Nike will resume selling its products directly to Amazon in the U.S. for the first time since 2019, CNBC has confirmed. The sneaker giant stopped selling its goods wholesale on Amazon six years ago as part of a push to distribute more directly to customers and have greater control over the shopping experience. At the time, Nike and several brands like popular shoemaker Birkenstock cut ties with Amazon due to rising concerns around counterfeit products on the company’s sprawling third-party marketplace. A Nike spokesperson said on Wednesday that the company is investing in its marketplace to bring more products and services to “consumers wherever and however they choose to shop.” “This includes expanding to new digital accounts, including Amazon in the U.S., new physical partners like Printemps, elevating retail experiences across the marketplace, and launching Nike’s AI powered conversational search to improve our online services,” the spokesperson said in a statement. Amazon told CNBC in an email that it will “soon begin sourcing a much wider range of Nike products directly to expand our selection for U.S. customers.” The Information earlier reported the news. Prior to the agreement, a limited selection of Nike products were available on Amazon via third-party sellers. But Nike was a “gated” brand on Amazon, meaning it was highly restricted to prevent counterfeit and low-quality items. Apple and L’Oreal are among other gated brands on Amazon. “We value independent sellers, and we’re providing an extended period of time for the small number of sellers affected to sell through their inventory of overlapping items,” Amazon’s spokesperson added. The deal represents a win for Amazon, which has sought to attract more high-end brands to its platform. Amazon found early success with online apparel by selling a wide range of basics from popular brands and its own private labels. In recent years, it’s moved upmarket by opening online luxury fashion shops. Amazon late last month launched a storefront with Saks Fifth Avenue featuring a curated range of luxury brands like Dolce & Gabbana.

Motilal Oswal recommends buying 5 stocks, including Amber Enterprises and Restaurant Brands Asia, for potential double-digit returns. Learn more! Motilal Oswal, a brokerage house, has zeroed in on five very different businesses and put a ‘Buy’ recommendation on them. These stocks range from air‑conditioner maker Amber Enterprises to Burger King operator Restaurant Brands Asia. Here’s the kicker. Motilal Oswal expects double‑digit returns from each of these stocks from current levels. Let’s take a look at these stocks and know why the brokerage has given a buy rating to them- Amber Enterprises Motilal Oswal continues to remain optimistic about Amber Enterprises, despite some recent hiccups in earnings. The brokerage has given a buy rating to the stock with a revised target price of Rs 7,600, projecting a potential upside of 22%. According to Motilal Oswal, the company posted better-than-expected revenue and EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) in Q4FY25, although net profits were hit by higher losses from its joint ventures and an unexpected tax rate hike. “Revenue outperformance was driven by strong growth in consumer durables, particularly RAC and electronics divisions,” the report noted. However, it also pointed out that the railways division was impacted by offtake delays. “We expect a CAGR of 20% / 27% / 49% in revenue / EBITDA / Net Profit over FY25-27 for Amber,” the brokerage said, while valuing the stock at 47x P/E on Mar’27E earnings. Happy Forgings Auto component manufacturer Happy Forgings (HFL) has also earned a buy rating, with a price target of Rs 984, indicating an upside of 20% from current levels. As per the brokerage, PAT for Q4FY25 came in line with estimates and the company generated free cash flow of Rs 119 crore after capex of Rs 280 crore in FY25. Motilal Oswal sees a strong future backed by a recovery in domestic commercial vehicle (CV) demand, a positive tractor outlook, and steady order wins in industrials and passenger vehicles (PVs). “We expect HFL to post a CAGR of 14%/16%/16% in revenue/EBITDA/PAT during FY25-27E,” the brokerage report said. “HFL’s superior financial track record compared to its peers serves as a testament to its inherent operational efficiencies,” the report added. Kalpataru Projects The brokerage house has maintained its buy rating with a new target price of Rs 1,300, reflecting an upside of 16%. The company reported steady revenue, EBITDA, and PAT in Q4FY25, while its balance sheet strength, improved working capital, and debt reduction impressed analysts. “We expect Kalpataru Projects to report a CAGR of 19%/25%/37% in revenue/EBITDA/PAT over FY25-27,” the brokerage said. The brokerage firm has slightly increased FY26/FY27 estimates by 2% each, based on improved order inflows and lower debt levels. The brokerage values the core business at 18x FY27E P/E in its SoTP-based valuation. Galaxy Surfactants Motilal Oswal sees an upside in specialty chemical player Galaxy Surfactants, assigning it a buy rating with a target price of Rs 2,650, pointing to a 16% upside. The company posted a strong beat in Q4, prompting analysts to raise EBITDA and PAT estimates by 8% and 9% for FY26, respectively. “We estimate a volume CAGR of 6% over FY25-27, with volumes picking up in the Specialty Care segment in the developed markets,” Motilal Oswal noted. The brokerage also sees expanding margins driven by premium products, customer additions, and focused R&D spending of Rs 40-50 crore annually. Restaurant Brands Asia Topping the list in terms of potential upside is Restaurant Brands Asia (RBA) – the master franchisee for Burger King India. Motilal Oswal has given a buy rating with a target of Rs 135, implying a sharp upside of 65% from current levels. According to the brokerage, India operations have been strong, with 1% same-store sales growth in FY25 and 9% increase in dine-in traffic. RBA also managed to outperform most dine-in peers, barring Jubilant FoodWorks. “Unlike most QSR peers (barring JUBI), RBA delivered positive SSSG (same store sales growth) during the year,” the report said. The brokerage believes BK Cafe and improving dine-in trends will be margin drivers, alongside cost efficiencies and expansion. “We reiterate our BUY rating with a TP of INR135. We value the India business at 30x FY27E EV/EBITDA (pre-IND-AS) and Indonesia’s EV at INR5b,” added the brokerage.

