SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " general " 2,536 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Top Boston hospitals clash over Medicare Advantage network after split
First, Mass General Brigham split with Dana-Farber. Now its Medicare Advantage plan is dropping the cancer hospital.
General Mills closes sale of Brazil food business
Transaction with Grupo 3corações advances portfolio revamp.
Former Labor Secretary misused funds
A new report from the department's Office of Inspector General found Lori Chavez-DeRemer violated numerous department policies
EU and ASEAN discuss health emergency preparedness and response
The Director-General of the European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), Dr Florika Fink-Hooijer, met with the Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dr Kao Kim Hourn, in Jakarta on 4 September 2026 to discuss health emergency preparedness and response to emerging health threats, and to explore deeper cooperation between the EU and ASEAN. Both regions face similar challenges from emerging threats such as infectious diseases, which will further increase with climate change and increased travel, requiring global and regional cooperation. Both sides acknowledged that regional partnerships are essential to prepare for the next health emergency — it's a matter of when, not if. Building close EU-ASEAN cooperation on health emergency preparedness and response is therefore critical to ensuring a collective response, as we look ahead to the Commemorative Summit in 2027 marking the 50th anniversary of EU-ASEAN Dialogue Relations. Among other topics, discussions covered future partnership in the establishment and operations of the ASEAN Centre for Public Health Emergencies and Emerging Diseases (ACPHEED), as well as other key avenues for deeper collaboration.
HERA Director-General visits Indonesia to strengthen health cooperation
The Director-General of the European Commission’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), Dr Florika Fink-Hooijer, met with Indonesia's Minister of Health, H.E. Budi Gunadi Sadikin, in Jakarta on 4 September 2026. Discussions centred on Indonesia's expansion of surveillance capacities, including genomic sequencing as well as local manufacturing capacity. There was a clear commitment to work together on wastewater surveillance going forward. Earlier that day, Director-General Fink-Hooijer, met with the Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dr Kao Kim Hourn, at the ASEAN Secretariat to discuss health emergency preparedness and response to emerging health threats, and to explore deeper cooperation between the EU and ASEAN. More info on the meeting at the ASEAN Secretariat: https://link.europa.eu/HdVV7q
Markel announces collaboration with Midwest General Insurance Agency to expand small business workers compensation offering in California
/PRNewswire/ -- Markel, the insurance operations within Markel Group Inc. (NYSE: MKL), announced today a strategic collaboration with Midwest General Insurance...
Used books are big business in CT again. ‘People are just reading more in general’.
Whether it’s about cost, availability or a rediscovered love of browsing and collecting, stores and book fairs that specialize in used or out-of-print books are booming.
225,750 Shares in Six Flags Entertainment Corporation $FUN Bought by Legal & General Group Plc
Legal & General Group Plc purchased a new stake in Six Flags Entertainment Corporation (NYSE:FUN - Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund purchased 225,750 shares of the company's stock,
Michael Lombardi resigns as North Carolina football GM amid school investigation
North Carolina football general manager Michael Lombardi has resigned, ending the tenure of an immediate hire in Bill Belichick’s NFL-to-college coaching transition who had been on on paid administrative leave as the subject of a school investigation.
Trump Taps Army Engineering Official as Acting Secretary
The move came days after the resignation of Daniel P. Driscoll, who had clashed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the purge of top generals in the Army.
Suspended UNC football GM Michael Lombardi resigns amid complaint, investigation
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Michael Lombardi’s tenure at the University of North Carolina was a short one. The Tar Heels’ football general manager resigned from his position on Thursday, according
Bill Belichick’s general manager resigns amidst investigation
Back in July, North Carolina Tar Heels football general manager Michael Lombardi was placed on paid leave in the wake of an internal investigation. Now, he has officially resigned from his post. Less than a week after North Carolina officially began its season with a win over TCU, they will now be without their general…
A judge expanded abortion access in Idaho last month. Another court paused his decision
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said the ruling “means unborn children and their mothers in our state are protected under Idaho law.”
Michael Lombardi out as UNC’s football general manager
Michael Lombardi, a longtime confidant of North Carolina football head coach Bill Belichick, was placed on paid administrative leave in late July. He is no longer with the football program.
Bravo Greater Des Moines grant applications due Sept. 25
Bravo Greater Des Moines is accepting applications for its operating and public art grant programs. The operating grant program provides general operating support to eligible arts, culture and heritage organizations in Greater Des Moines to support administrative expenses and day-to-day costs of running an organization. The public art grant program supports comprehensive public art projects…
YouTube Gold: Appalachian State Shocks The World
The Big Ten has been a football powerhouse for more than a century, and the main driving forces of that dominance have almost always been Ohio State and Michigan. Michigan Stadium, generally known as the Big House, seats 107,601, but they can squeeze in 115,000 on a big day when the fire Marshall’s not looking. […]
Legal & General Group Plc Invests $6.41 Million in PENN Entertainment, Inc. $PENN
Legal & General Group Plc purchased a new stake in PENN Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:PENN - Free Report) during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm purchased 299,874 shares of the company's stock, valued at approximately $6,405,000. Legal
Could PA insiders profit from political prediction markets?
Federal officials argue states can’t regulate prediction markets. 44 state attorneys general, including Pennsylvania’s, argue otherwise.
Gong-Show Griswold’s latest data dump a disaster
Last week, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office discovered they exposed for weeks the addresses of more than 130,000 “confidential voters” — including victims of sexual assault, domestic violence — and her political opponent in the attorney general’s race, District Attorney Michael Allen. The act itself, another in a growing list of acts of […]
Colorado’s education paradigm déja-vu
Déja-vu for 10 years. In 2015-2016, state standardized testing was fully integrated into teacher performance evaluation. The tests comprised 50% of teacher “performance.” The idea was to follow the General Electric “rank-and-yank” human resources model. At GE, the model went like this: top 20% of employees got raises and bonuses; the middle 70% got to […]
N.Y. leads 23-state lawsuit over new Title X family planning funding conditions
Attorney General Letitia James is leading the challenge to new conditions tied to Title X.
Lions GM Pushes Back on Major Roster Concern
When the Detroit Lions released Terrion Arnold after his arrest, the team faced scrutiny for not doing enough to protect themself at the position. However, General Manager Brad Holmes made it clear that he feels good about the cornerback room, and they felt they had a good group whether Arnold was here or not. “We […] The post Lions GM Pushes Back on Major Roster Concern appeared first on HEAVY.
Georgia AG urges SEC to suspend, expel LSU if school rosters former NFL players
A state judge is set to rule Thursday on whether former NFL players can suit up for LSU as Georgia's attorney general pushes commissioner Greg Sankey to impose severe conference penalties
Florida Democrats call for attorney general’s impeachment over Hope Florida
Democrats have little power in Tallahassee.
Jonathon Brooks Sidelinded Ahead Of Panthers Season Opener
The Carolina Panthers are keeping a close eye on running back Jonathon Brooks as the regular season approaches. Brooks missed practice Tuesday and was again working off to the side with trainers Wednesday because of general soreness. The Panthers have not indicated that he suffered a new major injury, and the exact location of the…
Middleton leads Johnson in race for Texas attorney general, but the contest is unusually close
State Sen. Mayes Middleton spent lavishly to capture the Republican nomination and build statewide name recognition. But the most recent polling shows him just five percentage points ahead of Democratic state Sen. Nathan Johnson -- with more than a fifth of voters still undecided.
The moderates’ plan to slow Hasan Piker has already worked
The streamer has become a general election distraction for allies.
MyChart Medicare phishing scam raises concern among Philadelphia health systems
Pa. Attorney General David Sunday is urging residents to beware of unsolicited free offers and rewards.
