LAS VEGAS (AP) — So much of the technology showcased at CES includes gadgets made to improve consumers’ lives — whether by leveraging AI to make devices that help people become more efficient, by creating companions to cure loneliness or by providing tools that help people with mental and physical health.

But not all innovation is good, according to a panel of self-described dystopia experts that has judged some products as “Worst in Show.” The award that no company wants to win calls out the “least repairable, least private, and least sustainable products on display.”

“We’re seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them, and it enables some cool things,” Liz Chamberlain, director of sustainability at the e-commerce site iFixit told The Associated Press. “But it also means that now we’ve got microphones and cameras in our washing machines, refrigerators and that really is an industry-wide problem.”

The fourth annual contest announced its decisions Thursday. The companies listed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A new smart ring every few years?

Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, awarded the Ultrahuman Rare Luxury Smart Ring the title of “least repairable.”

The rings, which come in colors like dune and desert sand, cost $2,200. Wiens said the jewelry “looks sleek but hides a major flaw: its battery only lasts 500 charges.” Worse, he said, is the fact that replacing the battery is impossible without destroying the device entirely.

“Luxury items may be fleeting, but two years of use for $2,200 is a new low,” he said.

An AI-powered smart crib?

Bosch’s “Revol” crib uses sensors, cameras and AI that the company says can help monitor vital signs like how an infant is sleeping, their heart and respiratory rates and more. The crib can also rock gently if the baby needs help falling asleep and signal to parents if a blanket or other object is interfering with breathing.

The company says users can see how and where their data is stored. Bosch also says the crib can be transformed into a desk as children get older.

But EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn said the crib preys on parents’ fears and “collects excessive data about babies via a camera, microphone, and even a radar sensor.”

“Parents expect safety and comfort — not surveillance and privacy risks — in their children’s cribs,” she said in the report.

Too much waste?

Although AI is everywhere at CES, Stacey Higginbotham, a policy Fellow at Consumer Reports, felt that SoundHound AI’s In-Car Commerce Ecosystem, powered by its Automotive AI, pushes it to unnecessary extremes.

The feature “increases energy consumption, encourages wasteful takeout consumption and distracts drivers—all while adding little value,” Higginbotham said. That landed the in-car system as “least sustainable” on the list.

Soundhound AI’s platform allows drivers and passengers to order takeout for pick-up directly from the car’s infotainment system. In a statement Tuesday, Keyvan Mohajer, CEO of SoundHound AI, said the product’s launch marks an moment “decades in the making.”

“What begins here with food and restaurants will ultimately open up a whole new commercial ecosystem for vehicle and device manufacturers everywhere,” he said.

Vulnerable to hacking

TP-Link’s Archer BE900 router won for “least secure” of CES. The company is a top-selling router brand in the U.S. But its products are vulnerable to hacking, said Paul Roberts, founder of The Security Ledger.

“By Chinese law, TP-Link must report security flaws to the government before alerting the public, creating a significant national security risk,” he said. “Yet TP-Link showcased its Archer BE900 router at CES without addressing these vulnerabilities.”

Who asked for this?

The awards also feature a category called “who asked for this?” Top of that list was Samsung’s Bespoke AI Washing Machine, which Nathan Proctor, senior director of U.S. PIRG, a consumer advocacy group, said is filled “with features no one needs,” including the ability to make phone calls.

“These add-ons only make the appliance more expensive, fragile, and harder to repair,” he said.

At a press conference at CES Tuesday, Jong-Hee Han, vice chairman of Samsung’s device experience division, said that he was “proud of how we have introduced new technologies and intelligence to the home, connected key devices and set the standard for the home of the future.”

“We are reinforcing our commitment to delivering personalized experiences through our widespread implementation of AI and we will continue this journey of AI leadership in the home and beyond, not just for the next decade, but for the next century,” he said.

The worst overall

Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Repair Association called the LG “AI Home Inside 2.0 Refrigerator with ThinkQ” the worst product overall. The fridge adds “flashy features,” Gordon-Byrne said, including a screen and internet connection.

“But these come at a cost,” Gordon-Byrne said. “Shorter software support, higher energy consumption, and expensive repairs reduce the fridge’s practical lifespan, leaving consumers with an expensive, wasteful gadget.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — In one of the most important cases of the social media age, free speech and national security collide at the Supreme Court on Friday in arguments over the fate of TikTok, a wildly popular digital platform that roughly half the people in the United States use for entertainment and information.