Sometimes the arguments could be heard well down the hall. The topic was “60 Minutes,” and the tension was audible. CBS News chief Wendy McMahon was clashing with her bosses over upcoming stories on the newsmagazine — in part because President Trump’s legally dubious lawsuit against CBS meant that billions of dollars were at risk. “Wendy was standing up for us,” a veteran CBS journalist said. “There’s a lot of fear about what happens with her gone now.” McMahon stepped down on Monday, under pressure from CBS parent Paramount Global, intensifying the impression that CBS News is in distress due to Trump’s political pressure and other business factors. While CBS journalists are doing their jobs and covering the Trump administration assertively, Paramount lawyers are trying to strike a settlement with Trump, perhaps believing that such a deal will help secure the administration’s approval of a pending merger. With the Trump tug-of-war on everyone’s minds, getting and keeping “60 Minutes” on the air this spring was a week-by-week challenge, according to people at the network. McMahon repeatedly defended the program in conversations with Paramount Global co-CEO George Cheeks, who himself was under pressure from controlling shareholder Shari Redstone. While some of the internal battles have been previously reported, five sources who spoke with CNN on condition of anonymity said the fights were much more fraught than the viewing public realizes. There was one hint about it on-air, last month, after “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens resigned, citing a loss of independence. “No one here is happy about it,” correspondent Scott Pelley said of the interference Owens had sensed. The alleged corporate meddling began several months earlier. One of the disputes was over CBS News coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. Redstone, a strong supporter of Israel and Jewish causes, lodged objections over what she sensed was biased coverage of the conflict. For a newsmagazine like “60 Minutes” with a long, proud tradition of independence, Redstone’s involvement was deeply troubling. One of her chief complaints was about a January “60 Minutes” segment that highlighted America’s support for Israel’s bombing of Gaza. McMahon mediated the conflict over that report, as well as multiple disputes over “60 Minutes” reports about Trump’s return to office and the impact of his administration’s policy changes. It was clear, the five sources said, that Paramount was primarily concerned about how the tough Trump coverage would impact the lawsuit and settlement talks. (The New York Times reported Monday that Trump’s team threatened to file another lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” segment on Trump targeting big law firms.) One of the people involved said McMahon played the role of educator, or at least tried to, “explaining the importance of journalistic independence” to Paramount leadership. There is a long history of news division chiefs serving as firewalls between a corporate parent and a newsroom. The big difference in this case is the Trump lawsuit over last October’s “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, which Trump claimed was deliberately mis-edited at the behest of the Democratic campaign. Legal experts have derided the lawsuit as frivolous and laughable, and CBS defended the newsmagazine and its editorial judgment on First Amendment grounds. A full transcript of the Harris interview only further confirmed that “60 Minutes” engaged in normal editing processes. However, the suit posed a very serious problem for Redstone, who struck a merger deal with Skydance Media in mid-2024. That deal is now awaiting Trump administration approval. Redstone has pushed to settle the lawsuit, despite the widely held assessment that CBS lawyers would prevail against Trump in court. In a letter to Redstone that was made public on Tuesday, three Democratic senators questioned whether Paramount is in danger of violating bribery laws. That question has also come up inside CBS News. At “60 Minutes,” “everyone thinks this lawsuit is an act of extortion, everyone,” a network correspondent told CNN. The far-flung “60 Minutes” staff — while rarely all together at the network’s midtown Manhattan headquarters — is united in confidence that the program did nothing wrong, despite Trump’s wild allegations about the Harris interview. But there is also a widespread sense of resignation that the Trump settlement will happen, one way or another. Citing a source close to the negotiations, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that Paramount could pay Trump as much as $30 to 50 million. McMahon and Owens told colleagues that they would not apologize to Trump as a part of any settlement, so their departures may portend an imminent deal. McMahon had detractors in and around CBS, too, and those people have pointed to other reasons for her exit. The news division’s recent