August Monthly Review: ChatGPT In Epic
Death, taxes, another frontier lab healthcare launch inspiring truly insane LinkedIn takes. As much as I want to stay away, I repeatedly am the crewman unplugging his ears whenever we pass these sirens. So it’s not the first and probably not the last time we dial up the typewriter rather than tie ourselves to the mast. The full blow-by-blow timeline: Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe The End of the Standalone PHR (Jan 8): ChatGPT Health arrives for consumers, at the time powered by b.well. I was bullish on the approach in that the best way for the PHR to finally solve distribution was to meet consumers were they already are (i.e. When Horizontal Meets Healthcare (Jan 9): OpenAI for Healthcare puts out the shingle for enterprises, with SharePoint ingestion standing in for the EHR integration the product actually needed. Another One: Anthropic’s Healthcare Debut (Jan 16): Claude's version, on HealthEx rails instead of b.well, with Agent Skills for FHIR development as the one true vertical-specific investment. ChatGPT for Clinicians: The Trap Sprung (Apr 24): OpenAI filled in the missing GTM middle with a free product for verified clinicians, effectively peeling the enterprise wrapper off ChatGPT for Healthcare and taking the PLG fight directly to OpenEvidence. OpenAI’s Second Attempt at Health (Jul 31): a relaunch of their patient specific app, now branded Health in ChatGPT, where the privacy partition came out, the connectors thinned, and b.well disappeared in favor of first-party FHIR work against a smaller network Beyond a Shingle So what was announced now? Today, we’re introducing a new electronic health record integration that brings authorized patient context from Epic into ChatGPT for Healthcare, along with the Healthcare Public Data plugin for direct, structured access to official healthcare datasets like PubMed, DailyMed, and CMS Coverage. Together, these capabilities bring ChatGPT closer to the systems and sources healthcare teams trust, while supporting the controls and compliance healthcare work requires. The core portfolio is unchanged from prior announcements we delineated and discussed (aside from the relaunch of patient-facing). Since trade publications still seem to be confusing them by using the wrong names: Enterprise sales motion: ChatGPT for Healthcare Protecting their core product / PLG: ChatGPT for Clinicians Consumer/patient-facing product: Health in ChatGPT So really, this is a feature release (specifically for ChatGPT for Healthcare when it comes to EHR integration). What’s cool about it, though, is that we are moving beyond just putting out a shingle. Everything in the January enterprise launch was horizontalizable: Horizontal tech companies thus generally start verticalization with their “putting out a shingle phase”. Telling the world you’re open for business as a horizontal tech company reliably attracts early inbound interest from buyers who are already trying to force-fit horizontal tools into domain-specific workflows and are eager for any signal that the vendor intends to support their use case more directly. Nothing was really vertical specific, which is exactly what you'd expect from the ultimate hypergrowth horizontal company dipping their toes into specific industries. But eventually you have to stop changing the sign on the door and start changing the product. Can you guess where the horizontal product was going to run out of road? This is the core dilemma writ large: verticalization requires differentiation, while scale economics of consumer and horizontal push toward unification. I’ve buried the lede so deep here it will be painful to some readers, but what should be shocking to no one is that my perspective is that EHR integration is the only path that meaningfully resolves this tension for ChatGPT for Healthcare. Integration with Microsoft Sharepoint is fine, but it is categorically insufficient for any product that hopes to influence clinical decision-making. SMART Money Well here we are, eight months later! Real vertical investment has begun, which surprised a few people. One friend in the industry messaged me: “Absolutely no way Epic gave ChatGPT API access.” Looking forensically at the announcements, the integration is notably read-only across appointment notes, laboratory results, medications, and specialist documentation. So while I’m not a betting man, I'd wager the house this is a SMART on FHIR launch: That sounds a lot like USCDI! The recommended path for the workflow they outline would be SMART on FHIR Their Health AI lead’s post is evocative of both standalone and EHR launch SMART, which another termed “ChartGPT” and “EHR Plugin” The implementation burden for SMART on FHIR is the lowest of the available integrative paths This is the team who literally did patient-facing SMART on FHIR with Epic last month Most importantly, if you’re a horizontal company, you generally still haven’t taken the full plunge and thus (overly) value reusability. SMART on FHIR is the logical compromise: healthcare-specific enough to matter, but standardized enough to reuse. Nobody Asked Judy Another friend asked “I thought they had to go to each health system, or did they go direct to Epic and now health systems opt in?” Given the trust paradigms in healthcare, this functionally cannot be Epic hoovering up all the data for OpenAI and shoving ChatGPT in their customers’ faces (or they would revolt). However, I do believe the aforementioned terrible coverage by TechCrunch and other outlets is probably responsible for that question, given the 325 million reference. When using FHIR as a business associate to an Epic customer, there is no EHR gatekeeping to speak of, as that isn’t how fhir.epic.com works: You register an app You pick your APIs You test against the sandbox APIs You list as “Ready for Production” Hospitals pick your app You test and go live with them Bluntly, nobody had to say yes or no in Verona (nor were they given the chance). Vendor Services (their next developer tier up that I doubt OpenAI is using quite yet in this initial release) certainly has contractual paperwork that some resent, but even there, the twin pressures of mounting antitrust and information blocking make outright gatekeeping increasingly fraught. My friend’s sentiment is, to me, representative of a broader industry neurosis, perhaps a sort of scar tissue of prior eras: people assume the gate is still there and never actually try the door. There are certainly other ways Epic (and any EHR) can put its thumb on the scale, but they are not so dumb as to stand in front of a federally mandated API and play bouncer at this exact moment in time. So I think they can and probably should go deeper, as this release is at best parity and at worst behind vertical-specific competition. OpenEvidence did a basic SMART launch with Sutter Health in February, allowing for more convenient evidence search by providers. They then add patient-context (the equivalent SMART on FHIR flow to what we see here) when Cedars-Sinai went enterprise-wide in May. UpToDate has four distinct applications across deeper workflows like patient engagement listed in Epic Showroom and announced a partnership with Epic to power Art at UGM Abridge and other ambient scribes have invested deeply into the deepest bidirectional clinical copilot workflow with integrations well beyond SMART on FHIR. In that light, the “Who is OpenAI primarily targeting here?” is clear. This release brings them into striking distance of OpenEvidence, but not the others quite yet. They are the only one of the three you can reach without building something truly Epic-specific. When will they go further? Competition is a great motivator to overcome the horizontal demons and start building things that can’t be reused: not across industries, not across EHRs, maybe not past the customer you built them for. That’s the price of actually verticalizing. The question is if and when OpenAI will be willing to pay it. Month in Review Here is the monthly review. As a reminder, this is a regular round-up of the month’s posts and other content to surface things you may have missed across regulation, litigation, interoperability, and beyond. AI assistance is used in these bullet summaries so I can focus on articles. Articles Published: None this month Video Content: The Information Exchange: Standards-based Thruple Edition (Aug 14): Back to school for us too, with Brad reporting in from the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem’s one year anniversary in DC. We get into the January CMS-0057 deadline, the fall rulemaking reading list, and why enrollment still keeps most apps off FHIR. The Information Exchange: Epic Dúnadan Edition (Aug 25): A UGM roundup with Ryan Brickner joining for the first time to check our takes against what the building actually thinks. Rangers, Ergo sitting on top of EHI, and a down-market lineup that needs some cuts. Regulatory: Stacked Deck, Bad Hand (Aug 05): ONC’s website refresh took the entire HIT Policy Committee record with it, so I rebuilt the archive and went looking for the regulatory capture story everyone assumes is buried in there. Stacking the deck and winning the hand turn out to be very different things. The Sixth Generation of Patient Access (Aug 19): A quick catalog of the five generations of patient access we’ve layered on since HIPAA, and the two candidates now competing to be the sixth. One is planned. The other is the market routing around the plan entirely. Court cases: Three Cases Walk Into a Docket (Aug 06): Two surprise settlements cleared the board in a single week, and then Judge Maddox dropped ninety-four pages on Vyne v. Henry Schein. The sleeper is a DMCA holding that makes direct-to-database a considerably riskier business model. Epic