• Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, says AI will transform jobs at the company.
• The tech will create new jobs in robotics and AI, despite automating some existing roles, he said.
• Amazon has 500 open robotics roles on LinkedIn.

AI isn't all doom and gloom for jobs, said Amazon's Andy Jassy.

In an interview with CNBC published on Monday, the Amazon CEO deemed AI "the most transformative technology in our lifetime." He said that it would change things not only for Amazon customers but also for its employees.

Jassy said that AI technologies would create jobs in at least two areas of the company.

"With every technical transformation, there will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate," he said. "Are there going to be other jobs? We're going to hire more people in AI and more people in robotics, and there are going to be other jobs that the technology wants you to go higher that we'll hire over time too."

Jassy said that AI agents, which do tasks like coding, research, analytics, and spreadsheet work, would also change the nature of every employee's job.

"They won't have to do as much rote work," he said. "Every single person gets to start every task at a more advanced starting spot."

On LinkedIn, Amazon has added at least 500 open roles worldwide with the keyword "robotics" in the job title in the past month. Roles span internships to senior applied scientist positions.

The Amazon robotics senior applied scientist job description includes tasks like "developing machine-learning capabilities and infrastructure for robotic perception and motion" and "building visualization tools for analyzing and debugging robot behavior."

Jassy's comments came in response to a question about his June 17 memo, which outlined how AI would change the company's workforce.

"It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company," he wrote.

Some Amazon employees were not happy with Jassy's message. In internal Slack channels, some called for leadership to share in the fallout, while others saw it as a layoff warning, Business Insider reported.

"There is nothing more motivating on a Tuesday than reading that your job will be replaced by AI in a few years," one person wrote in Slack.

Amazon employs about 1.5 million workers, according to its website, and has cut almost 28,000 jobs since the start of 2022, per Layoffs.fyi.

From Jassy's memo and Monday's interview, it is unclear which or how many Amazon employees would be affected by AI-driven job changes.

Other tech CEOs have raised the alarm on AI-related job cuts, especially for white-collar and entry-level roles.

In April, Micha Kaufman, the CEO and founder of the freelance-job site Fiverr, wrote in an email to employees that: "It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, project manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person — AI is coming for you."

In late May, Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, suggested AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.

"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming," Amodei told Axios in an interview. "I don't think this is on people's radar."

• Microsoft said its medical AI diagnosed cases four times as accurately as human doctors.
• The AI system also solved cases "more cost-effectively" than its human counterparts, Microsoft said.
• The study comes as AI's growing role in healthcare raises questions about its place in medicine.

Microsoft said its medical AI system diagnosed cases more accurately than human doctors by a wide margin.

In a blog post published on Monday, the tech giant said its AI system, the Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator, diagnosed cases four times as accurately as a group of experienced physicians in a test.

Microsoft's study comes as AI tools rapidly make their way into hospitals and clinics, raising questions about how much of medicine can or should be automated and what role doctors will play as diagnostic AI systems get more capable.

The experiment involved 304 case studies sourced from the New England Journal of Medicine. Both the AI and physicians had to solve these cases step by step, just like they would in a real clinic: ordering tests, asking questions, and narrowing down possibilities.

The AI system was paired with large language models from tech companies like OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, and Google. When coupled with OpenAI's o3, the AI diagnostic system correctly solved 85.5% of the cases, Microsoft said.

By contrast, 21 practicing physicians from the US and UK — each with five to 20 years of experience — averaged 20% accuracy across the completed cases, the company added. In the study, the doctors did not have access to resources they might typically tap for diagnostics, including coworkers, books, and AI.

The AI system also solved cases "more cost-effectively" than its human counterparts, Microsoft said.

"Our findings also suggest that AI reduce unnecessary healthcare costs. US health spending is nearing 20% of US GDP, with up to 25% of that estimated to be wasted," it added.

"We're taking a big step towards medical superintelligence," said Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft's AI division, in a post on X.

He added that the cases used in the study are "some of the toughest and most diagnostically complex" a physician can face.

Suleyman previously led AI efforts at Google.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Will AI replace doctors?

Microsoft said in the blog post that AI "represents a complement to doctors and other health professionals."

"While this technology is advancing rapidly, their clinical roles are much broader than simply making a diagnosis. They need to navigate ambiguity and build trust with patients and their families in a way that AI isn't set up to do," Microsoft said.

"Clinical roles will, we believe, evolve with AI," it added.

Tech leaders like Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates have said that AI could help solve the long-standing shortage of doctors.

"AI will come in and provide medical IQ, and there won't be a shortage," he said on an episode of the "People by WTF" podcast published in April.

But doctors have told BI that AI can't and shouldn't replace clinicians just yet.

AI can't replicate physicians' presence, empathy, and nuanced judgment in uncertain or complex conditions, said Dr. Shravan Verma, the CEO of a Singapore-based health tech startup.

Chatbots and AI tools can handle the first mile of care, but they must escalate to qualified professionals when needed, he told BI last month.

Do you have a story to share about AI in healthcare? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Ray Dalio said solving America's debt problem will require a bipartisan solution.
• But Dalio said Republicans and Democrats can't do it "because politics have become so absolutist."
• "To me, that's a tragedy," he added.

Ray Dalio, the founder and former CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, said on Monday that Republicans and Democrats don't have the political will to reduce the country's national debt.

"There is no way that the deficit/debt bomb problem can be sustainably dealt with unless there is a mix of tax revenue increases and spending decreases that are determined in a bipartisan way," Dalio wrote in an X post on June 30.

Dalio said in his post that both Republicans and Democrats know they have to cut the deficit by raising taxes and cutting spending. This "would lead to a supply/demand balance improvement for US debt which in turn would lower interest rates," he added.

Dalio said lower interest rates would "reduce the budget deficit" and "help the markets and the economy."

