that an unorganized set had left some contestants injured and lacking in regular access to food and medication. Other participants have told AP they received two light meals each day and MrBeast branded chocolate bars.

MrBeast’s team also faces new accusations they “knowingly misclassified” the contestants’ employment status to the Nevada Film Commission in order to receive a state tax credit for more than $2 million.

Among other forms of relief, the five competitors seek an order that MrBeast institute “workplace reforms” and awards “all wages owed.”

Last month, amid several public relations crises, Donaldson ordered a full assessment of his YouTube empire’s internal culture and outlined plans to require company-wide sensitivity training.

No more details have been divulged and no date has been publicized for the reality game show’s release.

—James Pollard, Associated Press

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

A top supplier of digital devices in U.S. prisons is launching a new program to help incarcerated individuals earn a high school diploma by using the company’s tablets.

Advocates say the expansion in virtual education is promising, especially since many inmates lack basic literacy skills. But some advocates have said there are limits to what that prison technology can accomplish.

The company ViaPath, which sells secure devices and telecommunications services for use in the criminal justice system, has announced that inmates across the country will soon be able to enroll in virtual classes through a partnership with Promising People, an education technology company, and American High School, a private online school based in South Florida that will grant the diplomas.

The asynchronous classes will be available for free on ViaPath’s tablets, 700,000 of which the company says are already in use in nearly 2,000 prisons and jails.

“If you get a high school diploma, you get a secondary education along with some trades and skills. The likelihood of you recidivating back into our prisons are very small,” said Tony Lowden, chief social impact officer for ViaPath. “We believe there’s an opportunity to help men and women come home differently.”

A meta-analysis by the RAND Corporation found that education significantly reduces recidivism, suggesting that every $1 invested in education in prisons could save $4-$5 on reincarceration costs.

Lowden said the high school diploma program will offer a more comprehensive education than existing GED courses and provide inmates with greater earning potential once they’re released. The company said it will also offer career and technical education through virtual reality headsets.

ViaPath maintains that its tablets are free for inmates to use and that it won’t charge for the educational programming. Still, prison telecoms is a lucrative industry, with state and local governments signing multimillion-dollar contracts for phone services, tablets, and apps that inmates can use to call loved ones, stream music or read e-books—for a fee. Charges for those services can rack up quickly for incarcerated individuals who make just 25 cents an hour, if that, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

After being incarcerated for 11 years in Florida, Ryan Moser knows the conveniences of prison tablets—and the shortcomings.

“There’s a lot of advantages to the tablet. You can study whenever you want,” said Moser, who’s now a freelance journalist and communications consultant.

But using a tablet behind bars isn’t like scrolling on an iPad at home, Moser said. The devices are generally charged or updated at a central kiosk inside the prison, and access can be inconsistent and unpredictable—and is ultimately up to correctional officers.

“I remember it taking four days to get my tablet charged,” Moser said. “If you were a discipline problem or if you were someone that gave them attitude, they might keep [your tablet] for a week, two weeks.”

Keri Watson heads the Florida Prison Education Project at the University of Central Florida, which offers college-level courses inside prisons. She has questions about the delivery of virtual instruction behind bars but said she’s heartened by efforts to improve access.

“The more programs in as many modalities as possible, the better,” Watson said.

Digital infrastructure has helped prisons continue offering programming at times when volunteers can’t get inside, such as through the COVID-19 pandemic or during a security lockdown.

During the pandemic, Watson said her staff had to shift their in-person classes to virtual instruction through tablets provided by a different company. She said it was a difficult transition.

“The technology was not there,” she said. “So until it can be more like the technology that can be offered to non-incarcerated students, I’m not sure it’s feasible.”

The devices’ functions are limited for security purposes by design. Lowden, the ViaPath official, told the Associated Press that the company’s tablets will not carry note-taking apps due to security risks like inmates communicating covertly.

Still, advocates say inmates desperately need more access to education to prepare them for their release. According to the most recent annual report for Florida’s state prison system, 1,339 inmates earned a GED in 2022, less than 2% of the state’s incarcerated population of more than 80,000 people.

“While participation in educational programming remains optional, overall inmate participation in these programs continues to rise,” the Florida Department of Corrections said in a statement to the AP. “The Department has focused its resources on programming that addresses functional literacy and vocational training.”