reformatting of the “CBS Evening News” is widely thought to be a misfire, for instance, and the newscast will likely be retooled — again — once McMahon is out of the picture. But “despite all her miscalculations, she was viewed as the last thing standing between us and Redstone,” one of the sources said. When Owens stepped down, CBS journalists feared that in-the-works “60 Minutes” segments about Trump could be quashed. Journalists talked with each other about how to preserve the material. According to several sources, McMahon worked behind the scenes to protect the reports. McMahon, Cheeks and Redstone have not commented about the “60 Minutes” disputes. Ultimately, the newsmagazine’s reputation has been protected. Week after week, CBS has broadcast substantive investigations about Trump and other subjects. Ahead of the newsmagazine’s traditional mid-May season finale, a scheduled report about Trump’s planned cutbacks to the IRS was held back, but for sound journalistic reasons, according to the network. A CBS spokesperson said that “the roughly 7,000 probationary employees who were dismissed from their jobs” at the IRS were being called back to work, thus changing the segment altogether. “Our team will continue to report on these new details and will broadcast the story in the future,” CBS said. With McMahon exiting, her recently named No. 2, CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, will now report directly to Cheeks. CBS journalists said they are hopeful that Cibrowski, an award-winning journalist and executive, will act as a heat shield with Paramount — and Skydance, assuming the merger is approved.

Epic Games’ wildly popular multiplayer shooter game “Fortnite” was available again on Apple’s app store in the US on Tuesday, capping a ban of nearly five years and marking a major win for the video company. The video game title was also available on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the European Union, Fortnite said in a post on social media platform X. Apple had banned Fortnite from its store in 2020, and while the iPhone maker allowed the game back last year in the European Union following pressure from authorities, the app store on iPhones and iPads in the US still did not carry the game. Fortnite launched in 2017 and became an instant hit, drawing millions of players around the world thanks to its last-player-standing, “battle royale” format. At the time of the ban, Epic had 116 million users just on Apple’s platform.

There is a “first of its kind” crypto bill making progress through the Senate that you’re going to be tempted to snooze on because a) it’s about “stablecoins,” which is a subcategory of crypto – a parallel financial system almost no one understands, and b) opponents are focusing their criticism on corruption, which may be accurate but perhaps you’re tired of reading all the news about the Trump family’s alleged use of the power of the presidency to make a profit? (ICYMI: see here, here, here and here.) But there’s a big planting-seeds-for-the-next-financial-crisis kind of reason why you should understand what this bill is. So let’s get into it. Some key background The crypto industry-backed bill is called GENIUS, or “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins.” Stablecoins are a digital asset designed to maintain a 1-to-1 peg with the dollar (or other traditional, “stable” currency). One stablecoin should always equal one dollar, forever and ever. They are essentially a way for crypto investors to keep their cash in the crypto universe, where tokens like bitcoin and ether and solana tend to swing wildly in value. They aren’t nearly as well known as bitcoin, the biggest crypto by market value. But in terms of trading volume, stablecoins are by far the biggest players. What’s in the bill (in English)? The crypto industry wants the Genius bill because it would lay down, for the first time in the industry’s 16-year history, rules of the road for a key sector of their business. Which, of course, encourages greater adoption of crypto and thus makes them more money. The bill would require stablecoins to, among other things, hold reserves of safe, liquid assets like US dollars and Treasury bills, and publicly disclose those holdings monthly. It would also place some light restrictions on publicly traded companies that want to issue their own stablecoins (more on that in a moment). But “the bill is light on consumer safeguards and limitations to corporations’ ability to issue their own stablecoins,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University professor of international trade and the author of the 2021 book “The Future of Money.” “Moreover, the Trump administration’s boosterism of crypto and light-touch approach to regulation suggests that any such safeguards and limitations will not be enforced with much force,” Prasad added. What’s the issue? Well. There’s the potential for corruption, as Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other