"But because politics have become so absolutist, they feel they can't go down this obviously best path because both their constituents and their parties will throw them out of office if they explored this more balanced approach," Dalio wrote on X.

"To me, that's a tragedy," he added.

A representative for Dalio did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

This isn't the first time Dalio has warned about the ramifications of leaving debt levels unattended. In February, Dalio told attendees at the World Governments Summit in Dubai that the US could suffer the financial equivalent of a "heart attack" if debt continued to soar.

Then, in March, Dalio said he had met House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington and other House Republicans to discuss the national debt. Dalio said after the meeting that there was a "pretty broad recognition" among attendees that the deficit needed to be reduced to around 3% of US GDP.

The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in the 2024 fiscal year but only collected $4.92 trillion in revenue. The resulting deficit of $1.83 trillion was $138 billion higher than the previous fiscal year's.

Dalio isn't the only business leader who has sounded the alarm on the US debt problem.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has sharply criticized President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" for worsening the country's debt situation. Musk was a prominent financial backer of Trump and used to lead the administration's cost-cutting outfit, the White House DOGE Office.

But Musk broke with Trump just days after he announced his departure from DOGE on May 28. Musk called Trump's bill a "MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK" on June 5 before walking back his attacks the following week.

Musk, however, resumed his attacks on the bill over the weekend. The bill is pending a vote in the Senate, and GOP lawmakers hope to send it to Trump's desk by July 4.

"It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country — the PORKY PIG PARTY!!" Musk wrote in an X post on Monday.

• X's new head of product, Nikita Bier, said he got the job by posting his way to the top.
• Bier said he spends "every waking hour" on X.
• In 2022, he tweeted at Elon Musk asking for the product head role.

Here's how X's new head of product said he got the job: "I've officially posted my way to the top."

Nikita Bier, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur, posted a picture on X on Monday with the platform's owner, Elon Musk, writing about how he landed his new appointment.

"While I already spend every waking hour on this app, I'll now be spending that time helping others unlock that same value," he said in the post.

Musk reposted Bier's announcement with the caption, "Welcome to X!"

The appointment was a long time coming for Bier — he has had his eye on the role for more than three years. In April 2022, shortly after Musk took over X — which was then called Twitter — Bier tweeted at Musk asking for the role: "@elonmusk Hire me to run Twitter as VP of Product."

"Twitter has the potential to be the leading messenger, groups app & content creation tool," he said in the post.

Shortly after his appointment on Monday, Bier added the comment "Never give up" to his old post.

Bier worked as a Meta product manager from 2017 to 2021. He cofounded tbh, an anonymous polling app for teenagers, which was acquired by Facebook in 2017. Less than a year later, Facebook shut down the app, citing "low usage."

Bier also cofounded Gas, a social media app similar in function to tbh. Discord acquired it in January 2023 and shut it down in November.

Along with being a serial entrepreneur, Bier is also a serial poster. He posts on X several times daily and has garnered a following of over half a million on the app.

Over the years, he has provided Musk with product advice on X. In January 2023, Bier wrote that he would pay Musk $100 to "revert all product changes back" to what they were before he acquired Twitter.

Representatives for X did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Olivia Munn says her breast cancer diagnosis taught her to let go of the "extra baggage" in her life.
• "When I got the diagnosis, immediately, the negative thoughts in my head, I dropped all of that," she said.
• Despite being more common in middle-aged and older women, breast cancer is rising among women under 50.

Olivia Munn, 44, says her breast cancer diagnosis forced her to confront her priorities in life.

On Monday's episode of "Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard," Munn spoke about how her cancer journey prompted her to let go of distractions and focus on the things she truly cared about.

The "X-Men: Apocalypse" actor was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy in 2023.

"When I got the diagnosis, immediately, the negative thoughts in my head, I dropped all of that. Because when you are diagnosed with cancer you have one job," Munn told podcast host Dax Shepard.

Munn said her sole focus at that point in time became recovery, and with all her energy dedicated to surviving cancer, she had no room to think about anything else.

"That's all your mind is thinking about, and you're like 'How do I get through this? How do I get through this? How do I live? How do I survive?' Because there's no way to climb Everest with extra baggage on your shoulders," Munn said.

When she recovered, she realized the experience had completely changed her mindset.

"I'm like, oh, now that I got to the other side, I'm not going to — I can't imagine picking it back up," Munn said.

"That's what cancer did for me," she added. "It was literally one step at a time, right, so when I have the thoughts that creep in, I think very quickly and let it go."

Munn isn't the only public figure who has publicly spoken about their cancer journey.

In April 2024, Shannen Doherty had said on her podcast that she was getting rid of some of her belongings after her breast cancer returned as stage 4. Doherty died in July 2024 at 53.

In November, Kathy Bates said that she decided against having reconstruction surgery after getting a double mastectomy in 2012 due to breast cancer.

In the US, breast cancer accounts for about 30% of all new cancer diagnoses in women each year, per data from the American Cancer Society. Although breast cancer mainly occurs in middle-aged and older women, the disease is on the rise among those who are 50 and below.

A representative for Munn did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular hours.

• Elon Musk reignited his criticism of Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" over the weekend.
• Musk had sharply criticized the bill on June 5 but backed away from his attacks just days later.
• Musk has since resumed his attacks and said he will form his own political party if the bill passes.

Elon Musk is not done slamming President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" just yet.

Musk started criticizing Trump's spending bill on June 5 but walked back the attacks just days later. Musk said in an X post on June 11 that some of his remarks on Trump had gone "too far."

But the detente did not last long. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO reignited his attacks on the bill over the weekend and hasn't stopped since.

On Saturday, Musk wrote on X that the president's signature tax bill "will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country."

"Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future," he continued.

GOP lawmakers hope to send the bill, which is pending a vote in the Senate, to Trump's desk by July 4. Musk, however, said he would defeat politicians who voted for the bill if it passed and form his own political party.