In his years as a GED tutor at a state prison near the Florida Everglades, Moser saw the impact that a basic education could have on his fellow inmates.

“I remember seeing the looks on guys’ faces,” Moser said. “Getting into education and accomplishing something there was one of the proudest moments for some of these guys in their life.”

Moser said the virtual high school diploma program could help meet the basic educational needs of inmates and let them sidestep waiting lists for in-person classes. But just like on the outside, he said there’s “no substitute” for incarcerated students being able to sit in a real classroom and learn from a qualified teacher.

—Kate Payne, Associated Press/Report for America

The owner and manager of the cargo ship that caused the deadly Baltimore bridge collapse recklessly cut corners and ignored known electrical problems on the vessel, the Justice Department alleged Wednesday in a lawsuit seeking to recover more than $100 million that the government spent to clear the underwater debris and reopen the city’s port.

The lawsuit filed in Maryland provides the most detailed account yet of the cascading series of failures on the Dali that left its pilots and crew helpless in the face of looming disaster.

The Justice Department alleges that mechanical and electrical systems on the massive ship had been “jury-rigged” and improperly maintained, culminating in a power outage moments before it crashed into a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March. Six construction workers were killed when the bridge toppled into the water.

“This tragedy was entirely avoidable,” if not for the companies’ decision to place an “ill-prepared crew on an abjectly unseaworthy vessel,” says the lawsuit against Dali owner Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and manager Synergy Marine Group, both of Singapore.

“They did so to reap the benefit of conducting business in American ports. Yet, they cut corners in ways that risked lives and infrastructure,” the complaint says.

Darrell Wilson, a Grace Ocean spokesperson, said the owner and manager had no comment on the merits of the claim but “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

Justice Department officials refused to answer questions Wednesday about whether a criminal investigation into the collapse remains ongoing. FBI agents boarded the vessel in April.

The ship was leaving Baltimore for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss. Six men on a road crew, who were filling potholes during an overnight shift, fell to their deaths. The collapse snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully opened in June.

The companies filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine-casualty case in history. Justice Department officials said there is no legal support for that bid to limit liability and pledged to vigorously contest it.

“With this civil claim, the Justice Department is working to ensure that the costs of clearing the channel and reopening the Port of Baltimore are borne by the companies that caused the crash, not by the American taxpayer,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

The case comes a day after the victims’ families declared their intent to file a claim seeking to hold the ship’s owner and manager liable for the disaster.

Brawner Builders, which employed the victims, filed its own claim for damages Wednesday, saying the company had lost “six beloved employees” as well as the construction equipment and vehicles they were using.

Documents released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) showed investigators discovered a loose cable on the Dali that, when disconnected, triggered an electrical blackout similar to what happened as it approached the bridge on March 26.

But the Dali had already experienced power issues earlier. Its first blackout occurred while still docked in Baltimore after a crew member mistakenly closed an exhaust damper during maintenance, causing one of the diesel engines to stall, according to safety investigators. Crew members then switched from one transformer and breaker system—which had been in use for several months—to a second that was active upon its departure. That second system is where investigators found the loose cable.

The Justice Department complaint points to “excessive vibrations” on the ship that attorneys called a “well-known cause of transformer and electrical failure.” Instead of dealing with the source of the excessive vibrations, crew members “jury-rigged” the ship, the complaint alleges.

The complaint notes cracked equipment in the engine room and pieces of cargo shaken loose. Inspectors also found loose nuts and bolts and broken electrical cable ties, the Justice Department says. The ship’s electrical equipment was in such bad condition that an independent agency stopped further electrical testing because of safety concerns, according to the lawsuit.

“In sum, this accident happened because of the careless and grossly negligent decisions made by Grace Ocean and Synergy, who recklessly chose to send an unseaworthy vessel to navigate a critical waterway and ignored the risks,” said Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Chetan A. Patil.

When the active transformer and breaker system failed as the ship approached the bridge, power should have automatically transferred to the ship’s other system, the lawsuit says, “but this automation, a safety feature tailor-made for the occasion at hand, had been recklessly disabled.” Instead, the ship’s engineers had to manually restore power, which took a full minute, the complaint says.