critics have been shouting from the rafters. In fact, Democrats initially refused to vote for the bill in part because of Trump’s out-in-the-open crypto schemes, such as the private dinner taking place this week among the biggest holders of his $TRUMP memecoin, a kind of token whose only purpose is to attract money for its issuer. The White House has repeatedly pushed back on any questions about the president’s potential ethical conflicts, from his interest in accepting a luxury jet from Qatar to his family’s crypto holdings. (“This White House holds ourselves to the highest of ethical standards,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this month.) Not much has changed in the bill between then and now. But some Democrats dropped their opposition anyway, likely because they’re just accepting the “apparent inevitability of blockchain-based finance and of crypto more generally,” Prasad said. One of those Democrats was Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia who defended his reversal on the bill Monday. “Many senators, myself included, have very real concerns about the Trump family’s use of crypto technologies to evade oversight, hide shady financial dealings, and personally profit at the expense of everyday Americans,” Warner said in a statement. “But we cannot allow that corruption to blind us to the broader reality: blockchain technology is here to stay. If American lawmakers don’t shape it, others will – and not in ways that serve our interests or democratic values.” The Trump family owns a crypto platform called World Liberty Financial, which issues a stablecoin called USD1. A few weeks ago, an Abu Dhabi investment firm called MGX chose USD1 to finance a $2 billion investment in crypto exchange Binance (see related crimes). That is “essentially giving Trump a cut of this enormous financial deal,” Warren said Monday in prepared remarks. So, yeah, it sure looks like once again Trump could get richer off an industry he directly oversees through a regulatory apparatus he is rapidly working to defang. Meanwhile, the crypto industry has plowed millions of dollars into industry Super PACs that gave heavily to both Republican and Democratic campaigns last year. Is that it? No, there’s more! A lot of the focus on corruption is merited, said Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who has been studying stablecoin policy, in an interview Tuesday. But that’s not what’s keeping her up at night. She referred to the GENIUS bill as “a car crash in slow motion.“ “The thing that makes me lose the most sleep is that this bill would allow the largest tech platforms to essentially become the functional equivalent of banks,” said Allen, who was part of the commission appointed by Congress to study the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. “The last crisis was caused by ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions. The size of some of these tech platforms makes that look quaint.” Let’s step back for a moment. The bill provides almost no resistance for a tech giant like Meta or Amazon or Google to issue its own stablecoin. (In short, companies would have to get approval from a regulatory triad representing the Treasury, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve. As Prasad notes, that isn’t much of a hurdle under Trump’s broadly pro-crypto administration.) Meta already tried to get in on the crypto biz back in 2019 with a project called Libra (later renamed Diem), but abandoned it in 2022 in response to opposition from lawmakers and regulators. Now, according to a report in Fortune this month, Meta is once again testing the stablecoin waters, discussing various ways to introduce stablecoins as a means to manage in-app transactions. The benefits for Meta (or whomever) are clear: Stablecoin transactions keep users in the app, and the company then gathers all kinds of valuable information about its users and how they spend their money. But what happens when there’s a run on stablecoins, or some other financial shock that causes those financial businesses to fail? Proponents say there’s no reason to think there’ll be a run on stablecoins if they’ve got 100% cash reserves backing them. Of course, that thinking is premised on a “ridiculously optimistic assumption” that there will never be a run on a stablecoins, Allen says. She notes that money-market mutual funds are “almost identical in structure,” and are not immune from the kind of panic that causes bank runs. “Money-market mutual funds experienced runs that required bailouts in 2008 and again in 2020, so “I think runs on stablecoins are likely.” In fact, she notes, the government has already had to bail out a stablecoin when Silicon Valley Bank failed in 2023. The lender has more than $3 billion worth of a stablecoin called USDC among its vast uninsured deposits. “We may be setting ourselves up to essentially have to bail out these large tech platforms,” Allen says.