"It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country — the PORKY PIG PARTY!!" Musk wrote in an X post on Monday.

"Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people," he said.

Musk said in a follow-up post, published just an hour later, that any politician who voted for the bill despite campaigning on cutting government spending should "hang their head in shame."

"And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth," he added.

Musk said later that a new party, the "America Party," will be formed the day after the "insane spending bill passes."

"Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE," Musk added.

Musk had long opposed Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill." In an interview with CBS that aired last month, Musk said he was "disappointed to see the massive spending bill."

Musk said the bill "undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," the government cost-cutting outfit he led when he was a part of the Trump administration. Musk announced his departure from the White House DOGE office on May 28.

"I think a bill can be big, or it could be beautiful. I don't know if it could be both," Musk told CBS.

Musk's disagreement with Trump over the bill marks a rare break between the two men. Musk had been a prominent backer of Trump's presidential campaign last year, where he spent at least $277 million backing Trump and other GOP candidates in the 2024 elections.

When Musk criticized Trump's bill earlier in June, he took credit for Trump and the GOP's electoral victories in 2024. That was also when he first floated the possibility of forming his own political party.

"Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate," Musk wrote on X on June 5.

"Such ingratitude," he continued.

Musk said in an interview with Bloomberg on May 20 that he had "done enough" political spending and planned to "do a lot less in the future."

"Well, if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it," he added.

Trump initially expressed disappointment at Musk's behavior but has since taken a more conciliatory tone with Musk. Trump said last week that he still views Musk positively but has not spoken to him much.

"He's a smart guy. And he actually went and campaigned with me and this and that," Trump said in an interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday.

"But he got a little bit upset, and that wasn't appropriate," he added.

Musk and the White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Canada scrapped a digital services tax after a trade threat from President Donald Trump.
• The tax would have cost US tech firms billions each year and $3 billion in retroactive payments.
• Similar digital taxes also exist in France and the UK, aimed at large digital companies.

US tech giants came close to paying billions to Canada under a new tax law.

Had Canada not halted a digital services tax enacted in 2024 that applies retroactively to 2022, US tech giants would have needed to pay Canada approximately $3 billion upfront on Monday, on top of a 3% levy on all revenue earned from digital services linked to Canadian users going forward.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association estimated that Canada's tax measure would lead to annual losses of between $900 million and $2.3 billion for US firms and could result in up to 3,000 job losses in the country.

In a separate estimate by Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer in 2023, the DST would generate CA$7.2 billion in revenue for the government over five years, which is about $5.29 billion at the current exchange rate.

The digital services tax, which is a tax on companies that earn revenue in Canada through social media advertisements and other online services, was halted on Sunday after President Donald Trump announced on his social media on Friday that the US would be "terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada" over the measure.

Canadian Minister of Finance and National Revenue François-Philippe Champagne will introduce legislation to officially rescind the tax.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also discussed launching a Section 301 investigation on Canada's tax measure on CNBC on Friday.

"Today's announcement will support a resumption of negotiations toward the July 21, 2025, timeline set out at this month's G7 Leaders' Summit in Kananaskis," wrote Mark Carney, Canada's Prime Minister, in a statement posted by Canada's Department of Finance.

The tax measure would have applied to tech companies with worldwide annual revenues greater than 750 million euros ($885 million) and Canadian digital services revenue greater than $20 million a year. Services subject to the tax include advertising, social media, and marketplaces, and large tech companies in the US, like Meta, Amazon, and Apple, would primarily be affected.

Canada is the US's second-largest trading partner and the top buyer of US exports. According to the Census Bureau, the northern neighbour bought $349.4 billion in US exports in 2024 and exported $412.7 billion worth of goods across the border. Canada has been spared from some of Trump's highest tariffs, but still faces a 50% duty on steel and aluminum.

Canada is not the first or the only country to propose a digital services tax. Both France and the UK have similar measures aimed at taxing revenue generated by large multinational digital companies.

The White House has restarted trade talks with Canada following the scrapped tax policy.

Carney's office, the White House, Meta, and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

• Federal Reserve leader Austan Goolsbee smoothed stagflation fears at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
• Goolsbee cited low unemployment and falling inflation as reasons not to panic.
• Despite pressure, the Federal Reserve maintains high interest rates to bring down inflation.

A Federal Reserve leader thinks that fears of stagflation are overblown.

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Austan Goolsbee, pushed back on concerns that recent supply-side shocks, like tariffs and global military conflicts, could trigger a return to an era of double-digit inflation and sky-high joblessness.

Goolsbee said that with unemployment near 4% and inflation around 2.5% and falling, he sees no possibility that tariffs or another supply-side shock could cause actual 1970s-style stagflation in the near term, referring to a time when inflation topped 13% and unemployment exceeded 8%.

"There's definitely the possibility of both things getting worse at the same time," Goolsbee added, referring to inflation and unemployment. "And there you usually say, well, how long is each side's discrepancy going to last? Do you think it's temporary or do you think it's permanent? And how big is each side... that's the way I think about it."

Goolsbee offered no forecast, but his remarks come as the Federal Reserve continues to hold interest rates in an effort to bring inflation back to its 2% target.

While core inflation, which excludes more volatile prices like food and energy, is down from its 2022 peak, it has remained sticky in key sectors like housing and services.

Despite mounting pressure from markets and President Donald Trump to cut rates, Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, has said the agency needs to see stronger evidence that inflation is firmly under control, especially after several months of higher-than-expected price indexes earlier this year.

In a post on Monday, Trump called the chair "Jerome 'Too Late' Powell" and said that people in the US "should be paying 1% Interest" in a social media post. The Trump administration is also looking into ways to replace Powell, though his term doesn't expire till next May. Powell's term as a member of the board of governors also doesn't expire until 2028.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

• Paul and Ellen Eggers left California and moved to Penang, Malaysia, after they retired.
• They live in a beachfront condo that costs 8,000 Malaysian ringgit, or about $1,800, each month.
• They say their lifestyle in Malaysia isn't that different from the US — except they've learned to play Mahjong.