If the transformers had been in automatic mode rather than manual, the ship “would not have lost power and steering for any meaningful period of time, and the devastating tragedy that ensued would not have occurred,” the lawsuit says.

Power was momentarily restored by the engineers, but it again switched off because of a separate problem with the ship’s fuel pumps, which resulted from a cost-cutting measure, the Justice Department alleges.

The anchor couldn’t be immediately deployed and the bow thruster was unavailable in the critical moments when the ship’s pilots were desperately trying to avoid disaster, according to the complaint.

—Lea Skene and Alanna Richer, Associated Press

“I’m not going to cook for you,” world-class chef and multiple-Michelin-star restaurateur José Andrés said as he took the stage at the 10th annual Fast Company Innovation Festival. “Don’t get too excited.”

But then, he cooked.

Figuratively, that is—Andrés roasted American politics for its mangled handling of immigration in the United States.

“Immigration reform has to happen,” Andrés said, citing 11 million “dreamers,” or children of undocumented immigrants. “Everybody is employing them everywhere, in blue and red states, and they are part of the economy.”

The reality is, “people are coming undocumented because the businesses need the people, but the government is not giving them the visas to do it in the right way,” Andrés explained. “If I’m opening a Spanish restaurant and I want to bring five people from Spain to help me make paella, give me a way to do that.”

“We [would] cut undocumented immigration by 75% overnight if we were more in the business of creating true immigration systems that benefit America,” he added.

Today’s anti-immigrant vitriol, and the hate-filled rhetoric that has come to permeate public discourse, isn’t the America that Andrés knows. In the ’80s, he saw a different vision: “Watch the [GOP primary] debate between President Ronald Reagan and [George H. W.] Bush,” he said. “They were going back and forth about who was the most pro-immigrant. It was almost hilarious.”

Seeds of hope

An immigrant himself, Andrés founded the nonprofit World Central Kitchen in 2010, borne from the rubble of a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. In the aftermath, Andrés traveled to the country to serve meals to hungry survivors whose homes had been destroyed.

Today, World Central Kitchen goes where it is needed, mobilizing across the world to deliver life-sustaining food to people in crisis zones, from Ukraine in the trenches of its war with Russia, to Maui in the wake of devastating wildfires, to Bangladesh during a heavy monsoon season.

This year, World Central Kitchen suffered its own tragedy. Seven aid workers for the organization were killed by an Israeli airstrike during a mission to bring food to battle-torn Gaza, amid the Israel-Hamas war.

“In the moment, I was just going down in a spiral of, ‘I’m shutting down the entire operation forever,'” said Andrés. “I don’t want that responsibility on my shoulders.”

But, he says, it was his daughter Inés—who is “somewhere in the world feeding people with another organization because she doesn’t want to get close to me”—who gave him faith. “She said, ‘We are not going to be changing the world without understanding that we must take some risks,'” said Andrés.

In all the clashes of nations that World Central Kitchen has been caught between, in all the sparks of conflict and flames of war, and all the starvation, poverty, and pain he’s witnessed, Andrés hasn’t lost hope. He doesn’t see politics as defining, or people as hateful. For him, it’s not red or blue, but black and white—cut and dried.

“I go to blue states and red states in emergencies, and you know what I realized?” he asked the crowd. “In the worst moments of humanity, the best of humanity shows up and you will see people in a kitchen helping feed fellow Americans, not because they’re Republicans or Democrats, but they’re Americans helping Americans, people helping people.”

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here.

Newsom signs pile of AI bills as the SB 1047 deadline approaches

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pile of AI bills into law on Tuesday. Two of those bills concern the rights of actors in a world where studios have the option to use an AI-generated version of an actor rather than the genuine article. AB 2602 requires studios to state explicitly in contracts with actors that they’re claiming the right to create an AI-generated likeness of their body or voice. AB 1836 imposes a 70-year requirement in which studios must get consent from a deceased actor’s estate before generating an AI likeness. (Both bills build on AI-related concessions that actors won during the writers’ strike.)

Another trio of bills signed into law by Newsom deal with the use of AI in politics. AB 2655 requires online platforms to remove or label deepfakes that misrepresent political candidates during election season. AB 2839, meanwhile, expands the time period around elections in which individuals are prohibited from knowingly sharing deepfakes and other AI-generated disinformation. And AB 2355 requires campaigns to disclose any use of AI-generated or AI-manipulated ad content. 

