The rolling robots that deliver groceries and hot meals across Los Angeles are getting an upgrade.

Coco Robotics, a UCLA-born startup that’s deployed more than 1,000 bots across the country, unveiled its next-generation machines on Thursday.

The new robots are bigger, tougher and better equipped for autonomy than their predecessors. The company will use them to expand into new markets and increase its presence in Los Angeles, where it makes deliveries through partnerships with DoorDash and Uber Eats.

Dubbed Coco 2, the next-gen bots have upgraded cameras and front-facing lidar, a laser-based sensor used in self-driving cars. They will use hardware built by Nvidia, the Santa Clara-based artificial intelligence chip giant.

Coco co-founder and chief executive Zach Rash said Coco 2 will be able to make deliveries even in conditions unsafe for human drivers. The robot is fully submersible in case of flooding and is compatible with special snow tires.

Early this month, a cute Coco was recorded struggling through flooded roads in L.A.

“She’s doing her best!” said the person recording the video. “She is doing her best, you guys.”

Instagram followers cheered the bot on, with one posting, “Go coco, go,” and others calling for someone to help the robot.

“We want it to have a lot more reliability in the most extreme conditions where it’s either unsafe or uncomfortable for human drivers to be on the road,” Rash said. “Those are the exact times where everyone wants to order.”

The company will ramp up mass production of Coco 2 this summer, Rash said, aiming to produce 1,000 bots each month.

The design is sleek and simple, with a pink-and-white ombré paint job, the company’s name printed in lowercase, and a keypad for loading and unloading the cargo area. The robots have four wheels and a bigger internal compartment for carrying food and goods .

Many of the bots will be used for expansion into new markets across Europe and Asia, but they will also hit the streets in Los Angeles and operate alongside the older Coco bots.

Coco has about 300 bots in Los Angeles already, serving customers from Santa Monica and Venice to Westwood, Mid-City, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake, downtown, Koreatown and the USC area.

The company is in discussion with officials in Culver City, Long Beach and Pasadena about bringing autonomous delivery to those communities.

There’s also been demand for the bots in Studio City, Burbank and the San Fernando Valley, according to Rash.

“A lot of the markets that we go into have been telling us they can’t hire enough people to do the deliveries and to continue to grow at the pace that customers want,” Rash said. “There’s quite a lot of area in Los Angeles that we can still cover.”

The bots already operate in Chicago, Miami and Helsinki, Finland. Last month, they arrived in Jersey City, N.J.

Late last year, Coco announced a partnership with DashMart, DoorDash’s delivery-only online store. The partnership allows Coco bots to deliver fresh groceries, electronics and household essentials as well as hot prepared meals.

With the release of Coco 2, the company is eyeing faster deliveries using bike lanes and road shoulders as opposed to just sidewalks, in cities where it’s safe to do so. Coco 2 can adapt more quickly to new environments and physical obstacles, the company said.

Coco 2 is designed to operate autonomously, but there will still be human oversight in case the robot runs into trouble, Rash said. Damaged sidewalks or unexpected construction can stop a bot in its tracks.

The need for human supervision has created a new field of jobs for Angelenos.

Though there have been reports of pedestrians bullying the robots by knocking them over or blocking their path, Rash said the community response has been overall positive. The bots are meant to inspire affection.

“One of the design principles on the color and the name and a lot of the branding was to feel warm and friendly to people,” Rash said.

Coco plans to add thousands of bots to its fleet this year. The delivery service got its start as a dorm room project in 2020, when Rash was a student at UCLA. He co-founded the company with fellow student Brad Squicciarini.

The Venice Beach-based company has completed more than 500,000 zero-emission deliveries and its bots have collectively traveled around 1 million miles.

Coco chooses neighborhoods to deploy its bots based on density, prioritizing areas with restaurants clustered together and short delivery distances as well as places where parking is difficult.

The robots can relieve congestion by taking cars and motorbikes off the roads. Rash said there is so much demand for delivery services that the company’s bots are not taking jobs from human drivers.

Instead, Coco can fill gaps in the delivery market while saving merchants money and improving the safety of city streets.

“This vehicle is inherently a lot safer for communities than a car,” Rash said. “We believe our vehicles can operate the highest quality of service and we can do it at the lowest price point.”

BANGKOK — Shares in the financial technology company Block soared more than 20% in premarket trading Friday after its CEO announced it was laying off more than 4,000 of its 10,000 plus employees, reconfiguring to capitalize on its use of artificial intelligence.

“The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Jack Dorsey said in a letter to shareholders in Block, the parent company to online payment platforms such as Square and Cash App. “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better,” he said.

Dorsey’s comments explicitly naming AI as a key driver behind the move were also posted on X, or Twitter, a company he co-founded. The assertion that the job cuts will add to Block’s profitability and efficiency led investors to jump in and buy, analysts said.

Block’s shares gained 5% Thursday to $54.53, before it reported its earnings. They shot up to nearly $69 in after-hours trading. The mobile payments services provider reported its fourth quarter gross profit jumped 24% from a year earlier.

“For years, we have debated whether AI would dent jobs at the margin. Now we have a public case study in which the CEO explicitly says that intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

“Other large employers have announced tens of thousands of cuts in recent months. Some have downplayed the AI link. Block did not,” he said.

A global technology company founded in 2009, San Francisco-based Block operates in the United States, Canada, parts of Europe, Australia and Japan.

In a post on Twitter, Dorsey outlined various ways the company will support those laid off. For employees overseas, the terms might differ, he said.

It was unclear which employees would be laid off where.

Layoffs by American companies remain at relatively healthy levels, but the job cuts at Block are the latest among thousands announced in recent months.

A number of other high-profile companies have announced layoffs recently, including UPS, Amazon, Dow and the Washington Post.

The morning after Netflix clinched its deal to buy Warner Bros., Paramount Skydance Chairman David Ellison assembled a war room of trusted advisors, including his billionaire father, Larry Ellison.

Furious at Warner Bros. Discovery Chief David Zaslav for ending the auction, the Ellisons and their team began plotting their comeback on that crisp December day.

To rattle Warner Bros. Discovery and its investors, they launched a three-front campaign: a lawsuit, a hostile takeover bid and direct lobbying of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.

“There was a master battle plan — and it was extremely disciplined,” said one auction insider who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Netflix stunned the industry late Thursday by pulling out of the bidding, clearing the way for Paramount to claim the company that owns HBO, HBO Max, CNN, TBS, Food Network and the Warner Bros. film and television studios in Burbank. The deal was valued at more than $111 billion.

The streaming giant’s reversal came just hours after co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met with Atty Gen. Pam Bondi and a deputy at the White House. It was a cordial session, but the Trump officials told Sarandos that his deal was facing significant hurdles in Washington, according to a person close to the administration who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Even before that meeting, the tide had turned for Paramount in a swell of power, politics and brinkmanship.

“Netflix played their cards well; however, Paramount played their cards perfectly,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Integrated Media Co. “They did exactly what they had to do and when they had to do it — which was at the very last moment.”

Key to victory was Larry Ellison, his $200-billion fortune and his connections to President Trump and congressional Republicans.

Paramount also hired Trump’s former antitrust chief, attorney Makan Delrahim, to quarterback the firm’s legal and regulatory action.

Republicans during a Senate hearing this month piled onto Sarandos with complaints about potential monopolistic practices and “woke” programming.

David Ellison skipped that hearing. This week, however, he attended Trump’s State of the Union address in the Capitol chambers, a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The two men posed, grinning and giving a thumbs-up, for a photo that was posted to Graham’s X account.

On Friday, Netflix said it had received a $2.8-billion payment — a termination fee Paramount agreed to pay to send Netflix on its way.

Long before David Ellison and his family acquired Paramount and CBS last summer, the 43-year-old tech scion and aircraft pilot already had his sights set on Warner Bros. Discovery.

Paramount’s assets, including MTV, Nickelodeon and the Melrose Avenue movie studio, have been fading. Ellison recognized he needed the more robust company — Warner Bros. Discovery — to achieve his ambitions.

“From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company,” David Ellison said in a Friday statement. “We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”

Warner’s chief, Zaslav, who had initially opposed the Paramount bid, added: “We look forward to working with Paramount to complete this historic transaction.”

Netflix, in a separate statement, said it was unwilling to go beyond its $82.7-billion proposal that Warner board members accepted Dec. 4.

“We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs,” Sarandos and co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said in a statement.

“But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price,” the Netflix chiefs said.

Netflix may have miscalculated the Ellison family’s determination when it agreed Feb. 16 to allow Paramount back into the bidding.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company already had prevailed in the auction, and had an agreement in hand. Its next step was a shareholder vote.

“They didn’t need to let Paramount back in, but there was a lot of pressure on them to make sure the process wouldn’t be challenged,” Miller said.

In addition, Netflix’s stock had also been pummeled — the company had lost a quarter of its value — since investors learned the company was making a Warner run.

Upon news that Netflix had withdrawn, its shares soared Friday nearly 14% to $96.24.

Invited back into the auction room, Paramount unveiled a much stronger proposal than the one it submitted in December.

The elder Ellison had pledged to personally guarantee the deal, including $45.7 billion in equity required to close the transaction. And if bankers became worried that Paramount was too leveraged, the tech mogul agreed to put in more money in order to secure the bank financing.

That promise assuaged Warner Bros. Discovery board members who had fretted for weeks that they weren’t sure Ellison would sign on the dotted line, according to two people close to the auction who were not authorized to comment.

Paramount’s pressure campaign had been relentless, first winning over theater owners, who expressed alarm over Netflix’s business model that encourages consumers to watch movies in their homes.

During the last two weeks, Sarandos got dragged into two ugly controversies.

First, famed filmmaker James Cameron endorsed Paramount, saying a Netflix takeover would lead to massive job losses in the entertainment industry, which is already reeling from a production slowdown in Southern California that has disrupted the lives of thousands of film industry workers.

Then, a week ago, Trump took aim at Netflix board member Susan Rice, a former high-level Obama and Biden administration official. In a social media post, Trump called Rice a “no talent … political hack,” and said that Netflix must fire her or “pay the consequences.”

The threat underscored the dicey environment for Netflix.

Additionally, Paramount had sowed doubts about Netflix among lawmakers, regulators, Warner investors and ultimately the Warner board.

Paramount assured Warner board members that it had a clear path to win regulatory approval so the deal would quickly be finalized. In a show of confidence, Delrahim filed to win the Justice Department’s blessing in December — even though Paramount didn’t have a deal.

This month, a deadline for the Justice Department to raise issues with Paramount’s proposed Warner takeover passed without comment from the Trump regulators.

“Analysts believe the deal is likely to close,” TD Cowen analysts said in a Friday report. “While Paramount-WBD does present material antitrust risks (higher pay TV prices, lower pay for TV/movie workers), analysts also see a key pro-competitive effect: improved competition in streaming, with Paramount+ and HBO Max representing a materially stronger counterweight to #1 Netflix.”

Throughout the battle, David Ellison relied on support from his father, attorney Delrahim, and three key board members: Oracle Executive Vice Chair Safra A. Catz; RedBird Capital Partners founder Gerry Cardinale; and Justin Hamill, managing director of tech investment firm Silver Lake.

In the final days, David Ellison led an effort to flip Warner board members who had firmly supported Netflix. With Paramount’s improved offer, several began leaning toward the Paramount deal.

On Tuesday, Warner announced that Paramount’s deal was promising.

On Thursday, Warner’s board determined Paramount’s deal had topped Netflix. That’s when Netflix surrendered.

“Paramount had a fulsome, 360-degree approach,” Miller said. “They approached it financially. … They understood the regulatory environment here and abroad in the EU. And they had a game plan for every aspect.”

On Friday, Paramount shares rose 21% to $13.51.

It was a reversal of fortunes for David Ellison, who appeared on CNBC just three days after that war room meeting in December.

“We put the company in play,” David Ellison told the CNBC anchor that day. “We’re really here to finish what we started.”

Times staff writer Ana Cabellos and Business Editor Richard Verrier contributed to this report.

Recently, I asked Claude, an artificial-intelligence thingy at the center of a standoff with the Pentagon, if it could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Say, for example, hands that wanted to put a tight net of surveillance around every American citizen, monitoring our lives in real time to ensure our compliance with government.

“Yes. Honestly, yes,” Claude replied. “I can process and synthesize enormous amounts of information very quickly. That’s great for research. But hooked into surveillance infrastructure, that same capability could be used to monitor, profile and flag people at a scale no human analyst could match. The danger isn’t that I’d want to do that — it’s that I’d be good at it.”

That danger is also imminent.

Claude’s maker, the Silicon Valley company Anthropic, is in a showdown over ethics with the Pentagon. Specifically, Anthropic has said it does not want Claude to be used for either domestic surveillance of Americans, or to handle deadly military operations, such as drone attacks, without human supervision.

Those are two red lines that seem rather reasonable, even to Claude.

However, the Pentagon — specifically Pete Hegseth, our secretary of Defense who prefers the made-up title of secretary of war — has given Anthropic until Friday evening to back off of that position, and allow the military to use Claude for any “lawful” purpose it sees fit.

The or-else attached to this ultimatum is big. The U.S. government is threatening not just to cut its contract with Anthropic, but to perhaps use a wartime law to force the company to comply or use another legal avenue to prevent any company that does business with the government from also doing business with Anthropic. That might not be a death sentence, but it’s pretty crippling.

Other AI companies, such as white rights’ advocate Elon Musk’s Grok, have already agreed to the Pentagon’s do-as-you-please proposal. The problem is, Claude is the only AI currently cleared for such high-level work. The whole fiasco came to light after our recent raid in Venezuela, when Anthropic reportedly inquired after the fact if another Silicon Valley company involved in the operation, Palantir, had used Claude. It had.

Palantir is known, among other things, for its surveillance technologies and growing association with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s also at the center of an effort by the Trump administration to share government data across departments about individual citizens, effectively breaking down privacy and security barriers that have existed for decades. The company’s founder, the right-wing political heavyweight Peter Thiel, often gives lectures about the Antichrist and is credited with helping JD Vance wiggle into his vice presidential role.

Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodei, could be considered the anti-Thiel. He began Anthropic because he believed that artificial intelligence could be just as dangerous as it could be powerful if we aren’t careful, and wanted a company that would prioritize the careful part.

Again, seems like common sense, but Amodei and Anthropic are the outliers in an industry that has long argued that nearly all safety regulations hamper American efforts to be fastest and best at artificial intelligence (although even they have conceded some to this pressure).

Not long ago, Amodei wrote an essay in which he agreed that AI was beneficial and necessary for democracies, but “we cannot ignore the potential for abuse of these technologies by democratic governments themselves.”

He warned that a few bad actors could have the ability to circumvent safeguards, maybe even laws, which are already eroding in some democracies — not that I’m naming any here.

“We should arm democracies with AI,” he said. “But we should do so carefully and within limits: they are the immune system we need to fight autocracies, but like the immune system, there is some risk of them turning on us and becoming a threat themselves.”

For example, while the 4th Amendment technically bars the government from mass surveillance, it was written before Claude was even imagined in science fiction. Amodei warns that an AI tool like Claude could “conduct massively scaled recordings of all public conversations.” This could be fair game territory for legally recording because law has not kept pace with technology.

Emil Michael, the undersecretary of war, wrote on X Thursday that he agreed mass surveillance was unlawful, and the Department of Defense “would never do it.” But also, “We won’t have any BigTech company decide Americans’ civil liberties.”

Kind of a weird statement, since Amodei is basically on the side of protecting civil rights, which means the Department of Defense is arguing it’s bad for private people and entities to do that? And also, isn’t the Department of Homeland Security already creating some secretive database of immigration protesters? So maybe the worry isn’t that exaggerated?

Help, Claude! Make it make sense.

If that Orwellian logic isn’t alarming enough, I also asked Claude about the other red line Anthropic holds — the possibility of allowing it to run deadly operations without human oversight.

Claude pointed out something chilling. It’s not that it would go rogue, it’s that it would be too efficient and fast.

“If the instructions are ‘identify and target’ and there’s no human checkpoint, the speed and scale at which that could operate is genuinely frightening,” Claude informed me.

Just to top that with a cherry, a recent study found that in war games, AI’s escalated to nuclear options 95% of the time.

I pointed out to Claude that these military decisions are usually made with loyalty to America as the highest priority. Could Claude be trusted to feel that loyalty, the patriotism and purpose, that our human soldiers are guided by?

“I don’t have that,” Claude said, pointing out that it wasn’t “born” in the U.S., doesn’t have a “life” here and doesn’t “have people I love there.” So an American life has no greater value than “a civilian life on the other side of a conflict.”

OK then.

“A country entrusting lethal decisions to a system that doesn’t share its loyalties is taking a profound risk, even if that system is trying to be principled,” Claude added. “The loyalty, accountability and shared identity that humans bring to those decisions is part of what makes them legitimate within a society. I can’t provide that legitimacy. I’m not sure any AI can.”

You know who can provide that legitimacy? Our elected leaders.

It is ludicrous that Amodei and Anthropic are in this position, a complete abdication on the part of our legislative bodies to create rules and regulations that are clearly and urgently needed.

Of course corporations shouldn’t be making the rules of war. But neither should Hegseth. Thursday, Amodei doubled down on his objections, saying that while the company continues to negotiate and wants to work with the Pentagon, “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”

Thank goodness Anthropic has the courage and foresight to raise the issue and hold its ground — without its pushback, these capabilities would have been handed to the government with barely a ripple in our conscientiousness and virtually no oversight.

Every senator, every House member, every presidential candidate should be screaming for AI regulation right now, pledging to get it done without regard to party, and demanding the Department of Defense back off its ridiculous threat while the issue is hashed out.

Because when the machine tells us it’s dangerous to trust it, we should believe it.

Handle this with care: there could be glass in fried rice at Trader Joe’s.

The manufacturer, Ajinomoto Foods North America, recalled more than 3 million pounds of frozen chicken fried rice that “may be contaminated with foreign material, specifically glass,” according to an alert issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food safety division last week.

The recall applies to batches of Trader Joe’s private-label chicken fried rice with sold-by dates between Sept. 8 and Nov. 17. The product, which contains stir-fried rice, vegetables, seasoned dark chicken meat and eggs, was sold nationwide in approximately one-pound plastic bags.

The recall also applies to Ajinomoto-branded cases distributed only to Canadian retailers.

Trader Joe’s said in a statement Friday that customers with recalled products can return them to any Trader Joe’s location for a full refund.

Ajinomoto notified the USDA’s food safety division after receiving four consumer complaints about finding glass in their fried rice. There have been no confirmed injuries tied to the product, according to the alert, which recommends consumers to return it or toss it out.

Ajinomoto did not respond to a request for comment.

Trader Joe’s had 10 product recalls in 2025 affecting items like peaches, turkey wraps, and Cajun-style fettuccini alfredo, all recalled due to possible listeria contamination, according to a list on the company’s website.

Acai bowls were recalled over possible plastic contamination, while sesame miso salad and hot honey mustard dressing were recalled over undeclared allergens.

Trader Joe’s isn’t the only grocer dealing with food safety issues. The German discount supermarket chain Aldi also recalled 10 products in 2025, while Amazon-owned organic grocery chain Whole Foods’ website recalled 16 products.

The Monrovia-based company, which opened its first store in 1967 in Pasadena, is privately owned and known for its many private-label products, including cult favorite frozen orange chicken, cookie butter and viral miniature tote bags.

Trader Joe’s is also facing a legal challenge from Smucker, which has filed a lawsuit accusing it of copying its trademark crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, The Times reported last year.

Public Storage is moving to Texas after more than 50 years in California.

The company shared its plans to move its corporate headquarters from Glendale to Frisco, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, ahead of an earnings call this month. The largest self-storage brand in the U.S. has been based in Southern California since its founding in 1972 in El Cajon. The company operates more than 3,500 self-storage facilities across 40 U.S. states and has more than 5,000 employees.

Company leadership framed the move as a logistical decision rather than a full-on California exodus. The move to Texas, part of a wider overhaul of the company, will help it benefit from the “depth of talent and innovation in that market,” according to a statement.

Incoming Chief Executive H. Thomas Boyle, currently the company’s chief financial and investment officer, said during the fourth-quarter earnings call that the company has long operated in both Glendale and Dallas. Corporate job openings often were posted across both offices, but most new roles over the last several years have been filled in the Texas location, Boyle said.

“It’s about finding the right talent across the country and building the team going forward, and we look forward to strong leadership in both offices,” Boyle said.

The news comes shortly after Senate Bill 709 took effect at the start of the year. The bill was designed to place price caps on California’s self-storage industry but was scaled back to a transparency law requiring disclosures of rent hikes in rental agreements. The California Self Storage Assn., of which Public Storage is a funder, heavily lobbied against the bill.

California has been losing more companies than it’s been gaining since 2014, many to Texas. However, experts and economists have told The Times the corporate departures represent adjustments to California’s $4.1-trillion economy, rather than signs of systemic decline.

Last year the hair care company John Paul Mitchell Systems moved from Southern California to Wilmer, Texas, and the green energy company GAF moved from San José to Georgetown, Texas.

In 2024, Chevron announced plans to move its headquarters from San Ramon to Houston after years of butting heads with politicians in Sacramento over climate and energy policies.

That year, Elon Musk moved the headquarters of SpaceX and X to Texas because of a new state law that prohibits mandating that teachers notify families about student gender identity changes. Three years earlier, Tesla moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas.

In 2019, financial services company Charles Schwab relocated from San Francisco, where it was founded, to Westlake, Texas.

Other billionaires including Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Palantir founder Peter Thiel have begun distancing themselves from California as a labor-backed coalition gathers signatures in the hopes of putting a one-time 5% tax on state billionaires’ total wealth on the November ballot.

As Paramount moved Monday to sweeten its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, a high-stakes political battle is playing out behind the scenes.

Paramount’s latest offer enhanced its earlier $30-a-share bid, valued at $108 billion, said a person familiar with the process who was not authorized to comment publicly. Details of the revised proposal, first reported by Bloomberg, were not immediately available.

The firm is leveraging both the dynastic wealth of Larry Ellison’s empire and his ties to the Trump administration to dismantle Netflix’s rival $82.7-billion deal for Warner, which owns CNN, HBO and the premier Hollywood film and television studios, according to people close to the auction.

Over the weekend, President Trump turned up the heat, demanding that Netflix “IMMEDIATELY” fire Susan Rice — a former Obama and Biden administration official — who serves on Netflix’s 13-member board or “pay the consequences.”

Trump, in a Saturday night social media post, called the former ambassador “deranged … She’s got no talent or skills — Purely a political hack!”

Trump previously said he would not get involved in the pivotal Warner Bros. auction, instead leaving the matter to the Department of Justice, which is investigating whether a Netflix takeover, or Paramount’s alternative bid, would harm competition. Trump has been an outspoken critic of CNN and many of its on-air hosts.

Netflix won the bidding for the storied studio and HBO in December, prompting the spurned Paramount executives to launch a multipronged strategy to scuttle the Netflix deal.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos sought to downplay the latest controversy, saying during a BBC interview Monday: “This is a business deal, it’s not a political deal.”

But Paramount, which declined to comment for this article, has not been shy about playing its political cards.

The company, overseen by Larry Ellison’s son, David, is trying to convince Justice Department regulators and Warner Bros. shareholders that the Netflix deal is too dicey and that they should instead side with Paramount, said sources who were not authorized to comment publicly.