In the 1970s, Paul and Ellen Eggers taught in Malaysia as volunteers with the US Peace Corps.

The experience left a lasting impression, and decades later, as they prepared to retire from their jobs as college professors in California, they decided to return.

"I had read an article in Forbes Magazine about people retiring overseas," Ellen, now 70, told Business Insider. "We hadn't really thought a lot about it before, but then one of the places that was listed as very popular and very affordable was Penang in Malaysia."

They were familiar with the Southeast Asian country, having returned for vacations over the years, and never forgot how much they enjoyed it.

In 2015, with the goal of retiring in the next year or two, the couple spent five weeks in Malaysia to see if it felt right for the next chapter of their lives.

"We knew that our income could go a lot farther in Malaysia, and we thought, 'We could actually do this. Why not?'" Ellen said.

When it was finally time for them to retire, they didn't hesitate to say goodbye to their lives in the US. The couple got rid of almost everything they owned, including two cars, furniture, and hundreds of books, which they donated to their university.

"It was a very easy decision for us," Paul, now 71, told BI.

Moving across the world

It's been seven years since the couple moved to Penang, a state in the northwestern part of Malaysia.

They had spent just one weekend there back in the '70s, Paul said. "We didn't really know Penang well at all when we came on our reconnaissance trip, but we liked what we saw, so that made our decision for us."

Unlike the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital, they were drawn to Penang for its mix of natural and urban landscapes. Moreover, they didn't want to own a car, and Penang's reliable public transport system made getting around easy.

However, the couple's decision to move across the world surprised some of their family and friends back home. They weren't familiar with Malaysia, and weren't sure what to make of it. Paul said.

"Some of them thought we were nuts. I think some of them still do, seven years later," Ellen said.

Not having children of their own made the move simpler.

"I think it would be more difficult if you had children and grandchildren — although many of our friends do, and they make it work just fine with visits," Ellen said.

The couple is on the Malaysia My Second Home, or MM2H, visa program, which was first introduced in 2002 to attract foreigners to retire and live in Malaysia.

The most recent rule changes, announced in 2024, included stricter financial requirements, including the need to buy property in Malaysia.

Since the couple obtained their visas under an earlier version of the program, they were grandfathered in under the old rules and weren't required to purchase property, Paul said.

Back in the US, they owned a 2,000-square-foot home in the Sierra Nevada foothills, which they sold for $290,000 before relocating to Malaysia.

Now, they're settled in a three-bedroom beachfront condo — their third home in Penang — which they moved into eight months ago. Rent is 8,000 Malaysian ringgit, or about $1,800, each month.

"Honestly, we really like the idea of not owning anything. Not owning a house, not owning a car; it's very freeing," Ellen said.

Their complex has a pool, gym, and tennis courts, and they're within walking distance of grocery stores and clinics. Georgetown, the capital of Penang, is a 15-minute car ride away.

While they don't track every expense month to month, they always keep a close eye on what's coming in and going out.

They estimate that their living expenses — inclusive of rent — usually come up to around 12,000 ringgit to 13,000 ringgit, or about $2,800 to $3,060, each month.

Retired life in Penang

The couple says they're enjoying their retirement in Penang.

"Of course, when we were in the US, we were working, so that took up a very big part of the day," Ellen said. "We have much more time for personal hobbies and pastimes. We both read a lot. We try to exercise quite a lot."

Paul says their lifestyle in Malaysia isn't that different from the US. "We pretty much do what we did in the States," he added.

With one exception — they've learned how to play Mahjong, a tile-based strategy game that's extremely popular all over Asia.

"I've met many people through that," Ellen said. "It's a lovely thing that you meet people from all over the world here and think nothing of sitting down at a table with two people from Europe and two people from Australia. It's just so natural."

The other friends they've made came through mutual connections, she added.

Penang also has an international airport, which makes it easy for them to travel around the region and beyond, including New Zealand and Australia. They recently returned from a cruise in Norway, Paul said.

"Malaysia is so accessible to everywhere, not just Southeast Asia. It's easy to get a flight to Europe, and because we are saving so much money here, we can afford to travel," Ellen said.

They both speak Malay from living in Malaysia years ago, but Paul says you can easily get by in Penang with just English.

Those who want to make a similar move should pay attention to one thing: The heat.

"It seems like a minor thing, but a lot of people are quite shocked at the tropical heat and don't realize how careful you have to be with the sun and hydration and things like that," Ellen said.

Penang has come to feel like home in the years they've lived here.

"We're just very familiar with Malaysian lifestyle, the language, the customs, and so on," Paul said.

"In fact, the things that are different are the things that we love. We like the food, the nature, the climate, and the friendliness of Malaysians," Ellen added. "And no snow."

Do you have a story to share about retiring and moving to a new city? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's wedding in Venice last week was met with a wave of protests.
• While demonstrations focused on the wedding, overtourism is the primary concern among protesters.
• "We used him to speak about the real problems of Venice," a protest organizer said.

If you were in Venice last week and not on Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez's 200-person guest list, you may not have known the glamorous celebrations were going on. But that didn't stop local Venetians from protesting against the event.

That's because the demonstrations weren't only about the third-richest man in the world.

They were about pushing back against the idea of Venice as a theme park and playground for billionaires — rather than as a living city that's home to 50,000 people in the historic center who are fed up with the impacts of mass tourism.

"He wanted to use Venice as a background," Tommaso Cacciari, a Venetian activist and a leader of the No Space for Bezos movement, told Business Insider of the billionaire Amazon founder. "We used him to speak about the real problems of Venice, and it worked, and we are very glad about it."