Tuesday’s news is just as notable for what it didn’t include: SB 1047, which would impose a basic set of safety and reporting requirements on companies developing large “frontier” models. The bill intends to get the state more involved in ensuring that AI companies don’t create unsafe models that could cause or enable catastrophic harm (for example, the creation of a bioweapon).

Many Silicon Valley venture capital and startup people, along with some powerful political allies, claim the bill’s requirements would slow research progress on a technology that could revolutionize technology and business. Proponents of the bill argue that frontier AI models may soon pose severe risks and that developers of such models should implement reasonable safeguards against such risks.

Tuesday’s signature of the politics- and entertainment-related AI bills is no indicator that Newsom will indeed sign AB 1047 (he has until September 30 to decide). In deciding SB 1047, Newsom must size up the real risk of catastrophic harm from large AI models, then balance the threat against the need of the state’s biggest industry to push forward—and profit from—a transformative technology.   

Microsoft rolls out the second “wave” of AI at work

Microsoft rolled out on Monday a new set of AI features within its productivity and collaboration apps. The showcase event,  called Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2, was meant to display the second phase of Copilot’s integration into modern business workflows. As demonstrated on Monday, the AI Copilot is ever present in the interface, and has become more adept at fetching relevant contextual information, including proprietary or company-specific information from a knowledge graph.

“Copilot Pages” is a good example. The tool is something like Google Docs, with the AI copilot acting as a coworker in a collaboration group. One demo video shows a user asking Copilot to fetch information about a potential project. The user can then chat with the AI, and finally move all the AI’s responses onto a “Page,” where other users are invited to weigh in. As the team iterates and fleshes out the idea, it can use the Copilot to pull in documents that might help advance the work, like proposal templates or project plans from the past.

Another feature, Narrative Builder, takes a similar approach, but within the PowerPoint environment. The tool starts by generating a sample presentation outline based on a small amount of information provided by the user, then pulls in presentation templates and art that fit the company’s style. The tool lets a user get to a reasonably good draft quickly, then begin reacting to it, instead of staring at blank pages. A new Prioritize my Inbox tool uses AI to prioritize emails based on the body of the email itself. For instance, it can glean from an email if an action needs to be taken by the recipient, and how urgently the recipient needs to act. 

Perhaps most interesting of all, Microsoft is now rolling out a new tool called Copilot Studio where regular worker-users (not coders or people with AI skills) can build their own AI agents. Microsoft believes such agents are the way of the future for businesses. For instance, an HR department might use Copilot to build a “new employee assistant” that can guide a new hire through all the paperwork, orientation, and training that happens on the first day of a new gig. Such a bot would know the employee handbook and onboarding procedures and could answer any questions the employee might have.

Or a customer service department might use Copilot to build an agent that assists field service workers during customer calls. Such an agent would come armed with all the company’s product information, information on specific customers, and protocols for repairs and trouble-shooting. Microsoft originally announced the Copilot agents back in May, but the user-friendly agent builder is new, and will become available to businesses that subscribe to the Microsoft 365 Copilot services within the next few weeks.

NewsGuard: Two-thirds of top news sites block AI crawlers

Large language models are trained using massive amounts of data scraped from the public internet without explicit permission—and without paying for it. As this has become better understood, many publishers have included a line of code in their websites telling the web crawlers “do not scrape.” In a new report, NewsGuard says that 67% of news websites it rates as “top quality” now block web crawlers’ access to their content.

NewsGuard, which provides anti-misinformation tools, deduces that AI model developers must then rely disproportionately on news data from low-quality sources such as The Epoch Times and ZeroHedge, which may publish rumors or conspiracy theories, or have a political agenda. Among these low-quality sites, 91% allow the crawlers, NewsGuard finds. “This helps explain why chatbots so often spread false claims and misinformation,” the report states.

Of course, NewsGuard has no way of knowing what news data is used to train AI models because AI companies don’t disclose that (it acknowledges this). But it’s true that publishers are blocking crawlers used by AI companies, and that AI companies now routinely sign content deals with publishers so that they can train models using the publisher’s content. OpenAI, for example, has now signed such agreements with Time, The Atlantic, Vox Media, and others.