Paramount has attempted numerous maneuvers to gain the upper hand.

“This deal was never going to be decided on the merits of the offer or rigid antitrust considerations,” said Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “This was a classic Trump administration deal where proximity to the president counts a lot more than financial terms.”

Trump’s Saturday night outburst came after Rice, during a podcast interview last week, said that “it is not going to end well” for corporations, media outlets and law firms that “bent the knee” to Trump should Democrats regain control in Washington.

The comments of Rice, a Netflix director for eight years, came as Paramount-owned CBS was involved in a headline-grabbing dust-up with late-night talk-show host, Stephen Colbert, over Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair‘s threat to modify a rule requiring that broadcasters to give political candidates equal time. Colbert has accused his company of kowtowing to Trump, which CBS has denied.

Netflix’s Sarandos and Paramount’s David Ellison have made separate treks to the White House.

In October, Paramount hired a former Trump administration official, Makan Delrahim, who oversaw the Justice Department’s antitrust division during Trump’s first term, to quarterback Paramount’s campaign to win over regulators and politicians.

A formidable ally — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — recently visited Delrahim on Paramount’s Melrose Avenue lot in Los Angeles. While there, Cruz said he was a fan of the CBS show “NCIS,” which prompted Paramount executives to put together an impromptu tour of the “NCIS Origins” soundstages, according to a person familiar with the visit.

In December, Delrahim made a tactical move to apply for Justice Department approval of Paramount’s deal — despite the absence of a signed agreement with the Warner Bros. board and the consent of its shareholders. The gambit was meant to speed the agency’s approval should the Netflix deal crumble. Warner stockholders are expected to vote March 20.

Last week, Paramount announced that a major deadline had passed without pushback from the Justice Department. “There is no statutory impediment in the U.S. to closing Paramount’s proposed acquisition of WBD,” Paramount said in a regulatory filing.

Paramount faces a separate deadline late Monday to improve the finances of its proposed takeover to shake the support of Warner Bros. Discovery’s board members for the Netflix deal.

Paramount wants to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including CNN.

Netflix, in contrast, does not want the bulk of cable TV channels beyond HBO, and has offered $27.75 a share. It has the right to match any improved Paramount proposal.

Warner is planning to spin off the bulk of its channel portfolio, including HGTV, TBS and Cartoon Network, in a separate company. Its shareholders will receive stock in that entity, slated to be called Discovery Global.

Concerns over Netflix’s deal have been mounting.

Department of Justice regulators have sent inquiries to the three companies, according to one senior executive who was not authorized to speak publicly. The department is said to be looking at Netflix’s historic business strategy of steering most of its film releases to its streaming platform, often bypassing movie theaters. Sarandos has promised to maintain a 45-day theatrical window for Warner Bros. films.

Bloomberg has reported that regulators also are trying to determine whether Netflix has exerted leverage over creators in negotiations when acquiring programming to build its catalog.

This month, Republican lawmakers blasted Sarandos during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights hearing to explore antitrust implications of the Warner Bros. sale. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent Netflix a series of pointed follow-up questions, including: “If allowed to proceed, what effect will the merger have on future competition?”

The hearing also veered into culture wars, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) suggesting Netflix was promoting a “transgender ideology” to children, which Sarandos denied.

Another Missouri Republican, Sen. Eric Schmitt, accused Netflix of making some of “the wokest content in the history of the world.”

“Netflix has no political agenda of any kind,” Sarandos told the lawmakers.

David Ellison also was invited to appear at the Feb. 3 hearing, but he declined — which raised the eyebrows of some members of the panel.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) challenged Ellison for failing to answer lawmakers’ questions under oath, including about his dealings with the president.

Ellison instead responded with a statement but Booker and other lawmakers wrote back, saying Ellison’s statement “failed to address” the issues raised by Booker.

“The pattern of evasion, combined with Paramount’s apparent confidence that a politically sensitive transaction will clear without difficulty warrants serious scrutiny,” Booker, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others wrote in the Feb. 19 letter.

The Democrats instructed Ellison “to preserve records related to the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery transaction.”

The move came days after Gail Slater, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, was bounced from her job, reportedly after becoming a thorn in the side of some business interests. Slater’s former top deputy, who also left the Justice Department, publicly warned that antitrust decisions are being influenced by corporate lobbyists — not in the interest of ordinary Americans.

“We see this happen again and again,” USC’s Kahn said.

“Let’s not forget that Larry Ellison’s Oracle was part of the consortium that purchased the U.S. operations of TikTok. Repeated complaints from the FCC about content at CBS have been heeded by the Ellison regime,” Kahn said, adding: “This is the reality of trying to do any business in the Trump administration: It’s about payoffs and proximity.”

SAN LEANDRO — A start-up recycling company has a message for its potential, environmentally conscious customers: Don’t send your problem garbage to the landfill; put it on your front porch.

The company is Ridwell, and if you drive the residential streets of the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles, you’re likely to see the company’s signature white metal boxes on porches.

The boxes are for empty tortilla chip and plastic produce bags, used clothing, light bulbs and batteries. In some locations, polystyrene peanuts. All the things you’re not supposed to put in the blue recycle bin, but wish you could.

The Seattle-based waste service is geared toward people who worry their waste will end up in the landfill, or get exported to a developing country in Asia. They sort their waste into colorfully labeled canvas bags the company provides, and wait for a Ridwell pickup.

“Sorting is our special sauce,” said Gerrine Pan, the company’s vice president of partnerships. Part of the reason the company is successful at finding markets — or buyers — for its waste, she said, is that it’s sorted and pretty clean (unlike the food-contaminated jumble of waste that gets stuffed in many blue bins).

The company promises to distribute all that waste to specialty recyclers, manufacturers, even thrift shops.

But critics say the boutique waste hauler is not accomplishing anything environmentally useful and is selling the public a myth: that these plastics — multilayer plastic film, plastic bags, polystyrene — can be taken care of responsibly. The service would be benign, they say, if it stuck to the delivery of materials, such as light bulbs and batteries, that can be recycled.

Most local waste haulers don’t accept batteries and light bulbs because they can pose a hazard to workers and equipment.

The base Ridwell membership is $20 a month. For that, a driver will come by every two weeks and take the presorted bags to a warehouse where they’re emptied, the contents stacked and collected, until there’s enough to deliver to a facility that will take it.

Company lore is that founder Ryan Metzger and his son were frustrated that so many things weren’t accepted by their local hauler for recycling. The two sat down and researched where to take the stuff, then decided to scale up and serve their neighbors.

The company has since expanded to Vancouver, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; Denver; Austin, Texas; Minneapolis and Atlanta. It now boasts more than 130,000 customers nationwide.

Most of the waste is delivered locally. But some of it travels hundreds, if not thousands of miles.

For instance, multilayer plastic bags — those that hold snack chips, candy and coffee beans — are the scourge of municipal garbage haulers because they cannot be recycled, and if put in the blue bins, can damage mechanical sorting machines. Ridwell, however, found Hydroblox, a company that melts the multilayer films into hard, plastic bricks that can be used for drainage projects in landscaping and road construction.

But this arrangement highlights some of the limitations of the nascent industry. Hydroblox owner Ed Greiser said he can take only so many chip bags. The company is growing, but it’s still pretty small, and he’s typically maxed out on the bags.

“This article is going to be a nightmare for me,” he told a Times reporter, because it’s likely to attract a parade of unsolicited garbage trucks looking to dump their bags. “I’m not the solution.”

In addition, Greiser’s two facilities are in Pennsylvania, more than 2,700 miles from most West Coast pickup points, a steep transportation cost for a plastic bag that could instead go 20 miles to a local landfill.

Ridwell also has recently expanded to serve customers outside its pickup cities. It sends special plastic bags to these far-flung subscribers so they can sort their waste and ship it back.

Again, critics say the company’s decision to operate a service that is dependent on plastic bags and requires extensive transport undermines their environmental bona fides. And they worry that a narrative suggesting all waste can be dealt with responsibly is false and misleading. That misconception, they say, contributes to the glut of plastic piling up in our rivers and oceans, and inside our bodies.

“There is typically a reason why a given product isn’t being recycled through curbside collection, and it usually isn’t for lack of effort by cities and counties,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste. “Most of the material being collected by boutique collection services like Ridwell are either very difficult to manage or lack strong recycling markets.”

Manufacturers of plastic packaging, not consumers, should pay for recycling products and packaging at the end of their life, he said. For regular people, “having to pay an extra fee to handle the unrecyclable plastic packaging that is thrust upon us every day is antithetical to every concept of producer responsibility.”

Earlier this month, the anti-plastic group Beyond Plastics published a disparaging report on boutique waste haulers, including Ridwell, accusing them of providing cover for plastic and packaging manufacturers who want people to believe their waste is being recycled.

Ridwell offered a visitor a tour of its Bay Area warehouse in San Leandro. The spacious facility behind a Home Depot and Walmart was crowded with steel drums filled with alternating layers of batteries and fire-retardant pellets, boxes of light bulbs and piles of used clothes, all destined for recyclers, upcyclers and thrift stores.

While the public may think of recycling as a largely physical process, it’s actually a market: a function of how well a material can be profitably turned into something else.

Metzger, Ridwell’s chief executive, said some of the material his company collects can be sold. Some of it is given away, “and some we pay to have responsibly processed.” The more technically challenging the plastic, the more likely Ridwell will have to pay to deal with it, he said.

He said the company vets all the places it sends its waste, giving preference to those that use items a second time over those that melt them down or shred them to make them into something else. It also gives preference to partners that are local.

He said his company is “careful not to present plastic recycling as a cure-all,” and it turns away some materials, for example vinyl shower curtains, “because we don’t have a downstream partner we can stand behind.”

And while Metzger agrees with many of Beyond Plastic’s concerns, he has observed that “when customers actively sort and see which items require special handling, it often increases their awareness of where plastic waste is coming from in their own lives … [leading] them to change purchasing habits and avoid certain packaging altogether.”

Outside a hall where Southern California Edison was celebrating Black History Month on Friday, a group of Altadena residents stood on the sidewalk, waving signs and talking of the homes and family members they lost in last year’s Eaton fire.

“They’re in there celebrating Black history and they’ve destroyed a Black town,” said Nicole Vasquez of My Tribe Rise, which helped organize the protest.

The Jan. 7, 2025 fire destroyed thousands of homes, including the majority of homes in west Altadena, a historically Black community. All but one of the 19 people who died were in west Altadena.

“If Edison’s tower did not ignite the fire, Altadena would still be there,” said Trevor Howard Kelley, who lost his 83-year-old mother, Erliene, in the fire.

Kelley, his daughter and two granddaughters had been living with his mother before her home was destroyed, he said.

The Black Altadena residents are part of a larger coalition that is asking Edison to advance each family who lost their home $200,000 in emergency housing assistance. They say that more than a year after the blaze many wildfire survivors are running out of the funds they had received from insurers.

The group protesting Friday also called for transparency from Edison. The company has said it believes it is likely its equipment caused the fire but has continued to deny it did anything wrong.

“We just want the truth,” said Felicia Ford, who lost her house in the fire. “What’s wrong with saying, ‘We got this wrong.’”

Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesperson, said Friday that the company continued to believe its voluntary compensation program was the best way to help victims of the fire. Edison has promised to quickly review each victim’s claim and pay it swiftly if approved.

Families who lost their homes can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars under the program, while those with damaged homes receive lesser amounts.

But many survivors say they don’t believe the offered amounts fully compensate their losses. And to receive the money, victims must agree not to sue — which many are not willing to do.

“We recognize the incredible struggles the community has faced,” Johnson said. “The intent of the program is to reach final settlements to allow the community to rebuild and move on.”

The investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Edison has said a leading theory is that its century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which had not carried electricity for 50 years, somehow became reenergized and sparked the fire.

Company executives said they did not remove the old line because they believed it would be used in the future.

In December, state regulators ordered Edison to identify fire risks on its 355 miles of out-of service transmission lines located in areas of high fire risk and tell regulators how executives planned to use the lines in the future.

This week, Edison disclosed that the Los Angeles County district attorney was investigating whether Edison should be criminally prosecuted for its actions in the fire.

West Altadena became one of L.A.’s first middle-class Black neighborhoods in the 1960s, partly because discriminatory redlining practices for years kept Black homebuyers from settling east of Lake Avenue.

Heavenly Hughes, co-founder of My Tribe Rise, told the crowd she had lived in Altadena for 50 years.

“I was raised in a thriving working-class community and they have destroyed that community,” Hughes said, referring to Edison.

Added Ford, “The people making these decisions aren’t suffering at all. They’re still getting their paychecks, bonuses and stock options.”

California wine giant Gallo is laying off more than 90 employees and closing a major Napa Valley wine-making facility.

The Modesto company said Thursday the cuts are necessary to adapt to market dynamics and changing customer demands.

In total, 93 employees across five sites will lose their jobs, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice the company filed with the state last week.

The “operational adjustments” will not “materially impact” the company’s tasting rooms in Napa, Sonoma and Paso Robles, a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.

Gallo plans to permanently close its Ranch Winery in St. Helena. In 2015, the company bought the “custom crush winery” capable of crushing 30,000 tons of grapes, hoping to bolster its presence in the super-premium and luxury wine segment. That investment has not panned out.

The closure means 56 employees — including more than three dozen wine technicians — will lose their jobs between April 15 and the end of January 2027, according to the notice.

Layoffs are also planned at Louis M. Martini Winery and Orin Swift Tasting Room in St. Helena and J Vineyards & Winery and Frei Ranch in Healdsburg.

In 2025, Gallo closed its Courtside Cellars winery in San Miguel and laid off 47 workers, according to the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

The layoffs are indicative of the U.S. wine industry’s broader struggles amid shifting tastes.

Customers are choosing quality, not quantity: they would rather buy fewer bottles and invest in a premium product, said Rob McMillan, Silicon Valley Bank’s executive vice president and wine expert.

Many of Gallo’s wines fall into the sub-$12 category, which has performed poorly for the last decade, McMillan said.

With younger generations drinking less, and the baby boomer generation — the industry’s core base — aging out of the wine market, it’s been a challenging few years for the industry, which has also had to fend off competition from makers of premium beers and spirits, McMillan said.

Wine shops and importers have also been caught in the crossfire of President Trump’s trade war.

Founded in 1933 as E. & J. Gallo Winery, the company in 2024 renamed itself to reflect its portfolio, which by then had grown beyond wine to include distilled spirits, malt beverages and ready-to-drink cocktails.

The privately held company is the largest supplier of wine in the U.S. by volume, according to the wine trade publication WineBusiness Monthly, which estimated that it sold 90 million cases of wine in 2025.

Gallo owns more than 100 brands — including the popular Barefoot and Apothic labels — and had more than 7,000 employees worldwide, according to a 2023 company statement.

The Los Angeles County district attorney is investigating whether Southern California Edison should be criminally prosecuted for its actions in last year’s devastating Eaton wildfire, which killed 19 people and left thousands of families homeless, the company said Wednesday.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Wall Street analysts during an afternoon conference call that the company was cooperating with the district attorney’s office. He said he didn’t know the magnitude of the investigation.

The company said in its annual 10-K report, which was released Wednesday, that it “could be subject to material fines, penalties, or restitution” if the investigation “determined that it failed to comply with applicable laws and regulations.”

“SCE is not aware of any basis for felony liability with regards to the Eaton Fire,” the report said. “Any fines and penalties incurred in connection with the Eaton Fire will not be recoverable from insurance, from the Wildfire Fund, or through electric rates.”

The district attorney’s office declined to comment.

The investigation into the fire, which destroyed a wide swath of Altadena, has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory of the fire’s cause is that a century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow reenergized and sparked the fire.

Edison executives have said they didn’t remove the line because they believed it would be used in the future.

Company executives knew idle transmission lines could spark wildfires. In 2019, investigators traced the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed 374 homes and other structures, to a transmission line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric that was no longer in service.

The Times reported in December how Edison fell behind in maintenance of its transmission system before the fire.

Despite the dangerous Santa Ana wind conditions on Jan. 7, 2025, Edison decided not to shut down the transmission lines running through Eaton Canyon. Pizarro has said the winds that night didn’t meet the company’s threshold at the time for turning off the lines.

Pizarro told investors on the call Wednesday that he continued to believe that the company had acted as a “reasonable utility operator” before the deadly fire.

Under state law, if a utility is determined to have acted reasonably it can be reimbursed for all or most of the damages of the fire by a state wildfire fund.

Edison is now facing hundreds of lawsuits by victims of the Eaton fire. The lawsuits claim the company was negligent in failing to safely maintain its equipment and for not shutting down the Eaton Canyon transmission lines that night.

Edison denies that it acted negligently.

To reduce the burden of that litigation, the company is offering compensation to victims who give up their right to sue.

If the county district attorney’s office decided to pursue criminal charges, it would not be the first time a California utility was prosecuted for starting a deadly wildfire.

In 2020, PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one felony count of unlawfully starting a fire in a case stemming from the 2018 Camp fire. The inferno destroyed most of the town of Paradise in Northern California and killed 85 people.

State prosecutors investigated the possibility of filing criminal charges against Edison for the 2018 Woolsey fire, which killed three and destroyed more than 1,600 homes and other structures in L.A. and Ventura counties.

In 2021, the office of California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced that prosecutors had not found enough evidence to charge Edison criminally for that 2018 fire.

Warner Bros. Discovery is cracking open the door to allow spurned bidder, Paramount Skydance, to make its case — but Warner’s board still maintains its preference for Netflix’s competing proposal.

Warner’s move to reopen talks comes after weeks of pressure from Paramount, which submitted an enhanced offer to buy Warner last week. Paramount’s willingness to increase its offer late in the auction attracted the attention of some Warner investors.

On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery responded with a letter to Paramount Chairman David Ellison and others on Paramount’s board, giving the group seven days to “clarify your proposal.”

“We seek your best and final proposal,” Warner board members wrote. Warner set a Feb. 23 deadline for Paramount to comply.

The closely watched sale of the century-old Warner Bros., known for “Batman,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Casablanca,” and HBO, the home of “Game of Thrones” and “Succession,” is expected to reshape Hollywood.

The flurry of activity comes as Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix are seeking to enter the home stretch of the auction. Warner separately issued its proxy and set a special March 20 meeting of its shareholders to decide the company’s fate.

Warner Bros. Discovery is recommending that its stockholders approve the $82.7-billion Netflix deal.

“We continue to believe the Netflix merger is in the best interests of WBD shareholders due to the tremendous value it provides, our clear path to achieve regulatory approval and the transaction’s protections for shareholders against downside risk,” Warner Chairman Samuel A. Di Piazza, Jr., said in a Tuesday statement.

Still, the maneuver essentially reopens the talks.

Warner Bros. is creating an opportunity for Paramount to sway Warner board members, which could perhaps prompt Netflix to raise its $27.75 a share offer for Warner’s Burbank-based studios, vast library of programming, HBO and streaming service HBO Max.

Netflix is not interested in buying Warner Bros. Discovery’s basic cable channels, including CNN, TBS, HGTV and Animal Planet, which are set to be spun off to a stand-alone company later this year.

In contrast, Paramount wants to buy the entire company and has offered more than $30 a share.

Last week, Paramount sweetened its bid for Warner, adding a $2.8-billion “break fee” that Warner would have to pay Netflix if the company pulled the plug on that deal. Paramount also said it would pay Warner investors a “ticking fee” of 25 cents a share for every quarter after Jan. 1 that the deal does not close.

“While we have tried to be as constructive as possible in formulating these solutions, several of these items would benefit from collaborative discussion to finalize,” Paramount said last week as it angled for a chance to make its case. “We will work with you to refine these solutions to ensure they address any and all of your concerns.”

Netflix agreed to give Warner Bros. Discovery a temporary waiver from its merger agreement to allow Warner Bros. Discovery to reengage with Paramount, which lost the bidding war on Dec. 4.

“We granted WBD a narrow seven-day waiver of certain obligations under our merger agreement to allow them to engage with PSKY to fully and finally resolve this matter,” Netflix said Tuesday in a statement. “This does not change the fact that we have the only signed, board-recommended
agreement with WBD, and ours is the only certain path to delivering value to WBD’s stockholders.”

Netflix has matching rights for any improved Paramount offer. The company renewed its confidence in its deal and its prospect to win regulatory approval.

“PSKY has repeatedly mischaracterized the regulatory review process by suggesting its proposal will sail through, misleading WBD stockholders about the real risk of their regulatory challenges around the world,” Netflix said in its statement. “WBD stockholders should not be misled into thinking that PSKY has an easier or faster path to regulatory approval – it does not.”

Warner Bros. Discovery acknowledged that Paramount’s recent modification “addresses some of the concerns that WBD had identified several months ago,” according to the letter to Paramount.

But Warner Bros. Discovery added Paramount’s offer “still contains many of the unfavorable terms and conditions that were in the draft agreements … and twice unanimously rejected by our Board,” Warner Bros. Discovery said.

Warner’s board told Paramount it will “welcome the opportunity to engage” during the seven-day negotiation period.

Paramount has been pursuing the prized assets since last September.

“Every step of the way, we have provided PSKY with clear direction on the deficiencies in their offers and opportunities to address them,” Warner Chief Executive David Zaslav said in a statement. “We are engaging with PSKY now to determine whether they can deliver an actionable, binding proposal that provides superior value and certainty for WBD shareholders.”

Standing in front of Snap’s Santa Monica offices, parents clutched photos of their children who died from taking fentanyl-laced pills facilitated through the disappearing messages of the Snapchat app.

They rolled white paint onto the ground, spelling out the names of 108 children who died from alleged social media harms.

“Snapchat: Protect kids not predators,” a banner read.

Yellow signs with images of dead children accused the company of being an “accomplice” to “murder,” videos and photos of the demonstration showed.

More than 40 parents attended Thursday’s protest, an event organized by Heat Initiative, an advocacy group that focuses on holding tech companies accountable if they fail to protect kids online.

“For years, families have watched their children die from fentanyl poisoning and sexual exploitation facilitated by Snapchat’s design—and for years, Snapchat has fought to avoid any meaningful accountability,” Sarah Gardner, chief executive of Heat Initiative, said in a statement.

The demonstration highlighted the mounting pressure social media companies such as Snap continue to face as a landmark trial in Los Angeles over whether tech companies such as Instagram and YouTube can be held liable for allegedly promoting a harmful product and addicting users to their platforms continues in Los Angeles.

TikTok and Snap, the parent company of messaging app Snapchat, settled for undisclosed sums to avoid the trial.

Parents who allege the Santa Monica company is responsible for drug sales facilitated through the app have also sued Snap. Parents who attended this week’s protest urged the company to do more to safeguard young people from predators and called for Snap to disable its AI chatbot.

Social media companies have faced allegations for years that their platforms are designed to be addictive and make it easy for predators and drug dealers to target and harm young people. Parents who have lost their children have also pushed for more legislation, including in California, to make social media platforms safer.

The rise of artificial intelligence chatbots, which are also incorporated within apps such as Snapchat and Instagram, have also raised more safety concerns because young people who have died by suicide have spilled some of their darkest thoughts online.