TikTok says it plans to shut down the social media site in the U.S. by Jan. 19 unless the Supreme Court strikes down or otherwise delays the effective date of a law aimed at forcing TikTok’s sale by its Chinese parent company.

Working on a tight deadline, the justices also have before them a plea from President-elect Donald Trump, who has dropped his earlier support for a ban, to give him and his new administration time to reach a “political resolution” and avoid deciding the case. It’s unclear if the court will take the Republican president-elect’s views — a highly unusual attempt to influence a case — into account.

TikTok and China-based ByteDance, as well as content creators and users, argue the law is a dramatic violation of the Constitution’s free speech guarantee.

“Rarely if ever has the court confronted a free-speech case that matters to so many people,” lawyers for the users and content creators wrote. Content creators are anxiously awaiting a decision that could upend their livelihoods and are eyeing other platforms.

The case represents another example of the court being asked to rule about a medium with which the justices have acknowledged they have little familiarity or expertise, though they often weigh in on meaty issues involving restrictions on speech.

The Biden administration, defending the law that President Joe Biden signed in April after it was approved by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress, contends that “no one can seriously dispute that (China’s) control of TikTok through ByteDance represents a grave threat to national security.”

Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.

But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok told the justices, adding that limits on speech should not be sustained when they stem from fears that are predicated on future risks.

In December, a panel of three appellate judges, two appointed by Republicans and one by a Democrat, unanimously upheld the law and rejected the First Amendment speech claims.

Adding to the tension, the court is hearing arguments just nine days before the law is supposed to take effect and 10 days before a new administration takes office.

In language typically seen in a campaign ad rather than a legal brief, lawyers for Trump have called on the court to temporarily prevent the TikTok ban from going into effect but refrain from a definitive resolution.

“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government — concerns which President Trump himself has acknowledged,” D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice to be his administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in a legal brief filed with the court.

Trump took no position on the underlying merits of the case, Sauer wrote. Trump’s campaign team used TikTok to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, and Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in December. He has 14.7 million followers on TikTok.

The justices have set aside two hours for arguments, and the session likely will extend well beyond that. Three highly experienced Supreme Court lawyers will be making arguments. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will present the Biden administration’s defense of the law, while Trump’s solicitor general in his first administration, Noel Francisco, will argue on behalf of TikTok and ByteDance. Stanford Law professor Jeffrey Fisher, representing content creators and users, will be making his 50th high court argument.

If the law takes effect, Trump’s Justice Department will be charged with enforcing it. Lawyers for TikTok and ByteDance have argued that the new administration could seek to mitigate the law’s most severe consequences.

But they also said that a shutdown of just a month would cause TikTok to lose about one-third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.

As it weighs the case, the court will have to decide what level of review it applies to the law. Under the most searching review, strict scrutiny, laws almost always fail. But two judges on the appellate court that upheld the law said it would be the rare exception that could withstand strict scrutiny.

TikTok, the app’s users and many briefs supporting them urge the court to apply strict scrutiny to strike down the law.

But the Democratic administration and some of its supporters cite restrictions on foreign ownership of radio stations and other sectors of the economy to justify the effort to counter Chinese influence in the TikTok ban.

A decision could come within days.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

MyPillow had agreed in October to pay $550,000, but then didn’t fork over the money. So last month Hennepin County Judge Susan Burke updated the amount, adding $48,000 in interest and $4,800 for attorney fees owed to DHL.

Lindell had blamed the incurred costs on DHL, saying he had stopped using them in a dispute over shipments. That didn’t wash with Burke, who noted that Lindell had made just two payments toward a plan that had been laid out last April before missing the $550,000 October settlement payment. She ruled that he had broken the agreement and is now “liable for the full amount due,” the Minnesota Star-Tribune reported.

It is far from Lindell’s smallest bill, as judgments piled up after his insistence the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

In 2023 he was ordered to pay $5 million to Nevada software engineer Robert Zeidman after he disproved Lindell’s stolen election lie — an arbitration judgment affirmed by a federal judge in 2024. Lindell’s legal team quit in 2023, saying he owed them “millions of dollars.”