More than 100 organizations are raising alarms about a provision in the House’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package that would hamstring the regulation of artificial intelligence systems. Tucked into President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful” agenda bill is a rule that, if passed, would prohibit states from enforcing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” for 10 years. With AI rapidly advancing and extending into more areas of life — such as personal communications, health care, hiring and policing — blocking states from enforcing even their own laws related to the technology could harm users and society, the organizations said. They laid out their concerns in a letter sent Monday to members of Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm — regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences — the company making or using that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public,” the letter, provided exclusively to CNN ahead of its release, states. The bill cleared a key hurdle when the House Budget Committee voted to advance it on Sunday night, but it still must undergo a series of votes in the House before it can move to the Senate for consideration. The 141 signatories on the letter include academic institutions such as the University of Essex and Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, and advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Economic Policy Institute. Employee coalitions such as Amazon Employees for Climate Justice and the Alphabet Workers Union, the labor group representing workers at Google’s parent company, also signed the letter, underscoring how widely held concerns about the future of AI development are. “The AI preemption provision is a dangerous giveaway to Big Tech CEOs who have bet everything on a society where unfinished, unaccountable AI is prematurely forced into every aspect of our lives,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director at non-profit Demand Progress, which drafted the letter. “Speaker Johnson and Leader Jeffries must listen to the American people and not just Big Tech campaign donations,” Peterson-Cassin said in a statement. The letter comes as Trump has rolled back some of the limited federal rules for AI that had been existed prior to his second term. Shortly after taking office this year, Trump revoked a sweeping Biden-era executive order designed to provide at least some safeguards around artificial intelligence. He also said he would rescind Biden-era restrictions on the export of critical US AI chips earlier this month. Ensuring that the United States remains the global leader in AI, especially in the face of heightened competition from China, has been one of the president’s key priorities. “We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off,” Vice President JD Vance told heads of state and CEOs at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in February. US states, however, have increasingly moved to regulate some of the highest risk applications of AI in the absence of significant federal guidelines. Colorado, for example, passed a comprehensive AI law last year requiring tech companies to protect consumers from the risk of algorithmic discrimination in employment and other crucial decisions, and inform users when they’re interacting with an AI system. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed a law earlier this year that creates civil and criminal penalties for people who distribute misleading AI-generated deepfake content. And Ohio lawmakers are considering a bill that would require watermarks on AI-generated content and prohibit identity fraud using deepfakes. Multiple state legislatures have also passed laws regulating the use of AI-generated deepfakes in elections. That some applications of AI should be regulated has been a rare point of bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill. On Monday, President Donald Trump is set to sign into law the Take It Down Act, which will make it illegal to share non-consensual, AI-generated explicit images, which passed both the House and Senate with support from both sides of the aisle. The budget bill provision would run counter to the calls from some tech leaders for more regulation of AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified to a Senate subcommittee in 2023 that “regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models.” More recently on Capitol Hill, Altman said he agreed that a risk-based approach to regulating AI “makes a lot of sense,” although he urged federal lawmakers to create clear guidelines to help tech companies navigating a patchwork of state regulations. “We need to make sure that companies like OpenAI and others have legal clarity on how we’re going to operate. Of course, there will be rules. Of course, there need to be some guardrails,” he said. But, he added, “we need to be able to understand how we’re going to offer services, and where the rules of the road are going to be.”

Elon Musk says he’ll be sticking around as CEO of Tesla for the next few years. During an interview Tuesday at Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk was asked if he was committed to being the leader of Tesla for the next five years, and he responded with a “yes.” When asked in a followup if he had any doubts about that plan, he said “well, I might die.” Musk, who also runs other companies including SpaceX, has spent a significant amount of time this year working for the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiatives, making investors nervous that he isn’t devoting enough time to Tesla. The automaker’s sales have also plunged 13% in the first three months of this year, the largest drop in deliveries in its history. But “the only things that matter in long term are autonomy and Optimus,” the company’s planned humanoid robot, which is still in development, Musk said in an interview later Tuesday with CNBC. “Those overwhelmingly dominate the future of financial success of the company.” Musk said that he was confident that, in five years, robotaxis will be ubiquitous. But Musk has laid out ambitious timelines for robotaxis and self-diriving cars in the past – without meeting his self-declared goals. “Obviously my predictions on this have been overly optimistic in the past,” he said at an event last year. At the forum, Musk said his outsized pay package at Tesla, including shares of the car company, was meant to give him control in company votes. A Delaware court previously rejected Tesla’s plan to award Musk a package then worth $56 billion, as the company argued that it was needed to entice Musk to stay focused on the automaker. “The compensation should match that something incredible was done,” he said. “I’m confident that whatever some activist posing as a judge in Delaware happens to do will not affect the future compensation.” Musk said that the compensation plan was necessary not for its monetary value, but because he wants to remove the possibility that he could be ousted from the company by an activist investor. Musk’s recommitment to Tesla comes a few weeks after the Wall Street Journal reported that the electric vehicle company had taken steps to work on a formal process to find a new CEO following the recent problems plaguing the company, notably slumping sales and protests. However, Musk denied the report, previously posting on X, “It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors!” Tesla’s chair, Robyn Denholm, also said the report was “absolutely false.” In April, Musk told investors that he would be stepping back from his role running DOGE this month, freeing up more time to run the car company. Tesla’s (TSLA) stock price had tumbled as much as 45% this year, but has rebounded and is only down 10%. The company’s shares jumped 1% in Tuesday trading.