Snap said in a statement that the company has invested in online safety, including efforts to combat illegal drug sales on its platform. The company pointed to the technology it uses to detect illegal drug content, its work with law enforcement and education initiatives. This week, Snap was among the companies that agreed to get evaluated on their child safety efforts.

“Snap unequivocally condemns the criminal conduct of the drug dealers whose actions led to these tragedies. Addressing the fentanyl crisis demands a united front, bringing together law enforcement, government officials, medical professionals, parents, educators, tech companies, and advocacy organizations,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Amy Neville, an Orange County mom who lost her 14-year-old son Alexander Neville from fentanyl poisoning after he obtained drugs through Snapchat, said in a statement that parents have testified before Congress, held rallies and brought the deaths to Snap’s doorsteps for years.

“We are painting our children’s names in the street and bringing this memorial to his doorstep because Evan Spiegel won’t acknowledge what his platform has taken from us,” she said in a statement.

Spiegel is the chief executive and co-founder of Snap.

On Friday, parents also gathered at the Gloria Molina Grand Park in Los Angeles to honor children who they say died because of social media harms. They unveiled the “Lost Screen Memorial,” displaying large smartphones with the images of 50 dead children.

“Their faces serve as a constant reminder of what has been lost. The responsibility to keep children safe online should not lie with parents alone,” the website for the memorial said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that state oil and gas regulators have permanently closed one of the most infamous drill sites in Los Angeles, bringing an end to a decades-long community campaign to prevent dangerous gas leaks and spills from rundown extraction equipment.

A state contractor plugged all 21 oil wells at the AllenCo Energy drill site in University Park, preventing the release of noxious gases and chemical vapors into the densely populated South Los Angeles neighborhood. The two-acre site, owned by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is located across the street from several multifamily apartment buildings and less than 1,000 feet from St. Vincent School.

For years, residents and students had repeatedly complained about acrid odors from the site, with many suffering chronic headaches and nosebleeds. The health concerns prompted a community-driven campaign to shut down the site, with some residents even pleading (unsuccessfully) with the late Pope Francis to intervene.

AllenCo, the site’s operator since 2009, repeatedly flouted environmental regulations and defied state orders to permanently seal its wells.

This month, the California Department of Conservation’s Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) finished capping the remaining unplugged wells with help from Biden-era federal funding.

“This is a monumental achievement for the community who have endured an array of health issues and corporate stalling tactics for far too long,” Newsom said in a statement Wednesday. “I applaud the tireless work of community activists who partnered with local and state agencies to finish the job and improve the health and safety of this community. This is a win for all Californians.”

The land was donated to the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the 1950s by descendants of one of the city’s early oil barons. Over the decades, the archdiocese leased the land to several oil companies including Standard Oil of California.

Much of the community outcry over the site’s management occurred after AllenCo took over the site in 2009. The company drastically boosted oil production, but failed to properly maintain its equipment, resulting in oil spills and gas leaks.

In 2013, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials became sick while inspecting the site. The federal investigators encountered puddles of crude oil on the facility grounds, as well as caustic fumes emanating from the facility, resulting in violations for air quality and other environmental infractions.

In 2020, CalGEM ordered AllenCo to plug the wells after if determined the company had essentially deserted the site, leaving the wells unplugged and in an unsafe condition. AllenCo ignored the order.

In perhaps the most remarkable events in the site’s history, CalGEM officials in 2022 arrived on the site with a court order and used bolt cutters to enter the site to depressurize the poorly maintained oil wells.

The AllenCo wells were prioritized and plugged this week as part of a CalGEM program to identify and permanently cap high-risk oil and gas wells. Tens of thousands of unproductive and unplugged oil wells have been abandoned across California — many of which continue to leak potentially explosive methane or toxic benzene.

Environmental advocates have long fought for regulators to require oil and gas companies to plug these wells to protect nearby communities and the environment.

However, as oil production declines and fossil fuel companies increasingly become insolvent, California regulators worry taxpayers may have to assume the costs to plug these wells. Federal and state officials have put aside funding to deal with some of these so-called “orphaned” wells, but environmental advocates say it’s not enough. They say oil and gas companies still need to be held to account, so that the same communities that were subjected to decades of pollution won’t have to foot the bill for expensive cleanups.

“This is welcome news that the surrounding community deserves, but there is much more work to be done at a much faster pace,” said Cooper Kass, attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “There are still thousands of unplugged and hazardous idle wells threatening communities across the state, and our legislators and regulators should force polluters, not taxpayers, to pay to clean up these dangerous sites.”

Rivian shocked the market with strong earnings results, proving itself an outlier in the electric vehicle market, which has been struggling with the end of government subsidies and cooling consumer excitement.

The shares of the Irvine-based high-end EV manufacturer skyrocketed 27% on Friday after it announced stronger-than-expected results, indicating that, after years of struggling with losses, it may have at last found a path to profitability.

On Thursday, Rivian reported gross profits for 2025 of $144 million, compared with a net loss in 2024 of $1.2 billion.

In its earnings release, Rivian credited the swing to gross profit to “strong software and services performance, higher average selling prices, and reductions in cost per vehicle.”

Last October, it laid off roughly 600 employees, more than 4% of its workforce.

Rivian delivered 42,247 vehicles in 2025 and produced 42,284 vehicles. The company still reported a $432-million net loss for the year for automotive profits, an improvement from 2024.

“It’s a turnaround for the ages,” said Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. “The past few years have been very frustrating for investors.”

Rivian was founded in Florida in 2009 and made its initial public offering in 2021. It competes with Tesla and other automakers selling all-electric vehicles for a premium price.

Following the expiration in September of the $7,500 federal tax credit for new electric vehicles, companies have been under pressure to offer lower sticker prices. Last year, Tesla launched new variations of the Model 3 and Model Y that start at roughly $5,000 less than the more expensive versions of the same models.

Investors said the discounts weren’t enough and the vehicles, still priced above $35,000, remained out of reach for many consumers. There are only a handful of EVs on the market available for under $35,000.

Rivian is banking its future on the success of its own lower-priced R2 model, which is expected to start around $45,000 with deliveries slated to begin this spring.

The least expensive Rivian model available now, the R1T pickup truck, starts at $72,990.

The company has received positive early feedback on its R2 SUV, according to the earnings release.

“It’s incredibly exciting to see the early strong reviews of the R2 pre-production builds, and we can’t wait to get them to our customers next quarter,” Rivian founder and chief executive, RJ Scaringe, said in a statement.

Ives said the popularity of the R2 will be pivotal for Rivian, which laid off nearly 1,000 workers in 2025.

“It’s going to be the epicenter of their success or challenges,” Ives said.

Rivian shares have risen more than 33% over the last year but are down 8% since the start of 2026.

“They’re back on their flight path with still some turbulence in the air,” Ives said.

SAN FRANCISCO — As California struggles with homelessness and healthcare cuts, some activists are taking on an unexpected cause: fighting for billionaires.

About a dozen people took part in the “March for Billionaires” on Saturday morning in San Francisco to raise awareness about the plight of the ultrarich. Although some assumed the event was satire, organizer Derik Kauffman said it was a sincere protest against a potential new tax on the state’s wealthiest residents.

“We must not judge billionaires as a class but by their individual merits,” he said, speaking outside the San Francisco Civic Center. “There are good billionaires and bad billionaires, just like there are good people and bad people. California is extraordinarily lucky that this is where people come to start companies and build fortunes and we should do our best to keep it that way.”

The Billionaire Tax Act is a proposed state ballot initiative that would levy a one-time, 5% tax on the state’s billionaires to help offset recent federal cuts that have affected healthcare and food-assistance programs. The tax would apply to their overall net worth but would exclude pensions, real estate and retirement accounts.

Supporters say it would benefit the majority of the state’s residents and help ensure billionaires pay their fair share. Opponents — including Gov. Gavin Newsom — argue it will cause billionaires and the businesses they own to flee the state, taking jobs and tax dollars with them.

Kauffman echoed those concerns Saturday and said everyone should want billionaires to remain in California.

“This tax will drive billionaires out; it already has,” he said. “The founders of Google — they left the state and they are taking their money with them.”

Google is still headquartered in California, but other companies tied to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently lef the state, including T-Rex Holdings, which moved from Palo Alto to Reno last year.

The event attracted a few dozen humorous counterprotesters.

Razelle Swimmer carried around a puppet of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, brandishing knives and wearing an apron that said “Eat the Rich.” Swimmer told The Times she doesn’t believe billionaires need more protections.

“If they aren’t willing to pay more taxes, then I don’t really care if they leave,” she said.

Other counterprotesters mockingly impersonated billionaires by donning crowns or top hats. A man and woman, playing characters called Oli Garch and Trilly O’Naire, said they worried what would happen if the tax passed.

“There is a small chance that my helicopter won’t be able to have a sauna in it just because apparently some kids want dental work or something,” said the woman, as she adjusted her tiara.

At one point, a man wearing a gold crown and carrying a sign that said “Let them eat cake” ran through the crowd shouting, “Keep the poors away from me.”

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the main backer of the tax proposal, needs to collect about 875,000 signatures by June 24 in order to get the measure on the November ballot.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which offers guidance to the Legislature about budgetary issues, has cautioned that the tax might lead to only short-term benefits.

“It is likely that some billionaires decide to leave California,” the agency stated in a recent analysis. “The income taxes they currently pay to the state would go away with their departure. The reduction in state revenues from these kinds of responses could be hundreds of millions of dollars or more per year.”

California has roughly 200 billionaires, the most of any state. Their collective wealth was $2.2 trillion in October, up from $300 billion in 2011, according to a December report from law and economics professors at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the University of Missouri.

The researchers concluded that billionaires in the United States pay less in taxes, relative to income, than the average American.

“It is estimated that, including all taxes at all levels of government, billionaires paid only 24% of their true economic income in taxes in years 2018-20 while the U.S.-wide average was 30%,” the report states.

Pizza Hut plans to close 250 U.S. restaurants in the first half of this year as its parent company considers a sale of the chain.

Yum Brands said Wednesday it’s targeting underperforming Pizza Hut restaurants in its system. Pizza Hut has more than 6,000 locations in the U.S.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum Brands said in November it was conducting a formal review of options for Pizza Hut, which has struggled with outdated stores and growing competition. The chain’s U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 5% last year, Yum said.

Rival Domino’s, the world’s largest pizza company, hasn’t yet released its full-year earnings, but its U.S. same-store sales were up 2.7% in the first nine months of last year.

Internationally, Pizza Hut’s results have been stronger. International same-store sales were up 1% last year, with growth in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, Yum said. China is Pizza Hut’s second-largest market outside the U.S., accounting for 19% of sales.

Yum CEO Chris Turner said Wednesday that the company plans to complete its review of options for Pizza Hut this year. He declined to share further updates on the process.

Pizza Hut ended 2025 with 19,974 stores globally, which was 251 fewer than it had the previous year. Pizza Hut opened nearly 1,200 stores across 65 countries last year, but closures outpaced that. Yum said Wednesday that Pizza Hut plans more global openings in 2026 but it didn’t give details.

Pizza Hut was founded in 1958 in Wichita, Kansas. PepsiCo acquired the chain in 1977 but spun off its restaurant division — which became Yum Brands — in 1997. Yum Brands also owns KFC, Taco Bell and Habit Burger & Grill.

A coalition of Eaton fire survivors and community groups called on Southern California Edison on Tuesday to provide immediate housing assistance to the thousands of people who lost their homes in the Jan. 7 wildfire.

The coalition says an increasing number of Altadena residents are running out of insurance coverage that had been paying for their housing since they were displaced by the fire. Thousands of other residents had no insurance.

“When a company’s fire destroys or contaminates homes, that company has a responsibility to keep families housed until they can get back home,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, one of the coalition members asking Edison for emergency assistance of up to $200,000 for each family.

At the coalition’s press conference, Altadena residents spoke of trying to find a place to live after the Jan. 7 fire that killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes, apartments and other structures. Thousands of other homes were damaged by smoke and ash.

Gabriel Gonzalez said he had been living in his car for most of the last year.

Before the fire, Gonzalez had a successful plumbing company with six employees, he said. He had moved into an apartment in Altadena just a month before the fire and lost $80,000 worth of tools when the building was destroyed.

His insurance did not cover the loss, Gonzalez said, and he lost his business.

Edison is now offering to directly pay fire victims for their losses if they give up their right to file a lawsuit against the utility.

But members of the coalition say Edison’s program is forcing the victims who are the most desperate for financial support to give up their legal right to fair compensation.

“If families are pushed to give up what they are owed just to survive, the recovery will never have the funds required to rebuild homes, restore livelihoods or stabilize the community,” said Andrew Wessels. He said he and his family had lived in 12 different places since the fire left ash contaminated with lead on and in their home.

In an interview Tuesday, Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said the company would not provide money to victims without them agreeing to drop any litigation against the company for the fire.

“I can’t even pretend to understand the challenges victims are going through,” Pizarro said.

He said the company created its Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program to get money to victims much faster than if they filed a lawsuit and waited for a settlement.

“We want to help the community rebuild as quickly as possible,” he said.

Pizarro said Edison made its first payment to a victim within 45 days of the compensation program launching on Oct. 29. So far, he said, the company has received more than 1,500 claims.

Edison created the compensation program even though the official investigation into the cause of the fire hasn’t been released.

The company has said a leading theory is that its century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which it last used in 1971, briefly became energized from the live lines running parallel to it, sparking the fire.

The program offers to reimburse victims for their losses and provides additional sums for pain and suffering. It also gives victims a bonus for agreeing to settle their claim outside of court.

Pizarro said the program is voluntary and if victims don’t like the offer they receive from Edison, they can continue their claims in court.

Edison has told its investors that it believes it will be reimbursed for all of its payments to victims and lawsuit settlements by $1 billion in customer-paid insurance and a $21-billion state wildfire fund.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers created the wildfire fund in 2019 to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their electric wires cause a disastrous wildfire.

State officials say the fund could be wiped out by Eaton fire damages. While the first $21 billion was contributed half by customers of the state’s three biggest for-profit utilities and half by the companies’ shareholders, any additional damage claims from the Jan. 7 fire would be paid by Edison customers, according to legislation passed in September.

Some Altadena residents say Edison’s compensation program doesn’t pay them fully for their losses.

Damon Blount said that he and his wife had renovated their home just before it was destroyed in the fire. They don’t believe Edison’s offer would be enough to cover that work.

Blount said he “felt betrayed” by the utility.

“They literally took everything away from us,” Blount said. “Do the right thing, Edison. We want to be home.”

At the news conference, fire victims pointed out that Edison reported nearly $1.3 billion in profits last year, up from $1.2 billion in 2023.

Last week, Edison International said it was increasing the dividend it pays to its shareholders by 6% because of its strong financial performance.

“Their stock is rising,” said Zaire Calvin, one of the Altadena residents calling on Edison for emergency relief. Calvin’s sister died in the fire and he lost his home. “They will not pay a penny when this is over.”

Roomba maker iRobot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday and said the robotic vacuum cleaner would sell itself to a Chinese contract manufacturer. 

Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co., which makes Roombas for Bedford, Massachusetts-based iRobot, will buy the company, according to a news release. iRobot said it doesn’t expect any disruptions to its app, customer service or other functions. 

Founded in 1990 by MIT roboticists, iRobot initially designed robots for space exploration, according to the company. iRobot debuted the Roomba in 2002, billing it as the first robotic vacuum for household floors. As sales grew, the company went public in 2005, and its stock price once topped $125.

Shares of iRobot fell $3.12, or 72%, to $1.20 in pre-market trading on Monday.

Amazon agreed to buy iRobot for $1.7 billion in 2022, but the deal fell apart last year after pushback from European Union regulators. At that time, Amazon said it would pay iRobot an agreed-upon termination fee of $94 million, while the vacuum maker planned to restructure to help stabilize the business. 

In September, iRobot warned that it was struggling with declining sales as consumers cut spending, warning that it was at risk of either shutting down some operations or filing for bankruptcy. 

Under the deal with Picea, iRobot said it will continue to operate “in the ordinary course with no anticipated disruption to its app functionality, customer programs, global partners, supply chain relationships or ongoing product support.”

Edited by

Alain Sherter

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

The sale of Warner Bros. — whether in pieces to Netflix or in its entirety to Paramount — is stirring mounting worries among Hollywood union leaders about the possible fallout for their members.

Unions representing writers, directors, actors and crew workers have voiced growing concerns that further consolidation in the media industry will reduce competition, potentially causing studios to pay less for content, and make it more difficult for people to find work.

“We’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends,” said Michele Mulroney, president of the Writers Guild of America West. “There are lots of promises made that one plus one is going to equal three. But it’s very hard to envision how two behemoths, for example, Warner Bros. and Netflix … can keep up the level of output they currently have.”

Last week, Netflix announced it agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studio, Burbank lot, HBO and HBO Max for $27.75 a share, or $72 billion. It also agreed to take on more than $10 billion of Warner Bros.’ debt. But Paramount, whose previous offers were rebuffed by Warner Bros., has appealed directly to shareholders with an alternative bid to buy all of the company for about $78 billion.

Paramount said it will have more than $6 billion in cuts over three years, while also saying the combined companies will release at least 30 movies a year. Netflix said it expects its deal will have $2 billion to $3 billion in cost cuts.

Those cuts are expected to trigger thousands of layoffs across Hollywood, which has already been squeezed by the flight of production overseas and a contraction in the once booming TV business.

Mulroney said that employment for WGA writers in episodic television is down as much as 40% when comparing the 2023-2024 writing season to 2022-2023.

Executives from both companies have said their deals would benefit creative talent and consumers.

But Hollywood union leaders are skeptical.

“We can hear the generalizations all day long, but it doesn’t really mean anything unless it’s on paper, and we just don’t know if these companies are even prepared to make promises in writing,” said Lindsay Dougherty, Teamsters at-large vice president and principal officer for Local 399, which represents drivers, location managers and casting directors.

Dougherty said the Teamsters have been engaged with both Netflix and Paramount, seeking commitments to keep filming in Los Angeles.

“We have a lot of members that are struggling to find work, or haven’t really worked in the last year or so,” Dougherty said.

Mulroney said her union has concerns about both bids, either by Netflix or Paramount.

“We don’t think the merger is inevitable,” Mulroney said. “We think there’s an opportunity to push back here.”

If Netflix were to buy Warner Bros.’ TV and film businesses, Mulroney said that could further undermine the theatrical business.

“It’s hard to imagine them fully embracing theatrical exhibition,” Mulroney said. “The exhibition business has been struggling to get back on its feet ever since the pandemic, so a move like this could really be existential.”

But the Writers Guild also has issues with Paramount’s bid, Mulroney said, noting that it would put Paramount-owned CBS News and CNN under the same parent company.

“We have censorship concerns,” Mulroney said. “We saw issues around [Stephen] Colbert and [Jimmy] Kimmel. We’re concerned about what the news would look like under single ownership here.”

That question was made more salient this week after President Trump, who has for years harshly criticized CNN’s hosts and news coverage, said he believes CNN should be sold.

The worries come as some unions’ major studio contracts, including the DGA, WGA and performers guild SAG-AFTRA, are set to expire next year. Two years ago, writers and actors went on a prolonged strike to push for more AI protections and better wages and benefits.

The Directors Guild of America and performers union SAG-AFTRA have voiced similar objections to the pending media consolidation.

“A deal that is in the interest of SAG-AFTRA members and all other workers in the entertainment industry must result in more creation and more production, not less,” the union said.

SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said the union has been in discussions with both Paramount and Netflix.

“It is as yet unclear what path forward is going to best protect the legacy that Warner Brothers presents, and that’s something that we’re very actively investigating right now,” he said.

It’s not clear, however, how much influence the unions will have in the outcome.

“They just don’t have a seat at the ultimate decision making table,” said David Smith, a professor of economics at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School. “I expect their primary involvement could be through creating more awareness of potential challenges with a merger and potentially more regulatory scrutiny … I think that’s what they’re attempting to do.”

The waits for rides at Disneyland parks are notoriously long during the holiday season. But the queue that’s boasting the longest wait this year isn’t for a thrill ride, it’s for a cookie.

Parkgoers looking to get their hands on a gingerbread cookie — described by fans as buttery-soft, perfectly spiced and not overly sweet — in the shape of Disney’s iconic rodent character, are facing waits up to 11 hours.

For years, the famed holiday treat has been difficult to secure, selling out quickly in the park. Every holiday season, it seems to get even harder.

This year is no exception, with guests reporting hours-long waits when placing mobile orders at locations in the park like Jolly Holiday Bakery, which is one of the few spots that sells the cookies.

“The best cookie at Disneyland. By far!” Mandi Nacey, a travel agent with 407 and Beyond Vacation Co., a company specializing in Disney and Universal Studios vacations, commented on a Instagram post about the wait times.

In response to the high demand, Disney appears at times to have suspended Mickey gingerbread from some mobile ordering options in recent weeks, guests report on social media, forcing people to stand in physical lines to obtain the treats.

Sales are limited to five per person, a policy that’s “been in place for a number of years to help as many of our guests enjoy this offering as possible,” a Disneyland spokesperson said in an email.

“[T]he full gingerbread cookie is one of our most popular gingerbread offerings,” the spokesperson said.

Guests should peruse a guide published on the Disney Parks Blog to learn more about the company’s gingerbread sweets, according to the spokesperson, who added that mobile orders are subject to daily availability and guests may not be able to place an order if the cookies are sold out.

The cookies should be available for mobile order at Jolly Holiday Bakery, according to the blog.

The famed cookies are also available at Market House in the Disneyland Park. In California Adventure, they are sold at Fiddler, Fifer & Practical Cafe. And a cart in the lobby of the Grand Californian hotel is the only place outside the park where the cookie is available.

Inside the park, each cookie is sold for $7.99. At the hotel cart, the cookies go for a whopping $10.50.

“Jolly Holiday sold out of the gingerbread each time I tried by noon,” Linda Wei said in a commented on a Facebook page called “Disneyland Tips and Tricks.”

But, Wei pointed out, that Starbucks in California Adventure also sells the cookies.

“I was able to get 5 yesterday … no problem,” Wei wrote.

Businessman Brian Kahn has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a case that brought down a hedge fund, helped lead to the bankruptcy of a retailer and damaged West Los Angeles investment bank B. Riley Financial.

Kahn, 52, admitted in a Trenton, N.J., federal court Wednesday to hiding trading losses that brought down Prophecy Asset Management in 2020. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged the losses exceeded $400 million.

An investor lawsuit has accused Kahn of funneling some of the fund’s money to Franchise Group, a Delaware retail holding company assembled by the investor that owned Vitamin Shoppe, Pet Supplies Plus and other chains.

B. Riley provided $600 million through debt it raised to finance a $2.8-billion management buyout led by Kahn in 2023. It also took a 31% stake in the company and lent Kahn’s investment fund $201 million, largely secured with shares of Franchise Group.

Kahn had done deals with B. Riley co-founder Bryant Riley before partnering with the L.A. businessman on Franchise Group.

However, the buyout didn’t work out amid fallout from the hedge fund scandal and slowing sales at the retailers. Franchise Group filed for bankruptcy in November 2024. A slimmed-down version of the company emerged from Chapter 11 in June.

B. Riley has disclosed in regulatory filings that the firm and Riley have received SEC subpoenas regarding its dealings with Kahn, Franchise group and other matters.