v. Health Gorilla: Into the MDL (Aug 10): Nine class actions are headed to Miami, and the Panel signaled it wants to bring the case that spawned them along too. That would leave Epic arguing the requests were obviously fraudulent in one courtroom and unknowable in the other. Amazon v. Perplexity: Agents Are Legalized! (Aug 11): The Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction against Comet, holding that the user is the one accessing the servers rather than the company that built the agent. A real win for agentic access, and a much narrower one than the headline suggests. Veeva v. Epic: Come At Me, Bro (Aug 26): Epic’s response brief wants the dismissal affirmed and, unusually, wants the opinion published as precedent. Buried in it is Epic’s own description of what its non-competes actually prohibit, which current and former employees should read closely. EHRs: The Contract Epic Would Never Sign Today (Aug 04): A 1999 SEC exhibit catches Epic licensing nearly its entire product line, Tapestry included, to the company that became TriZetto. The marketing services menu attached to it is the part that will make you blink. Forecast from Verona (Aug 07): The Epic Almanac makes one argument six different ways: the AI is only as good as the networks behind it. Emmie headlines, Art’s context stack is the most ambitious part, and Penny finally gets an autonomous coding date on the calendar. Works With Epic MyChart (Aug 17): Epic’s first new Showroom category since the death of Workshop certifies hardware instead of software, badge on the box and all. Made for iPhone, but for blood pressure cuffs, and rough news for anyone selling the RPM stack sitting in between. UGM Hot Takes 2026 (Aug 20): Everyone else covered the AI announcements, so I went after Savvy deleting the payment gateway, Rangers as Boost with the timer removed, and a down-market lineup with too many entries. Plus the Health Grid tidbits I cannot help myself on. MyChart Central Grows Up (Aug 24): Device data and Emmie turn Epic’s identity hub into a full consumer platform, which is both a logical answer to ChatGPT and a bit of a mistake. It also happens to be the best scraping target Epic has ever shipped. Industry Analysis: The Wrong Yardstick (Aug 12): Vertical software keeps getting judged against Superhuman and Notion, which is the wrong bar entirely. Your user is comparing your product to a whiteboard and forty phone calls before lunch. Primitives vs. Abstractions (Aug 27): Developers want building blocks, systems of record prefer to hand out business logic, and both sides have a real case. There’s no test from the outside that separates the engineering reason from the competitive one, which is why this keeps ending up in court. Cross-industry Comparisons: The Two Kinds of Platform Power (Aug 18): Attention power and record power are different problems that keep getting handed the same regulatory toolkit. Congress’s latest swing at Big Tech shows both what’s possible and where it falls apart. The Dogs of (Platform) War (Aug 21): A CourtListener alert turned up a property management fight with healthcare’s exact shape and none of the Cures Act. Shell prospects, ghost accounts, a notetaker bot that came back to haunt someone, and a lawyer arguing both sides of the same theory in two states. Fractals All the Way Down (Aug 31): Yardi dominates property management right up until you zoom into one segment, where AppFolio owns it outright and Yardi doesn’t appear at all. Where you draw the line around a B2B software market is about to decide an awful lot of cases. Other News: If Judy Had the Courage (Aug 13): A short eulogy for the era when software was allowed to look insane: WinAMP, bold colors, and everything the grey chatbot era has taken from us. External Media: Portland Monthly Health Tech Meetup: Erin O’Brien channeled my own feelings - maybe it’s just because it’s August and beautiful, but the monthly edition of the PDX Health community meetup was a ripper. Make sure to reach out if interested to join for the next one. STAT’s Coverage of Epic This Month: Brittany Trang of STAT did a fantastic job of breaking the FTC investigation that’s been lurking, as well as UGM related coverage, so I had to give her her wish of a meme. Fall Conferences: I’m pumped to be kicking off my fall conference season in NYC at Nabla Accelerate next month, which Chrissy provided the link to apply for. Here’s the rest of my schedule in case you want to meet up: Commonwell (Redwood Shores, CA): Oct 13-14 Open@Epic (Madison, WI): Oct 21-22 eHealthExchange (Austin, TX): Oct 27 Sequoia Project (Austin, TX): Oct 28-29 HLTH (Vegas): Nov 15-18 RSNA (Chicago): Nov 29-Dec 3 Posts I Liked: HTI-6 Should Unbundle API Certification: Josh Mandel makes the case that HTI-6 should split (g)(10) into separate authorization and data certifications, so a PACS or a genomics platform can certify only the role it actually performs. Imaging is the urgent example, but the structure solves a much bigger problem. On implementing ePrior Auth with Epic: Scott Rossignol’s field notes from a live ePrior Auth build on Epic, including the two app registrations nobody warns you about and the CPT mapping problem waiting at the end. CMS-0057 implementations are going to be such a beast. Healthcare point solutions are starting to look a lot like streaming services: Spencer Dorn runs the cable-to-streaming arc against health IT and lands squarely on the bundling half of the cycle. Bundling can be good! It can also be bad! Life is nuanced. Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
As Food Companies Ditch Artificial Dyes, What Does Science Say About Their Health Effects?
General Mills has removed artificial colors from all of its U.S. cereals, including Lucky Charms and Trix, replacing synthetic dyes with colors derived from fruits, vegetables and spices such as turmeric and paprika. The move comes as food companies face growing pressure from consumers, retailers and policymakers to eliminate artificial dyes. GW public health experts are available to discuss what this shift means for consumers and what we actually know about the health effects of artificial foo
Chris McKenna details ‘disappointing’ exit from ‘General Hospital’ after shocking death scene
Chris McKenna admits his departure from ‘General Hospital’ is ‘disappointing’ after his powerful and mysterious character Jack Brennan met a grisly end on Tuesday’s new episode of the daytime drama.
Iris exits Generali's Redion platform in a management-led buyout
The buyout separates identity protection from Generali's newly unified Redion platform, just three months after that platform launched
Capped or graduated income tax rate? Colorado voters to decide
The proposal to create income tax tiers — which would replace Colorado’s flat rate — has been certified for the November general election ballot, setting the stage for a major showdown between two competing forces seeking to define the parameters of state revenue. Initiative No. 195, which would raise the tax obligations on higher-income earners, will […]
What Box Office Bomb Crushed Obsession on Streaming?
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get into this week’s issue, let me ask you for some suggestions. At the risk of coining too many names for too many things (hence my dictionary of terms...), I need a name for straight-to-streaming films that are too expensive to justify a straight-to-streaming release, but not big enough to justify a theatrical release. Like some of the films I highlighted in last week’s tally of the biggest film flops of 2026 so far: Hulu’s Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, Pizza Movie or Never Change! They don’t feel like “made for TV movies” (think Hallmark and Lifetime movies, cheap Netflix romcoms, or Disney Channel Original movies, for example) but they don’t feel big enough for the big screen. They’re not “cinematic” enough, so to speak. As I wrote... “I still need a name for this middle zone of film that’s too expensive to go straight-to-streaming but too small to justify a theatrical release (with all the PR, distribution, marketing and whatnot costs that go along with it), the Goldilocks zone of streaming film death.” Friend of the newsletter Brandon Katz has suggested the “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”. I love that first one. I’d offer up the much wordier “The Streaming Budget Dead Zone” or “the Goldilocks Zone of streaming film death” but that last one isn’t accurate since, unlike Goldilocks’ porridge, these films are the opposite of “just right”. That’s the problem! Anyway, if you have any suggestions, let me know! On to today’s Streaming Ratings Report. As you can tell by today’s headline, things are going to be spicy! I’m looking at a box office bomb that did really, really well on streaming, somewhat challenging a few different narratives. And another Netflix series declined in its second season. All that, plus Wicked: For Good switching streamers, The Hawk continuing its strong run, _The Bear’_s finale season finally dropping off the charts, the WNBA posting a big viewership number, “shallow libraries”, a sitcom spinoff failing to launch, more big budget IP flopping on Paramount+, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of July 20th to July 26th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - The Latest Theatrical Success Story on Streaming In the latest edition of “Flops, Bombs and Misses of the First Half of 2026”, I made a crucial change: I started including theatrical films with the streaming misses. The streamers have collectively—including Netflix, but not to as big of an extent—stopped making a lot of straight-to-streaming films, and the ones they do make aren’t as expensive as in the heyday of the streaming bubble. After the following two