The very basic meaning of what it means to ” Google” something – typing in keywords and sifting through links, images and information snippets is nearly behind us, according to Google. The search giant laid out its vision for the future of searching the web on Tuesday, introducing a flurry of updates that aim to shift Google’s ubiquitous search engine from being a box for processing keywords to a system of “digital agents” that can crawl the web and answer questions based on a person’s real-world surroundings, tastes and preferences. Google’s AI push comes as publishers – particularly independent ones – have already raised concerns about how the prominence of AI-generated answers could threaten their businesses. The announcements, made during the company’s annual developer conference, underscore that Google’s most important business is facing more competition than ever. Chatbots like ChatGPT and AI-fueled search engines such as Perplexity present an alternative way to find information and get things done – two tasks firmly at the center of Google’s core business. The newly announced tools can be seen as an effort to prove its nearly 30-year-old search engine isn’t losing relevance in the AI era. “What all this progress tells me is that we are now entering a new phase of the AI platform shift, where decades of research are now becoming reality for people, businesses and communities all over the world,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, said in a press briefing ahead of the conference. ‘AI Mode’ Google is broadening AI Mode, previously only available to those who signed up to test early features through its Labs program, to all US users through the Google app. It’s a step beyond AI Overviews, the AI-generated answers consumers see at the top of results. The primary difference between AI Mode and a standard Google search is the way it processes queries. Instead of just looking at the whole question, AI Mode breaks queries down into subtopics and generates additional searches based on those subtopics to provide a more specific answer. Google says AI Mode will soon draw on a person’s search history to further personalize answers, and users will also be able to link it to other Google apps, like Gmail. Beyond how it processes questions, AI Mode is expected to offer two key new ways of searching: one that it claims will handle tasks on a user’s behalf, and another that lets them show Google their surroundings using their phone’s camera. Although AI Mode is now generally available in the US, these two specific features will still require users to sign up for Labs. Google’s Project Mariner technology, which the company announced as a research prototype last year, will be able to accomplish certain tasks on a person’s behalf and answer questions that usually require multiple steps, the company claims. For example, one could ask a question such as “Find two affordable tickets for this Sunday’s Reds game in the lower level,” and Google will search for tickets, analyze options and pricing, fill out forms autonomously and then pull up tickets that match the user’s criteria. It will initially be available for buying tickets, making restaurant reservations and booking local appointments through services such as Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy and Vagaro, and will come to the Labs section of the Google app in the coming months. AI Mode in the Google app is also getting a new feature that lets users ask questions about the world around them. Visual search isn’t new to Google; the company’s Lens tool already lets users ask questions about photos they’ve snapped. But this mode takes that idea a step further by showing Google what a person is seeing in real time. The idea is to make it easier for Google to answer questions about complex tasks that are difficult to describe – such as whether the specific bolt in the toolbox is the right size for the bike frame being fixed – just by pointing a phone at it and asking. Google previously brought this visual search functionality to its Gemini assistant on Android, which it’s now expanding to the iPhone. But Tuesday’s announcement shows Google sees it as being key to the future of its search engine as well. Some of the new search capabilities overlap with those available in Google’s Gemini assistant, potentially causing confusion among consumers. Robby Stein, vice president of product for Google search, told CNN that search is tailored for learning, while Gemini is meant to be a helper for tasks like generating code and writing business plans in addition to answering questions. Google’s competition Google’s search engine has been the primary vessel for finding information online for nearly three decades. But that position is being challenged more than ever due to the proliferation of AI services from companies like OpenAI and Perplexity, as well as fellow tech stalwarts like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft – all of which have upgraded or are in the process of upgrading their virtual assistants with advanced AI capabilities. OpenAI, Google’s chief rival in the AI assistant space, has launched its own search engine. Google’s increased competition became evident earlier this month when Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, revealed in courtroom testimony that Google searches in its Safari browser in April had decreased for the first time since 2002, Bloomberg reported. Google has pushed back on that statement, saying it’s seen “overall query growth in search” including those coming from Apple devices. Market research firm Gartner estimated last year that search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026 as consumers gravitate toward AI tools. But Pichai, on a call with reporters, said the updates reflect the new ways people are using his company’s search engine. “When I look ahead, you’ve got glimpses of a proactive world, an agentic world,” he said. “All of this will keep getting better.”