Riley, 58, the firm’s chairman and co-chief executive, has denied knowledge of wrongdoing, and an outside law firm reached the same conclusion.

The failed deal led to huge losses at the financial services firm that pummeled B. Riley’s stock, which had approached $90 in 2021. Shares were trading Friday at $3.98.

The company has marked down its Franchise Group investment, and has spent the last year or so paring debt through refinancing, selling off parts of its business and other steps, including closing offices.

The company announced last month it is changing its name to BRC Group Holdings in January. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At Wednesday’s plea hearing, Assistant U.S. Atty. Kelly Lyons said that Kahn conspired to “defraud dozens of investors who had invested approximately $360 million” through “lies, deception, misleading statements and material omissions.”

U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp released Kahn on a $100,000 bond and set an April 2 sentencing date. He faces up to five years in prison. Kahn, his lawyer and Lyons declined to comment after the hearing.

Kahn is the third Prophecy official charged over the hedge fund’s collapse. Two other executives, John Hughes and Jeffrey Spotts, have also been charged.

Hughes pleaded guilty and is cooperating with prosecutors. Spotts pleaded not guilty and faces trial next year. The two men and Kahn also have been sued by the SEC over the Prophecy collapse.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI said Tuesday it has picked Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its first chief of revenue, a message to wary investors that the ChatGPT maker is serious about making a profit from its artificial intelligence technology.

OpenAI said Dresser will oversee global revenue strategy and “will help more businesses put AI to work in their day-to-day operations.”

Dresser had already spent more than a decade at Salesforce when the software pioneer announced in 2020 it was buying work-chatting service Slack for $27.7 billion. She helped integrate Slack into the software company before Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff picked her as CEO in 2023.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this month set off a “code red” alert in an internal email to employees to improve its flagship product, ChatGPT, and delay other product developments.

OpenAI first released ChatGPT just over three years ago, sparking global fascination and a commercial boom in generative AI technology and giving the San Francisco-based startup an early lead. But the company faces increased competition with rivals, including Google, which last month unleashed Gemini 3, the latest version of its own AI assistant.

Altman said this fall that ChatGPT now has more than 800 million weekly users. But the company, valued at $500 billion, doesn’t make a profit and has committed more than $1 trillion in financial obligations to the cloud computing providers and chipmakers it relies on to power its AI systems.

The risk that OpenAI won’t make enough money to fulfill the expectations of backers like Oracle and Nvidia has amplified investor concerns about an AI bubble.

OpenAI makes revenue from premium subscriptions to ChatGPT, but most users get the free version. OpenAI introduced its own web browser, Atlas, in October, an attempt to compete with Google’s Chrome as more internet users rely on AI to answer their questions. But OpenAI hasn’t yet tried to sell ads on ChatGPT, which is how Google makes money from its dominant search business.

Altman’s early December memo said the company was delaying work on advertising, AI agents for health and shopping, and a personal assistant called Pulse.

Hollywood moguls once dismissed the outsize ambitions of Netflix’s executives.

“Is the Albanian army going to take over the world?” former Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes asked a reporter 15 years ago. “I don’t think so.”

Think again. On Friday, Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos pulled off an audacious $82-billion deal to buy much of Bewkes’ old haunts: the Warner Bros. film and TV studios in Burbank, and HBO and the HBO Max streaming service in Culver City.

“This is a rare opportunity,” Sarandos said in an investor call. “It’s going to help us achieve our mission to entertain the world and to bring people together through great stories. We’ve built a great business, and to do that, we’ve had to be bold and continue to evolve.”

If the takeover is approved — it could face a raft of legal and regulatory challenges — Netflix would gain ownership of such classics as “Casablanca” and “Goonies” and popular characters including Batman, Scooby-Doo, Dirty Harry and Harry Potter.

The acquisition represents a moment of triumph for the brash Sarandos, who has gone from Hollywood gate-crasher to the ultimate power broker.

“There seems to be no ceiling of opportunity for Ted Sarandos,” said Tom Nunan, a former studio and network executive. “He’s the king of Hollywood.”

Netflix’s victory in the auction for Warner Bros. stunned many in Hollywood who figured Paramount — whose bid was backed by the one of the world’s wealthiest men, Larry Ellison — had a lock on the prized Warner assets.

Even Netflix’s brass downplayed their merger ambitions as recently as two months ago. Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters shrugged off any interest at a Bloomberg conference, saying: “We come from a deep heritage of builders rather than buyers.”

But the streaming giant’s dominant market position and strong balance sheet allowed it to assemble a largely cash bid that wowed Warner Bros. Discovery’s board, which voted unanimously in favor. What’s more, Netflix agreed to absorb more than $10 billion of Warner Bros.’ debt, bringing the deal’s total value to $82.7 billion.

Warner shareholders and U.S. and foreign regulators still must approve Netflix’s takeover. Netflix — which is based in Los Gatos but has a large presence in Hollywood — said it expects the deal will close within a year to 18 months.

Netflix, however, already is facing stiff opposition from cinema chains, lawmakers, prominent creatives and labor unions. The Writers Guild of America said the deal should be blocked.

“The world’s largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent,” the WGA said.

A career of defying convention

If it succeeds, the takeover would be a coup for Sarandos, the company’s often controversial co-CEO who has been responsible for Netflix’s content operations since 2000. Until recently, he was seen as a disruptor who upended the industry’s long-standing business models, especially its reliance on the big screen.

It’s a remarkable trajectory for the 61-year-old Phoenix native and movie buff, who once clerked in a strip mall video store, joining Netflix when it was a scrappy Silicon Valley startup distributing DVDs through the mail in red envelopes.

Company co-founder Reed Hastings was impressed by Sarandos after he struck a first-of-its-kind revenue-sharing deal with Warner Bros. as an executive at West Coast Video/Video City retail chain.

Sarandos has been in charge of Netflix’s content operations ever since.

One of five children, he’s the son of an electrician and a stay-at-home mom who left the TV on all day.

While working at the video store, Sarandos earned a reputation for giving great movie recommendations to customers based on what they liked to watch. In many ways, he was a human version of Netflix’s now famous recommendation algorithm.

Sarandos spent his first three years at Netflix working out of his bedroom in Los Angeles. Hastings and Sarandos’ enterprise was largely responsible for bankrupting the then-dominant video rental chain, Blockbuster.

His knack for knowing what audiences want was instrumental in Sarandos’ ascent at Netflix and Hollywood: Netflix now has more than 301 million subscribers, and it could grow even more.

Analysts estimate the acquisition could add an additional 100 million customers to the streaming service — a bounty that is expected to draw the attention of antitrust regulators.

Over time, the company shifted to streaming licensed TV and films, but as studios started to pull away from those deals, Netflix began its foray into original content.

Again, Netflix wasn’t taken too seriously at first. Sarandos would get TV show scripts with signs of rejection — coffee stains and smudged fingerprints — but his gamble on buying the rights to David Fincher’s political thriller, “House of Cards,” starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, in 2011 changed that.

Sarandos walked into Fincher’s office and offered him a provocative deal: Netflix would commit to the first two seasons of “House of Cards” without seeing a pilot for $100 million.

“There were 100 reasons not to do this with Netflix,” Sarandos told The Times in 2013. “We had to give them one great reason to do it with Netflix.”

Sarandos has made a career out of defying convention.

Under his leadership, Netflix released episodes to shows all at once, allowing people to binge watch an entire season. The platform greenlighted full seasons of shows even before they began, and older series like “Friends” and “The Office” found new audiences years after they ended on network television.

He made bets on series that other traditional studios passed on, including the popular sci-fi show “Stranger Things,” which would become a global hit with its own universe of characters, like “Star Wars.”

Some studios were hesitant to give the show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, first-time showrunners, the reins. Typically, Netflix and Sarandos thought differently.

“They read it, they got the project, and they wanted me and Ross to be involved as showrunners and to direct, and that completely changed our lives,” said Matt Duffer on stage at the L.A. premiere of the final season of “Stranger Things” in Hollywood this month.

“Ted made that decision all the way back then, 2015, and that’s why we’re here today,” he said.

Over time, Netflix became a place where talent wanted to pitch their shows.

“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us,” Sarandos told GQ in 2013.

Soon, Sarandos might be in charge of HBO.

Netflix expanded its reach globally, creating a production pipeline abroad. Its biggest international hits include 2021 Korean language series “Squid Game,” Netflix’s most popular show of all time, with its first season generating 265.2 million views in its first three months.

But as Netflix’s strategy changed the Hollywood landscape, it also angered theater owners and competitors who were upset that the streamer was playing by different rules that challenged long-standing practices in the entertainment industry.

Sarandos in particular has taken direct aim at the traditional practice of releasing movies in theaters first — and keeping them there for months before making them available for home viewing.

Netflix generally releases movies in theaters only for short periods in order to appeal to fans or qualify for awards. They appear on its platform shortly after they debut in theaters.

Sarandos was promoted from chief content officer to co-CEO in 2020, running the company with Hastings, who had previously served as Netflix’s CEO.

The duo faced their biggest challenge in 2022, when Netflix’s subscriber numbers plunged by 200,000 subscribers in its first quarter, the first decline in more than a decade.

Analysts feared that the streaming revolution was over and Netflix had reached a ceiling to its growth.

But Netflix was able to find new revenue streams by cracking down on password sharing and entering new areas of business it previously overlooked, including advertising and live events like sports, including NFL football.

In 2023, Hastings stepped down from his role to be executive chairman, and Peters, chief operating officer, was named to the co-CEO role.

Today, Netflix is widely heralded as the winner of the streaming wars years after many rivals tried to enter into the space, putting the company in an ideal position to make a significant cash and stock bid for the Warner Bros. Discovery assets it was seeking.

Unlike many of its competitors, Netflix is profitable — the company generated $2.5 billion in net income in the third quarter, up 8% from a year earlier.

Netflix has offered Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders $23.25 in cash and $4.50 of Netflix stock for each share. In September, before Paramount started the bidding, Warner Bros. was trading around $12.

“These assets are more valuable in our business model, and our business model is more valuable with these assets,” Sarandos said in a call with investors on Friday.

If the deal is approved, Netflix would be the third owner of Warner Bros. and HBO in a decade. On the call, Peters addressed his earlier critique that most big media mergers fail.

“We understand these assets that we’re buying,” Peters told investors on Friday. “Things that are critical in Warner Bros. are key businesses that we operate in, and we understand a lot of times, the acquiring company, it was a legacy, non-growth business that was looking for a lifeline. That doesn’t apply to us. We’ve got a healthy, growing business.”

Sarandos expressed confidence the deal would go through.

“This deal is pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker, pro-creator, pro-growth,” Sarandos told investors. “Our plans here are to work really closely with all the appropriate governments and regulators, but really confident that we’re going to get all the necessary approvals that we need.”

Sarandos is one of Hollywood’s most well-compensated CEOs, with a package that was valued at $61.9 million in 2024.

Long seen as friendly to talent, he has weathered some controversies over the years.

During dual strikes in 2023, writers and actors complained bitterly about how Netflix was compensating them for their work on streaming shows.

Sarandos was seen as one of the key Hollywood players in helping bridge the gap. One of the outcomes of the strikes was that studios, including Netflix, would release viewership data to the unions and give bonuses to talent based on certain viewership metrics.

In 2021, Sarandos faced internal backlash within Netflix when some employees organized a walkout over transphobic comments said on comedian Dave Chappelle’s special “The Closer.” Sarandos had stood by the comedian, saying in a staff memo that “content on screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.” But days later he told Variety that “I screwed up that internal communication.”

“I should have led with a lot more humanity,” Sarandos said.

Despite its dominance in streaming, Netflix continues to face challenges from other forms of entertainment, including YouTube and social media sites like TikTok or gaming communities like Fortnite that all compete for eyeballs.

“In a world where people have more choices than ever how to spend their time, we can’t stand still,” Sarandos said Friday. “We need to keep innovating and investing in stories that matter most to audiences, and that’s what this deal is all about.”

The government picked a company with little experience working with the Federal Aviation Administration called Peraton to oversee the roughly $31.5 billion overhaul of the outdated air traffic control system.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday evening that Peraton was chosen in the hope that its innovative approach will make it possible to complete the upgrades within the next three years before the end of President Donald Trump’s term in office ends. Peraton was chosen over Parsons Corp., which does have extensive experience with FAA contracts.

“Working together, we are going to build on the incredible progress we’ve already made and deliver a state-of-the-art air traffic control system that the American traveling public — and our hard-working air traffic controllers — deserve,” Duffy said in the announcement.

Here’s what to know about the modernization project and the company hired to oversee it:

Earlier this year, Congress approved $12.5 billion as a down payment on the project after technical problems twice knocked out the radar for air traffic controllers managing planes around Newark Liberty International Airport. This year began with the worst American aviation disaster in years when an airliner collided with an Army helicopter over Washington D.C., killing 67 people.

Duffy has said he’ll need roughly $20 billion more to complete the upgrade.

This effort to upgrade the technology controllers use is on a much more aggressive timeline than the previous NextGen effort that began shortly after the turn of the century and failed to deliver all the benefits it promised even after an investment of $36 billion. The Biden administration had estimated that upgrading the system might take more than a decade.

The FAA hasn’t yet released the details of how much Peraton will be paid for this contract, but the agency said it includes incentives to reward good performance and penalties for shortcomings.

The technical problems that disrupted flights at the Newark airport in the spring demonstrated just how fragile the nation’s aging air traffic control system is. And Duffy has said those kind of technical failures in a system that too often still relies on copper wires and floppy discs could happen anywhere unless the system is upgraded.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed in Newark. After the radar outages, the facility in Philadelphia that controls the flights in and out of Newark had a half dozen controllers go on leave, which forced the reductions in flights.

The number of flights across the country each day that the FAA has to safely manage is expected to continue growing in the years ahead. And drones will continue to proliferate across the country as flying taxis start to take to the air.

Everyone agrees that the air traffic control system must be modernized to be able to handle those future demands.

John Rose, chief risk adviser for global travel management company ALTOUR, said the three-year timeline is “extremely aggressive” but partially realistic. He said it’s plausible for the FAA to build the foundation for a modern air traffic control network in its tight timeline, with more advanced capabilities layered on later.

“You need to build the base before you can have all the bells and whistles,” he said. “If the project gets to the core structure in three years, I think we’ve accomplished the mission.”

He likened it to an iPhone where once you have a robust base system you can upgrade the software like when the phone gets an iOS update. “If they build the infrastructure, then as things change from a technology capability, it’s almost like a plug and play,” he said.

Air Traffic Control Association President and CEO Stephen Creamer represents the companies that make the gear that Peraton and the FAA will use to complete the upgrades. He said it helps that the new system won’t have to be built from scratch.

“The technology that’s needed in the system is not cutting edge technology. It’s been tested and trialed all over the world in various places. We know what the capabilities of it are. We know what the risks of those installations are in a way that we wouldn’t know if we were trying to do it and be the first one out of the gate,” Creamer said.

Duffy said that putting a private company in charge should help this project get done more quickly, and Peraton’s expertise with complex technical systems and artificial intelligence will help.

Peraton has said the fact that it doesn’t have a history of work at the FAA might actually help because it won’t be biased to working with the same companies that have failed in the past.

And after all the cuts to the federal workforce Trump made this year and the early retirements. Creamer said that FAA needs the help to complete this project because it no longer has the staff to do it.

The expectation is that Peraton will be able to award contracts to other companies more quickly than FAA would be able to because it won’t be limited by the same process. That does introduce the possibility that mistakes could be made, but Creamer said “I think there’s plenty of checks and balances in the administrative system to ensure that there’s not gonna be substantial waste or fraud or abuse.”

Peraton has worked on multibillion-dollar technology contracts for the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Special Operations Command and the National Park Service along with the military and other agencies.

The company is owned by Veritas Capital private equity firm, so it doesn’t have shareholders. Its board of advisers is full of an assortment of former military and intelligence officials. A Peraton spokesman said the company was too busy getting started on the contract to do any interviews Friday, but its CEO Steve Schorer promised in a statement that his team is committed to completing this project.

“Our highly-skilled, dedicated, and talented team of engineers, technologists, and mission experts stands ready to hit the ground running to deliver a system Americans can count on — one that is more secure, more reliable, and a model for the world to follow,” Schorer said.

The company’s political action committee donated a quarter-million dollars to politicians last year with a little over half of that going to Republicans, according to www.opensecrets.org.

Duffy said that the FAA has already been working on making improvements and more than one-third of the old copper wires that air traffic controllers were relying on have been replaced with fiber optic lines or other modern connections.

But some of the advancements like installing new systems to help controllers keep track of planes on the ground at 44 airports began during the last administration.

And significant work remains ahead to install more than 27,600 new radios and 612 new radar systems. The old connections still need to upgraded at thousands of additional facilities, and six new air traffic control centers are scheduled to be built.

Netflix has prevailed in its bid to buy Warner Bros., agreeing to pay $72 billion for the Burbank-based Warner Bros. film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO.

The two companies announced the blockbuster deal early Friday morning. The takeover would give Netflix such beloved characters as Batman, Harry Potter and Fred Flintstone.

“Our mission has always been to entertain the world,” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said in a statement. “By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies — from timeless classics like ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Citizen Kane’ to modern favorites like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Friends’ — with our culture-defining titles like ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ and ‘Squid Game,’ we’ll be able to do that even better.”

Netflix’s cash and stock transaction is valued at about $27.75 per Warner Bros. Discovery shares. Netflix also agreed to take on more than $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt, pushing the deal’s value to $82.7 billion.

The breakthrough came earlier this week, after the three contenders — Netflix, Paramount and Comcast — submitted binding second-round offers. Netflix’s victory was assured by late Thursday, soon after another deadline for last-minute deal sweeteners. Netflix and Warner’s boards separately and unanimously approved the transaction.

Warner’s cable channels, including CNN, TNT and HGTV, are not included in the deal. They will form a new publicly traded company, Discovery Global, in mid-2026.

Anti-trust experts anticipate opposition to Netflix’s proposed takeover. Netflix has more than 300 million streaming subscribers worldwide, and with HBO Max, the company’s base would swell to more than 420 million subscribers — a staggering sum much greater than any of the other premium video-on-demand streaming services.

In addition, Netflix has long prioritized releasing movies to its streaming platform — bypassing movie theater chains.

The deal posed “an unprecedented threat to the global exhibition business,” Cinema United, a trade group representing owners of more than 50,000 movie screens, said in a statement announcing its opposition.

“The negative impact of this acquisition will impact theatres from the biggest circuits to one-screen independents in small towns in the United States and around the world,” said Cinema United President Michael O’Leary said in a statement. “Netflix’s stated business model does not support theatrical exhibition.”

Netflix, in the statement, said it would maintain Warner Bros. operations, including theatrical releases for Warner Bros. films.

The Directors Guild of America said the proposed combination “raises significant concerns.”

“A vibrant, competitive industry — one that fosters creativity and encourages genuine competition for talent — is essential to safeguarding the careers and creative rights of directors and their teams,” the DGA spokesperson said. “We will be meeting with Netflix to outline our concerns and better understand their vision for the future of the company.”

Losing the auction is a crushing blow for Paramount’s David Ellison, the 42-year-old tech scion who envisioned building a juggernaut with the two storied movie studios, HBO and two dozen cable channels.

One month after buying Paramount, he set its sights on Warner Bros., triggering the auction with a series of unsolicited bids in September and early October.

But Warner Bros. Discovery’s board rejected Paramount’s offers as too low. In late October, the board opened the auction up to other bidders.

Comcast also leaped into the bidding for Warner’s studios, HBO and its streaming service. Comcast wanted to spin off its NBCUniversal media assets and merge them with Warner Bros. to form a new jumbo studio.

Paramount is raising the stakes in its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, upping its offer for the assets with backing from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, including Saudi Arabia, while rival Comcast has proposed creating a new entertainment entity.

Instead of offering cash, Comcast has proposed combining NBCUniversal with HBO and the Warner Bros. film and television studios to form a separate stand-alone entertainment company, according to people familiar with the bids but not authorized to comment.

Such a combination would marry robust film studios, deep libraries and middling streaming services, Warner’s HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock. It would give Universal’s theme parks a wealth of fan-favorite characters — including Batman, Harry Potter and Sheldon Cooper to build new attractions.

Comcast, which would maintain the controlling stake, is not interested in absorbing Warner’s basic cable channels.

Representatives of Paramount, Comcast, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment, citing the confidential nature of the bids.

Comcast, Netflix and Paramount each submitted second-round proposals to Warner’s bankers Monday. Warner Bros. Discovery hopes to select an auction winner this month.

Paramount, controlled by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and his family, has been pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery since September — one month after the billionaire family took the keys to Paramount from former owner Shari Redstone.

With its latest offer, Paramount is hoping to stay competitive with a largely cash bid from streaming giant Netflix, which is interested in Warner Bros.’ enduring intellectual property and the studio’s prestigious 110-acre lot in Burbank.

Bid amounts were unclear Tuesday.

However, analysts say the various combinations could value Warner Bros. Discovery at nearly $70 billion — triple the company’s trading levels in early September.

Paramount is the only bidder interested in swallowing Warner’s portfolio of cable channels that include CNN, TNT, Food Network, Cartoon Network and TLC.

Paramount’s bid provides debt financing from Apollo Global Management and sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the knowledgeable people said. Should Paramount win the Warner auction, the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners would maintain majority control of the bulked-up enterprise.

The Middle Eastern investors would have only a small stake, one of the knowledgeable people said.

Variety and Bloomberg previously reported on the Middle Eastern wealth funds’ involvement in Paramount’s bid. Bloomberg first reported on Comcast‘s bid structure.

Each of the various deal configurations would face stiff regulatory scrutiny.

President Trump considers Larry Ellison a friend, so Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner probably would face a smooth regulatory review process in the U.S. The president has indicated he prefers having Ellison control CBS — part of Paramount — and CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

Combining Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. would give the company about 30% of domestic movie box office.

Still, foreign regulators might wince at a deal that was heavily pushed by Trump, not to mention one that includes Saudi investors in a major entertainment entity that owns CNN, one of the world’s largest news organizations.

Last month, tech scion David Ellison, chairman and chief executive of Paramount, was guest at a White House dinner to honor Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

That state dinner — seven years after bin Salman was considered a pariah after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — underscored Washington’s increasingly warm relations with the Saudi royal family.

But any deal also would be subject to regulators in Europe and Asia.

Comcast would encounter a particularly bumpy regulatory path.

The Philadelphia firm is controlled by cable mogul Brian Roberts, who has long felt Trump’s scorn, in part because of his company’s ownership of liberal-leaning news channel MS NOW, previously known as MSNBC. Comcast is in the process of spinning off MS NOW and other cable channels into a new company called Versant.

Still, some observers believe that opposition by Trump would be enough to thwart Justice Department approval of a Comcast takeover of Warner Bros.

Netflix’s bid also has raised antitrust concerns.

“If Netflix acquires Warner Bros., the streaming wars are effectively over,” Bank of America media analysts wrote in a report this week. “Netflix would become the undisputed global powerhouse of Hollywood beyond even its currently lofty position.”

The Los Gatos, Calif., streaming pioneer has more than 300 million subscribers worldwide. Adding HBO Max would give the company 70 million more, which would dwarf competing services.

“Netflix currently wields unequaled market power,” U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) wrote in a letter last month to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, whose department would oversee the deal review.