DHL sued him in September last year to get its funds restored, alleging violation of contract. DHL alleged in the lawsuit that MyPillow had agreed in a settlement to pay the full amount in 24 installments, but stopped doing so in June.

With News Wire Services

The sister of Sam Altman accused the OpenAI chief executive officer of sexually abusing her for almost a decade, in a lawsuit filed in federal court.

Ann Altman, 30, alleged that Sam Altman abused and manipulated her while they were growing up in Missouri in the late 1990s to early 2000s. According to the lawsuit filed Monday, the alleged abuse began when she was 3 years old and the last instance allegedly occurred when he was an adult but she was still a minor. Ann Altman has previously claimed on social media that Sam Altman abused her.

Sam Altman, 39, posted a statement on behalf of himself, his mother and brothers on X on Tuesday, calling the claims “utterly untrue.”

“This situation causes immense pain to our entire family,” the statement read.

Sam Altman, a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, gained a global profile with the massive success of artificial intelligence startup OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, which sparked an AI frenzy upon its release in late 2022.

Under Missouri state law, plaintiffs can bring claims for childhood sexual abuse up until the age of 31. Ann Altman is suing for damages, claiming she has experienced severe emotional distress and faces mounting medical bills related to her mental health treatment.

The case is Altman v. Altman, 4:25-cv-00017, US District Court, Eastern District of Missouri (St. Louis).

(With assistance from Ellen Huet and Peter Blumberg.)

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vowing to stop machines from taking their jobs, 45,000 U.S. longshoremen are threatening to go on a strike that would shut down ports on the East and Gulf coasts and could damage the American economy just as President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House.

That’s where things get complicated.

Negotiations resume Tuesday between the ILA and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shippers. The sticking point is a familiar one at America’s ports: machines replacing human labor, specifically semi-automated cranes operated by software or employees working remotely to guide containers onto trucks or trains. Conventional cranes have a human at the controls.

The union and its president, Harold Daggett, are dead set against allowing additional automation at East and Gulf coast ports. They argue that the machines aren’t any more efficient than human labor.

“This isn’t about meeting operational needs,’’ Daggett’s son Dennis Daggett, the union’s executive vice president, wrote last month. “It’s about replacing workers under the guise of progress while maximizing corporate profits at the expense of good-paying, family-sustaining U.S. jobs.’’

Port operators and shipping companies argue that U.S. ports are falling behind more automated ports such as those in Rotterdam, Dubai and Singapore.

Facing the Jan. 15 strike deadline, the two sides will have barely a week to reach an agreement. “They’re not giving themselves a whole lot of time,’’ said Jonathan Gold, a vice president at the National Retail Federation who handles issues involving supply chains and trade.

Trump has already weighed in for the union. After meeting Harold Daggett at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, the president-elect posted on social media that additional automation of ports would hurt workers: “The amount of money saved is nowhere near the distress, hurt and harm it causes for American workers, in this case, our Longshoremen.’’ Trump also asserted that he knows “just about everything there is to know about’’ automation.

The stakes are high for the U.S. economy. Ports on the East and Gulf coasts handle more than half the nation’s traffic in shipping containers, the steel boxes at the center of world trade, which carry everything from smartphones to fresh fruit to automobiles.

“A strike that lasts less than a week won’t have a material impact on the broader economy,’’ said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Inventories are generally ample, which will forestall shortages … However, a strike that lasts much longer than a week will cause increasing disruptions and shortages that will result in mounting economic costs, rising from an estimated $500 million a day to over $2 billion a day if the strike lasts more than a month.’’

The retail federation’s Gold says it take three to five days for supply chains to recover from a one-day disruption. “If you go anywhere longer than five days, then you’re into serious difficulties,’’ he said. “Then you’re into weeks of serious recovery.’’ An 11-day shutdown at West Coast ports in 2002, he said, “took close to six months to recover from.’’

“A longer strike could hurt retail profitability as there would be delay in future deliveries, with seasonal and fashion goods arriving past their peak selling period, resulting in lower sales and an increase in markdowns to clear these goods,” said Christina Boni of Moody’s Ratings, a credit agency. The short strike last fall didn’t last long enough to do much damage to the economy and ended before it could disrupt shipments for the holiday season.