films bombed in theaters, you’d guess that they’ll be included in my next collection of flops, bombs and misses six months from now: Masters of the Universe on Prime Video (only $64 million domestic box office) Mortal Kombat II on HBO Max ($79 million domestic) But you’d be wrong! Masters of the Universe, a reboot of the He-Man franchise, a toy from the 1980s, came to streaming on 22-July and did great! This long-gestating project—it’s been at every studio for years, and came close to getting a greenlight at Netflix—then finally came to theaters in June, and showed up on streaming less than two months later. (I don’t love this short theatrical window.) It surprisingly grabbed nearly 20 million hours on its debut: That means, wait for it, Masters of the Universe is currently the eighth biggest film on streaming through two weeks. My rough bar for “hit” is shows or films in the top 15%. Ergo…Masters of the Universe is a legit, streaming hit! (One quick caveat: if it falls out of the top ten next week, it will move to 13th overall, just on the edge of the top 15.) Of course, that’s the data for just 2026. Here’s how it stacks up to Prime Video’s theatrical films: That drop into its second week is typical for Amazon films, but also a worrying sign. I have a feeling interest in this film is front-loaded and we’ll see it drop off after this. As for Mortal Kombat II, in this case, the viewership numbers roughly match the theatrical outing, with only 4.1 million hours in its first week. Here’s how it stacks up to other HBO Max films: The best defense of this number is that, as a relatively violent rated-R film, Mortal Kombat II never had a good chance at breaking out. So now it’s time for a little big of “Entertainment Nuance Guy”: First, yeah, my headline is obviously facetious, since Masters of the Universe besting Obsession says more about horror as a genre than it does that film. Second, I read and listened to quite a few “nobody wanted this IP” takes about Masters of the Universe, and that’s not really true. At least enough people wanted it to power a 20 million+ hour debut! Third, both this film and Mortal Kombat II were considered “average” by viewers, but not great films, with a 6.4 and 6.3 respectively on IMDb. That’s just shy of the level needed to be a word-of-mouth hit. Fourth, in the olden days, strong word of mouth could transform a box office miss into a cable/DVD hit, like Austin Powers or The Shawshank Redemption. We haven’t seen a lot of examples of that on streaming, though. And there are far fewer ways to monetize the post-theatrical life of a film these days. Fifth, Prime Video has shown an ability to push their own titles well, likely because they control the Amazon Fire TV ecosystem. Add it all up, and here’s my nuanced take on Masters of the Universe: it was a box office bomb, but, shockingly, a streaming hit. Unfortunately, while being a theatrical hit saves your film financially, being a streaming hit does not. Both Masters of the Universe and Mortal Kombat II had big budgets and needed to make more money in theaters to justify them. So…Straight-to-Streaming or Theaters? We’ve hit a really fun point in the streaming calendar, since the films that came out in theaters in April, May, and June are now arriving on streaming. So the “Do theatrical releases help streaming performances?” question is gonna get a fresh round of updates nearly every week. No single week will answer the question, but we may get some insights. For example, so far in 2026, it looks like theatrical films are lasting longer on the weekly Nielsen film charts. Here’s a list of films that have made the charts in their fourth or fifth week of release, separated by “for kids” and “general entertainment”: It certainly seems like theatrical films are lasting just a pinch longer on the charts, with Project Hail Mary being the current five-week champion. One Battle After Another did well for HBO Max too, and even The Sheep Detectives made it four weeks. The only exception to this trend? Obsession, which only lasted two weeks on the charts. You might tempted to overreact to this news. Don’t. Obsession is a huge horror hit, but horror just doesn’t do as well on streaming. By the way, here’s the Google Trends for various theatrical and stremaing films: Plus, when it comes to Netflix in four months, Obsession may have another big boost. Quick Notes on Film Note that when I write, “the streamers have pulled back on straight-to-streaming films” that doesn’t mean “abandoned” because Netflix is gonna Netflix. On 24-July, they released 72 Hours, a Kevin Hart comedy. Along with Eddie Murphy, Mark Wahlberg, John Cena and Adam Sandler, Kevin Hart is a streaming film star now. Did this latest one work? Not really. It only garnered two weeks of 13.2 and 12.2 million hours on its debut, well below the 20-million-hour hit threshold. It also was poorly received critically—a 44 on Metacritic—and by customers—a 5.4 on IMDb on 21K IMDb reviews. We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… The latest Netflix true crime doc to pop on the charts… How The Bear finished its run… Netflix’s latest Western to return to streaming… What Paramount+ animated film flopped… And what sitcom also missed… All the flops, bombs and misses… And a whole lot more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! I’m behind by a week, so we’ve got two issues coming your way this week, including one in a couple of days or so, then we’ll be all caught up**.** Next issue, inspired by The Super Mario Galaxy Movie coming to Peacock, I’m going to take a look at the workhouse of streaming TV: kids films. Plus The Devil Wears Prada 2 continues theatrical films’ big run on streaming. All that, plus another surprise hit on Hulu, Lioness on CBS, and a whole lot more. Long term, LeBron James is filming his own “Last Dance”-style docu-series, surprising no one. But as I’ve been writing about a lot this summer, this genre is really overrated, so whoever ends up buying it (reportedly ESPN) really shouldn’t pay too much for it.
Rep. Seth Moulton targets Sen. Ed Markey in Massachusetts Democratic primary amid broader calls for generational change
The primary is crucial in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, and the winner will be expected to prevail in November's general election.
Florida Politics: Hope Florida, Nixon-Moody debate?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is set to host a forum with several huge names in the Florida Republican Party, such as Attorney General James Uthmeier and GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Byron Donalds. Meanwhile, Angie Nixon is throwing her hat into the ring, challenging U.S. Senator Ashley Moody to a public debate ahead of the general election. POLITICO Reporter and Florida Playbook author Kimberly Leonard joined FOX 35's Garrett Wymer live over Zoom to discuss what's new in Florida politics.
ALCF Service-Enabled Science Series Explores Experiment-Time Computing and the DIII-D Digital Twin
Sept. 1, 2026 — The latest session in the ALCF’s Service-Enabled Science training series explored how integrated computing resources, automated workflows, and modern data infrastructure are helping accelerate fusion research. The webinar, “Fusing Experiments, Data, and Computing at DIII-D and ALCF,” led by General Atomics’ Mark Kostuk and Brian Sammuli, is now available on the ALCF’s […]
Baton Rouge General bringing permanent healthcare clinic to Scotlandville
Baton Rouge General plans to open a new primary care and mental health clinic at the Jewel J. Newman Community Center in October, expanding access to healthcare for residents of Scotlandville, north B… Already an INSIDER? Sign in. Already an INSIDER? Sign in
Caesars Entertainment Investor Alert: Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC Investigates Adequacy of Price and Process in Proposed Sale of Caesars Entertainment, Inc.
Former Attorney General of Louisiana Charles C. Foti, Jr., Esq. and the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (“KSF”) are investigating the proposed sale of Cae...
Google Pics is Workspace’s new ‘pro-level’ AI image creator & editor
Following the announcement at I/O 2026 in May, Google Pics is launching in general availability today. This image editor...
Lowe's launches major effort to help close America's skilled trades gap
Lowe's Foundation launched a coalition with Nvidia, General Motors and over 75 partners to train and certify 1 million skilled tradespeople by 2035.
Who is Rob Bonta? The AG at the heart of some of the biggest legal battles in business
California’s attorney general is angling for broader changes to the social media industry after a massive settlement with Meta.
Massachusetts politics | Voters head to polls for state primary today
Massachusetts’ primary election day is being held Tuesday as voters decide who will be on the ballot come November’s general election. One of the most high-profile races to watch is the contest between Democratic Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Seth Moulton.
The Department of the Navy’s Science and Technology Board: Building on 250 Years of Naval Innovation
In September of 1776, an enormous British armada lay anchored in New York Harbor. A month earlier, British forces under General William Howe had defeated the Continental Army and gained control of New York City and Long Island. Now this fleet of 400 ships, including 10 ships-of-the-line, 20 frigates, and 170 transports among many others
Omar Khan speaks with reporters after Steelers’ roster is released
Steelers General Manager Omar Khan had a lot to discuss with reporters this afternoon on the South Side.
Fluid Panthers sign ILB Bobby Okereke, claim OL Corey Bullock
Carolina general manager Dan Morgan continues to construct the NFL team's 53-man roster.