The AI industry is working on ways of fixing the news problem. Perplexity and OpenAI Search, for example, can call on an index of current web content to help inform the answers the AI generates. And a growing area of research focuses on “recursive” learning, or the ability of an AI model to constantly learn new information and integrate it into their training data.

More AI coverage from Fast Company: 

• Even with a $150 billion valuation, OpenAI is far from a sure bet
• Microsoft’s AI Copilot will now help you make pivot tables and write Python code within Excel
• New AI tools can dig up skeletons in politicians’ social media histories—and yours, too
• Generative AI promised limitless creation—instead, it’s all about summarization

Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week, suggesting job growth picked up in September.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 219,000 for the week ending September 14, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 230,000 claims for the latest week.

The labor market has cooled considerably, with a big step-down in hiring and decrease in job openings, which have raised concerns of a deterioration in conditions that could undermine the economic expansion. Layoffs, however, remain low.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut interest rates by 50 basis points, the first reduction in borrowing costs since 2020. Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters “the labor market bears close watching,” but added that the U.S. central bank was not waiting for layoffs to rise before lowering borrowing costs.

Powell also said policymakers were not hearing from businesses that a rise in layoffs was “getting ready to happen,” adding “the time to support the labor market is when it’s strong, and not when you begin to see the layoffs.”

The Fed had raised its benchmark overnight interest rate by 525 basis points in 2022 and 2023 to a 5.25%-5.50% range.

Claims have been little changed since dropping from an 11-month high of 250,000 in late July, which economists mostly blamed on temporary plant shutdowns in the automobile industry.

The claims data covered the week during which the government surveyed business establishments for the nonfarm payrolls component of September’s employment report. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 142,000 jobs in August, below the average monthly gain of 202,000 over the past 12 months.

The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, fell 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.829 million during the week ending September 7, the claims report showed. The so-called continuing claims have declined from more than 2-1/2-year highs touched in July.

That jump was mostly attributed to policy changes in Minnesota that allowed nonteaching staff in the state to file for unemployment benefits during the summer school holidays. Continuing claims data next week could offer more clues on the health of the labor market in September.

—Lucia Mutikani, Reuters

We are beginning to see shifts in the workforce that are influenced by an increasingly older population. Requests for more flexible schedules to care for aging family members. Vocal and much needed advocates calling out ageism in the recruitment process. The rise of fractional executives to lead organizational functions, especially in start-ups. This is not a phase; this will be the new way of working. Here’s why.

Global demographics are shifting. According to the World Health Organization, one in six people in the world will be 60 or older by 2030. While countries such as Japan and South Korea have acclimated to having a predominantly older population, the global shift is unprecedented.

Left unaddressed, these demographic shifts will impact the healthcare system, workplace productivity, and a country’s GDP. These are all big issues that lead to longer, fuller discussions. Yet from a workplace perspective, there is much that can be done now to prepare for the inevitable changes. Here are three aspects to consider.

1. Support more flexible work schedules. This is not an return to office debate. Rather, it’s about building flexibility into our social and work infrastructures so that employees can balance the needs of work and loved ones without fear of losing their livelihoods. Trust employees to meet their deadlines and honor their commitments. Additionally, when they are in the office, ensure the work environment is conducive to productivity, connection, and collaboration.
   
2. Learn from blue zones. There is much to be gained by taking a closer look at blue zones, those regions of the world inhabited by people living exceptionally long lives based on lifestyle choices. From a work perspective, employers can do much to introduce programs that recognize balance, social interactions, and stress reduction now. This can pave the way for longer, healthier lives.
   
3. Use technology to advance or support longevity. The longevity market sector is big, with experts estimating it will go from $27 billion in 2023 to $44 billion in 2031. While there are many segments to it—smart homes, fall prevention and detection, social engagement, transportation, and more as evidenced by this great AgeTech Market Map—the one area that needs immediate attention is in closing staffing gaps in senior care communities. According to the American Health Care Association, 94% of senior care facilities find it difficult to attract new staff, with 67% reporting a lack of qualified or interested candidates.