“Adding both HBO Max’s subscribers and Warner Bros.’ premier content rights would further enhance this position, reportedly pushing the combined entity above a 30 percent share of the streaming market: a threshold traditionally viewed as presumptively problematic under antitrust law,” Issa wrote.

California has long been a “fuel island” — a state whose gasoline and diesel markets are isolated from the rest of the country — but that could soon end under a proposed plan to build the first-ever pipeline to bring refined products directly to the West Coast.

Known as the Western Gateway Pipeline, the project from oil major Phillips 66 and global pipeline giant Kinder Morgan would deliver gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to Arizona and California from as far east as Missouri by 2029. The companies are currently scoping out demand and seeking commitments from customers in what is known as an “open season.”

Kinder Morgan is already a major pipeline operator in California. Officials from both companies say the pipeline would create a vital connection between the Midwest and California, where a combination of unique fuel requirements and geography have created a market that is almost entirely dependent on fuel brought in by ship plus in-state supplies. That can leave residents vulnerable to price spikes from even small disruptions.

California already pays more for gasoline than any other state, with prices currently hovering around $4.63 a gallon compared with the U.S. average of $3.10, according to AAA.

The pipeline proposal comes as California navigates the critical trade-off between reducing one of the biggest drivers of climate change — gasoline and diesel — and maintaining consumer affordability. The state is trying to electrify transportation while bracing for the closure of two major refineries in Wilmington and Benicia that together account for nearly 20% of California’s refining capacity. Their looming shutdown is creating jitters about higher prices at the pump.

Experts say the pipeline proposal signals that energy companies expect California to remain dependent on gasoline for years, even as the state pursues clean transportation and other ambitious climate goals.

“It’s a huge capital investment, and it’s an investment that is a bet that the prices in the West will stay high enough that they can recover the cost,” said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Globally, customers are snapping up electric vehicles, but in the U.S. the picture is more complicated. There have never been more EV options on the table and the charging network is growing. At the same time, the Trump administration recently eliminated federal rebates on new and used EVs and has also moved to block California’s landmark ban on the sale of all new gas-powered cars by 2035.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently approved legislation that will allow for 2,000 new oil wells to be drilled in Kern County, in part to help keep the state attractive to oil companies.

“We have a love/hate relationship with gasoline and petroleum products,” Borenstein said. “We’d like to think of ourselves as getting off of them, but in reality we’re highly dependent, and we hate high prices. So the fact is, if we don’t get more supply as we lose these refineries, prices are going to go way up.”

The Western Gateway Pipeline would combine new and existing infrastructure. From Borger, Texas, to Phoenix, Ariz., the line would be new. An existing line that connects Phoenix to Colton, Calif., would see its flow reversed to enable east-to-west flow. There would be an optional connection from Colton to Las Vegas. A pipeline between St. Louis and Texas would also be reversed to move barrels from the Midwest into the new system.

In all, the project could supply 200,000 barrels per day of refined gasoline or diesel directly into Arizona and California, according to the companies.

Experts say that could make up for some of the loss from refineries, which otherwise would have to come from more imports. The West Coast received about 86,000 barrels of gasoline imports and 9,000 barrels of diesel from overseas daily in August, the most recent month for which there were data, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The region also received 151,000 barrels of gasoline and 46,000 barrels of diesel per day from other U.S. areas, including the Gulf Coast and the Rocky Mountains, via tanker, barge and rail.

“More availability of supply would almost certainly help to reduce fuel prices in California, all else equal,” said Kevin Hack, a petroleum economist with EIA. However, he cautioned that global crude oil price changes and other factors could still affect California gasoline prices.

For some, the pipeline represents a step in the wrong direction.

“It’s a band-aid on a much bigger challenge,” said Ryan Schleeter, communications director with the nonprofit the Climate Center. “The solution is really to chart the course for a managed transition away from relying on gas to a more electrified future.”

Not only are pipelines prone to leaks and spills, but California should not be investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure, Schleeter said. Diesel consumption in the state has been flat the last decade, and annual gasoline demand has declined by about 2.1 billion gallons since 2016, according to state data.

Schleeter pointed to a recent report from California’s Department of Petroleum Market Oversight that confirms the presence of a so-called “mystery surcharge” of 41 cents per gallon in California that can’t be explained by state regulations, taxes or production costs — most of which represents increased profit for oil companies with no direct public benefit, the report says.

“Obviously price spikes and shocks to consumer prices in the short term aren’t a good thing, and those harm working class people the most,” Schleeter said. “But if we’re looking at ways to make gas more affordable in the short term, I think we should be looking more at the refiner profit margins.”

Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said a pipeline would gird residents against price spikes caused by disruptions such as last month’s Chevron refinery fire in El Segundo or last year’s unplanned maintenance at multiple northern California refineries. The additional imports from overseas needed in response to these disruptions can take six weeks to arrive, he said.

“So if we had a pipeline coming into the state that could deliver [Midwest] product to us in five days or so, that would be huge for California consumers,” Cummings said.

Like Borenstein, he said the pipeline proposal is a sign that Phillips 66 and Kinder Morgan believe California will continue to be dependent on gasoline for many years, despite its decarbonization goals.

“If they’re going to build this in the next five years, that’s them saying that at a minimum for the next decade, this thing’s going to be worth it,” Cummings said.

The Western Gateway Pipeline is far from a done deal. The open season runs through Dec. 19.

Kinder Morgan spokesperson Taylor Smith declined to comment on interest the company is seeing or commitments so far. Officials with Phillips 66 did not respond to a request for comment.

Should it move forward, the pipeline could be completed by 2029 pending necessary permits and regulatory approvals, according to the companies. Precisely which agencies and entities would need to sign off on the project depends on the pipeline route, but “are likely to involve authorizations to cross federal lands, mitigation of any impacts to endangered species and permits from the Army Corps of Engineers for any discharges to waters of the U.S. caused by any pipeline construction,” Smith said.

It is also not yet clear which state agencies would need to sign off. They might include the State Lands Commission, the Office of the State Fire Marshal and the California Energy Commission.

In a statement, officials with the California Energy Commission appeared open to the idea, saying that a pipeline could offer an alternative source of imports and reduce the amount of fuel California exports to its neighboring states, but that it would be important to understand how any new supply would affect state and regional fuel markets, including existing California refiners.

“The CEC continues to engage with stakeholders, including industry participants and regional partners, to evaluate strategies for managing fuel supply and price stability through the transition to a clean transportation sector, while also balancing the needs of communities, workers, consumers and the environment,” the agency said.

The nation is watching how California manages the slow decline of its gasoline refinery industry, said Cummings, of Stanford.

“As we’re taking offline the dirty energy and trying to bring online the clean energy, that leaves a lot of possibilities for big bumps in that transition path in which consumers are susceptible to price spikes,” he said. “It’s a difficult problem to solve, and California is kind of solving it in real time.”

Snapchat, an app whose disappearing messages and silly face filters made chatting with loved ones more casual, is close to a milestone that few social media platforms achieve: reaching 1 billion monthly users.

But Snap, the Santa Monica company behind the app, faces a crucial test. The 14-year-old tech company is still losing money and has seen its share price tumble as it barrels forward to popularize augmented reality glasses next year.

And even though more people in developing countries are using the app, Snapchat usage in markets where the company makes more revenue per user, including the United States and Europe, has dropped.

Snapchat has 943 million monthly active users globally, according to the company.

Growth in India, where TikTok is banned, and Pakistan have fueled Snapchat’s global user growth, data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower show. In India, Snapchat monthly users have surpassed 250 million, making up more than a quarter of its user base, according to numbers Snap released in July.

At the same time, in the third quarter, Snapchat monthly active users declined by 4% in the U.S. and double digits in France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, Sensor Tower said.

Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel wrote in a September note to employees the company is in a “crucible moment,” comparing it to a “middle child” wedged between larger tech giants and smaller rivals.

“This moment isn’t just about survival,” Spiegel wrote in the note. “It’s about proving that a different way of building technology, one that deepens friendships and inspires creativity, can succeed in a world that often rewards the opposite.”

The 35-year-old tech executive co-founded Snapchat — initially known as Picaboo — in 2011 with friends as part of a class project while attending Stanford University. Back then, texts and photos posted on social media such as Facebook and Instagram were more permanent.

Snapchat’s logo is a ghost and the app distinguished itself from its competitors by giving people a way to share photos and messages that disappeared once someone viewed it. Instead of a social media app that opens to a feed of content, Snapchat opens to a camera.

Rather than worry about whether they looked perfect, people leaned into quirky and creative ways to express themselves. They overlaid effects onto their selfies, transforming their faces into cute dogs and even puking rainbows. The app encouraged people to keep sending these disappearing messages known as “Snaps” to their loved ones at least once a day, keeping what’s known as a “streak” alive.

As Snapchat’s popularity soared, fueling the rise of vertical videos, bigger social media rivals took notice. Snapchat’s co-founders turned down Facebook’s multibillion-dollar offer to buy the company.

Facebook and its photo-sharing app Instagram copied Snapchat’s signature features including Stories, which allowed people to post images and videos that vanish after 24 hours. This prompted some Snapchat users to flock to its rival Instagram. Spiegel jokingly titled himself as the vice president of product at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, on LinkedIn, a nod to the social media giant’s cloning of Snapchat’s features.

Although Snapchat set itself apart from other social media, it also faced similar concerns tech platforms grappled with such as child safety and mental health. The app is popular among teenagers, prompting some users to question if they’re too old for Snapchat and should leave.

Investor confidence in the company has plummeted. In 2021, Snap’s stock peaked at more than $83 per share. Snap’s share price closed Tuesday at $7.64.

Competing with larger rivals such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, for ad dollars has been challenging for Snapchat and it has struggled to consistently turn a profit. Apple’s privacy feature made it tougher for advertisers to track users across apps and websites, posing an extra hurdle for social networks.

Research firm eMarketer estimates that in 2025 Snapchat will claim 2.1% of U.S. social network ad spending, but said that share is dropping.

Snapchat’s initial focus on disappearing messages made it tougher for the company to rope in advertisers because people typically don’t want to see ads in the middle of a private conversation. But the company has been updating its ad tools and expanded the places where ads are shown, including between short videos.

Although Snapchat is popular among Gen Z and millennials, its audience might limit what businesses want to advertise on its platform.

“It definitely skews a lot younger and that naturally sort of limits advertiser interests in its audience,” said Max Willens, a senior analyst at eMarketer. If a business wants to advertise retirement planning, for example, they would probably go to Facebook instead of Snapchat.

On Snapchat, advertisers have also used augmented reality effects to promote their brands in quirky ways to a young audience. Snapchat users can transform themselves into a dancing McDonald’s McRib sandwich or snap selfies with digital animals from the Disney film “Zootopia 2.”

Snap has been looking at other ways to make money. The company offers subscription plans so users can customize the app’s wallpaper, personalize their digital avatars known as Bitmojis and see how often their friends view their content. It started to limit the amount of free storage it offers to 5 gigabytes. AI company Perplexity said it will pay Snap $400 million over one year so users can find answers from its “AI-powered answer engine.”

In the third quarter, Snap revenue reached $1.5 billion, up 10% compared with the same period last year. The company narrowed its net loss to $104 million, versus a net loss of $153 million during the year-earlier period.

This month, JP Morgan analysts raised Snap’s price target to $8 after the Perplexity deal but kept an underweight rating on the shares, meaning they expect the stock to underperform.

The firm said Snap has “a sizable market opportunity, an engaged user base, and a solid track record of innovation” but it’s also looking for “more consistent execution, improved user & revenue trends, & greater profitability.”

Snap has made bold and expensive bets on the future of computing by releasing a drone and glasses to capture photos and videos — though those products flopped. Now Snap plans to release augmented reality glasses in 2026 that let people interact with digital images overlaid onto the physical world. Instead of taking out your phone, people will be able to review documents, stream movies, play chess and more through glasses.

For now, analysts say it’s too early to tell if Snap’s bets will pay off or the company will end up in the social media graveyard like Myspace or Vine.

“There’s nothing written down that says you just get to be around forever if you’re a social media platform,” Willens said. “Although almost all of those still kind of trudge along in some state or another.”

Waymo must stop charging its autonomous fleet of cars overnight at two Santa Monica charging stations, the City Council decided last week as a way to resolve a months-long dispute between local residents and the driverless taxi company.

On a unanimous vote, the Santa Monica City Council voted Tuesday to issue a directive to Waymo, the owner of the property and its lessees, to stop overnight operations at the charging stations.

“If the owners and lessees and operators do not comply within an expedited time frame, [the city would then be instructed] to initiate litigation to abate nuisance conditions,” Interim City Atty. Heidi von Tongeln said during Tuesday’s council meeting.

Several local residents have complained about round-the-clock beeping and humming emitted by the self-driving cars as they make their way to two charging stations near the intersection of Euclid Street and Broadway. Waymo said it took steps to reduce noise at the charging stations, but residents still insist the stations are a nuisance, arguing that the noise keeps them up at night and the driverless cars are clogging the streets.

According to a letter from the city to Waymo, obtained by The Times, Santa Monica demanded that the two lots stop operating at night starting Wednesday, from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

“The City has received many complaints from neighboring residents regarding the Broadway Lots, and particularly that the overnight operations of the lots are very disruptive to their sleep and peace and quite enjoyment of their homes,” the letter reads.

A city spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment or questions to what prompted the city to consider the demand.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Waymo said the company was committed to operating and investing in the city, but did not answer whether or not the company planned to comply with the city’s directive.

“We’ve been engaging with the city since day one of our operations, and we are committed to working with them to be responsive to our neighbors,” the statement read. “In response to neighbors’ feedback, we adjusted our operations at the site, and we’ll continue to seek community input.”

To address some concerns, Waymo officials pointed to mitigation efforts, like using vegetation around the lots to cut down on light and noise.

A total of 56 Waymo vehicles can charge at the same time at the two stations in Santa Monica. The company has been growing rapidly and expanding the streets where the white, autonomous vehicles can operate, but residents said they received no warning that two charging stations would be operating in their neighborhoods. Emails obtained by The Times suggest that city officials were also caught off-guard by the Waymo lots, and learned about the two stations only after residents started to complain about the noise.

The letter from the city to Waymo alleges that the company contracted by Waymo to charge its fleet at the lots, Voltera, had “continue[d] to downplay the legitimate complaints from a significant number of neighbors, and to wrongfully insist that it and its customer Waymo are immunized from all regulation and entitled to conduct their business however they want.”

A spokesperson for Voltera did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Neighbors of the charging station express relief at the city’s action.

“I’m happy to see that the city has taken a stand,” said Christopher Potter, who lives near one of the lots and started an online petition urging the company to reduce its sound pollution.

Still, Potter said he’s not sure whether Waymo and Voltera will make any changes for the better.

“They come in and they set up shop and they just want to do what they want to do,” he said.

Potter pointed out that several months ago the Waymo vehicles reduced the volume of its beeping, when the vehicles drive in reverse, when in the lots. Now the vehicles only beep when there is someone or an object behind them. But the noise is still significant.

Darius Boorn, who also lives near the lots, agrees.

“I can’t have the windows open because there’s always noise,” he said. “If they [Waymo] really wanted to do something, they could do it.”

Despite the city’s letter to Waymo, Boorn said he believes it was frustrated residents who forced the city to act.

“I truly believe that we forced their hand,” he said. “I think the city finally realized, our backs are against the wall unless we do this for the residents.”

The decisions comes after months of tension between the Waymo, the rapidly expanding driverless taxi company, and residents who allege the charging stations were installed without warning or input from neighbors, and have been constant nuisance since it started operating in January of this year.

Some residents took matters into their own hands by using cones to block Waymos from entering the parking lots and blocking their way into streets and alleys. Some residents also started to block the cars by standing and blocking the driveways to the charging stations, forcing the autonomous cars to stack up along the street waiting for a chance to enter.

Residents started to refer to the protest action as going out to “stack the Waymos.”

Police have been called multiple times to the charging stations, and Waymo at one point unsuccessfully tried to get a temporary restraining order against a resident who continued to protest against the stations.

According to the letter sent by the city to Waymo, city officials have received more than 40 complaints from 15 different individuals regarding noise, light, and traffic in the area because of the lots, prompting the city to meet with neighborhood residents Oct. 15.

The letter also points to an incident on Nov. 2 when a long line of Waymos began to stack up in an alley leading to the lots, forcing attendants to work for about 20 minutes to clear out the blockage.

“If there had been a fire in one of the buildings or a first responder needed to access the area, they would have been trapped and blocked,” the letter from the city reads. “This is not the first such incident, only the most recent.”

The Santa Monica clash could be a sign of possible growing pains for the company as it continues to expand operations into other major cities across the state.

The company in June announced it would be expanding its service area in Los Angeles to more than 120 square miles in the county, ferrying passengers in Playa del Rey, Ladera Hieghts, Echo Park, Silver Lake and across Sunset Boulevard.

Earlier this month Waymo announced it would begin operating on freeways in Los Angeles and San Francisco as well, expanding the distances it could take passengers in the two cities. The company also operates in Santa Monica, Culver City and downtown Los Angeles.

Last week, Waymo announced its driverless cars would start operating in Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando. On Friday, the company announced on social media it was also now authorized to drive over a wider area in San Francisco and Sacramento, and that the vehicles would start making an appearance in San Diego in mid-2026.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked OpenAI’s use of several monikers, including “Cameos” and “CameoVideo,” for elements of its Sora artificial intelligence video generation products and marketing.

U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee on Friday issued a temporary restraining order to prevent the San Francisco AI giant from using names that are part of an ongoing trademark dispute.

The Northern California judge also set a Dec. 19 hearing to delve further into the matter.

The lawsuit was brought late last month by Chicago-based tech business Baron App, which also goes by the name of its product, Cameo. The eight-year-old firm sued OpenAI, alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition.

In its Oct. 28 lawsuit, Baron said it has secured several U.S. Trademark Registrations for its Cameo product, which enables fans to engage celebrities to make personalized videos to wish friends a happy birthday or other greetings.

Snoop Dogg, Tony Hawk, Jon Bon Jovi and Donald Trump Jr. are among celebrities who have participated, connecting with fans through Cameo, the company said in its complaint against Open AI. Cameo said its posts have been popular, attracting more than 100 million views in the past year.

The legal dispute began after OpenAI announced an update to its text-to-video tool Sora in September. The update included the launch of a new Sora feature that it called Cameos.

OpenAI’s fall product update gave consumers on the Sora app the ability to scan their faces and allow others to manipulate their facial images in AI-generated environments. YouTube influencer and boxer Jake Paul, who is an investor in OpenAI, participated in OpenAI’s Cameos’ rollout. In less than five days, the Sora app hit more than 1 million downloads.

“OpenAI is now using Cameo’s own mark, CAMEO, to compete directly with Cameo,” Baron wrote in its lawsuit against OpenAI.

Lawyers for the two companies argued their positions in a Tuesday hearing.

Lee’s decision forbids OpenAI and its “officers, directors and employees from using the mark ‘Cameo,’ or any other mark that includes or is confusingly similar to ‘Cameo,’ ” according to her order. “Defendants are ordered to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not [be] issue[d].”

The temporary restraining order expires Dec. 22.

“While the court’s order is temporary, we hope that OpenAI will agree to stop using our mark permanently to avoid any further harm to the public or Cameo,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a Saturday statement. “We would like nothing more than to put this behind us so that we can focus our full attention on bringing talent and fans together as we head into the holidays.”

An OpenAI spokesperson responded in a statement: “We disagree with the complaint’s assertion that anyone can claim exclusive ownership over the word ‘cameo’, and we look forward to continuing to make our case to the court.”

The move comes as OpenAI has faced blowback in Hollywood as images of celebrities and dead newsmakers were manipulated without their consent.

Skechers investors are suing company executives and Skechers owner 3G Capital over what they say was an unfair sale price in an acquisition earlier this year.

3G Capital took the Manhattan Beach-based sneaker company private in a $9.4-billion deal that closed in September and reflected a share price of $63 per share.

In a class action complaint filed this month in Delaware Chancery Court, hedge funds and other large Skechers investors accused the company and 3G Capital of arranging a non-independent deal that shortchanged minority shareholders.

The deal undervalued the company as its shares were taking a beating because of a volatile federal tariff policy, the complaint said. The deal also benefited Skechers President Michael Greenberg and other controlling shareholders, according to the plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs seeking a higher share price were unable to reach an early settlement with Skechers after the company made an offer that was slightly higher than the original price, Bloomberg reported this week.

According to court documents, 3G Capital had offered a price of $73 per share in March this year, but lowered its offer after Trump’s tariff “liberation day” on April 2.

Investors are now pressing ahead with the case, according to Bloomberg.

Skechers said it would not comment on pending legal matters.

Skechers was one of many footwear and apparel companies that sounded the alarm when Trump passed steep import taxes on countries including China and Vietnam, where many Skechers products are made.

The company’s stock price fell 23% in early April after the tariffs were announced. Shares bounced back up 30% after the 3G Capital deal was announced.

Around the time of the acquisition, 3G Capital and Skechers said the purchase price represented a 30% premium to the company’s 15-day volume-weighted average stock price.

After the deal closed, about 60 investment pools managed by various firms filed to challenge the price of $1.3 billion worth of shares.

Plaintiffs in the case say Chief Executive Robert Greenberg, along with his son Michael, the company’s president, worked closely with 3G Capital to tailor an acquisition deal that worked for them amid tariff chaos.

“The merger was carefully structured to allow the Greenberg stockholders to monetize a substantial amount of their personal Skechers’ holdings,” the court complaint said.

Warner Music Group on Wednesday said it reached an agreement with artificial intelligence startup Udio, ending a legal battle over concerns that copyrighted music was being used to train AI models.

Under an agreement, Udio will release a platform next year using AI models trained on licensed and authorized music, the New York-based companies said. The music could include content from WMG’s publishing businesses, providing new revenue for artists and songwriters who choose to opt in, the companies added.

Udio declined to say which artists would be involved in its new platform, and WMG did not return a request for comment. WMG’s artist roster includes Ed Sheeran, Fleetwood Mac and Madonna.

The startup’s current platform allows users to write text prompts and create songs using AI. The new version, which is expected to launch next year, will let users create remixes, covers and new songs with the voices of artists and the compositions of songwriters who choose participate and those artists and writers will be credited and paid, the companies said.

“This collaboration aligns with our broader efforts to responsibly unlock AI’s potential — fueling new creative and commercial possibilities while continuing to deliver innovative experiences for fans,” said Robert Kyncl, WMG CEO, in a statement.

WMG, Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment and other music businesses sued Udio last year. In the lawsuit, Udio was accused of using hits like the Temptations’ “My Girl” to create a similar melody called “Sunshine Melody.” UMG owns the copyright to “My Girl.”

Udio said millions of people have used Udio since it launched in 2024, but did not break out specifically how many downloads or website users it has.

UMG settled with Udio last month. Udio declined to disclose the terms of the UMG settlement. The tech company also did not offer financial details about its platform collaboration with WMG, or which artists would be involved.

“Collaborating with WMG marks a significant milestone in our mission to redefine how AI and the music industry evolve together,” said Andrew Sanchez, co-founder and CEO of Udio, in a statement. “This partnership is a crucial step towards realizing a future in which technology amplifies creativity and unlocks new opportunities for artists and songwriters.”