Americans trust their doctors while second-guessing distant intermediaries—now more than ever
The general public is smiling at local healthcare providers while snarling at federal healthcare agencies, according to a survey report posted Aug. 31 by Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bill Guerin speaks out about Quinn Hughes’ extension
Minnesota Wild General Manager Bill Guerin was at the Minnesota State Fair on Monday. He shared more information about extending star defenseman Quinn Hughes. Guerin sat on the Chad Hartman Show and was asked about the latest on re-signing Hughes. Furthermore, the relationship between Hughes and Guerin is in a good place. The two sides […] The post Bill Guerin speaks out about Quinn Hughes’ extension appeared first on HEAVY.
Apple Releases New iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, and tvOS 27 Public Betas
Apple today released the sixth public betas of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, tvOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate, allowing anyone with a compatible device to download and test the new software. The sixth betas come a week after Apple seeded the fifth betas and a few hours after the eighth developer betas. You can get started by signing up on Apple's beta website and then opting in to the public beta by opening up the Settings app on your device, selecting General, and choosing Software Update.
U.S. military does not plan to deploy troops to the polls in November, general says
Responding to a senator’s questions, Gen. Dan Caine said the Pentagon did not plan to send military personnel to voting sites or to seize ballots or voting machines.
Apple Releases macOS Golden Gate Beta 8
Apple today provided developers with the eighth beta of macOS Golden Gate, with the update coming a week after Apple seeded the seventh beta. Developers can download macOS Golden Gate by going to System Settings > General > Software Update. Beta Updates will need to be enabled, and a free developer account is required. macOS Golden Gate includes multiple design improvements.
Apple Seeds Eighth iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 Betas to Developers
Apple today seeded the eighth betas of iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 to developers for testing purposes, with the update coming one week after Apple released the seventh betas. Registered developers can download the betas from the Settings app on the iPhone or iPad by going to the General section and selecting Software Update. iOS 27 introduces Apple's smarter version of Siri, Siri AI.
We need more mega-science projects, says CERN Director-General
CERN's Director-General Mark Thomson advocates for more mega-science projects, highlighting the transformative Future Circular Collider during a Mumbai visit.
Democracy Works: Political status and the DSA summer
For our first episode of the fall season, we talk with a social movement scholar about whether the DSA's policies can win over enough votes to win in a general election and why political coalitions don't always align with the structure of America's two-party system.
Meta’s Business Set to Escape Lawsuits Unscathed
Meta’s $17 billion settlement with state attorneys general includes a long list of restrictions for teen users, but it won’t hold back its underlying business.
Seoul National University of Science and Technology develops AI framework to test and improve vision-system robustness
A new artificial intelligence (AI)-based system shows how natural damage to traffic signs can mislead deep neural network (DNN)-based vision systems. The framework, AdvWT, uses a generative model to learn realistic damage patterns and then optimize them to trigger misclassification. Tests across multiple AI architectures showed strong attack success, transferability and physical-world robustness. The approach can identify vulnerabilities and improve AI generalization to real-world damage.
Is it safe to eat lettuce yet? What to know as cyclosporiasis outbreak lingers
As federal health officials continue to investigate this summer’s outbreak of cyclosporiasis that has been tied to iceberg lettuce, many people are wondering: Is it safe to eat lettuce yet? For now, the answer seems to be generally yes – with an important caveat.
Legal & General Group Plc Takes $13.61 Million Position in Caesars Entertainment, Inc. $CZR
Legal & General Group Plc acquired a new stake in Caesars Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:CZR - Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund acquired 450,848 shares of the company's stock, valued at approxi
Washington to receive $227M in Meta settlement to protect children’s mental health
Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said the harm done by platforms like Instagram and Facebook has taken away things that used to be normal for kids.
Colorado Sues EarnIn For “Immoral, Unethical, Oppressive and Unscrupulous” Business Practices
Hey all, Jason here. When this hits your inbox, I should be en route to the airport — not to go anywhere myself, just to pick up my better half. I must admit, it’s been strange to be home alone (well, with two dogs) for two weeks! Really lets me “optimize” to spending more time on reading/writing/working, whether that’s healthy or not! Looking forward to getting back into a (somewhat) more balance routine. Subscribe or Support by Upgrading Compare Notes With the People Who Built Modern Fintech Partner content: Remitly CEO Sebastian Gunningham. Increase founder Darragh Buckley. Linda Du, Co-founder & President at Valon. They’ll unpack the decisions behind building and scaling major financial products: what they got right, what broke, what they would do differently, and how AI and new infrastructure are changing the operator playbook. Most events tell you where fintech is going. NerdCon puts the people who built the present in the room and asks them what comes next. Expect an operator-led conversation grounded in real products, real trade-offs and lessons earned the hard way. Fintech Business Weekly readers save 20% on Regular tickets with code FBW20 before standard pricing ends September 11. Meet the Builders Things To Know & Other Good Reads Advent and Stripe Abandon $50 Billion Pursuit of PayPal (Bloomberg) Trump Family’s New Crypto Bank Is Backed by Abu Dhabi Sheikh (Wall Street Journal) The multiplying risks of financing data centres (FT) Let the Bond Market Speak (Wall Street Journal) Did we waste a crisis? Modest proposals to reform deposit insurance. (Fintech Takes Banking) Untangling Guggenheim: How Private Credit Built Its Own Universe (Net Interest) The Hater’s Guide To Circular Financing — Part One (Ed Zitron) Fiat Ventures Rebrands to FGV Capital, Announces $35M Oversubscribed Fund II (BusinessWire) Socure Announces Strategic Growth Investment at $5.2B Valuation and Acquires Agentic Operations Platform Fravity (Socure) Listen: When Consumer Protection Disclosures Work Too Well (Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast) Colorado Sues EarnIn For “Immoral, Unethical, Oppressive and Unscrupulous” Business Practices When Andreessen Horowitz led EarnIn’s $39 million Series B in 2017, Alex Rampell, a partner at the storied venture capital firm, described EarnIn’s small-dollar advance product as “free,” relying on “entirely on voluntary contributions instead of fees.” Rampell favorably compared EarnIn’s approach to typical payday loans, writing, “Payday loans historically have had the potential to be a slippery slope for consumers into financial distress: opaque systems and steep fees that are hard to repay and set individuals back further than where they started. For many Americans living paycheck to paycheck, that kind of slide into debt can be extremely difficult to recover from.” But EarnIn’s product — which, the company says, isn’t a “loan,” legally speaking — ends up being anything but free for most users. While it is technically possible to take a no-fee advance from the company, most users incur “Lightning Speed” (instant funding) fees and/or ostensibly optional tips that combined can equate to annualized percent rates that can reach over 1,000%. With an average term of 9.77 days, even fees and tips that are small on an absolute dollar basis are equivalent to high APRs on an annualized basis. A lawsuit filed last week by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser against EarnIn describes the company and its product and business practices quite differently than Andreessen’s Rampell; “EarnIn’s business practices are unfair because they are immoral, unethical, oppressive and unscrupulous,” the complaint, filed in District Court in Denver, Colorado, says. EarnIn’s marquee product, Cash Out, isn’t a loan, the company says, as Cash Out is not “[f]orward [l]ooking” because “[t]he money is transferred based on earnings to date,” does not carry a mandatory fee to access funds, and is “non-recourse,” meaning EarnIn cannot pursue recovery from users who don’t repay advanced funds. EarnIn is sometimes referred to as an “Earned Wage Advance” service. Though, unlike some others in the broader category, EarnIn does not integrate with employers’ payroll or time and attendance systems. Rather, EarnIn attempts to verify a user’s income and employment, by examining direct deposit transaction data in their linked external bank account, by using GPS location and Bluetooth data to estimate a user’s time spent at work, if they work in a fixed location, and/or by having a user provided a work email address. While repayment is theoretically optional, as EarnIn would have no recourse, such as reporting non-payment to the credit bureaus or a collections agency, this is anything but clear to users of the EarnIn app, Colorado’s complaint argues. During the process of taking a Cash Out, users must agree to a preauthorized debit of the amount advanced, plus any expedited funding fee and/or tips. Though users technically can revoke this ACH authorization, the fact that they have this right isn’t presented to users during the Cash Out process, but rather is included in linked terms and conditions few users are likely to actually read. And users who do wish to revoke their ACH authorization must do so three or more days before the scheduled transaction date by emailing EarnIn’s customer support. Similarly, EarnIn’s marketing claims that it carries “no interest” and “no mandatory fees” is technically true, but is not the reality for many of the app’s users, the Colorado complaint argues. Further, EarnIn has extensively marketed to users the ability to “access your pay today,” to get “instant” funds, and to get funds “the same day you work” — when, in reality, this speed of access was only possible by paying the additional, undisclosed Lightning Speed fee. The Colorado complaint highlights this contradiction specifically, noting: EarnIn tells consumers that they can ‘Make any day payday with EarnIn’ and that there no ‘hidden’ or ‘mandatory fees.’ For a consumer to access their pay on the same day requested, they would have to pay the Lightning Speed fee. In the fine print of the advertisement EarnIn discloses that ‘[f]ees apply to use Lightning Speed,’ a direct contradiction to the larger text of the advertisement, and a fact that would not be immediately understood by a consumer as ‘Lightning Speed’ is not defined nor explained. Like other small-dollar lending services, rather than explicitly charge interest, EarnIn collects a markup on the optional Lighting Speed fee, which, given the nature of the transactions, many users opt for, as well as offering users the option to leave “tips.” EarnIn leverages either Real-Time Payments (RTP) rails or push-to-card via debit rails if a user opts for the optional Lightning Speed. But while these capabilities cost EarnIn, on average, $0.075 or $0.20 per transaction, respectively, EarnIn charges users significantly more. Initially, EarnIn charged as little as $1.99 for Cash Outs up to $24. But EarnIn has hiked these fees multiple times, and now charges $4.99 for Cash Outs up to $75 and $6.99 for those over $75. According to the Colorado complaint, EarnIn leverages “dark patterns” to manipulate users and to make it more difficult to avoid tipping. Examples of these “road blocks” highlighted in the complaint include: As of 2023, in the EarnIn app, a consumer attempting to get a loan under the default settings had to make at least eighteen separate taps to complete the transaction and reduce the tip to $0. There is an alternative method to leave a $0 tip, via the “Custom tip” feature, but EarnIn made this option difficult to access by visually deemphasizing it and positioning it near devices’ “home” button. Using language and imagery such as “Tip to pay it forward,” “Your generosity supports the service + helps,” “Your tips make a difference,” and “[t]he APR for this cash out is 0%. Your tips help support us.” While Lightning Speed and tipping are, in theory, both optional, in practice, users nearly always ended up paying something. According to the Colorado suit, users were charged either a tip or an expedite fee for more than 92% of transactions, with an average APR of nearly 388%. And, although the advances are “non-recourse,” EarnIn successfully collects on nearly all transactions — 99.18%, according to the complaint, which, Colorado argues, “demonstrat[es] that EarnIn’s advances function as high cost loans, not voluntary payments.” The share of EarnIn users incurring fees — despite the product being marketed as 0% APR — is hard to reconcile with Andreessen investor Rampell’s favorable description of EarnIn vs. “opaque systems and steep fees” associated with payday loans, which, Rampell says, can be “extremely difficult” for borrowers to extricate themselves from. According to Colorado’s suit, EarnIn’s Cash Out product “trapped many consumers in extreme cycles of high-cost reborrowing.” The suit gives an example of one consumer in the state, who took out a whopping 1,151 loans, paying a total of $4,038.50 in Lightning Speed expedited funding fees on loans that averaged the equivalent of 1,421% APR. Another Colorado user, the suit says, took out 1,033 loans, paying $8,561.22 in tips and fees at an average APR of 1,539% . These types of usage patterns demonstrate “the severe and repeated financial harm caused by EarnIn’s illegal lending model,” the Colorado complaint argues. In aggregate, from January 2023 through July 2025, EarnIn extended 3.1 million loans to 56,778 users in Colorado — an average of nearly 55 transactions per person during the time period. EarnIn lent more than $300 million and collected more than $16 million from Colorado users in Lightning Speed fees and in tips. Ultimately, the Colorado complaint argues that “EarnIn’s Cash Outs are loans under Colorado law, and EarnIn’s contention that its product is not a loan based on its disclaimer of any legal repayment obligation lacks any real-world significance given how the Cash Out transactions actually operate in practice.” Colorado further argues that “EarnIn was not working with companies here in providing consumers with funds but acted as a third-party lender and charged illegally high rates, used deceptive design strategies to extract some charges, and trapped consumers in repeat borrowing. Colorado will continue to stand up for consumers and hold companies accountable when they violate our credit laws or attempt to evade them through misleading practices.” Colorado’s suit alleges EarnIn assesses finance charge in excess of that permitted by Colorado law, that EarnIn failed to make legally required disclosures to Colorado borrowers, that EarnIn made supervised loans to consumers without obtaining the requisite license, that EarnIn violated the state’s Deferred Deposit Loan Act, that EarnIn engage in unfair and deceptive trade practices, and that EarnIn made false or misleading statements concerning price. The suit seeks a court order enjoining EarnIn from violating relevant Colorado laws, for EarnIn to refund amounts charged in excess of state law, fees, costs, and penalties, and other relief the court deems to be just. Fintech Business Weekly is made possible by the generous support of paying subscribers — bringing you independent analysis of banking, fintech, and crypto without fear or favor. You can support my work by becoming a paying subscriber if you aren’t already. Paying subscribers enjoy: access to the entire archive of nearly six years of newsletters extended versions of the weekly newsletter, with additional content and analysis and (for founding member tier) quarterly personal 1:1 fintech Q&A / strategy calls with me, tapping into my unparalleled knowledge of the intersection of banking and fintech and experience working in the sector, including helping to launch Goldman Sachs’ retail bank Marcus Support Fintech Business Weekly You can also support Fintech Business Weekly by sponsoring a newsletter or podcast, putting you in front of 93,000+ of the most influential decision makers in banking, fintech, and crypto. Learn more about sponsor opportunities or request a media kit by dropping me an email. Q2 Quarterly Banking Profile: Five Quick Takeaways The FDIC released its quarterly banking profile, which is always worth a read, for the second quarter. The profile provides an aggregate snapshot about the overall health of the 4,238 institutions whose deposits are insured by the FDIC, who, collectively, hold more than $26 trillion in assets and saw a total net income of more than $90 billion in the second quarter. Net income was up 12% vs. Q1 2026, with lower provisions and realized gains on securities helping to drive the improvement, somewhat offset by increases in non-interest expense and applicable income taxes. Overall net interest margin was basically flat quarter over quarter (up 1 basis point vs. Q1 2026), though community banks saw NIM grow by 10 basis points, to 3.81%. Unsurprisingly, given that interest rates haven’t changed, unrealized losses on securities changed little, edging up slightly to $326.7 billion vs. $325.1 billion in Q1 2026. Aggregate credit quality has remained benign, with asset quality actually improving slightly in Q2. Overall, institutions reported a 9 basis point decline in their past-due and non-accrual rate, to 1.44%. Net charge off rate also declined by 2 basis points, to 0.57%. And finally, the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund stands at $161.1 billion, making the DIF reserve ratio 1.48% — above the statutory minimum of 1.35%, but still below the designated target reserve ratio of 2%. [Paid Subscriber Exclusive] Nissan Withdraws ILC App, State Associations Plan BankChain Alliance, FDIC Defines “Unsafe or Unsound Practice” For First Time Automaker Nissan withdrew its application to charter a Utah industrial loan company and its corresponding application to the FDIC for deposit insurance last week, on August 19th. Nissan’s application had been outstanding for more than a year, as it originally applied in June 2025. Recent applications to the OCC to form national banks have been decisioned, one way or the other, substantially more quickly than has historically been the case.
For at least 1 week, Bill Belichick has quieted the noise at UNC — and even cracked a smile
The Tar Heels played tough defense, didn't kill themselves with huge mistakes or penalties and generally made life tough for TCU. Sounds a lot like a Belichick-coached team, doesn't it?
Doctor Says: Staying up late? There could be health risks.
This is a column in a series from Dr. Olivia Ragusa, a primary care physician at Baton Rouge General, sharing insight on a variety of health topics for patients of
Alaska campaign watchdog says Treg Taylor should not be allowed to run for governor
A state commission says Taylor, a former attorney general, failed to file a financial disclosure as required by law.