Technology innovations that are helping to address the senior care staffing issue include robots in the dining room and kitchen, and automated workflows to streamline scheduling, data entry, and other administrative tasks. There is also an uptick in using AI to better understand subtle shifts in a resident’s body movement. This can indicate immediate needs, such as wandering or falls, or long-term health issues such as frailty. This, too, can help close staffing gaps by sending alerts and staff to the residents most in need, as opposed to routinely scheduled check-ins. The cost savings from reduced risks and avoiding compliance violations can potentially be redirected to improving staff training and wages.

Companies that offer staffing, billing, training, or other types of solutions that complement the needs of senior care communities are encouraged to form partnerships with longevity tech providers to help address these issues.

Prepare for the future

These are just a few ways that employers and communities can work more closely together to prepare for the upcoming changes. While we don’t know how the workplace will look by the year 2030, we cannot be surprised when these demographic shifts have a ripple effect on the entire population.

Workplaces that prepare for changes now will be in a better position to recruit and retain top talent. Tech innovators that see the opportunities in longevity technology can seize a significant market share now. Commercial real estate investors and owners would do well by gaining a better understanding of how to run their senior communities most efficiently. For each of us, longevity is a gift, not an issue to be fixed or dismissed. After all, isn’t being well-cared for what we want, especially as we age?

Honghao Deng is CEO and cofounder of Butlr.

From the world’s largest food companies to consumers, we are focused on finding ways to reduce our impact on climate change. For some, the solution has been to give up a staple on tables across the country—the burger.

But I’m here to let you in on a secret. You can have your burger without the side of guilt. That’s because the cow’s environmental footprint just changed.

Some of the world’s largest food companies have set significant climate commitment goals, yet the path to achieve this is one of the industry’s biggest challenges. That’s because it’s difficult to capture the reduction value of Scope 3 emissions—indirect emissions that occur in the value chain. These food companies must not only consider their role in getting the glass of milk on your table, but the footprint of the cow too.

A response to methane

It’s clear we all want a choice in what we eat. Demand for animal-based protein isn’t declining— it’s growing. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recognized both the need for more animal protein production to address global hunger, while also reducing emissions. In livestock, they’ve identified nine measures to reduce methane emissions 25% by 2030, and to increase livestock productivity 1.7% per year globally by 2050. Cattle are a key part of the answer to addressing some of the world’s biggest societal issues: hunger and climate. The cow is no longer the culprit—the cow is the how.

The biggest opportunity to make a difference in emissions is inside the animal—enteric methane. Methane is shorter lived than carbon dioxide (CO2), lasting about a decade in the atmosphere, but is 27 times more potent at trapping heat. With methane, smaller reductions can create a bigger impact. But you can’t have environmental sustainability without also creating economic sustainability, meaning sustainable practices must also be profitable on the farm to create widespread adoption.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently completed its comprehensive, multi-year review safety and efficacy review of our product, Bovaer® (3-NOP), a first-in-class methane-reducing feed ingredient, for use in lactating dairy cattle. The product suppresses the methane-inducing enzyme in the cow’s rumen. By giving one tablespoon of Bovaer to each lactating dairy daily, we can lower methane emissions by around 30%, equal to 1.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions each year. These reductions create a new opportunity for dairy farmers to be financially rewarded for reducing their dairy’s carbon footprint. Feeding one million cows Bovaer would reduce emissions by the equivalent of removing more than 285,000 cars from the road for a year. 

Other climate tools

Climate neutral farming keeps U.S. farmers globally competitive so that they can continue to produce more food with a lower, and ultimately balanced environmental footprint. Access to this technology now gives farmers another tool to implement. It starts with innovations in feed, like Bovaer, and other on-farm solutions, implementing tools like our tool UpLook, an insights-based engine designed to measure and monitor greenhouse gas emissions, and Athian’s first-of-its-kind voluntary livestock carbon insetting marketplace to create the necessary ecosystem to help farmers reduce, measure, and monetize their emission reductions, delivering value through the entire food chain.

Climate neutral livestock farms are the future, and will happen this decade. Making the U.S. farmer more profitable and competitive, helping food companies achieve their Scope 3 emissions goals, and giving consumers what they also want—more environmentally conscious animal protein options—environmentally friendly dairy choices from milk and yogurt to cheese, ice cream, and more.