In Europe, the weedkiller atrazine has been banned for nearly two decades because of its suspected links to reproductive problems like reduced sperm quality and birth defects. In the United States, it remains one of the most widely used pesticides, sprayed on corn, sugar cane and other crops, the result of years of industry lobbying. It has been detected in the drinking water of some 40 million Americans. Now, American environmental groups that have long sought a ban are finding some unexpected allies: the Trump administration and its MAGA supporter base. This week, a “Make America Healthy Again” commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to issue a report on the causes of chronic illnesses in the United States. And Mr. Kennedy, who worked for years as an environmental lawyer fighting chemical companies, wants the report to highlight the harms of pesticides like atrazine, according to three people with knowledge of his efforts. It is an unwieldy coalition, extending even to some men’s rights influencers on alternative media, where commentary abounds on how toxic chemicals are threatening masculinity. They are taking on an influential agricultural and chemicals lobby that has long rebuffed attempts to strengthen restrictions on atrazine and other pesticides, at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back government restrictions on industries, not imposing new ones. Mr. Kennedy has a vocal movement behind him. “We’re calling for a ban of 85 pesticides that have already been banned in other countries,” said Zen Honeycutt, who leads a coalition of mothers opposed to pesticides and genetically modified organisms, at a national conference of Make America Healthy Again supporters ahead of the report’s publication. “These pesticides cause reproductive damage, and we have a reproductive crisis in our country today,” she said at the meeting, attended by farmers, health influencers and conservative activists, as well as several administration officials. “Do we want the American population to be able to procreate or not?” Lori Ann Burd, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a group that has long sought a ban in the United States of atrazine and other pesticides, sees an uneasy but potentially powerful alignment of interests. “There’s an epic battle brewing over the direction that the administration is going to take on toxic chemicals,” she said. “This is the movement that helped to elect Trump,” she said. “But we’re also up against some of the most powerful corporate lobby groups in the country.” The showdown is the latest chapter in a long battle over pesticides like atrazine, long valued for its efficacy and affordability in controlling weeds and increasing crop yields. Each year, American farmers spray the pesticide on about 75 million acres of farmland, roughly equivalent to the area of New Mexico. But atrazine can also run off into streams and rivers, contaminating water sources and harming aquatic life. In humans, it is an endocrine disruptor linked to preterm delivery, birth defects and low sperm counts, and possibly to thyroid, ovarian, and other cancers. Some sixty countries ban the use of atrazine, manufactured by Switzerland-based Syngenta, which was acquired by the Chinese state-owned chemical company ChemChina in 2017. Syngenta contested those concerns, saying atrazine was one of the most studied and thoroughly tested chemicals in the world and that, at trace levels found in the environment, the pesticide would not “have any impact on hormones or human health.” The federal agency led by Mr. Kennedy, Health and Human Services, referred questions to the White House. Kush Desai, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the president had “campaigned on Making America Healthy Again and standing up for America’s farmers, and the administration is aligned on delivering on both of these goals.” In America, the farming lobby has fought attempts to regulate the chemical. During the first Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled back restrictions on the use of several pesticides, including atrazine. That rollback came under Nancy Beck, a former chemical-industry lobbyist who at that time led the agency’s toxic chemicals program. Today, Dr. Beck, who holds a doctorate in environmental health and toxicology, is back at the E.P.A. as principal deputy assistant administrator overseeing the Office of Chemical Safety. In recent weeks she has pushed back against mentioning pesticides in the MAHA commission report, according to the three people with knowledge of the commission’s discussions. Kailee Tkacz Buller, a former seed oil lobbyist who is chief of staff at the Department of Agriculture, has also pushed back against focusing on pesticides in the MAHA report, citing concerns over disruptions to the food supply chain, one of the three people said. That came after 79 Republican lawmakers, led by Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, urged the Trump administration to resist efforts from “activist groups promoting misguided and sometimes malicious policies masquerading as health solutions.” In their letter, the Republican lawmakers accused environmental activists of all stripes of “advancing harmful health, economic or food security policies under the guise of human health.” On Tuesday, a coalition of farm groups, including the National Corn Growers Association, issued a statement urging the Trump administration to “consider the consequences” of a report that suggested U.S. farmers were harming Americans through their production practices. ‘We urge President Trump to ensure that the MAHA Commission report is based on sound science and evidence-based claims rather than opinions and preferences of social influencers and single-issue activists with little to no experience in actual farming or food production,” the groups said. MAHA supporters are unfazed. “Big Ag, Big Food, Big Pharma, the pesticide companies, all of these companies are the delivery mechanisms for toxins,” said Tony Lyons, co-president of the newly established MAHA Institute, which hosted the MAHA conference. “Our government agencies shouldn’t be protecting a handful of the most powerful companies on earth, protecting their profits over the welfare of its own citizens.