Minnesota attorney general allows out-of-state acquisition of North Memorial Health
South Dakota-based Sanford Health may move forward in acquiring North Memorial Health next month after the hospital systems signed a 10-year oversight agreement with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. As part of the agreement, Sanford committed to maintaining hospital and emergency services at North Memorial’s Robbinsdale hospital, which is the health system’s flagship safety net […]
Adult congenital heart programs growing more important as time goes on
More than 95% of congenital heart patients now survive into adulthood, leaving clinicians with much more ground to cover than ever before. Providing high-quality care for these patients requires specialty care as well as collaborations with general cardiologists.
Free-falling atoms in space put a new twist on Galileo’s gravity test
Rubidium atoms on China’s Tiangong space station fell with the same acceleration, upholding a cornerstone of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
AG Ellison clears Sanford Health-North Memorial merger after oversight agreement
Minnesota will allow Sanford Health’s merger with North Memorial to move forward after they agreed to a 10-year oversight agreement, Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Friday morning.
Minnesota AG gives green light to Sanford Health merger with North Memorial
The attorney general’s blessing is seen as the last regulatory hurdle to a deal in which the South Dakota-based system agrees to maintain Robbinsdale hospital for at least a decade.
In AP interview, Attorney General Todd Blanche defends his record as political pressure mounts
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Attorney General Todd Blanche’s fidelity to President Donald Trump nearly cost him his confirmation. Now comes Blanche’s real test.
In AP Interview, Attorney General Todd Blanche Defends His Record as Political Pressure Mounts
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Attorney General Todd Blanche’s fidelity to President Donald Trump nearly cost him his confirmation. Now comes Blanche’s real test. Trump’s former personal attorney has stepped into the commanding role facing a challenge that other leaders of the Republican president’s ...
Gubernatorial candidates Phil Weiser, Greg Lopez spar, as Marx skips debate
Two of the candidates for Colorado governor squared off in a televised debate on Thursday night, when Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee, and former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez, an unaffiliated candidate, delved into issues of affordability, data center regulation and gun laws. The debate’s tone was civil. The policy differences between the two […]
Troops, taxes, war dominate Colorado’s 5th CD debate between Jeff Crank, Jessica Killin
Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank and Democratic challenger Jessica Killin on Thursday night clashed over the war in Iran, the federal budget and healthcare when they took the stage in Colorado Springs for a sold-out debate in the race to represent Colorado’s 5th Congressional District. The debate, which came just over five weeks before general […]
CT sues Kalshi over unlicensed sports betting
State Attorney General William Tong said what the app does constitutes gambling — making it subject to Connecticut consumer protection laws.
The Literacy Crisis Reaches Dog-Bear Science
“New analysis of more than 300 bear encounters suggests our canine companions often increase odds of conflict and rarely serve as early warning systems many recreationists assume,” reads a subhead in Mountain Journal. The thing is, that study reaches no such conclusion. But you have to read beyond the abstract to understand that. Mountain Journal is not alone. Let’s look at a brief list of takeaways published elsewhere just to establish that none of them seem to know how to read science. Wes Siler’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Here’s CBC: “A new peer-reviewed study, The Canine Conundrum: Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country?, dug into conflicts similar to what the video depicts, by analyzing 326 reported human-bear conflicts from 1901 to 2023 involving dogs.” “The study found 54 per cent of conflicts were started by dogs. In the encounters researchers included in the study, five people and 56 dogs were killed, and 170 people were injured.” “Lana Ciarniello, an independent researcher who co-authored the study, said researchers found when a person goes hiking with at least one other person, the odds of a negative bear encounter decrease by 50 per cent.” “However, when a dog is involved, the chances of a negative bear encounter increase because ‘a dog really adds a chaotic factor into the mix of recreation,’ said Ciarniello.” Again, the study finds no data supporting that conclusion. “Hiking with your pet dog may make you feel safer in bear country—but a hiker’s recent encounter and a new study prove that the numbers don’t add up,” writes Backpacker, which is now part of Outside. The numbers don’t add up to support this take. There’s plenty more examples, but all are equally dumb, so I’ll stop there. How did so many people get this so wrong? Three reasons: 1) the study is published behind a paywall, with only the abstract freely available. 2) the methodology sets out to create work relevant to a hyper-specific audience, not the public. And 3) the dataset studied is almost absurdly limited and doesn’t bear (get it?!) comparison to wider information. Let’s work through all three. The Problem is Money I understand the irony, since I’m writing about this on a subscription-model newsletter, but information wants to be free. The study is published by The Wildlife Society and costs $16 to access. Reprinting it is specifically prohibited by the terms of use, so I can only share snippets and my conclusions with you here. Having worked as a journalist for 24 years, I can report with some authority that journalists are both lazy and cheap. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that much of the material you’re seeing written about this study is drawn from the freely-available abstract (above) only, and not a deep dive into its methodology or data. And that’s a problem, because abstracts are where researchers are able to break from their numbers and editorialize their opinions about conclusions. So what’s getting reported isn’t based on numbers, it’s based on an opinion designed for a specific audience, not the general public. Hell yeah ladies, kick that bear’s ass. The Methodology is Designed to Support a Predetermined Conclusion One of the biggest issues with the science that everyone likes to cite about bear spray’s efficacy is that no one understands that study was designed for a specific audience, looking for a specific answer. And since that audience is not the public, and our safety was not the question being asked, its conclusion is rendered irrelevant to our needs. Yes, I’m talking about Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska, which was created by Tom Smith and Stephen Herrero, two of the same scientists who put together this dog-bear conflict analysis. In the spray study, the purpose was to present relevant agencies with the information they needed to issue their field workers with bear spray. As such, incidents where people were unable to access the spray or similarly failed to get it deployed in time were excluded from the results, and only incidents they deemed successful were included. Could a ranger roll down their vehicle’s window and scare a bear away from a dumpster by spraying it? Turns out the answer was yes, and that was good enough for the purposes of that study. The sample size of actual bear attacks—the thing you and I would want bear spray to provide a solution to, was too small to draw conclusions from, and didn’t indicate success in that role. Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? has similar limitations. “Insights provided here are intended to help wildlife managers create effective guidelines regarding the presence of domestic dogs in bear habitat,” is explained clearly by the study’s text. To conduct the study, Smith and Herrero went looking for publicly available reports of dog-bear conflicts: “All incidents included in our analysis involved at least one bear, one dog, and one person who was at immediate risk of injury (e.g., not in a protective structure such as a cabin or vehicle), injured, or killed,” explains the report’s methodology. Why is that a problem? “We recognize that data used in this study are biased in that people generally only report adverse interactions with bears, not benign ones. Consequently, we assume that for the most part, people and their dogs pass through bear country without incident.” As was the problem with the bear spray study, people are drawing conclusions here from a study that was never intended to be relevant to the general public. The Smith-Herrero database famously excludes Alaska’s Defense of Life and Property records, which are elsewhere considered the largest and most authoritative source on human-bear conflict. The Dataset is Absurdly Limited A 2009 study conducted by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife estimates that each year there are at least 43,000 documented complaints of human-bear conflict across North America. Is a Dog a Help or Hindrance in Bear Country? Examined those reports for years ranging from 1901 to 2023, and only managed to find 326 such incidents that met the criteria explained above. Let’s do some quick math, poorly. 43,000 incidents x 122 years = 5,246,000 total incidents of documented human-bear conflict. Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their criteria for dog+human+bear+risk or occurrence of injury. That means there’s a 0.006 percent chance that the study’s conclusion—that dogs make bear encounters more dangerous—even gets a chance of occurring. And remember, that’s only in documented conflicts. There’s no way to know how many people across North America run into a bear in any given year without any conflict, but it’s probably safe to assume that the total number is well in excess of 43,000. And, dig deeper into the study and you can find further restrictions that skew its conclusions even more. “While the people involved in these incidents did not report the level of training their dogs had received, it is our assumption that most were untrained companion dogs as opposed to well-trained bear dogs, such as Karelians and livestock guardian breeds that have proven to be significant aids in bear country,” the study’s methodology explains. And that’s a problem, because an ongoing study here in Montana is finding that the simple presence of a Kangal like our youngest dog Teddy can reduce visits to private property from grizzly bears by 87.8 percent. In addition to being a badass, Teddy is also a companion animal. And in my admittedly limited sample size of the three dogs currently present in our living room, she’s no more effective than her mutt brothers. Plenty of people own a dog capable of deterring bears, even if they didn’t set out to own a bear dog. The real purpose of this study appears to be a recommendation that leashes are mandated and recreationists pursue training in their deterrent of choice. But that doesn’t make for sensational headlines. Are There Any Real Takeaways Here? Let’s throw some numbers around, just to try and get our hands around what the larger picture might look like for bears and dogs here. The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that 42.6 percent of American households own a dog. The Canadian Animal Health Institute says roughly 35 percent of households in Canuckistan own a dog. In an attempt to create the worst possible result for dogs, let’s run with that 35 percent number. And given that outdoorsy and rural people are more likely to both own a dog, and have bear encounters, let’s just make a giant assumption and apply that number to those 43,000 conflicts documented annually. If 35 percent of 43,000 human-bear encounters involve a dog, then we can assume that at least 15,050 dog-bear conflicts are occurring annually in North America. 15,050 x 122 = 1,836,100. Smith and Herrero were only able to find 326 incidents that met their human, dog, chance or occurrence of injury criteria across 122 years. And only 170 documented human injuries. So, with all the obvious caveats about these numbers in no way describing reality beyond narrow study parameters, what they actually found is that your risk of injury if your dog tangles with a bear is only 0.009 percent. I’ll take those odds next time I’m hiking my dogs in bear country. Top photo: “Superintendent Horace Albright, eating pancakes with bears, at Lake Lodge, Yellowstone National Park.” NPS. A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, plan outdoor adventures, and prepare for real life, and who promises he’s less salty in real life than he sometimes comes across as on the Internet. Wes Siler’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Neronha urges state regulators to reject proposed health insurance premium hikes
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha is urging state regulators to deny proposed 2027 health insurance premium increases from Neighborhood Health Plan and Blue Cross Blue Shield, arguing the hikes are untenable for Rhode Islanders.