Jeff Simmons is president and CEO of Elanco Animal Health.

Given the semi-annual world-ending events and the bevy of unhinged, heavily costumed folks behind them, a comic book universe would be an objectively terrible place to live. Luckily, New York City is not Gotham City—even though it inspired it. But if you pass through Grand Central Station today, or Little Italy, or Times Square, you’ll see old-school newspaper hawkers schlepping copies of the Gotham Gazette—and if you’re a print subscriber of The New York Times, you’ll even get one right on your doorstep, wrapped around your regular paper.

I wouldn’t want to live in the DC universe. But as it turns out, it’s a pretty delightful place to visit for a few minutes, thanks to the streaming service Max and T Brand Studio’s newspaper collaboration for the new series The Penguin, which is set in Matt Reeves’ Batman timeline and debuts today.

“This opportunity was one that really felt natural for us, because there’s honestly nothing more New York [and thus Gotham City] than The New York Times,” says Vida Cornelious, senior vice president of creative at T Brand, the Times’ advertising content studio. “The Gazette has been the daily paper of the Batman universe since the 1940s, and what better way to complement the show than by bringing it to life and delivering it all over the country?”

EASTER EGGS AND RIDDLER ESCAPE ROOMS

Cornelious says Max approached her team a few months back with an RFP tied to The Penguin, which places the titular secondary character from Reeves’ first film, The Batman, in a crime saga all his own. T Brand responded with the idea of writing, designing, printing, and wrapping DC’s tabloid of record—which debuted in Batman #4 in December, 1940—around the official U.S. paper of record. 

“Our goal was really to try and build a believable world with the types of everyday melodrama you might find in any daily tabloid,” Cornelious says. 

To that end, in The Gazette there’s an article on conditions and issues within the prison housing the Riddler, the primary villain of The Penguin. There’s an op-ed bemoaning mold problems that are the result of the Riddler flooding Gotham in the first film. And my personal favorite: A piece headlined, “Riddler-Inspired Escape Room Raises Eyebrows.” (Cornelious says the T Brand edit team had a ball pitching stories for the fictional paper.)

Collectively, it’s all the minutiae of the real news cycle that would fill the void between the explosive events of tentpole comic book storylines, and it’s fascinating in its small-scale world building. There are, of course, also hints at big elements of the new show, such as an article about an heir to the Falcone crime family, an editorial cartoon detailing a missing Batman, and more. 

The cover, meanwhile, sets the stage for the series with its unabashed, all-out tabloid headline treatment: “The Penguin on Thin Ice.” And if the design looks familiar, that’s on purpose. The team drew influence from the Gotham Gazette props in The Batman and The Penguin, which paid obvious homage to New York’s real-world counterparts via screaming type and wordplay and design.

“It was most important that we were replicating that world of DC’s Gotham really accurately, from the colors to the fonts to the photography to the illustration and, of course, the writing style,” Cornelious says. “It really did come down to the details.”

If you came for the easter eggs, they’re here, too. You could start by Googling the bylines of some of those fictive journalists within for some fun callbacks, and you “may also notice what seems to be a secondary character from The Penguin looking for love in the classified ads …”

MARKETING MISFIRES

In an era where “fake news” is more often than not real, and the world is dominated by false narratives and AI imagery, the paper is clearly stamped as an advertisement, lest anyone think the Penguin is indeed taking over Gotham. Moreover, Cornelious adds that the Times’ ad standards and legal teams review T Brand’s output, which is the key to her department living up to the institution’s rigorous standards is authenticity—in this case, she says, to the spirit and ethos of the world Reeves built. 

While T Brand didn’t have access to the episodes for reference, Cornelious’ team had briefs outlining elements of the storytelling. Pia Chaozon Barlow, EVP of Originals Marketing at Max and HBO, wrote to Fast Company that showrunner Lauren LeFranc also worked closely with the team on the project, which had a strategic and practical angle to it, too.

“Partnering with The New York Times to produce the Gazette made perfect sense—it’s the most iconic New York City news outlet, and it allows us to reach not just superhero fans, but also those who love broader prestige crime dramas,” she detailed.