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT MAHA advocates say recent remarks from Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy signal a different approach under the second Trump administration. Since allying with Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Trump has complained about how the United States spends “billions and billions of dollars on pesticides,” compared to the European Union, yet has worse health outcomes. He has pledged that his administration would “ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides.” Mr. Kennedy is looking into pesticides seriously, Mr. Trump said, “because maybe it’s not necessary to use all of that.” For his part, Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly called atrazine “extraordinarily toxic” and has said that pesticides are significant contributors to chronic health problems and cancer. The anti-pesticide cause is finding supporters among online commentators who speak out on issues they consider important to men, such as infertility. “There has never been an era in human history where men are losing more. More men than ever are infertile,” Jackson Hightower, a men’s health influencer with more than a million followers across various social platforms, said in a recent video. “No one seems to be talking about how a major contributing factor to this is our food supply. And we have so much evidence to support the dangers of spraying our crops with chemicals like atrazine.” Research has shown there is some evidence globally of declining fertility among men. Studies have pointed to numerous factors that could be causing a decline, including chemical exposure and lifestyle choices like alcohol consumption, poor diet and lack of physical activity. Calley Means, an adviser to Mr. Kennedy who played a key role in orchestrating his endorsement of Mr. Trump, said he believed the country was “seeing one of the most significant realignments in American politics in American history.” He is the brother of Dr. Casey Means, Mr. Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General and another Kennedy ally. “We’ve galvanized a movement of moms, of independents, of young people,” Mr. Means said, “a revolutionary coalition of people who are going to change American politics.” All of this is happening as the Trump administration pursues a deregulatory drive that has few parallels in American history. The E.P.A., under Administrator Lee Zeldin, is revising or repealing more than 30 regulations aimed at protecting the air, water and Earth’s climate. There is also the question of how much influence Mr. Kennedy, as health secretary, can have over pesticide policy. Though the Food and Drug Administration, which is under his agency, can regulate pesticide residues in food, it is a different agency, the E.P.A., that regulates pesticide use. The E.P.A. is currently updating its mitigation proposals for atrazine, including revising its levels of concern for atrazine in water. But whether pesticides are targeted in the MAHA commission report, set to be issued on Thursday, is seen as an early test of the government’s approach. The report is expected to be a broad overview of the potential causes of chronic disease in children, including chemical exposures, food, lack of exercise and too much screen time. “I think if President Trump stands up and gets this out to the American people, he will go down as a historical figure who changed the trajectory of chronic disease,” said Vani Hari, widely known as the Food Babe, a popular author and activist close to Mr. Kennedy. The E.P.A. said in a statement that the Trump administration was “having robust conversations across government about how to drive economic growth while protecting human health and the environment.” The agency pointed to Dr. Beck’s extensive civil service career before her time working as an industry lobbyist, saying Mr. Trump had made “a fantastic choice” in selecting her to work at the agency. Traditional environmentalists, meanwhile, remain wary of MAHA’s controversial positions on lifesaving vaccines and more. As health secretary, Mr. Kennedy has broken with his predecessors by not advocating for vaccination, for example casting the decision to vaccinate against measles as a personal one. During an appearance last month by Mr. Kennedy at a conference focused on solving the global plastic trash crisis, environmentalists said they had steered him away from talk of vaccines. Even on pesticides, Mr. Kennedy’s scientific justifications aren’t always sound. He has suggested that chemicals in the water might be responsible for “sexual dysphoria” in children. In a segment aired by CNN, he said that atrazine could “forcibly feminize” frogs. “What this does to sexual development in children, nobody knows,” he said. (While there is research on atrazine feminizing male frogs, there is no evidence that the chemical similarly affects humans.) Jay Feldman, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Beyond Pesticides, said he hoped Mr. Kennedy’s unorthodox claims did not undermine the effort to regulate pesticides. For years he worked alongside Mr. Kennedy to raise awareness of the risks of pesticide exposure. “It’s unfortunate when you have an active player who has been a leading voice on environmental protection for most of his life attach himself to something so controversial,” he said. “The question is, will everything he does now be dismissed?”

Bridgewater Associates founder and billionaire Ray Dalio warned Monday that Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating understates the threat to U.S. Treasurys, saying the credit agency isn’t taking into account the risk of the federal government simply printing money to pay its debt. “You should know that credit ratings understate credit risks because they only rate the risk of the government not paying its debt,” Dalio said in a post on social media platform X. “They don’t include the greater risk that the countries in debt will print money to pay their debts thus causing holders of the bonds to suffer losses from the decreased value of the money they’re getting (rather than from the decreased quantity of money they’re getting),” the Bridgewater founder said. Moody’s on Friday cut the U.S. credit rating one notch to Aa1 from Aaa, citing the federal government’s ballooning budget deficit and soaring interest payments on the debt. It was the last of the three major credit agencies to downgrade the U.S. from the highest possible rating. U.S. stocks fell Monday as the 30-year Treasury bond yield jumped to 4.995% and the 10-year note yield climbed to 4.521% in response to Moody’s downgrade. “Said differently, for those who care about the value of their money, the risks for U.S. government debt are greater than the rating agencies are conveying,” Dalio said. Bridgewater’s assets under management dropped 18% in 2024 to some $92 billion, Reuters reported in March, down from a recent peak of $150 billion in 2021.