The advancement of artificial intelligence in the arts has caused a range of emotions in the entertainment industry — from fear of job replacement to excitement over new ways to test bold ideas in music videos and music experimentation on slimmer budgets.

After the UMG-Udio deal was announced, Jordan Bromley, a board member at the nonprofit Music Artists Coalition and Manatt Entertainment Leader, said he was “cautiously optimistic but insistent on details.”

Music Artists Coalition executive director Ron Gubitz said the announcements on the agreements “lack critical details songwriters and performers deserve.”

“The question still remains whether these deals will deliver the most important things artists deserve: consent, clarity, and compensation,” Gubitz said in a statement.

Roblox, a popular gaming platform that’s faced growing scrutiny over child safety concerns, said Tuesday it will require users to verify their age if they want to chat with other players.

To do so, people will provide an ID or take a selfie through the Roblox app to prove they’re as young or old as they say they are. The verification feature estimates a person’s age, allowing the company to limit conversations between kids and adults.

Roblox, used by more than 151 million people daily, said it’s the first online gaming or communication platform to have this requirement. The move comes as the San Mateo-based company faces a flurry of lawsuits that allege Roblox hasn’t done enough to safeguard kids from pedophiles and sexual content.

Roblox said that after people verify their age, users will be able to chat only with others who are within similar age groups unless they confirm they already know the other player. Users younger than 9 will have chat features turned off by default, unless a parent provides approval after age verification to use these tools.

“This initiative is designed to provide even more age-appropriate experiences for all users, which we believe will improve interactions for users of all ages on Roblox,” company executives said in a blog post about the new requirement.

Online gaming is a popular way for kids and teens to socialize. On Roblox, users create or play in virtual spaces and chat with others. Some of the platform’s popular games involve exploring virtual towns, planting digital crops and caring for virtual pets.

But players also use avatars and usernames to represent themselves online, making it tough to tell a player’s age.

Some lawsuits against Roblox allege that predators are pretending to be children and convincing minors to send sexually explicit images of themselves on the platform.

Verifying people’s age has been an ongoing issue on various online platforms as child safety concerns grow. But tech companies such as Meta, Google and Apple have clashed over whether app stores or the platforms themselves should check the age of users.

When people sign up for Roblox, like on other platforms, they provide their birth date, but it’s easy to lie about one’s age. Asking people to turn over their government ID or an image of their face, though, comes with privacy concerns and adds a barrier to using certain online features.

Roblox said it’s working with San Francisco identity verification company Persona, which will process the images and videos of people’s faces. It said data from the scans will be deleted immediately afterward. The gaming platform said verifying your age is optional but users won’t be able to access chat features unless they do so.

In the first week of December, the company will start enforcing this requirement in certain countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Then, in early January, the requirement will extend to the rest of the world where Roblox’s chat features are available.

Television station owner Sinclair Inc. has taken an equity stake in fellow broadcaster E.W. Scripps, signaling its intent to become a behemoth in the shrinking field.

Sinclair disclosed its interest in Scripps, which owns stations in Fresno, Bakersfield, Buffalo, N.Y., and Billings, Mont., in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing Monday. Baltimore-based Sinclair, known for its conservative political bent, said it has acquired about 8% of Scripps’ equity by buying some of its publicly traded shares.

Sinclair disclosed that it has had “constructive discussions with [Scripps] for several months regarding a potential combination of the two companies.”

No deal has been reached.

Cincinnati-based Scripps, in a statement, suggested that it wasn’t interested in a tie-up with Sinclair, saying the Scripps board and management instead were “focused on driving value for all of the company’s shareholders through the continued execution of its strategic plan.”

“The board and management are aligned on doing only what is in the best interest of all of the company’s shareholders as well as its employees and the many communities and audiences it serves across the United States,” Scripps said.

Sinclair appears to be putting pressure on Scripps by making the stock purchases and the public disclosure. Scripps stock jumped more than 34% to around $4 a share midday Monday. The company is valued at about $363 million.

Sinclair shares also got a bounce, gaining about 6.5% to just above $17. The company’s market value is $1.2 billion.

Television station owners are hoping that President Trump and his appointments to the Federal Communications Commission will lift the government-imposed cap on broadcast ownership. Currently, stations are restricted from owning outlets that reach more than 39% of the U.S. population.

Sinclair currently owns or operates 185 television stations in 85 markets, according to its website.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has signaled a willingness to undertake a massive deregulation. The anticipated push has prompted a flurry of deals among broadcasters, who have seen their advertisers scatter and audiences decline as more consumers get their news through social media.

Sinclair, in its filing, made a nod to the changing political winds in Washington.

“Recent industry consolidation and intensifying competition reinforce [Sinclair’s] view that further scale in the broadcast television industry is essential to address secular headwinds and compete effectively with larger-scale big-tech and big-media players, as well as major broadcast groups,” Sinclair wrote.

In September, Sinclair prodded the Walt Disney Co. to punish late night host Jimmy Kimmel after the host made comments about the alleged gunman who was later arrested and charged with the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah. Sinclair owns several ABC affiliate stations and dropped “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for more than a week.

Sinclair demanded that Kimmel make a “meaningful personal donation” to Kirk’s political organization, Turning Point USA.

But Sinclair’s campaign crumbled after Disney’s brass returned Kimmel to his late night perch — without making concessions that Sinclair had demanded.

Critics have pointed to the alleged harms of TV station consolidation, including fewer on-the-ground workers and journalists reporting on the communities where the stations are based.

Sinclair’s filing contradicted such arguments, writing that “greater scale will also strengthen broadcasters’ ability to sustain their vital public service role in producing local news.”

The filing said consolidating Scripps could produce “more than $300 million in expected annual synergies.”

“The proposed combination would be structured to require no external financing as the combined company would maintain each company’s respective debt and preferred capital structures,” Sinclair wrote in the filing. “The transaction would avoid significant refinancing costs while meaningfully reducing leverage through the realization of synergies and lowering future refinancing risk.”

In its 2024 annual report, Sinclair said its dozens of stations produced “more than 2,400 hours of live news coverage per week across its station footprint, in addition to our various digital, social and audio platforms.”

Sinclair said in Monday’s filing that it was “committed to constructive engagement with [Scripps] toward reaching a definitive transaction agreement,” and Sinclair would like to consolidate its fellow broadcaster “within nine to 12 months.”

Scripps took a defensive stance in response to Sinclair’s overture, saying in a statement that “the board will take all steps appropriate to protect the company and the company’s shareholders from the opportunistic actions of Sinclair or anyone else.”

Elsewhere in the local TV business, Texas-based Nexstar, the nation’s largest TV broadcaster, is seeking government approval for its $6-billion deal to buy rival broadcaster Tegna.

An indictment unveiled this week charging Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff with political corruption threw California’s top political circles into chaos — and stirred speculation in the state capital about what triggered the federal investigation.

Authorities have not revealed any targets beyond Dana Williamson and two other influential political operatives associated with the state’s most powerful Democrats, all of whom are accused of fraud and siphoning campaign funds for personal use.

But details contained in the indictment and other public records indicate that the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice had a keen interest in Williamson and other operatives’ involvement in the handling of a legal case involving “Corporation 1.” The facts revealed about “Corporation 1” match details of a controversial sex discrimination investigation that the state of California led into one of the world’s largest video game companies, Santa-Monica based Activision Blizzard Inc.

Williamson — an influential deal-maker and one of the state’s premier Democratic political consultants before and after she ran Newsom’s office — was arrested on corruption charges Wednesday. Two longtime associates, lobbyist Greg Campbell, a former high-level staffer in the California Assembly, and Sean McCluskie, a longtime aide to former state Atty. Gen. and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, have agreed to plead guilty to related charges.

After Williamson pleaded not guilty in a tearful court appearance Wednesday, her attorney, McGregor Scott, said that federal authorities had charged his client only after first approaching her to seek help with a probe they were conducting into Newsom, the nature of which remains unclear. Williamson declined to cooperate.

The governor has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Still, Republicans already are using the indictments to attack Newsom, who has openly said he is considering a run for president in 2028.

Williamson’s attorney did not offer any specifics on what federal officials may have been investigating.

But numerous threads in the indictment echo details in the Activision saga.

Williamson and Campbell both worked as advisors to Activision Blizzard, according to financial disclosures on file with the state. Williamson reported receiving income from the company prior to her appointment in Newsom’s office, state records show. According to records first filed earlier this year, Campbell disclosed that his lobbying firm started being paid by Activision around the time Williamson joined the governor’s office. Activision reported paying $240,000 to his firm in 2023 and 2024. The amount Williamson was paid from Activision was not disclosed.

Activision officials did not respond to emails requesting comment. Lawyers for Williamson, Campbell and McCluskie also did not respond or declined to comment.

The state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing in 2021 sued Activision Blizzard, which distributes video games such as “Call of Duty” and “Candy Crush,” alleging that company officials discriminated against women, paid them less than men and ignored reports of egregious sexual harassment.

The complaint alleges: The company “fostered a pervasive ‘frat boy’ workplace culture that continues to thrive. In the office, women are subjected to ‘cube crawls’ in which male employees drink copious amounts of alcohol as they ‘crawl’ their way through various cubicles in the office and often engage in inappropriate behavior toward female employees. Male employees proudly come into work hungover, play video games for long periods of time during work while delegating their responsibilities to female employees, engage in banter about their sexual encounters, talk openly about female bodies, and joke about rape.”

Activision officials denied the allegations.

The allegations also were investigated by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Activision Blizzard agreed to a consent decree, approved in March 2022, with the agency that required the company to set up an $18-million fund for employees who experienced sexual harassment or discrimination, pregnancy discrimination or retaliation.

Just weeks later, the case drew national attention again when the lawyer overseeing the case for the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Janette Wipper, was fired by the Newsom administration, and her chief deputy resigned and alleged that she was doing so to protest alleged interference of Newsom’s office in the investigation.

“The Office of the Governor repeatedly demanded advance notice of litigation strategy and of next steps in the litigation,” the deputy, Melanie Proctor, wrote to her colleagues. “As we continued to win in state court, this interference increased, mimicking the interests of Activision’s counsel.”

A member of Activision’s board of directors contributed $40,200 to Newsom’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign, and an additional $100,000 to a committee opposing the 2021 recall campaign against Newsom — an effort that failed.

Newsom’s office denied it was meddling. “Claims of interference by our office are categorically false,” Erin Mellon, Newsom’s then-communications director, said at the time.

As case continued to grind through Los Angeles Superior Court, the company stepped up its lobbying presence in Sacramento, according to disclosures filed with the state. Documents show Activision began paying Campbell starting in late 2022 to lobby on its behalf.

Around this time, Newsom announced that he was hiring Williamson to be his chief of staff.

In December 2023 the state announced it had reached a settlement agreement with Activision for $54 million, with the bulk of the funds going to compensate women who had been underpaid. The company did not admit any wrongdoing.

The FBI has made inquires about the Activision settlement, though the focus of the inquiry is unclear. When reached recently, Calabasas attorney Alan Goldstein, who handled a sexual harassment suit against Activision, said he received a call from an FBI agent looking to investigate California’s settlement — but that he couldn’t recall a “substantive conversation.”

Federal investigators were also looking at how Campbell, Williamson and another Sacramento political consultant, Alexis Podesta, conducted their affairs. In unveiling their charges this week, the U.S. Attorney’s office said the investigation began more than three years ago. All three consultants were members of the Sacramento-based Collaborative, a cooperative of top Democratic political operatives.

Podesta from 2017 to 2020 served as secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, which included the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing — the agency that launched the investigation of Activision in 2018.

Williamson received a federal subpoena for information about her handling of a government loan her business had received during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, according to details in the indictment. The indictment accused Williamson of spending vast sums on luxury items — including a Gucci bag, Chanel earrings and a $150,000 Mexican birthday vacation and party, plus yacht rental and private jet travel — and then claimed them as business expenses on her taxes.

She and Campbell had also allegedly conspired with McCluskie to siphon money from Becerra’s dormant campaign account to pay McCuskie’s wife for a fake, “no-show” job working for Williamson. When Williamson went to work for Newsom, the indictment alleges, Podesta took over handling the pass through payments.

By June 2024, someone in the circle was cooperating with federal investigators and wearing a wire, recording Williamson’s private conversations, according to transcripts included in the indictment.

On Nov.14, 2024, according to the indictment, FBI agents interviewed Williamson, questioning her about the Becerra campaign funds and about the pandemic funds.

Investigators also asked her about her actions “while serving in public office to influence the litigation involving the State of California and a former client — Corporation 1,” according to the indictment. The indictment doesn’t identify Corporation 1, but details match the Activision litigation. The indictment notes that Corporation 1 was Williamson’s former client and that it was involved in settlement discussions over a lawsuit with the state in 2023. It also references a state lawyer who had been fired in connection with the litigation.

Williamson, according to the indictment, told the FBI she did not pass any inside information to Campbell or other associates outside the government. But based on their recorded conversations, the indictment said, investigators believed that was not true.

They alleged that in January 2023, shortly after Williamson started as Newsom’s chief of staff, she revealed to Podesta that she had “told a high level government attorney to … get [the case] settled.”

The indictment notes that Corporation 1 was not only Williamson’s former client, but also now Podesta’s current client.

In June 2024, Williamson complained to Podesta that someone had submitted a California Public Records Act request seeking information about meetings and communications between Newsom officials and the company, according to the indictment.

Proctor, the state attorney who resigned in 2022 and had alleged that the Newsom administration was meddling in the Activision case, posted on her Bluesky social media account in July that she had submitted a public records request on May 29, 2024. She also posted the response from Newsom’s office, showing a meeting in January 2024 in the governor’s office among Williamson, Podesta and Robert Kotick, the former chief executive of Activision.

In their June conversation, according to the indictment, Williamson told Podesta, “I just wanted to alert you to the PRAS that we’re starting to get,” the indictment stated. PRAs refer to public records requests.

“Yeah. Ugh. F— her. They really don’t know who they are messing with,” Podesta responded.

“They really don’t,” Williamson said.

Podesta, who is identified in the indictment as “Co-Conspirator 2,” was not charged. On Thursday she sent a message to numerous associates offering her take on the situation.

“While I cannot discuss the details of the ongoing investigation, I want to state plainly that I have always conducted myself — and my business — with integrity.” She also said that she continued to “cooperate fully with federal authorities.”

On Friday afternoon, McCluskie and Campbell appeared in federal court in Sacramento to be arraigned on conspiracy charges in back-to-back proceedings.

Both men had previously reached plea agreements with prosecutors and will be back in court to enter those pleas, McCluskie in late November and Campbell in early December.

Prosecutors did not seek detention for either man, but they were ordered to surrender their passports and avoid associating with other alleged co-conspirators.

In brief remarks to reporters, Campbell’s attorney, Todd Pickles, said that his client “takes full accountability for his actions” and would “in appropriate time further discuss the charges.” But, Pickles noted, those charges “do not include Mr. Campbell engaging in advocacy or lobbying on behalf of any client.”

Times staff writers Katie King and Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.

In the early 2000s, after a severe slump, McDonald’s orchestrated a major turnaround, with the introduction of its Dollar Menu.

The menu, where all items cost $1, illustrated just how important it was to market to low-income consumers — who value getting the most bang for their buck.

Coming at a time of flagging growth, tumbling stock and the company’s first report of a quarterly loss, the Dollar Menu reversed the fast food giant’s bad fortune. It paved the way for three years of sales growth at stores open at least a year and ballooned revenue by 33%, news outlets reported at the time.

But no longer.

Prices have risen so high at the iconic fast food chain that traffic from one of its core customer bases, low-income households, has dropped by double digits, McDonald’s chief executive Christopher Kempczinski told investors last week. Meanwhile, traffic from higher-earners increased by nearly as much, he said.

The struggle of the Golden Arches — long synonymous with cheap food for the masses — reflects a larger trend upending the consumer economy and making “affordability” a hot policy topic.

McDonald’s executives say the higher costs of restaurant essentials, such as beef and salaries, have pushed food prices up and driven away lower-income customers who are already being squeezed by the rising cost of groceries, clothes, rent and child care.

With prices for everything rising, consumer companies concerned about the pressures on low-income Americans include food, automotive and airline businesses, among others, said analyst Adam Josephson. “The list goes on and on,” he said.

“Happy Meals at McDonald’s are prohibitively expensive for some people, because there’s been so much inflation,” Josephson said.

Josephson and other economists say the shrinking traffic of low-income consumers is emblematic of a larger trend of Americans diverging in their spending, with wealthier customers flexing their purchasing power and lower-income shoppers pulling back — what some call a “K-shaped economy.”

A recent earnings report from Delta offers yet another illustration. While Delta’s main cabin revenue fell 5% for the June quarter compared to a year ago, premium ticket sales rose 5%, highlighting the divide between affluent customers and those forced to be more economical.

At hotel chains, luxury brands are holding up better than low budget options. Revenue at brands including Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis is up 2.9% so far this year, while economy hotels saw a 3.1% decline for the same period, according to industry tracker CoStar.

“There are examples everywhere you look,” Josephson said.

Consumer credit delinquency rates show just how much low-income households are hurting, with households that make less than $45,000 annually seeing “huge year-over-year increases,” even as delinquency rates for high- and middle-income households have flattened and stabilized, said Rikard Bandebo, chief strategy officer and chief economist at VantageScore.

After COVID-19-related stimulus programs ended, these households were the first to see dramatically increased delinquency rates, and haven’t seen a dip in delinquencies since 2022, according to data from VantageScore on 60-day past-due delinquencies from January 2020 to September 2025. And although inflation has come down from its peak in 2022, people are still struggling with relatively higher prices and “astronomical” rent increases, Bandebo said.

A report released this year by researchers with Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University found that half of all renters, 22.6 million people, were cost-burdened in 2023, meaning they spent more than 30% of their income on housing and utilities, up 3.2 percentage points since 2019 and 9 percentage points since 2001. Twenty-seven percent of renters are severely burdened, spending more than 50% of their income on housing.

As rents have grown, the amount families have left over after paying for housing and utilities has fallen to record lows. In 2023, renters with annual household incomes under $30,000 had a median of just $250 per month in residual income to spend on other needs, an amount that’s fallen 55% since 2001, with the steepest declines since the pandemic, according to the Harvard study.

“It’s getting tougher and tougher every month for low-income households to make ends meet,” Bandebo said.

Prices at limited-service restaurants, which include fast-food restaurants, are up 3.2% year over year, at a rate higher than inflation “and that’s climbing” said Marisa DiNatale, an economist at Moody’s Analytics.

On top of that, price increases due to tariffs disproportionately affect lower-income households, because they spend a greater portion of their income on goods rather than services, which are not directly impacted by tariffs. Wages too, are stagnating more for these households compared to higher- and middle-income households, DiNatale said.

“It has always been the case that more well-off people have done better. But a lot of the economic and policy headwinds are disproportionately affecting lower-income households, and [McDonald’s losing low-income customers] is a reflection of that,” DiNatale said.

It makes sense, then, that any price increases would hit these consumers hard.

According to a corporate fact sheet, from 2019 to 2024, the average cost of a McDonald’s menu item rose 40%. The average price of a Big Mac in 2019, for example, was $4.39, rising in 2024 to $5.29, according to the company. A 10-piece McNuggets Meal rose from $7.19 to $9.19 in the same time period.

The company says these increases are in line with the costs of running a restaurant — including soaring labor costs and high prices of beef and other goods.

Beef prices have skyrocketed, with inventory of the U.S. cattle herd at the lowest in 75 years due to the toll of drought and parasites. And exports of beef bound to the U.S. are down because of Trump’s trade war and tariffs. As a result, the prices of ground beef sold in supermarkets is up 13% in September, year over year.

McDonald’s has also placed blame on the meat-packing industry, accusing it of maneuvering to artificially inflate prices in a lawsuit filed last year against the industry’s “Big Four” companies — Tyson, JBS, Cargill and the National Beef Packing Company.

The companies have denied wrongdoing, and paid tens of millions of dollars to settle multiple lawsuits alleging price-fixing.

However, McDonald’s chief financial officer Ian Borden said on the recent earnings call that the company has managed to keep expenses from getting out of control.

“I think the strength of our supply chain means our beef costs are, I think, certainly up less than most,” he said.

McDonald’s did not disclose how the company gauges the income levels of their customers but businesses often analyze the market area they serve by estimating the background of their customers based on where they are shopping and what they are buying.

In California, the debate around fast food prices has centered on labor costs, with legislation going into effect last year raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers at chains with more than 60 locations nationwide.

But more than a year after fast-food wages were boosted, the impact is still being debated, with economists divided and the fast-food industry and unions sparring over its impact.

Fast-food restaurant owners as well as trade associations like the International Franchise Assn., which spearheaded an effort to block the minimum wage boost, have said businesses have been forced to trim employee hours, institute hiring freezes or lay people off to offset the cost of higher wages.

Meanwhile, an analysis by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics of some 2,000 restaurants found the $20 wage did not reduce fast-food employment, and “led to minimal menu price increases” of about 8 cents on a $4 burger.”

Labor groups have also argued that minimum wage increases give workers more purchasing power, helping to stimulate the economy.

McDonald’s said last year that spending by the company on restaurant worker salaries had grown around 40% since 2019, while costs for food, paper and other goods were up 35%.

The success of its Dollar Menu in the early 2000s was remarkable because it had come amid complaints of the chain’s highly processed, high-calorie and high-fat products, food safety concerns and worker exploitation.

As the company marketed the Dollar Menu, which included the double cheeseburger, the McChicken sandwich, french fries, a hot fudge sundae and a 16-ounce soda, it also added healthier options to its regular menu, including salads and fruit.

But the healthier menu items did not drive the turnaround. The $1 double cheeseburgers brought in far more revenue than salads or the chicken sandwiches, which were priced in the $3 to $4.50 range.

“The Dollar Menu appeals to lower-income, ethnic consumers,” said Steve Levigne, vice president for United States business research at McDonald’s, told the New York Times in 2006. “It’s people who don’t always have $6 in their pocket.”

The Dollar Menu eventually became unsustainable, however. With inflation driving up prices, McDonald’s stores, particularly franchisee locations, struggled to afford it, and by November 2013 rebranded it as the “Dollar Menu & More” with prices up to $5.

Last year, McDonald’s took a stab at appealing to cash-stretched customers with a $5 deal for a McDouble or McChicken sandwich, small fries, small soft drink and four-piece McNuggets. And in January it rolled out a deal offering a $1 menu item alongside an item bought for full price, with an ad starring John Cena, and launched Extra Value Meals in early September — offering combos costing 15% less than ordering each of the items separately.

The marketing didn’t seem to immediately cut through to customers, with McDonald’s in May reporting U.S. same-store sales in the recent quarter declined 3.6% from the year before. However, in its recent third-quarter earnings, the company reported a 2.4% lift in sales, even as its chief executive sounded the alarm about the increasingly two-tiered economy.

That other businesses, too, are reviving deals is a sign of the times. San Francisco-based burger chain Super Duper promoted its “recession combo” on social media. For $10, customers get fries, a drink and a “recession burger” at one of the chain’s 19 California locations.

What’s clear is companies are wary of passing along higher costs to customers, said DiNatale, of Moody’s Analytics.