Beyond the print piece, a full digital campaign is rolling out on the websites of The New York Times and its sports hub The Athletic, featuring a countdown to Gotham’s mayoral “State of the City,” which coincides with The Penguin’s premiere, as well as headlines from Gotham City One news. And out on the streets, those aforementioned paper hawkers will be handing out standalone copies of the Gotham Gazette, which is likely to become a collector’s item to Bat fans.

Ultimately, viral marketing campaigns in the entertainment world can be a mixed bag. There’s the time The Blair Witch Project framed its (woefully compensated) stars as missing or dead. Or, the time Mission Impossible: III rigged newspaper boxes with devices that were supposed to play the movie’s theme song, but instead were mistaken for bombs. Or, more recently, the Megalopolis trailer intended to be subversive that ended up being stocked with AI-generated fake quotes attributed to real movie critics.

Which is all to say: It’s easy to take a big swing and go wrong. And it’s surprising when it just feels organically right and is, indeed, fit to print.

The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday marked the closest the central bank has come in launching an easing cycle on the cusp of a U.S. presidential election in nearly half a century.

While interest rate policy is rarely static during election years, kicking off a brand new rate-cutting phase with fewer than 10 weeks to Election Day has happened only twice before now — in 1976 and in 1984.

The U.S. central bank is an independent federal agency, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers consistently say political considerations — including approaching elections — do not factor at all in their decisions on interest rates.

“This is my fourth presidential election at the Fed,” Powell said in a press conference following the Fed’s policy meeting in late July. “(A)nything that we do before, during, or after the election will be based on the data, the outlook, and the balance of risks and not on anything else.”

Not everyone is convinced.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said earlier this year he thought the Fed might lower rates to help Democrats in the Nov. 5 election. Trump said last month that presidents ought to have a say over Fed decisions.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said only that she would respect the Fed’s independence. “As president, I would never interfere in the decisions that the Fed makes,” she said last month.

RATES IN ELECTION YEARS

The Fed has changed interest rates in all but two presidential election years dating back to 1972, and its actions have been closely divided between increases and reductions.

The policy rate has risen in five election years and fallen in six. In most cases those changes were part of cycles that had been set in motion a year or more before an election year.

The incumbent president or party controlling the White House won reelection in four of the five years rates rose in the run-up to Election Day.

The exception occurred in 2000, when Vice President Al Gore failed to keep the White House for the Democrats, and George W. Bush retook it for Republicans. Rates under then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan had risen that year by 1 percentage point between January and the end of October, although the last increase had been in June, roughly five months prior to the election.

Meanwhile, the challenger to an incumbent president or party controlling the presidency won five of the six elections held in years when rates were falling.

The exception was in 1996 when incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton won a second term. Rates — again under Greenspan — were lowered by a quarter of a percentage point between January and Election Day, although the last cut had occurred at the start of the year.

The most rates have risen in an election year prior to the day ballots were cast is 2.56 percentage points. That happened in 1984 when the Fed under Paul Volcker’s leadership was still grinding out the remnants of high inflation. Republican Ronald Reagan won reelection in a landslide.

The most they have fallen in an election year up to Election Day was 2.75 percentage points in 2008, when then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke was slashing rates to cushion the blow of the global financial crisis. Barack Obama retook the White House for the Democrats.

The only two presidential election years since 1972 to see no rate changes were in 2012 and 2016. Obama won re-election in the first and Trump won in the second to retake the White House for Republicans.

NEW CUTTING CYCLES

As common as rate changes are in election years, brand new rate-reduction cycles — a series of cuts that follow either one or more recent rate increases or a pause of rate changes of at least five months — are less frequently begun on the doorstep of an election.

Before the Fed’s announcement on Wednesday, there had been four since the 1970s, and in three of those the challenger won.

The most recent instance was the last presidential election in 2020. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fed under Powell’s direction cut rates twice that March by 1.50 percentage points, bringing the policy rate to the near-zero level. Democrat Joe Biden narrowly defeated Trump in that election.

The closest to an election an easing cycle has begun was in 1976 when the Fed under Arthur Burns lowered rates beginning just four weeks before Election Day. How much of a factor that proved to be in Democrat Jimmy Carter’s defeat of incumbent Republican Gerald Ford is unclear since rate decisions at that time were not publicly announced. Formal policy decision announcements only began in 1994.

—Dan Burns, Reuters