The protests in Venice have made headlines around the world this month as the city, which welcomes 20 million visitors annually, prepared for private jets and megayachts to arrive, carrying A-listers like the Kardashian-Jenner clan and Bill Gates.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, protesters gathered in a Venetian town square and along the iconic Rialto Bridge, holding signs that read, among other slogans, "No space for Bezos" with an image of a rocket ship — a nod to his rocket company, Blue Origin.

"Rumours of 'taking over' the city are entirely false and diametrically opposed to our goals and to reality," Lanza and Baucina, the event planner coordinating the wedding, said in a statement released earlier in June. "Before the recent news of protests arose, we had worked for there to be minimal negative impact or disruption to the lives of Venetians and the city's visitors."

Protests continued during the wedding celebrations last week, with demonstrators gathering in Piazza San Marco. One protester scaled a pole in front of Saint Mark's Basilica before being carried off by police.

While protesters made the Bezos-Sánchez wedding a focal point of their demonstrations, overtourism has been a prominent issue for Venetians for years.

Activists in Italy have regularly staged anti-tourism protests, BI has previously reported, including targeted demonstrations against companies like Airbnb. The palpable frustration felt by locals over overcrowded streets, environmental damage, and rising living costs has dissuaded some tourists from returning to visit the city.

Alan Fyall, the Visit Orlando endowed chair of tourism marketing at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management, told BI the Bezos-Sánchez wedding protests showed how fed up Venetians are with overtourism in general.

Fyall said the number of wedding guests was not necessarily the problem. But given the persistent problems of overtourism and the high cost of living, locals "see it as a little bit crass."

"The protesters said something like, 'This is feeding into the image of Venice as this tourism haven,'" Fyall said. "It all comes back to the bigger problem."

Cacciari said the goal is not to do away with all tourism, especially since many Venetians rely on the income from foreign travelers, but that a better balance needed to be struck.

"I don't like the slogan 'Tourists go home,' for example. No, tourists are welcome as long as there is a balance," Cacciari said. "But if the measure is broken, it's not the tourist's fault. It's the one who runs the city's fault."

City officials had welcomed the wedding. "We are happy and honoured to welcome Jeff Bezos and his consort Lauren Sánchez," Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said, according to Reuters.

In an attempt to dissuade mass travel, the city has implemented tourist taxes, charging day-trip visitors about $5 to enter the city center on certain days, and limited tour group numbers to a maximum of 25, as well as restricted the use of loudspeakers. They've also instituted restrictions on cruise ships. But despite those efforts, overtourism concerns have remained.

Fyall said the persistent nature of the protests shows that the city has not yet fully addressed its residents' concerns. Until it does, we can expect to see more protests like the ones targeted at Bezos.

• PauseAI gathered outside Google DeepMind's London office on Monday to demand more AI transparency.
• They argue that Google broke promises about transparency with its latest Gemini model.
• Chants of "test, don't guess" rang out, and a pretend courtroom drama played out.

A full-blown courtroom drama — complete with a gavel-wielding judge and an attentive jury, played out in London's King's Cross on Monday, mere steps away from Google DeepMind's headquarters.

Google was on trial for allegations of breaking its promises on AI safety.

The participants of this faux-production were protesters from PauseAI, an activist group concerned that tech companies are racing into AI with little regard for safety. On Monday, the group congregated near King's Cross station to demand that Google be more transparent about the safety checks it's running on its most cutting-edge AI models.

PauseAI argues that Google broke a promise it made during the 2024 AI Safety Summit in Seoul, Korea, when the company agreed to consider external evaluations of its models and publish details about how external parties, including governments, were involved in assessing the risks.

When Google launched Gemini 2.5 Pro, its latest frontier model, in April, it did neither of those things. The company said it was because the model was still "experimental." A few weeks later, it released a "model card" with some safety details, which some experts criticized for being too thin on details, TechCrunch previously reported. While the safety report made reference to third-party testers, it did not specify who they were.

For PauseAI, this isn't good enough. More importantly, the organization said, it's about not letting any lapse slip by and allowing Google to set a precedent.

"If we let Google get away with breaking their word, it sends a signal to all other labs that safety promises aren't important and commitments to the public don't need to be kept," said PauseAI organizing director Ella Hughes, addressing the crowd, which had gradually swelled to around 60 people.

"Right now, AI companies are less regulated than sandwich shops."

There's a lot to worry about when it comes to AI. Economic disruption. Job displacement. Misinformation. Deepfakes. The annihilation of humanity as we know it.

Focusing on the specific issue of the Google safety report is a way for PauseAI to push for a specific and attainable near-term change.

About 30 minutes into the protest, several intrigued passers-by had joined the cause. After a rousing speech from Hughes, the group proceeded to Google DeepMind's offices, where the fake courtroom production played out. Some Google employees leaving for the day looked bemused as chants of "Stop the race, it's unsafe" and "Test, don't guess" rang out.

"AI regulation on an international level is in a very bad place," PauseAI founder Joep Meindertsma told Business Insider, pointing to how US Vice President JD Vance warned against over-regulating AI at the AI Action Summit.

Monday was the first time PauseAI had gathered over this specific issue, and it's not clear what comes next. The group is engaging with members of UK parliament who will run these concerns up the flagpole, but Meindertsma is reticent to say much about how Google is engaging with the group and their demands (a Google spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story).

Meindertsma hopes support will grow and references polls that suggest the public at large is concerned that AI is moving too fast. The group on Monday was made up of people from different backgrounds, including some who work in tech. Meindertsma himself runs a software development company and regularly uses AI tools from Google, OpenAI, and others.

"Their tools are incredibly impressive," he said, "which is the thing that worries me so much."

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• Two people went overboard on a Disney Cruise Line ship on Sunday.
• An expert told BI the main concerns for someone adrift in the ocean and how to deal with them.
• Not panicking, trying to find objects that float, and making a signal can help you survive.