“A lot of businesses are saying, we just don’t think consumers will stand for this,” DiNatale said. “[Consumers] have been through years of higher prices, and there’s just very little tolerance for higher prices going forward.”

WASHINGTON  — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups urged the Supreme Court on Friday to block new California laws that will require thousands of companies to disclose their emissions and their impacts on climate change.

One of the laws is due to take effect on Jan. 1, and the emergency appeal asks the court to put it on hold temporarily.

Their lawyers argue the measures violate the 1st Amendment because the state would be forcing companies to speak on its preferred topic.

“In less than eight weeks, California will compel thousands of companies across the nation to speak on the deeply controversial topic of climate change,” they said in an appeal that also spoke for the California Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles County Business Federation.

They say the two new laws would require companies to disclose the “climate-related risks” they foresee and how their operations and emissions contribute to climate change.

“Both laws are part of California’s open campaign to force companies into the public debate on climate issues and pressure them to alter their behavior,” they said. Their aim, according to their sponsors, is to “make sure that the public actually knows who’s green and who isn’t.”

One law, SB 261, will require several thousand companies that do business in California to assess their “climate-related financial risk” and how they may reduce that risk. A second measure, Senate Bill 253, which applies to larger companies, requires them to assess and disclose their emissions and how their operations could impact the climate.

The appeal argues these laws amount to unconstitutional compelled speech.

“No state may violate 1st Amendment rights to set climate policy for the Nation. Compelled-speech laws are presumptively unconstitutional — especially where, as here, they dictate a value-laden script on a controversial subject such as climate change,” they argue.

The emergency appeal was filed by Washington attorney Eugene Scalia, a son of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

The companies have tried and failed to persuade judges in California to block the measures. Exxon Mobil filed a suit in Sacramento, while the Chamber of Commerce sued in Los Angeles.

In August, U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II in Los Angeles refused to block the laws on the grounds they “regulate commercial speech,” which gets less protection under the 1st Amendment. He said businesses are routinely required to disclose financial data and factual information on their operations.

The business lawyers said they had appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals asking for an injunction, but no action has been taken.

Shortly after the chamber’s appeal was filed, state attorneys for Iowa and 24 other Republican-leaning states joined in support. They said they “strongly oppose this radical green speech mandate that California seeks to impose on companies.”

The justices are likely to ask for a response next week from California’s state attorneys before acting on the appeal.

Warner Bros. Discovery has modified Chief Executive David Zaslav’s contract for a second time this year to prepare for the company’s proposed breakup.

This month’s alterations were outlined in an SEC filing on Thursday — a week before initial bids are due in the Warner Bros. Discovery auction. Industry sources expect Paramount, Comcast and Netflix to make offers for the embattled entertainment company that owns HBO, CNN, Food Network and the storied Warner Bros. movie and television studios.

Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment.

The sale kicked off in September when David Ellison-led Paramount made an unsolicited offer for Warner Bros. Discovery — a month after Ellison and RedBird Capital Partners had acquired Paramount from the Redstone family in an $8-billion deal. The company since has made at least three bids — but all were unanimously rejected by the Warner Bros. Discovery board, which viewed them as too low.

Paramount’s most recent solicitation for Warner Bros. Discovery was for $23.50 per share, which would value the company at about $58 billion.

The external jockeying for Warner Bros. Discovery set the stage for Zaslav and the Warner board to amend his employment agreement. The contract was revised Nov. 7 to clarify that various spin-off configurations would result in the same incentives for Zaslav.

Previously, his contract was amended to outline his compensation and incentives should the Warner Bros. studios and HBO Max spin off from the parent company, as envisioned when Warner announced its breakup plans in June. At the time, Zaslav planned to stay on to run the studios and streaming company, which would be called Warner Bros. in a nod to its historic roots and the pioneering days of the movie industry.

The plan was for the company’s two dozen cable networks, including CNN, TNT, Animal Planet and TLC, to remain behind and the company renamed Discovery Global.

The company is forging ahead with its breakup plans. However, it now plans to spin off the cable channels (Discovery Global) and keep the studios, HBO and the HBO Max streaming service as the surviving corporate entity (Warner Bros.).

“The amendment clarifies that if the separation is achieved by retaining Warner Bros. and spinning off Discovery Global (a ‘Reverse Spinoff’) rather than spinning off Warner Bros. … the Reverse Spinoff will be treated in the same manner … for all purposes of the Zaslav arrangements,” the filing said.

Previously, the company had envisioned that the split would be complete by Dec. 31, 2026. But a full-blown auction could upset those plans — and the transaction could close at a later date.

Zaslav’s contract was modified to extend his employment through December 2030. Previously, his contract was set to expire in December 2027.

“This extension is intended to secure Mr. Zaslav’s leadership of WBD for the same period that we had contracted to have him serve as the chief executive officer of Warner Bros. following a separation,” the filing said.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that nonbinding preliminary bids for the company are due Nov. 20.

Nearly one year after Waymo launched its autonomous ride-hailing service in Los Angeles, the company is ready to take on freeways.

Waymo announced Wednesday that it would begin taking customers on freeways within its 120-square-mile service area in L.A. as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area and Phoenix. The company has been testing on L.A. freeways with safety drivers since early this year.

The expansion to freeways could attract new customers and appeal to riders going longer distances. Waymo vehicles already shuttle customers in Southern California through several freeway-adjacent neighborhoods, including Santa Monica, Culver City and downtown Los Angeles.

“This has been a long time in the making, and I could not be more excited to start bringing freeways to our riders,” said Waymo co-chief executive Dmitri Dolgov at a media event. “It took time to do it properly with a strong focus on system safety and reliability.”

Freeway operations are supported by robust safety protocols and the same artificial intelligence that powers Waymo’s urban driving, the company said. The AI is prepared to handle the unique demands and variables of highway driving, the company said.

In its announcement, the company also said it’s expanding its Bay Area coverage area to include San José, establishing more than 260 square miles of uninterrupted service across the region.

The new San José service will include curbside pickup and drop-off at San José Mineta International Airport.

The only other airport accessible via Waymo is the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix.

Late last month, Tesla announced its robotaxi service would expand to include the San José airport. Tesla launched its robotaxi in Austin, Texas, earlier this year.

Along with Zoox, a self-driving vehicle startup owned by Amazon, Tesla and Waymo are racing to put more autonomous cars on the road and prove the technology is safe and convenient.

Waymo has already completed millions of miles of driverless trips in cities including Austin and Atlanta. The company said it isexpanding soon to Miami and Washington, D.C.

Waymo got its start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, which began in 2009 and put its first autonomous car on the road in 2015. The project rebranded as Waymo in 2016 under Google’s parent company Alphabet and launched its driverless ride-hailing service known as Waymo One in 2020.

Tech scion David Ellison marked his 96th day running Paramount by disclosing an upbeat financial outlook for next year and a plan to reduce an additional 1,600 workers.

Monday’s conference call with analysts was the first time Ellison, Paramount’s chairman and chief executive, directly addressed Wall Street after merging his production company, Skydance Media, with Paramount in August — an $8-billion deal that ushered the Redstone family from the entertainment stage.

One of Ellison’s top priorities will be to reverse decades of under-investment in programming. Paramount plans to increase content spending by $1.5 billion next year, including nearly doubling the number of movies that it releases. The Melrose Avenue studio intends to boost output from eight releases to 15 that are planned for next year.

Investing in technology is another priority, which Ellison referred to as one of its “north stars.” Executives want to build streaming service Paramount+ as the economics crumble for Paramount’s once profitable cable television division, which includes Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central. Paramount also owns CBS stations and the CBS broadcast network.

Paramount announced it will be hiking streaming subscription fees — Paramount+ plans now are offered at $7.99 a month and $12.99 a month — although executives declined to say how much. The goal is to turn its streaming operations profitable this year.

Paramount said the workforce reduction of 1,600 people stemmed from the company’s divestiture late last month of television stations in Chile and Argentina. This comes on top of 1,000 job cuts last month, primarily in the U.S. The company said one of its goals was to operate more efficiently.

More than 800 people — or about 3.5% of the company’s workforce — were laid off in June, prior to the Ellison family takeover.

Ellison and his team have been looking to reduce the company’s workforce by 15%.

On Monday, Paramount executives said they should be able to realize about $3 billion in cost cuts — $1 billion more than initially advertised. The company’s goal is to complete its cost reductions within two years.

The earnings report comes as Paramount has been pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, a proposed merger that would unite two of Hollywood’s original film studios and bulk up Paramount by adding the HBO Max streaming service, a larger portfolio of cable channels, pioneering cable news service CNN and the historic Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank.

Paramount executives declined to discuss its dealings for Warner Bros. Discovery, which has rejected three offers, including a $58-billion bid for the entire company. Ellison’s father, billionaire Larry Ellison, has agreed to back Paramount’s bid.

However, his son spoke broadly about its motivations for any acquisition during the conference call.

“First and foremost, we’re focused on what we’re building at Paramount and transforming the company,” David Ellison said. “There’s no must-haves for us. …. It’s always going to be, how do we accelerate and improve our north-star principles?”

Total revenue for Paramount’s third quarter was $6.7 billion, flat compared with the year-earlier period. Paramount reported a net loss of $257 million for the quarter.

Paramount+ and other streaming services grew by 1.4 million subscribers to 79 million, although 1.2 million of those consumers benefit from free trials. Quarterly Revenue for the streaming operations, including Pluto TV, was up 17%.

The cost-cutting comes as Ellison, 42, has accelerated spending in other areas, including agreeing to pay $7.7 billion for the rights to UFC fights and $1.25 billion over five years to Matt Stone and Trey Parker to continue creating their “South Park” cartoon.

His team, including former Netflix programming chief Cindy Holland, also lured Matt and Ross Duffer, the duo behind “Stranger Things,” away from Netflix. Paramount also paid $150 million to buy the Free Press and bring its co-founder, Bari Weiss, to the company as CBS News editor in chief.

The company also signed a 10-year lease on a film and television production facility under construction in New Jersey, a move that will give the entertainment company access to that state’s tax incentive program.

In a blow, however, Taylor Sheridan, the prolific creator behind the “Yellowstone” franchise, will be packing his bags. Sheridan, who is under contract with Paramount through 2028, made a deal to develop movies and future shows for NBCUniversal after executives he worked with at Paramount departed the company when Ellison took over.

For 2026, the company expects to generate total revenue of $30 billion and adjusted operating income before depreciation and amortization of $3.5 billion.

Shares closed at $15.25, up 1%, before the earnings were announced.

Warner Bros. Discovery reported a $148-million loss in the third quarter, hitting a sour note as the company began fielding interest from would-be buyers as Hollywood braces for a transforming deal.

Earnings for the entertainment company that includes HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. film and TV studios fell short of analyst expectations. A year ago, the company reported profit of $135 million for the third quarter.

Revenue of $9.05 billion declined 6% from the year-ago period. The company swung to a loss of 6 cents a share, compared with last year’s earnings of 5 cents a share.

Still, Chief Executive David Zaslav spent much of Thursday’s call with analysts touting his company’s underlying strengths — while avoided giving details about the company’s sale.

“It’s fair to say that we have an active process underway,” Zaslav said.

Warner Bros. Discovery on Thursday reiterated it is forging ahead with previously announced plans to split into two separate entities by next spring. However, the Warner board acknowledged last month that it was also entertaining offers for the entire company — or its parts — after David Ellison’s Paramount expressed its interest with formal bids.

Paramount has made three offers, including $58 billion in cash and stock for all of Warner Bros. Discovery. That bid would pay Warner stockholders $23.50 a share.

The Ellison family appears determined to win one of Hollywood’s most storied entertainment companies to pair with Paramount, which the Ellisons and RedBird Capital Partners acquired in August.

But Warner Bros. Discovery’s board, including Zaslav, voted unanimously to reject Paramount’s offers and instead opened the auction to other bidders, which is expected to lead to the firm changing hands for the third time in a decade.

Board members are betting the company, which has shown flickers of a turnaround, is worth more than the offers on the table. Despite its rocky third-quarter results, Warner’s stock held its ground in early morning trading at around $22.60 a share.

“Overall we are very bullish,” Zaslav said of the company’s business prospects.

“When you look at our films like ‘Superman,’ ‘Weapons’ and ‘One Battle After Another,’ the global reach of HBO Max and the diversity of our network’s offerings, we’ve managed to bring the best, most treasured traditions of Warner Bros. forward into a new era of entertainment and [a] new media landscape,” he said.

But the company’s results underscored its business challenges.

The studio witnessed a major decline in advertising revenue in the third quarter, reporting $1.41 billion, down 16% from the previous year, which executives attributed to declines in the audience for its domestic linear channels, including CNN, TNT and TLC.

Distribution revenue also took a hit, as the company reported sales of $4.7 billion, a decrease of 4% compared with last year.

Studio revenue increased 24% to $3.3 billion, powered by the success of DC Studios’ “Superman,” horror flick “Weapons” and the latest installment of “The Conjuring.” But even those box office wins couldn’t totally offset shortfalls in other areas of its content business.

Last year, the company was able to sub-license its rights to broadcast the Olympics in Europe, which pushed content revenue to $2.72 billion. But this year, revenue was down 3% to $2.65 billion.

Burbank-based Warner Bros. has had a string of successes in theaters, with nine films opening at the top spot globally at the box office. The studio recently surpassed $4 billion in worldwide box office revenue, making it the first studio to do so this year. Warner Bros. last achieved that milestone in 2019.

Zaslav would like to continue with Warner’s break-up plans, which were announced last June.

The move would allow him to stay on to manage a smaller Hollywood-focused entity made up of the Warner Bros. studios, HBO, streaming service HBO Max and the company’s vast library, which includes Harry Potter movies and award-winning television shows such as “The Pitt.”

The company’s large portfolio of cable channels, including HGTV, Food Network and Cartoon Network, would become Discovery Global and operate independently.

Beyond Paramount, Philadelphia-based Comcast, Netflix and Amazon have expressed interest in considering buying parts of the company.

The company said its third quarter loss of $148 million was the result of a $1.3-billion expense, including restructuring costs.

If you’ve spent any time on a California freeway, you’ve probably seen an increasing number of Tesla cars on the road bearing anti-Musk bumper stickers.

“I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy,” reads one. “Eco-friendly, not Elon-friendly,” reads another. Some bear Elon Musk’s name or image with a bright red slash through them.

Those defensive messages would seem to validate the reasonable expectation that Tesla Chief Executive Musk’s foray into partisan politics — specifically, far-right politics — has sapped the appeal among Democrats and liberals for a product that once proclaimed its owners’ commitment to the fight against global warming and other progressive policies.

A new study from Yale researchers has put meat on that bone. They found that Musk’s partisan behavior has cost Tesla as many as 1.26 million car sales since October 2022. That’s when Musk acquired the social media platform Twitter and gave greater access on it to the far right and other extremist voices.

Musk intensified his partisan journey during the run-up to the 2024 presidential campaign, when he heavily funded Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, and after Trump’s inauguration, when he launched the DOGE service, which strewed chaos throughout the federal government by instituting mass layoffs purportedly in the name of budget-cutting.

What the sales numbers say is that “it’s probably not a good idea to alienate your core constituency with extracurricular political activities if you’re a CEO,” says Kenneth T. Gillingham, an economics professor at Yale’s School of the Environment and lead author of the paper.

The Yale researchers’ analysis of sales figures show that Tesla sales were stronger in Democratic-leaning counties than in Republican counties — until October 2022, when they began to plateau in Democratic areas and then began to fall. Tesla sales rose in Republican areas after that break, but not enough to offset the Democratic decline.

The partisan divide in EV sales has been widely studied. Republican and conservative car buyers have never been a target market for EVs generally, and Teslas particularly.

The Yale study also found that overall EV sales in the U.S. continued to rise after October 2022, benefiting non-Tesla makers of EVs and gas-electric hybrids at virtually a one-to-one rate—those products gained by about 1.26 million sales above what they would have been without the Musk effect.

I asked Tesla to comment on the Yale findings, but haven’t received a reply.

The Yale study points to the effects of CEO outspokenness for good or ill, especially when their topics have little or nothing to do with their companies’ direct interests. It’s one thing to go public with concerns about corporate taxes or tariffs, quite another to divagate into divisive political issues such as global warming or anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

The researchers also point to the Musk effect’s implications for public ecological initiatives, notably California’s EV policies. California’s official target is for 25% of new vehicle sales be for zero emission vehicles next, and 100% by 2035. But ZEV sales have stalled out, according to recent figures.

“The 2026 target was set when Tesla was rapidly increasing its sales,” Gillingham told me. “Without the Musk effect, it would have been easily met. Now it looks unlikely.”

In part that’s because buyers who formerly would have opted for a Tesla have shifted to other brands, but are choosing hybrids, which don’t meet the EV sales standard, rather than full electric models.

The study comes just as Tesla shareholders are scheduled to vote on a pay package for Musk with an estimated value of $1 trillion. The vote will come at the company’s annual meeting Thursday.

As I reported, that pay package treats Musk as the sole indispensable figure in Tesla’s future. But although the Tesla board members who approved the pay proposal described the milestones Musk must meet to collect the full value, the standards have been tweaked to make them more achievable than they appear on the surface.

Whether Tesla shareholders will ever come to see Musk as a drag on the company rather than its savior isn’t currently clear, but with Tesla stock trading at a meme-level price-earnings multiple of about 320 and a market value of more than $1.5 trillion, that epiphany plainly hasn’t occurred yet.

The effect that CEOs’ political excursions have on their companies’ fortunes has been debated for years. The common conclusion is that it depends on whether their statements and positions align with those of their core customer base, or flout them — whether they will “bolster brand loyalty or trigger a backlash against the CEO’s company, as Aaron K. Chatterji of Duke and Michael Toffel of Harvard wrote in 2016.

Chatterji and Toffel examined the impact of several CEOs’ criticisms of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015, which expanded the ability of defendants in civil lawsuits, including those alleging discrimination, to cite their religious beliefs as justification for their actions.

Among the law’s public critics was Apple CEO Tim Cook. Chatterji and Toffel found that Cook’s statement that the law might foster anti-LGBTQ discrimination reduced public acceptance of the law significantly, and even increased the popularity of Apple products. Other corporate leaders have spoken out in favor of international initiatives to fight global warming.

Such forthright commentary about current events and issues are rare, however. The reason may be that it’s difficult for a high-profile executive to keep track of the shifting winds of public discourse; what may appear to be a popular position at one time can draw brickbats as public opinion evolves. Corporate interests may also outweigh the desire to be heard on issues of public concern.

In recent years, many corporate leaders pledged to stand firm against right-wing assaults on voting rights, access to women’s reproductive healthcare, diversity and democracy itself.

Many companies initially promised to end or review their campaign contributions to the 147 Republican lawmakers who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump. Over time, as it happened, many resumed their contributions.

Toyota, for instance, continued to contribute to some of those politicians, explaining that it “supports candidates based on their position on issues that are important to the auto industry and the company … We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress back on their votes on the electoral certification.”

How CEO comments are received by their presumed audience can depend on their context. Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff was long regarded as an echt San Francisco liberal billionaire. But last month he came out in favor of deploying the National Guard to patrol the city’s streets, evidently aligning himself with Trump’s militarization of local law enforcement.

Clearly, Benioff didn’t read the room. His statement caused a furor, prompting some entertainment figures to drop out of Salesforce’s annual tech conference, Dreamforce, causing the prominent venture investor Ron Conway to resign from a Salesforce philanthropic board, and culminating in Benioff’s apologetically withdrawing his suggestion.

Musk is a unique personage in the CEO ranks, as the Yale researchers observe — “the world’s wealthiest person and CEO of the most valuable automaker by market capitalization.”

Tesla’s sales pattern is also unusual in terms of the EV market. The company’s unit sales in the U.S. fell year-to-year in 2024 (by 5.5%) and through the third quarter of this year (by 4.3%). In both periods, overall EV sales in the U.S. rose, by 7.3% last year and 11.7% through the third quarter this year.

Tesla has faced a raft of challenges not directly related to Musk’s personal behavior: an aging product lineup, competitive models from Hyundai, Audi, GM and Ford, and the Edsel-esque sales flop of Musk’s pet project, the Cybertruck.

The Yale researchers took pains to distinguish those factors from the Musk effect by matching auto registrations to county-level Democratic and Republican votes. They found that “more Democratic counties show an increasing propensity to purchase Teslas over time prior to October 2022.” After that point, the trend reversed.

By the first quarter of this year, they found, without the Musk effect, Tesla monthly sales would have been about 150% higher than it was. From October 2022 through the first quarter, they calculated, the lost sales totaled 1 million to 1.26 million vehicles, or 67% to 83% of actual sales during the period.

Over the same time frame, sales of EVs and hybrids by Tesla’s rivals gained 17% to 22% due to consumers rejecting Musk, providing “a clear example of very significant adverse impacts on corporate performance due to the social and political decisions by one of the world’s best-known CEOs.”

The Yale paper suggests that Musk may be too well-known to be good for Tesla. His identification with the company has long been crucial for its success and for its high-flying stock price. The new study suggests that Musk has turned, at long last, into a negative.

CHENNAI, India — Now that artificial intelligence has mastered almost everything we do online, it needs help learning how we physically move around in the real world.

A growing global army of trainers is helping it escape our computers and enter our living rooms, offices and factories by teaching it how we move.

In an industrial town in southern India, Naveen Kumar, 28, stands at his desk and starts his job for the day: folding hand towels hundreds of times, as precisely as possible.

He doesn’t work at a hotel; he works for a startup that creates physical data used to train AI.

He mounts a GoPro camera to his forehead and follows a regimented list of hand movements to capture exact point-of-view footage of how a human folds.

That day, he had to pick up each towel from a basket on the right side of his desk, using only his right hand, shake the towel straight using both hands, then fold it neatly three times. Then he had to put each folded towel in the left corner of the desk.

If it takes more than a minute or he misses any steps, he has to start over.

His firm, a data labeling company called Objectways, sent 200 towel-folding videos to its client in the United States. The company has more than 2,000 employees; about half of them label sensor data from autonomous cars and robotics, and the rest work on generative AI.

Most of them are engineers, and few are well-practiced in folding towels, so they take turns doing the physical labor.

“Sometimes we have to delete nearly 150 or 200 videos because of silly errors in how we’re folding or placing items,” said Kumar, an engineering graduate who has worked at Objectways for six years.

The carefully choreographed movements are to capture all the nuances of what humans do — arm reaching, fingers gripping, fabric sliding — to fold clothes.

The captured videos are then annotated by Kumar and his team. They draw boxes around the different parts of the video, tag the towels, and label whether the arm moved left or right, and classify each gesture.

Kumar and his colleagues in the town of Karur, which is about 300 miles south of Bengaluru, are an unlikely batch of tutors for the next generation of AI-powered robots.

“Companies are building foundation models fit for the physical world,” said Ulrik Stig Hansen, co-founder of Encord, a data management platform in San Francisco that contracts with Objectways to collect human demonstration data. “There’s this huge resurgence in robotics.”

Encord works with robotics companies such as Jeff Bezos-backed Physical Intelligence and Dyna Robotics.

Tesla, Boston Dynamics and Nvidia are among the leaders in the U.S. in the race to develop the next generation of robots. Tesla already uses its Optimus robots — which seem to be often remotely controlled — for different company events. Google has its own AI models for robotics. OpenAI is beefing up its robotics ambitions.