Companies are taking steps to pre-empt potential damage from a strike. Some are rerouting shipments to the West Coast or to Canada. The Danish shipping giant Maersk last week urged its customers to pick up loaded containers from ports before Jan. 15, noting that “this proactive measure will help mitigate any potential disruptions at the terminals.’’

Some shippers are hitting their customers with strike-related fees. The German transportation company Hapag-Lloyd, for instance, has announced a “work disruption surcharge,’’ effective Jan. 20, of $850 on 20-foot containers and $1,700 on 40-foot containers.

Under their existing contract with the Maritime Alliance, the top-paid dockworkers earn $39 an hour, or $81,000 a year. The top hourly wage would rise to more than $60 an hour under the deal tentatively struck in October.

A 2019-2020 report by the Waterfront Commission, which oversees New York Harbor, found that a third of the longshoremen based there made $200,000 or more annually including overtime pay. That did not include workers’ share of royalties on the cargo that moves through the ports, payments that can come to thousands of dollars a year.

There’s little consensus on whether automation improves efficiency at ports – or hurts dockworkers.

In 2023, researchers at the Center for Innovation in Transport in Barcelona, Spain, concluded that “there is no clear evidence confirming that automated terminals outperform conventional ones’’ — though they conceded that technological advances could change things in the future.

Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced changes to content moderation on Facebook and Instagram long sought by conservatives. Incoming President Donald Trump said the new approach was “probably” due to threats he made against the technology mogul.

The move to replace third-party fact-checking with user-written “community notes” similar to those on Trump backer Elon Musk’s social platform X is the latest example of a media company moving to accommodate the incoming administration. It comes on the four-year anniversary of Zuckerberg banning Trump from his platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Zuckerberg has been a target of Trump and his allies since he donated $400 million to help local officials run the 2020 election during the coronavirus pandemic. Those donations became part of a false narrative that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, although there has never been any evidence of widespread fraud or problems that would have changed that result. Nonetheless, Republican-controlled states have banned future donations to local elections offices and Trump himself threatened to imprison Zuckerberg in a book published in September, during the peak of the presidential campaign.

Zuckerberg released a video Tuesday using some of the language that conservatives have long used to criticize his platforms, saying it was time to prioritize “free expression” and that fact-checkers had become “politically biased.” Zuckerberg said he is moving Meta’s content moderation team from California, a blue state, to red state Texas, and lifting restrictions on some immigration and gender discussions. Meta had no immediate comment on how many people might be relocated.

“I think they’ve come a long way, Meta,” Trump said. When asked if he believed Zuckerberg made the changes in response to threats the incoming president has made, Trump responded: “Probably.”

Meta is among several tech companies apparently working to get in Trump’s good graces before he takes office later this month. Meta and Amazon each donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund in December, and Zuckerberg had dinner with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Zuckerberg this week also appointed a key Trump ally, Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive Dana White, to Meta’s board. Amazon announced a documentary on incoming first lady Melania Trump. ABC News, which is owned by Disney, last month settled a libel suit filed by Trump with a $15 million payment to Trump’s presidential library foundation.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, called the Meta changes part of “a pattern of powerful people and institutions kowtowing to the president in a way that suggests they’re fearful of being targeted.”

Nyhan said that’s a grave risk to the country.

“We have in many ways an economy that’s the envy of the world and people come here to start businesses because they don’t have to be aligned with the governing regime like they do in the rest of the world,” Nyhan said. “That’s being called into question.”

Except for YouTube, Meta’s Facebook is by far the most used social media platform in the U.S. According to the Pew Research Center, about 68% of American adults use Facebook, a number that has largely held steady since 2016. Teenagers, however, have fled Facebook over the past decade, with just 32% reporting they used it in a 2024 survey.

Meta began fact checks in December 2016, after Trump was elected to his first term, in response to criticism that “fake news” was spreading on its platforms. For years, the tech giant boasted it was working with more than 100 organizations in over 60 languages to combat misinformation.

The Associated Press ended its participation in Meta’s fact-checking program a year ago.

Media experts and those who study social media were aghast at Meta’s policy shift.

“Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to end Meta’s fact-checking program not only removes a valuable resource for users, but it also provides an air of legitimacy to a popular disinformation narrative: That fact-checking is politically biased. Fact-checkers provide a valuable service by adding important context to the viral claims that mislead and misinform millions of users on Meta,” said Dan Evon, lead writer for RumorGuard, the News Literacy Project’s digital tool that curates fact checks and teaches people to spot viral misinformation.