If you fall from a cruise ship, there are a few things you can do to boost your chances of surviving and of being found, according to a survival expert.

Two people were rescued after going overboard on a Disney Cruise Lines ship as it traveled from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas on Sunday, Disney confirmed.

Details about how the pair went overboard have not been confirmed by Disney, but several media outlets have reported that passengers said a father jumped in the water to save his child, who fell overboard first.

Disney said in a statement that the crew aboard the Disney Dream, a cruise liner that holds up to 4,000 passengers, quickly recovered the two passengers from the water.

While it's rare for passengers to go overboard on cruise ships, it does happen. Many passengers who go overboard are never rescued, but others have survived the falls and, in some cases, long stretches of time in the water.

In June 2023, a woman survived after going overboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship more than 30 miles off the coast of the Dominican Republic and was rescued about 45 minutes after she went overboard.

In November 2022, Carnival Valor cruise ship passenger James Michael Grimes survived after going overboard, unbeknownst to anyone on board, and spending 20 hours in the water in what he described as a fight for his life.

He described treading water, fending off jellyfish and at least one finned creature, and trying to eat objects that floated by, including a piece of bamboo. He was finally spotted and rescued by the US Coast Guard.

There are some practical things a person who falls into the open ocean can do in order to increase their chances of surviving, according to Cat Bigney, a survival expert who has consulted for Bear Grylls and National Geographic.

Don't panic

There are many things working against a person who goes overboard. First, they have to avoid injury during the fall and when they hit the water. Calling for help or actually finding help in the open ocean is just about impossible. There could be blazing sun, potentially hungry predators, and rough water. Hypothermia and dehydration are also major risks.

"All of these factors make it very difficult for people to survive if they're adrift," Bigney, who has taught at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School for decades, told BI.

Going overboard on a cruise ship is extremely rare, but the vast majority of those who do are never rescued. Between 2009 and 2019, there were 212 overboard incidents on cruise ships, according to data compiled by Cruise Lines International Association. Only 48 of those people were rescued.

But the first thing a person in an overboard situation needs to remember is? Don't panic.

"When people enter into a body of water, they usually damage their lungs right away, because they gasp," Bigney explained. "We have such a panic instinct to get air, and when people do that they bring water into their lungs."

Keeping your cool in life-or-death situations is key, as panicking is "the biggest thing that will kill you in a survival situation," according to Bigney.

Find anything that floats

Once you're in open water, your next priority is to stay above the surface. Some people may have a natural advantage and float more easily, depending on their body composition, including body fat percentage and muscle mass.

Though Grimes was in the water for around 20 hours, it's unlikely he was treading water for that entire time, according to Bigney. A combination of floating, treading, and swimming would be ideal, although it would still be exhausting, especially in rough waters. But treading water periodically is still much more doable than constantly.

There are also ways to make floating easier. For instance, Grimes said he had taken off all of his clothes, in order to make himself more buoyant.

"Even a small buoyant device will help you — something you can use with your arms around or your neck over just to help relieve some of the stress if you're not a great swimmer or you're having a hard time staying afloat," Bigney said.

Grimes had said he tried chewing on some bamboo, which Bigney said is extremely buoyant. Even collecting small bits of bamboo or driftwood could help a person stay afloat, she said. In a best-case scenario, you could collect enough that would allow you to make a pile or raft that you could get up on top of and out of the water, which would also make you safer from any potential predators. 

Water would be a concern, food not so much

It's unlikely Grimes was able to get significant energy from chewing on bamboo, but food would not be a primary concern in the amount of time he was at sea.

"Our bodies are perfectly, evolutionarily adapted to have this ability to fast for a long period of time, so he should have been fine as far as food," Bigney said, adding that "psychologically," it may have helped him, but "physiologically" his body was probably OK without eating.

Calories are needed to regulate core body temperatures, but she said most bodies would be able to do that for a couple of days with reserves, including from fat and the liver. Grimes was treated for hypothermia after he was rescued, as the 70-degree water temperature was significantly colder than humans' baseline core body temperature, but moving around and swimming for much of the time he was stranded — as well as factors like what he had recently eaten and his body fat content — may have helped him avoid the worst of it.

Dehydration would be of much greater immediate concern than food, according to Bigney.

"You don't want to drink any salt water," she said, adding that you'd want to try to conserve whatever water you already had. One way to do that would be to try and use your clothing to create shelter from the sun, such as by wrapping it over your head.

Make a signal however you can — including with trash

Ultimately, if you fall from a cruise ship many miles from shore, it's a waiting game to be rescued, and making a signal is one way to improve your chances of being found.

"There's a lot of trash in our great oceans, unfortunately," Bigney said, adding that collecting any floating garbage into a large pile could potentially form a signal that could be spotted by rescuers.

When an overboard situation is reported, the US Coast Guard uses a program to estimate where a floating object might be, Gross told Insider. The Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System factors in the person's weight, clothing, body fat percentage, and whether or not they have a flotation device, as well as weather and ocean patterns.

For Grimes, the system returned over 7,000 square nautical miles of ocean where he could be, which is about the size of Massachusetts — so anything you can do to increase the chances of being spotted can help.

"In the end, it's kind of a grim situation, but people have survived," Bigney said, adding: "And people sometimes just die."

Editor's note: This story was originally published in December 2022 and was last updated in June 2025.

Have a news tip? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Elon Musk said he will form a new political party if President Donald Trump's spending bill passes.
• Earlier on Monday, he vowed to defeat politicians who support the bill in their primaries.
• Musk has repeatedly criticized the Big Beautiful Bill.

Elon Musk ramped up his fight against President Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill on Monday, vowing to form a new political party if it passes Congress.

"If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day," Musk said in a post on X. "Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE."

Earlier Monday, Musk vowed to defeat politicians who support Trump's bill, saying, "They will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth."