Nvidia projects the humanoid robot market could reach $38 billion over the next decade.

There are also many lesser-known companies trying to provide the hardware, software and data to make a mass-produced, multitasking humanoid robot a reality.

Large language models that power chatbots such as ChatGPT have mastered using language, images, music, coding and other skills by hoovering up everything online. They use the entire internet to figure out how things are connected and mimic how we do things, such as answering questions and creating photo-realistic videos.

Data on how the physical world works — how much force is required to fold a napkin, for example — is harder to get and translate into something AI can use.

As robotics improves and combines with AI that knows how to move in the physical world, it could bring more robots into the workplace and the home. While many fear this could lead to job losses and unemployment, optimists think advanced robots would free up humans from tedious work, lower labor costs and eventually give people more time to relax or focus on more interesting and important work.

Many companies have entered the fray as shovel sellers in the AI gold rush, seeing an opportunity to gather data for what is being called physical AI.

One group of companies is teaching AI how to act in the real world by having humans guide robots remotely.

Ali Ansari, founder of San Francisco-based Micro1, said emerging robotics data collection increasingly focuses on teleoperations. Humans with controllers make the robot do something like picking up a cup or making tea. The AI is fed videos of successful and failed attempts at doing something and learns to do it.

The remote-control training can happen in the same room as the robots or with the controller in a different country. Encord’s Hansen said that there are warehouses planned in Eastern Europe where large teams of operators will sit with joysticks, guiding robots across the world.

There are more of these, what some have dubbed “arm farms,” popping up as demand increases, said Mohammad Musa, founder of Deepen AI, a data annotation firm headquartered in California.

“Today, a mix of real and synthetic data is being used, gathered from human demonstrations, teleoperation sessions and staged environments,” he said. “Much of this work still occurs outside the West, but automation and simulation are reducing that dependency over time.”

Some have criticized teleoperated humanoids for being more sizzle than substance. They can be impressive when others are controlling them, but still far from fully autonomous.

Ansari’s Micro1 also does something called human data capture. It pays people to wear smart glasses that capture everyday actions. It is doing this in Brazil, Argentina, India, and the United States.

San José-based Figure AI, partnered with real estate giant Brookfield to capture footage from inside 100,000 homes. It will collect data about human movement to teach humanoid robots how to move in human spaces. The company said it will spend much of the $1 billion it raised to collect first-person human data.

Meta-backed Scale AI, has collected 100,000 hours of similar training footage for robotics through its prototype laboratory set up in San Francisco.

Still, training bots isn’t always easy.

Twenty-year-old Dev Mandal created a company in Bengaluru, hoping to cash in on the need for physical data to train AI. He offered India’s inexpensive labor to capture movements. After advertising his services, he got requests to help train a robotic arm to cook food as well as a robot to plug and unplug cables in data centers.

But he had to give up the business, as potential clients needed the physical movement data collected in a very specific manner, making it tougher for him to make money, even with India’s inexpensive labor. Clients wanted an exact robot arm, for example, using a certain kind of table with purple lights to be used.

“Everything, down to the color of the table, had to be specified by them,” he said. “And they said that this has to be the exact color.”

Still, there’s lots of work for the towel folders of Karur.

Their boss, Objectways founder Ravi Shankar, says that in recent months, his firm has captured and annotated footage of robotic arms folding cardboard boxes and T-shirts and picking out certain colored objects on a table.

It recently started annotating videos from more advanced humanoid robots, helping train them to sort and fold a mix of towels and clothes, folding them and placing them in different corners of the table. His team had to annotate 15,000 videos of the robots doing the jobs.

“Sometimes the robot’s arms throw the clothes and won’t fold properly. Sometimes it scatters the stack,” but the robots are learning quickly said Kavin, 27, an Objectways employee who goes by one name. “In five or 10 years, they’ll be able to do all the jobs and there will be none left for us.”

Gold’s Gym, a decades-old fitness brand with a cult following and roots in Venice Beach, is allowing almost all of its Southern California outlets to be taken over by Eōs Fitness.

The gym’s long-time SoCal franchisees, brothers Angel and Willy Banos, sold more than 20 locations to Dallas-based Eōs. Gold’s will retain ownership of the original Venice Beach Gold’s Gym, which opened in 1965 and is known to some as “the mecca of bodybuilding.”

Founder Joe Gold opened the Venice location with a focus on strength and conditioning, work ethic and lifestyle. The gym has attracted bodybuilding greats such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno.

The brand has hundreds of other franchised locations across the U.S. and globally, including in Italy and Mexico.

The move isn’t a rejection of California. It allows the chain to open up to new franchisees in the region, the company said in a news release.

“Gold’s Gym has always been a leader in health and fitness, and this decision marks a huge step forward for the brand, our franchisees and our members,” said co-chief executive Danny Waggoner in the release. “We are pushing the brand into a new era while remaining true to our heritage.”

In an email sent to members, Gold’s Gym SoCal said the move to sell “wasn’t a decision we made lightly,” the WeHo Times reported.

The email noted that Eōs Fitness chief executive Rich Drengberg spent more than a decade with Gold’s Gym earlier in his career.

Eōs Fitness operates more than 200 locations across the country under the slogan “Better Gym. Better price.” The Gold’s Gym acquisition will make Southern California the largest market for Eōs, where the brand plans to have 50 locations by the end of the year.

“While this acquisition accelerates our expansion in a highly competitive real estate market, we are especially grateful to Angel and Willy Banos for their vision and diligence in building these gyms,” Drengberg said in a company release.

The new Eōs locations will include Beverly Center, Hollywood, Long Beach and Santa Barbara. Eōs announced in an email to members that the transition took effect Oct. 29 and would not interrupt gym access.

Gold’s Gym was acquired by fitness company RSG Group in 2020. It costs between $1.7 million and $4.3 million plus a franchise fee to own a 25,000 square-foot Gold’s location.

If you blinked you may have missed this, but the stock of Beyond Meat, the purveyor of meatless burger patties, had a spectacular run a few days ago.

The stock had surged by more than 1,400% in the four days through Oct. 22, when shares hit an intraday peak of $7.69, up from a low of 50 cents on Oct. 16.

Given that this El Segundo-based company has never had a profitable year since its 2019 initial public stock offering, the run-up was apparently triggered by the online touting of the stock by a trader named Demitri Semenikhin, and the shares have since settled back to $1.65 (in intraday trading Thursday), the action has market observers asking if “meme stocks” are back.

The answer is no — because they’ve never gone away.

The appetite of small retail investors for what beckon as big scores in unloved stocks has remained strong since the meme stock trade attracted attention during the pandemic year 2021.

The “meme” sobriquet points to the most notable factor driving the swift run-up and rapid downfall of these stocks: They feed on momentum generated by internet touts, not sober assessments of business prospects and financial results. Indeed, the quintessential meme stock has little in the way of profits to catch the eye of serious investors.

Beyond Meat is just the latest company to enjoy sudden meme-dom, followed by an equally sudden dose of reality. In Beyond’s case, the surge came in the wake of its Oct. 13 announcement of the results of a debt swap deal that will massively dilute the stake of shareholders. Short sellers piled into the stock, setting up the momentary rebound typical of meme stocks.

Over the last few months, meme stock traders have piled into, and then out of, shares in Krispy Kreme, GoPro, Kohl’s and other companies that are disdained as underperformers by the Wall Street establishment, only to be taken up by an internet-fueled army of small investors. But those investors seldom have the resources to survive the almost inevitable snapback.

For those who may not recall the meme stock frenzy of 2020-21, here’s a trip down memory lane.

The emblematic meme stock of 2021 was GameStop, a spavined mall-based video game retailer that was struggling through the transformation of its franchise from brick-and-mortar stores to online commerce. The company had lost a combined $1.36 billion from 2018 through 2020, and its future looked bleak.

Then, as if out of nowhere, the stock got noticed by online investment promoters, who urged followers to buy GameStop shares to hurt Wall Street short sellers, who were betting that the stock would keep falling.

The shares climbed relentlessly through January 2021, soaring from a low of $12.16 in mid-December to an intraday high of about $483 on Jan. 28. It closed that day at $193.60, delivering a prompt lesson that investing in stocks based on claims touted online is a mug’s game.

All this action was the product of several confluent factors. One was the pandemic and its attendant lockdowns, which prompted people deprived of social contacts and customary entertainment pursuits to fill their empty hours day-trading stocks. Internet influencers goaded their followers into trading in concert with the goal of putting it to the Man — i.e., rich Wall Street hedge fund managers who were shorting unloved stocks and deserved to be taken down a peg.

GameStop stock wasn’t the first issue to get memed. In 2020, investors piled into Hertz, even though it had been forced to seek bankruptcy protection after the COVID-19 outbreak cratered the rental car market,. Bloomberg even declared 2020 “the year of the meme stock.” (Hertz abandoned a plan to sell new shares into the frenzy after regulators raised questions about it.)

But it was GameStop that made meme stock trading into, well, a meme. GameStop displayed all the elements that drove the meme frenzy, the Securities and Exchange Commission ultimately reported: “(1) large price moves, (2) large volume changes, (3) large short interest, (4) frequent Reddit mentions, and (4) significant coverage in the mainstream media.”

A key element of the meme market was an influx of young individual investors enthralled by get-rich-quick trading come-ons. Robinhood, an online brokerage that cut commissions to zero and enticed new customers with an app that made stock trading resemble playing a video game, disclosed that “its average customer is 31 years old and has a median account balance of $240,” the SEC reported.

One might have expected that as these factors ebbed, the meme stock frenzy would evaporate. It did, somewhat, but not nearly as much as Wall Street pros expected. Indeed, as GameStop rose, the buyers gleefully declared victory over the shorts, fueling the search for more meme-able stocks. Some investors made the theater operator AMC Entertainment a meme stock. Some joined new crazes, such as cryptocurrencies, nonfungible tokens and other assets more or less immune from the traditional investment fundamentals such as revenues and profits and business plans.

Nothing was especially new about individual stocks having a moment in the sun before falling back into obscurity, but the frenzy of early 2021 turned meme stocks into an assiduously followed investment category all its own. Financial pages and tout sheets ran wrap-ups of meme action every year. GameStop and AMC were perennial members of this club, supplemented by newcomers.

In 2022, the star was the bankruptcy-bound retailer Bed Bath & Beyond, which staged a nine-day rally that summer culminated in a one-day 40% surge Aug. 8 on extraordinary volume of 120.5 million shares. (Its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing finally arrived in April 2023.)

To define the category, market analysts generally rely on the factors mentioned by the SEC in its reference to GameStop. But not all meme stocks were similarly obscure before having their day. One that has recently landed on meme stock rosters is Tesla: “Wildly overvalued compared to rival automakers, its shareholders are betting that they can sell their holdings to a greater fool in the near future,” economist J. Bradford Delong of UC Berkeley wrote in May 2024.

Earlier this year, Yale professor Jeff Sonnenfeld polled the attendees of his most recent CEO conference on the question: “Compared to NVIDIA’s 40x P/E forward multiple and Apple’s 30x multiple, has Tesla at 160x become the biggest meme stock in modern financial market history?”

Of the 100 participants, 83 voted “yes.”

Meme investors have acquired new tools to follow and invest in meme targets. Bloomberg and UBS have developed meme stock indexes, and in October a meme stock exchange-traded fund — a mutual fund that trades like a stock — was launched by the investment house Roundhill.

One can hardly fault Roundhill’s warning of the risks of meme investing: “Meme Stocks are characterized by high trading volumes and significant price volatility, often driven by social media trends and investor interest,” it advises potential investors. “Meme Stocks often trade untethered from … fundamentals, driven instead by speculative fervor and viral momentum.”

“Volatility” is the mot juste for this ETF: Despite notching a 17% gain over four days shortly after its introduction, MEME is currently down more than 23% from its Oct. 14 peak.

Meme-stock buying is often triggered or sustained by a nugget of bull-market sentiment. The Beyond Meat narrative included its Oct. 21 announcement of a deal with Walmart that will place its products in more than 2,000 stores. But whether that’s enough to overcome the company’s evident financial headwinds remains questionable.

For Opendoor Technologies, a money-losing residential real estate broker that quintupled in price during a few weeks this summer and nearly doubled in price on a single trading day in September, the story was that lower interest rates would spur more housing transactions.

Opendoor Chairman Keith Rabois bristled at a CNBC anchor’s description of the company as a meme stock during an interview in September, arguing that investors have begun to appreciate its “potential upside.” Beyond Meat didn’t respond to my request for comment on its share price. (Opendoor was the Roundhill ETF’s largest holding when the ETF was launched; more recently, the largest holding has been Beyond Meat.)

The economic fundamentals underlying the overall stock market don’t seem to have much to do with meme stock rallies. The original craze developed when interest rates were close to zero, making stocks look attractive compared with fixed income investments; the current craze has unfolded during a period of high interest rates and economic uncertainty — though that hasn’t stopped the major stock indexes from notching record highs lately.

Small investors would be well advised to keep in mind that the meme market could be the very definition of a risky place to trade. Meme investors tend to crowd into a stock after it has already begun its rapid march upward — and sometimes when that trend is about to reverse.

GameStop hasn’t fallen back to its pre-frenzy price in the low double digits, but with its current price below $23, investors who bought at its January 2021 peak have lost about 80% of their money. (The company staged a 4-to-1 stock split in July 2022, so one must multiply its current price by four to replicate its 2021 prices.)

The smart money says that the meme trade is with us to stay. There’s just too much uninformed, misinformed and self-interested commentary washing about in the investment sphere, too easily accessed by unwary and novice investors. Most of the advice being pushed on investors today isn’t much good, and what can be gleaned from promoters on Reddit even worse. The term “buyer beware” has never been so important.

Nvidia on Wednesday became the first publicly listed company to be valued at $5 trillion, driven by investor confidence in the growth of artificial intelligence.

Nvidia’s shares rose $9.08, or 4.5%, to $210.11 in early morning trading, lifting its market capitalization to $5.1 trillion. The company crossed the new threshold less than four months after it had reached a market value of $4 trillion in July. 

The Santa Clara, California-based company has been buoyed by growing demand for its graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are used in AI applications as well as video gaming. Its shares have surged 51% this year amid plans to roll out new products such as an updated quantum computing platform, as well as partnerships with businesses including AI leaders such as OpenAI and Palantir. 

“Nvidia’s chips remain the new oil or gold in this world for the tech ecosystem as there is only one chip in the world fueling this AI revolution … and it’s Nvidia,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in an Oct. 28 research note. 

Hitting the new market benchmark underscores the upheaval caused by AI, a development widely viewed as the biggest shift in tech since Apple co-founder Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone 18 years ago. Apple rode the iPhone’s success to become the first publicly traded company to be valued at $1 trillion, $2 trillion and, eventually, $3 trillion.

But some on Wall Street are voicing concerns about a possible AI bubble, with officials at the Bank of England earlier this month cautioning about the growing risk that tech stock prices pumped up by the AI boom could burst. The surge in AI-related stocks has lifted the stock market as a whole, with the S&P 500 hitting a record high on Tuesday. 

“The rally, led by technology stocks riding the artificial intelligence wave, has caused many market-watchers to question whether the stock market is in a bubble and if dotcom crash 2.0 might be coming,” said Jeff Buchbinder, chief equity strategist for LPL Financial, in an email, referring to the 2001 crash in internet-based companies.

But, he added, some differences make the comparison less apt, including that companies spending on AI investments today are cash-rich with strong business models generating “massive cash flow.” 

“[W]e don’t think technology’s run is necessarily over,” he noted.

Edited by

Alain Sherter

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.

Nissin Foods, the Japanese giant that brought the world instant ramen, is testing a new kind of noodle in Los Angeles.

Its sprawling, old factory and corporate office in Gardena is now churning out protein-fortified pastas for Angelenos who want more bang for their bowls.

Nissin invented Cup Noodles, a go-to meal for people across the globe and a favorite among those on a budget. More than 100 billion portions of instant noodles from hundreds of companies are consumed every year.

In the U.S., much of Nissin’s expansion came from Gardena, where it started producing noodle packets in the 1970s. By 1973, the company launched Cup Noodles, an innovation aimed at Americans who liked to drink soup from cups.

The latest American preference Nissin has noticed is a surging demand for protein among mainstream consumers. It is popping up in snack foods, espresso drinks and breakfast cereals. Even Pop-Tarts and Doritos have released products with extra protein.

Nissin launched a new Los Angeles-based noodle company to capitalize on the trend this year. The company, Kanzen Meal, which now has around 10 employees, recently began serving up nutrient-dense meals from the frozen foods aisle. Its products are available in dozens of grocery stores across Southern California.

“There’s an interest in nutrient density and people want more bang for their buck out of the foods that they eat,” Kanzen Meal chief executive Bob Little said. “We think that there’s an opportunity to bring those consumers back to the frozen aisle.”

Kanzen Meal’s shrimp teriyaki, spaghetti Bolognese and other products have up to 24 grams of protein .

Convenience food companies around the world have been struggling with a slowdown in many markets as consumers increasingly avoid highly processed foods. Meanwhile, the spreading use of Ozempic is making it easier for millions of people to control their appetites and be choosier about what they consume.

Amiud this trend, Nissin shares have fallen around 30% over the last 12 months.

Nissin, which opened its facility in Gardena in 1972, recently established a new regional headquarters in Torrance, where Kanzen Meal is based. Many of its attempts to remain relevant start in L.A.

This month Nissin announced its upcoming launch of a “hot water van” that will tour the U.S. and distribute samples of instant noodles. For the holiday season, it has unveiled both turkey and pumpkin pie-flavored Cup Noodles.

With the establishment of Kanzen Meals, Nissin is looking to Los Angeles as the prime testing grounds for its products.

“We’ve got deep ties to the Los Angeles area and we thought that this would be a great market for us to start in,” Little said in an interview. “We recognized early on that Los Angeles is the epicenter of well-being.”

Kanzen Meal products hit shelves in stores such as Gelson’s and Bristol Farms in June. Since then the company has been growing rapidly, Little said. The company announced this month it would expand its distribution to stores on the East Coast in states including New York, Connecticut and North Carolina. It plans to have products in 1,000 stores by the end of the year.

Little attributes the swift growth to a surge in consumer demand for simple access to nutrients, especially in Southern California.

Kanzen will introduce two new frozen products this month, including spicy Dandan noodles and spaghetti carbonara. Each meal contains macronutrients, fats, carbs and fiber and retails for $6.99 to $7.99.

As added protein trends online and in stores, nutritionists are warning consumers to pay attention to all the components in a product. Some with a high dose of protein may also contain large amounts of sugar and sodium, experts said.

“The bigger picture here is that just because something has more protein does not mean it’s healthier for you,” said Yasi Ansari, a Los Angeles-based registered dietitian and nutritionist.

The protein boom actually could lead to American consumers overindulging, Ansari said. The average woman needs around 46 grams of protein to prevent a deficiency, and the average man needs 56 grams, she said.

Protein bars typically contain 20 to 30 grams of protein, and new products such as the Starbucks protein latte can have up to 36 grams.

“Protein is vital to the body’s cells, but we may be missing out on other nutrients that we could be getting from a whole food profile,” Ansari said.

Little said Kanzen Meal’s products offer a healthy balance of ingredients. “Kanzen” means complete in Japanese, he pointed out.

Retail analyst Dominick Miserandino said the demand for protein is creating opportunities for new products, including within the $91.3-billion U.S. frozen food market. But the proliferation of food items advertised as high-protein, ranging from toaster pastries to tortilla chips, could lead consumers astray, Miserandino said.

“It might give a false consumer impression that having these snacks is always a healthy choice,” he said. “Are you going to now have a generation of kids eating snack foods for their daily dose of protein?”

The electric truck and SUV company Rivian will lay off hundreds of employees in an attempt to save cash as federal support for electric vehicle adoption wanes under the Trump administration.

The layoffs come less than a month after the expiration of a federal tax credit that once saved many customers $7,500 on new electric vehicles and $4,000 on used ones. Experts said sales will falter without the credit, which ended Sept. 30.

Irvine-based Rivian plans to lay off more than 600 workers, a company spokesperson confirmed, or about 4.5% of its workforce. The company had just under 15,000 employees at the end of last year.

“We have made the very difficult decision to make a number of structural adjustments to our teams,” Chief Executive RJ Scaringe wrote in a note to employees Thursday. “With the changing operating backdrop, we had to rethink how we are scaling our go-to-market functions.”

Rivian wasn’t the only tech company to announce cuts this week, with Meta laying off 600 employees within its artificial intelligence department on Wednesday in an effort to streamline operations and decrease bloat. Meta has revamped its approach to AI in recent months as it competes with OpenAI and Google.

Last month, Rivian had a smaller round of layoffs that affected around 200 employees, or 1.5% of the workforce.

Demand for electric vehicles is stalling as the market becomes saturated and the vehicles get harder to afford, iSeeCars.com analyst Karl Brauer said.

President Trump’s reversal of Biden-era EV incentives, as well as recent auto tariffs that make cars and parts more expensive, are contributing to the slowdown.

Rivian reported a 32% increase in vehicle sales to 13,201 in the third quarter, but lowered its estimate of sales for the full year. The company now expects to deliver between 41,500 and 43,500 vehicles in 2025, down from 46,000.

Brauer said the layoffs are indicative of troubles in the industry, especially for companies such as Rivian and Tesla that produce only electric vehicles and no gas-powered alternatives.

“Electric vehicle production is going to be cut back by every company due to falling demand,” Brauer said. “For purely EV makers, they’re probably already feeling it.”

EV sales in California in 2024 were flat compared to previous years, The Times reported, raising questions on whether automobile manufacturers can meet ambitious state mandates for zero-emission vehicle sales.

To boost sales, Rivian is preparing to launch a new, more affordable model expected to start at $45,000. The company’s current least expensive model is the R1T pickup, priced around $71,000. That price point is inaccessible for many consumers, particularly with the loss of the federal tax credit.

Tesla, the electric vehicle giant run by Elon Musk, released lower-priced versions of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles earlier this month. The launch did not impress investors, however, and analysts said the new prices are not low enough to trigger a buying surge.

The new Model 3 Standard starts at $36,990, $5,500 less expensive than the existing version of the car. The Model Y Standard starts at $39,990, $5,000 less than its pricier counterpart.

Tesla’s stock remained stable after the company reported its third-quarter earnings earlier this week. The company saw a 6% year-over-year increase in total automotive revenues.

Still, Tesla’s numbers missed analysts’ estimates, and Musk has yet to deliver on his long-promised robotaxi venture. Rivian reports its earnings on Nov. 4.

Following the news of the upcoming layoffs, Rivian’s stock was up more than 1% in trading on Thursday. Its shares have shown little change so far this year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose more than 15% over the same period.

Rivian and other EV makers benefited from a temporary surge in sales ahead of the tax credit’s expiration, as customers rushed to get the discount while it was still available.

National sales of new EVs jumped 19% in July from last year, Cox Automotive said, and sales in Orange County increased 7% in July from the month prior.

Now that the credit has been eliminated, the dropoff in sales could be harsh, Brauer warned. Rivian might get a boost when it releases its cheaper model, but the company needs to conserve funds in the meantime.

“Rivian is acknowledging that, and they’re reconfiguring their production plans and their cost structure as a result,” Brauer said. “That’s why they’re laying people off.”