Business analysts saw it as an openly political gambit.

“Meta is repositioning the company for the incoming Trump administration,” said Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg. “The move will elate conservatives, who’ve often criticized Meta for censoring speech, but it will spook many liberals and advertisers, showing just how far Zuckerberg is willing to go to win Trump’s approval.”

X’s approach to content moderation has led to the loss of some advertisers, but Enberg said Meta’s “massive size and powerhouse ad platform insulate it somewhat from an X-like user and advertiser exodus.” Even so, she said, any major drop in user engagement could hurt Meta’s ad business.

Meta’s quasi-independent Oversight Board, which acts as a referee of controversial content decisions, said it welcomes the changes and looks forward to working with the company “to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible.”

On X, Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, called Meta’s move a “huge step in the right direction.”

Others in the GOP were skeptical.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” Rep. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, wrote on X. “Can any of us assume Zuckerberg won’t return to his old tricks?”

Zuckerberg is not registered with any political party but was once seen as a champion of liberal causes. He invested heavily in supporting an immigration overhaul and defending the rights of those brought to the U.S. illegally as children to remain in the country. His efforts to fact-check content on Facebook made him a longtime target of conservative suspicions. When he made his election donation in 2020 he framed it as a nonpartisan, civic act, but quickly ran afoul of widespread distrust on the right.

Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech and a former director of the International Fact-Checking Network, said the change is “a choice of politics, not policy,” and warned: “Depending on how this is applied, the consequences of this decision will be an increase in harassment, hate speech and other harmful behavior across billion-user platforms.”

BANGKOK (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to reject a bid by Nippon Steel to acquire U.S. Steel on national security grounds isn’t the first time friction over trade and investment has irked Washington’s closest ally in Asia.

There have been plenty of scraps over trade in the past few decades, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sought to smooth ruffled feathers in a visit to Tokyo on Tuesday.

Nippon Steel Chief Executive Eiji Hashimoto said the top Japanese steelmaker was standing firm on its proposed $15 billion friendly acquisition. Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s decision.

But the assertion that the proposed deal could threaten U.S. national security has stung.

Many in Japan see the decision as a betrayal by Washington after decades of U.S. pressure to lift barriers to investment and trade. The timing doesn’t help, with Japanese businesses already bracing for potentially damaging tariff hikes once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was blunt in warning that spoiling the deal might hurt Japanese investment in the U.S.

Here are some key issues at stake:

Making nice

While in Tokyo in a farewell tour before Biden leaves office, Blinken told reporters he believes that during the past four years the alliance with Japan has “grown stronger than it’s ever been before.” Japan and the U.S. are mutually the largest investors in each other’s economies, he noted, “strengthening the foundation for many years to come.” Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the U.S. Steel decision came up during Blinken’s meeting with Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya. But it said only that the two sides had “reaffirmed the importance of Japan-U.S. economic relations, including investment in the U.S. by Japanese companies.”

Harsh words

Before Blinken’s visit, Ishiba, who has struggled to build support and momentum since he took office in October, was emphatic.

“As for why national security was cited as an issue, it must be clearly explained. Otherwise, future discussions on the matter will come to naught,” he said Monday. “No matter how much we are an ally, I believe that the points I have just made are extremely important for our future relations.”

He said, “It is an unfortunate fact that Japanese industry has voiced concerns about future investment between the U.S. and Japan. We have to take this very seriously.”

Japan’s Trade Minister Yoji Muto said the decision was “very regrettable.” Headlines in Japanese newspapers mainly focused on Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel’s plan to fight the ruling in court.

US-Japan alliance

Japan is the biggest and most important U.S. ally in Asia, a relationship forged during the U.S. occupation following Japan’s 1945 defeat in World War II. Nearly 63,000 troops are stationed at dozens of facilities across the country and Washington has urged Japan to build up its own defense capabilities as a counterweight to China’s growing influence and military power.

Japan counts on the U.S. to provide an umbrella of defense against its neighbors China, Russia and North Korea. Some critics have chafed at the decision to reject Nippon Steel’s bid for U.S. Steel, saying Washington was treating Japan like it does China, a potential adversary.