When reached for comment, the White House referred Business Insider to Trump's recent interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday, ahead of the Tesla CEO's latest comments.

When asked about their relationship, Trump said Musk was a "wonderful guy" but that his comments about the president were not "appropriate." He also defended the spending bill, saying it would cut taxes and improve border security.

Musk, who stepped away from his work with the White House and DOGE last month, has been outspoken about his complaints with the bill, calling it a "disgusting abomination."

Once the "first buddy" to the president, Musk and Trump publicly feuded earlier in June. It appeared to stem from Musk's public distaste for the Big Beautiful Bill.

Musk has called out the bill for adding to the federal deficit and said it undermines the work DOGE did to cut back government spending. He also said over the weekend that the bill "gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future."

Trump previously called Musk "crazy" in response to his criticism of the bill and floated the idea of canceling his government contracts.

The Tesla and SpaceX billionaire has previously floated the idea of creating a new political party.

Earlier this month Musk posted a poll on X with the question, "Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?" Over 80% of people who responded said, "yes."

In another tweet on Monday, Musk said the spending bill made it "obvious" that "we live in a one-party country — the PORKY PIG PARTY!!"

"Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people," he said.

When Musk stepped back from DOGE, he said he was also planning to pull back on his political spending, and it's unclear if his spending intentions have changed.

• TPG is the latest private equity firm to bow out of early recruiting for junior talent.
• The firm sent a letter to potential candidates on Monday saying it won't hire until 2026.
• It joins Apollo and General Atlantic in toppling an annual recruiting tradition amid criticisms.

Another private equity firm pulled the plug on recruiting for 2027 associates this year, Business Insider has learned.

TPG, a buyout firm with $251 billion in assets, emailed recent graduates — many of whom are about to begin their first year as investment bankers — after 4:20 p.m. on Monday to say that they will not hire for 2027 jobs until "sometime in 2026."

It is the third firm to withdraw from "on-cycle recruiting," a frenetic recruiting process focused on getting incoming junior investment bankers to agree to jobs that won't start for two years, usually after their investment banking analyst programs have ended.

The trend started when Apollo announced a similar decision on June 11, as BI reported. It was followed by General Atlantic, which also canceled plans for early recruiting on June 12. Those announcements came days after JPMorgan told its incoming first-year bankers that they'd fire anyone who accepted one of these pre-dated jobs.

The industry has been criticized for starting on-cycle recruiting earlier and earlier each year. Last year, the process kicked off at the end of June, before many incoming junior bankers had even started Day 1 of their new Wall Street jobs. This year, there were signs it might start even earlier, with some firms reaching out for informal "coffee chats" during college graduation ceremonies.

TPG's memo, a copy of which was obtained by Business Insider, was sent by Anna Edwin, an HR executive at TPG. Here's the email:

Congratulations on your recent graduation!

This is an exciting moment as you transition to your professional life, and we want to emphasize how important and foundational this time can be. We are confident that these learnings and experiences will help inform the decisions you make about future steps in your career, and we hope that you will be thoughtful and engaged during this time.

We believe that our people are our most important asset, and our goal is that the Associates who join us each year will build meaningful, long-term careers at TPG. We aim to be thoughtful and intentional in our recruiting and hiring process and are committed to enabling recent graduates like you to focus on your learning and development.

With this in mind, TPG will not begin to hire for the Associate Class of 2027 until sometime in 2026. We will continue to approach our hiring process in the way that we think is best for our talented candidates, our teams, and our industry more broadly. We look forward to continuing our dialogue with you as you embark on your careers.

Best of luck in this new chapter and please stay in touch.

• Elon Musk is threatening to defeat politicians who vote for Trump's megabill.
• "They will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth," he wrote.
• Musk previously said he would scale back his political spending.

Elon Musk is back on a tear against President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" — and is threatening to defeat politicians who vote for it in future primaries.

"Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame," Musk wrote on X on Monday afternoon. "And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth."

Musk, who previously said he would scale back his political spending, could theoretically use his immense wealth to fund primary challengers in districts across the country.

A spokesman for America PAC, the tech titan's main super PAC, declined to comment. Musk routed roughly $240 million through the PAC last year, the vast majority of it in support of Trump's presidential bid.

Musk also revived his call for a new political party, writing in an earlier post that because the bill increases the debt ceiling, "we live in a one-party country — the PORKY PIG PARTY!!"

Since his public feud with Trump earlier this month, Musk has been relatively quiet on the bill. That changed over the weekend, when Musk called the bill "utterly insane" in a post on X.

The tech titan has opposed the bill, saying it would add trillions of dollars to the deficit and eliminate federal subsidies for renewable energy projects.

Musk's missive on Monday — issued just hours before the Senate was set to vote on final passage of the bill — was his starkest political threat yet against Republicans who support it.

A version of the bill passed the House in May, but it will have to clear the lower chamber once again. Lawmakers hope to get the bill to Trump's desk by July 4.

• Apple's "F1" movie with Brad Pitt captured the checkered flag in its opening weekend.
• The action film was boosted by a historically high revenue share from Imax screens.
• Although Apple will celebrate this win, its next films might not get the same Imax lift.

Apple's flashy "F1" movie took first place at the box office this weekend, and it had a secret weapon: Imax.

The much-hyped racing film starring Brad Pitt exceeded expectations with a $144 million global debut, including a $55.6 million showing in the US. That's well beyond the $115 million it was forecast to rake in, per The Hollywood Reporter.

"F1" was boosted by Imax, which said on Monday that its premium screens generated $28 million for the film, or 19% of its worldwide box-office total. That's the fourth-highest share of global sales ever in a debut, behind only "Dune," "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol," and "Oppenheimer," an Imax spokesperson told Business Insider.

US movie-goers were especially likely to pay up for the premium Imax experience. Twenty-three percent of the domestic box office for "F1" was from those who paid to see Pitt in Imax's expanded aspect ratio. That's a similar share to what "Sinners" and "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning" made from Imax earlier this year.