Microsoft finalizes Windows 11 version 26H2 for general availability: Next version of Windows 11 enters final preview phase before rollout begins
Microsoft has announced that Windows 11 version 26H2 is now available to test in the Windows Insider Release Preview Channel, which means general availability is imminent.
Philadelphia Eagles Insider Calls Top Draft Pick ‘Unplayable’
Few NFL general managers are better than Howie Roseman when it comes to assembling a roster. In fact, some might […]
Prominent general contractor's Austin office raided by federal authorities
Federal authorities raided Cadence McShane Construction Co.'s Austin, San Antonio and Plano offices on Aug. 26, the Austin Business Journal has learned.
Colorado gubernatorial candidates Phil Weiser, Greg Lopez to face off Thursday in televised debate
Two of the candidates for governor of Colorado are set to square off in a televised debate for the first time Thursday night, when Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee, and former U.S. Rep. Greg Lopez, an unaffiliated candidate, meet in Colorado Springs. Republican nominee Victor Marx, a ministry leader and first-time candidate, declined […]
New GM for Doyon’s Fairweather
Doyon, Limited named its operations director, Zach Dunlap, to take over as General Manager of its industry support subsidiary Fairweather.
Claiming Unlicensed Sports Betting, CT Sues Kalshi
According to a statement from Attorney General William Tong, Consumer Protection Commissioner Bryan T. Cafferelli and Gov. Ned Lamont, Kalshi is a financial services company offering an online “event contract” exchange platform, offering yes-no propositions about whether future events will occur.
Connecticut sues Kalshi to block alleged unlicensed sports gambling
The Connecticut Office of the Attorney General announced the lawsuit.
CIA chief reportedly warns Russia against attacking Nato countries on visit to Moscow
Kremlin dismisses US media reports after meeting as ‘scare stories’, as Pentagon policy chief prepares to meet Nato secretary general
Meta to restrict teen social media use under $18 billion settlement
The settlement stems from a lawsuit brought by attorneys general from across the country, including New York.
WHO appoints 21 leading scientists to Science Council to help shape future health breakthroughs
The WHO Science Council is an advisory body established by the WHO Director-General to provide independent advice on high-priority scientific issues, emerging technologies, and advances in science and innovation that may affect global health. The renewed Science Council comprises 21 members serving in their personal capacities. The Council advises WHO on scientific opportunities and challenges, supports strategic foresight, and contributes to strengthening trust in science and evidence-informed decision-making.
WHO appoints 21 leading scientists to Science Council to help shape future health breakthroughs
The WHO Science Council is an advisory body established by the WHO Director-General to provide independent advice on high-priority scientific issues, emerging technologies, and advances in science and innovation that may affect global health. The renewed Science Council comprises 21 members serving in their personal capacities. The Council advises WHO on scientific opportunities and challenges, supports strategic foresight, and contributes to strengthening trust in science and evidence-informed decision-making.
Spanberger AG draws fire over two-front fight against Trump enforcement agenda
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones faces fire over a civil rights probe into Greene County Sheriff Steve Smith's ICE-involved traffic stop operations.
Google announces Gemini 3.5 Transcribe for AI-powered speech-to-text
The AI that powers Gboard's Rambler is coming to more Google products, including Chrome.
Trump-endorsed Mike Mazzei wins GOP nomination for Oklahoma governor
Tulsa businessman Mike Mazzei narrowly won the Republican nomination for Oklahoma governor on Tuesday after getting a boost from President Donald Trump’s social media attacks on Mazzei’s rival, state Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
What does Dolly Parton mean to you?
The prolific performer, songwriter, actor and philanthropist Dolly Parton died Tuesday at 80. World leaders and the general public are in mourning.
How worried should the GOP be about two Dan Sullivans on the ballot in Alaska?
The situation that Republicans strove to avoid in Alaska has come to pass: Two Dan Sullivans will appear on the general election ballot for US Senate.
Darline Graham wins South Carolina GOP nomination to replace her late brother in U.S. Senate
U.S. Sen. Darline Graham won the Republican nomination to replace her late brother on South Carolina’s general election ballot, notching another win for President Donald Trump after he threw his support behind the political novice.
Republican with same name as incumbent Dan Sullivan advances from Alaska U.S. Senate primary
A candidate with the same name as Alaska’s incumbent U.S. senator has advanced to the general election in what will be one of the most closely watched races in the country this fall.
In Texas Senate race, Talarico seeks depositions that could damage Paxton
Democrat James Talarico has leaned into Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s past legal scandals to try to win over moderate Republicans.
What We Know About Dolly Parton Final Weeks, Health Struggles
As the world remembers Dolly Parton, People’s general manager and editor-in-chief, Charlotte Triggs, joins TODAY to discuss Dolly’s final magazine cover story and in-depth interview. Triggs also talks about “The Queen of Country’s” legacy, and shares details about her final weeks. “She was working right up until the very end,” Triggs says.
SEEING DOUBLE: Second Dan Sullivan advances, setting up bizarre Alaska Senate ballot
Dan Sullivan Jr. advances to Alaska's general election, complicating the race for Sen. Dan Sullivan as ranked-choice voting amplifies name confusion.
Burns UMC receives GCORR grant to advance community mental health initiative
Burns United Methodist Church in Des Moines, IA, received a General Commission on Religion and Race Action Fund grant for its new initiative, Sacred ...
Darline Graham wins South Carolina GOP nomination to replace her late brother in US Senate
U.S. Sen. Darline Graham won the Republican nomination to replace her late brother on South Carolina's general election ballot, notching another win for President Trump after he threw his support behind the political novice.
Darline Graham wins South Carolina GOP nomination to replace her late brother in US Senate
U.S. Sen. Darline Graham won the Republican nomination to replace her late brother on South Carolina's general election ballot, notching another win for President Trump after he threw his support behind the political novice.
Quantum Computers Could Give Scientists a New Way to Explore The Hidden Behavior of Matter
Researchers developed a generalized quantum computational spectroscopy method that uses quantum computers to study complex systems.