“When is an ally not a partner? Apparently when a Japanese company seeks to purchase an iconic U.S. corporation,” The newspaper The Japan Times said in an editorial. It described the concerns over national security as “incomprehensible,” adding “Trust has been greatly damaged and it is unclear what will be required to undo the harm.”

Track record on trade

Biden and Trump have both supported higher tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from China, saying they are needed to insulate American producers from unfair trade practices and a flood of cheap imports. In 2018, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on imports of Japanese steel on “national security” grounds. The Biden administration agreed to a deal in 2022 to allow a certain quota of some steel products to be imported tariff-free. Any above that amount is subject to the 25% tariff.

Today’s trade frictions follow decades of negotiations that have led Japan to open its markets much more widely to foreign goods and services, transforming its retailing from mostly old-style department stores and mom-and-pop shops into outlet malls and big discount stores. Such “gai-atsu,” or foreign pressure, led Japanese automakers and other manufacturers chose to invest in U.S. factories, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel contend their deal would save American jobs, and business groups on both sides have objected to seeing the deal fall through as part of a broad shift in recent years away from greater openness.

Four years after launching a push for more diversity in its ranks, McDonald’s is ending some of its diversity practices, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions.

McDonald’s is the latest big company to shift its tactics in the wake of the 2023 ruling and a conservative backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Walmart, John Deere, Harley-Davidson and others rolled back their DEI initiatives last year.

McDonald’s said Monday it will retire specific goals for achieving diversity at senior leadership levels. It also intends to end a program that encourages its suppliers to develop diversity training and to increase the number of minority group members represented within their own leadership ranks.

McDonald’s, which has its headquarters in Chicago, rolled out a series of diversity initiatives in 2021 after a spate of sexual harassment lawsuits filed by employees and a lawsuit alleging discrimination brought by a group of Black former McDonald’s franchise owners.

“As a world-leading brand that considers inclusion one of our core values, we will accept nothing less than real, measurable progress in our efforts to lead with empathy, treat people with dignity and respect, and seek out diverse points of view to drive better decision-making,” McDonald’s Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time.

But McDonald’s said Monday that the “shifting legal landscape” after the Supreme Court decision and the actions of other corporations caused it to take a hard look at its own policies.

A shifting political landscape may also have played a role. President-elect Donald Trump is a vocal opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Trump tapped Stephen Miller, a former adviser who leads a group called America First Legal that has aggressively challenged corporate DEI policies,as his incoming deputy chief of policy.

Vice President-elect JD Vance introduced a bill in the Senate last summer to end such programs in the federal government.

Robby Starbuck, a conservative political commentator who has threatened consumer boycotts of prominent consumer brands that don’t retreat from their diversity programs, said Monday on X that he recently told McDonald’s he would be doing a story on its “woke policies.”

McDonald’s said it had been considering updates to its policies for several months and planned to time the announcement to the start of this year.

In an open letter to employees and franchisees, McDonald’s senior leadership team said it remains committed to inclusion and believes a diverse workforce is a competitive advantage. The company said 30% of its U.S. leaders are members of underrepresented groups, up from 29% in 2021. McDonald’s previously committed to reaching 35% by the end of this year.

McDonald’s said it has achieved one of the goals it announced in 2021: gender pay equity at all levels of the company. It also said it expected to achieve a goal of having 25% of total supplier spending go to diverse-owned businesses by the end of the year.

McDonald’s said it would continue to support efforts that ensure a diverse base of employees, suppliers and franchisees, but its diversity team will now be referred to as the Global Inclusion Team. The company said it would also continue to report its demographic information.

The McDonald’s Hispanic Owner-Operators Association said it had no comment on the policy change Monday. A message seeking comment was left with the National Black McDonald’s Operators Association.

Disney, which owns Hulu, will be the majority owner of the new Fubo.

The two services have about 6.2 million subscribers between them, and both services will continue to be available after the merger is completed. YouTube TV claimed last year to have more than 8 million subscribers on its own, meaning it remains the largest live television streaming platform.

“Having two separate platforms today, obviously, it’s not ideal,” Fubo co-founder and CEO David Gandler said Monday during a call with investors, according to CNBC and The Hollywood Reporter. “I think we want to really focus on providing consumers with choice, and the Hulu product is really focused on providing a full entertainment bundle of sports, news and entertainment, and Fubo will continue to focus on its sports-first service, with the ability to launch skinnier sports bundles.”

The merger also settled a lawsuit over Venu, a planned streaming services combining sports content from Disney (ESPN), Fox Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT, TBS). A U.S. judge temporarily blocked that service from launching in 2024.

Fubo, which is sports-focused with an emphasis on giving cord-cutters a way to watch their local teams, had argued Venu would have solidified those three networks’ grasp on sports broadcasts and create an uncompetitive market. The merger and settlements should allow it easier negotiations to carry sports content from its former competitors.

It’s unclear if Venu will continue, as TV rights for several sports leagues are set to shuffle around in coming years.

NEW YORK (AP) — Your car is spying on you.

That is one takeaway from the fast, detailed data that Tesla collected on the driver of one of its Cybertrucks that exploded in Las Vegas earlier this week. Privacy data experts say the deep dive by Elon Musk’s company was impressive, but also shines a spotlight on a difficult question as vehicles become less like cars and more like computers on wheels.

“You might want law enforcement to have the data to crack down on criminals, but can anyone have access to it?” said Jodi Daniels, CEO of privacy consulting firm Red Clover Advisors. “Where is the line?”

Many of the latest cars not only know where you’ve been and where you are going, but also often have access to your contacts, your call logs, your texts and other sensitive information thanks to cell phone syncing.

The data collected by Musk’s electric car company after the Cybertruck packed with fireworks burst into flames in front of the Trump International Hotel Wednesday proved valuable to police in helping track the driver’s movements.

Within hours of the New Year’s Day explosion that burned the driver beyond recognition and injured seven, Tesla was able to track Matthew Livelsberger’s movements in detail from Denver to Las Vegas, and also confirm that the problem was explosives in the truck, not the truck itself. Tesla used data collected from charging stations and from onboard software — and to great acclaim.

“I have to thank Elon Musk, specifically,” said Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill to reporters. “He gave us quite a bit of additional information.”

Some privacy experts were less enthusiastic.

“It reveals the kind of sweeping surveillance going on,” said David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston. “When something bad happens, it’s helpful, but it’s a double edged sword. Companies that collect this data can abuse it.”

General Motors, for instance, was sued in August by the Texas attorney general for allegedly selling data from 1.8 million drivers to insurance companies without their consent.

Cars equipped with cameras to enable self-driving features have added a new security risk. Tesla itself came under fire after Reuters reported how employees from 2019 through 2022 shared drivers’ sensitive videos and recordings with each other, including videos of road rage incidents and, in one case, nudity.

Tesla did not respond to emailed questions about its privacy policy. On its website, Tesla says it follows strict rules for keeping names and information private.

“No one but you would have knowledge of your activities, location, or a history of where you’ve been,” according to a statement. “Your information is kept private and secure.”

Auto analyst Sam Abuelsamid at Telemetry Insight, said he doesn’t think Tesla is “especially worse” than other auto companies in handling customer data, but he is still concerned.

“This is one of the biggest ethical issues we have around modern vehicles. They’re connected,” he said. “Consumers need to have control over their data.”

Tensions were high when the Cybertruck parked at the front doors of Trump’s hotel began smoking, then burst into flames. Just hours earlier a driver in another vehicle using the same peer-to-peer car rental service, Turo, had killed 15 people after slamming into a crowd in New Orleans in what law enforcement is calling a terrorist attack.

Shortly before 1 p.m., the Las Vegas police announced they were investigating a second incident.

“The fire is out,” the police announced on the social media platform X, one of Musk’s other companies. “Please avoid the area.”

Tesla shortly thereafter swung into action.

“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk wrote on X. “Will post more information as soon as we learn anything.”

Over the next few hours, Tesla was able to piece together Livelsberger’s journey over five days and four states by tracking, among other things, his recharging stops in various locations, including Monument, Colorado, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Flagstaff, Arizona.

There are no federal laws regulating car data similar to those that restrict information collection and sharing by banks and health care providers. And state laws are a grab-bag of various rules, mostly focused on data privacy in general.

Daniels, the privacy consultant, thinks that new national laws are needed because rules have not kept up with technology.

“I think law enforcement should have access to data that can help them solve things quickly,” she said. “But we have a right to privacy.”