Imax tickets cost significantly more than the typical stub. The going rate for an Imax ticket in early 2025 was $19.51, according to data from research firm EntTelligence cited by The Hollywood Reporter, which also found that the average US movie ticket was $13.82.

Those figures align with the 40% ticket price premium that Imax CEO Richard Gelfond referenced last fall at Bank of America's media conference. He called the difference an "affordable luxury."

Apple is surely thrilled to see such a strong start for "F1" — its first major theatrical hit — no matter how it happened.

But it may be too soon to say the Silicon Valley titan has figured out Hollywood. Its strategy of big-budget films with A-list talent hasn't exactly been a resounding success at the box office, as bets like "Argylle," "Fly Me to the Moon," and "Killers of the Flower Moon" underwhelmed.

If Apple needs a legendary Imax run for its theatrical movie strategy to make sense, it may be hard to build on.

• Tech mogul Elon Musk has an estimated net worth of $367 billion.
• His estimated fortune peaked at around $439 billion in December 2024 as Tesla shares soared.
• Musk often trades places with businesspeople like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg for the title of world's richest person.

Elon Musk has a net worth of around $367 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.

His net worth, which is closely tied to Tesla's share price, received a huge boost following the news that Donald Trump had won reelection in November, as Tesla shares soared to an all-time high in December.

But the tech mogul's wealth comes from a number of sources and it isn't stable. Musk is currently the world's richest person and other billionaires are close on his heels, too: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is around $109 billion below Musk, while Jeff Bezos is $14 billion behind Zuckerberg.

How has Musk's net worth changed over time?

Musk, who was born in South Africa, moved to Canada and dropped out of a Ph.D. at Stanford, became a millionaire before he hit 30. Musk started Zip2, a website that provided city travel guides to newspapers, with his brother Kimbal Musk, and sold it to Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999. Musk, then aged 27, is believed to have got $22 million from the deal.

He went on to cofound online bank X.com in 1999. It soon merged with Peter Thiel's Confinity to become PayPal, and the company was bought for $1.5 billion by eBay in 2002. Despite having been ousted as CEO, Musk walked away with around $165 million. 

Musk cofounded space-exploration company SpaceX in 2002. In 2004, he became an investor in and the chairman of EV company Tesla.

During the financial crisis in 2008, he saved Tesla from bankruptcy with a $40 million investment and a $40 million loan. That same year, he was named Tesla's CEO.

Musk said 2008 was "the worst year of my life." Alongside problems in his personal life, Tesla kept losing money and SpaceX was having trouble launching the first version of its Falcon rocket. By 2009, Musk was living off personal loans.

Tesla went public in 2010, though, and Musk's estimated net worth steadily climbed. In 2012, he debuted on Forbes' Billionaires List with an estimated wealth of $2 billion. 

In 2016, Musk set up the tunnel-digging business, the Boring Company.

The next year, he founded the neurotechnology startup Neuralink.

Musk's net worth began a rapid ascent at the start of the pandemic as Tesla stock prices soared. Musk started 2020 with an estimated net worth of just under $30 billion and was worth around $170 billion just a year later – a more than five-fold increase in just a year. His estimated fortune peaked at around $340 billion in November 2021.

Musk also bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, serving as its CEO until he stepped down in early June 2023.

The stock is known to be volatile and it's had its ups and downs since then.

Musk's net worth declined by $15 billion after Tesla's "We, Robot" day on October 10 when it unveiled its highly anticipated robotaxi lineup. While the event turned heads with dancing robots and sleek autonomous vehicles offering rides to guests, it left investors with question marks surrounding the economics of the ride-hailing service. 

Following a big earnings beat later that month, Tesla's stock surged by 22%, leading Musk's net worth to increase by about $30 billion. The morning of Trump's reelection on November 6, which Musk heavily campaigned for, Tesla's stock was up about 15% to $289.37 per share after the market opened. In late November, Musk broke his net worth record of about $340 billion, which had stood for over three years.

Following an insider share sale at SpaceX, which boosted the startup to a $350 billion valuation, Musk's wealth surged again in December by about $50 million in one day, making Musk the first billionaire to reach the $400 billion mark.

His net worth has fallen by over $70 billion since then, although it's still up from pre-election. In the months after its election highs, Tesla's stock dropped by over 50% following a number of factors, including a vehicle sales slump, a rising Tesla boycott movement, and Musk's stint in the US government, which some investors felt took him away from his day-in-day-out Tesla CEO duties.

Tesla's stock rose back up following the CEO taking a step back from his role in the Department of Government Efficiency. However, it continues to have big swings. Musk had one of his single-day highest net worth losses in early June following a public spat on social media with the President, in which Trump floated the idea of having his government contracts revoked, and Musk repeatedly criticized Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill."

The automaker has since met its promised June deadline for the robotaxi, and shares rose more than 6.5% the following Monday after the limited launch in Austin.

Where does Musk's fortune come from?

Musk's wealth is largely dependent on Tesla shares. Though he takes no salary from Tesla, he's awarded stock options when the company hits challenging performance metrics.

"Elon will receive no guaranteed compensation of any kind — no salary, no cash bonuses, and no equity that vests simply by the passage of time," Tesla said in 2018 when the company announced a 10-year performance award for Musk. "Instead, Elon's only compensation will be a 100% at-risk performance award, which ensures that he will be compensated only if Tesla and all of its shareholders do extraordinarily well."

Investors had initially approved the $55 billion compensation plan in 2018, but a Delaware judge voided it last January on the grounds that Musk had undue influence over the package and its approval due to close ties with several board members.

At its annual shareholder meeting last June, investors voted to approve Musk's pay package. However, the judge upheld the original ruling, and the company has since said it plans to appeal that decision.

A large part of Musk's net worth comes from Tesla shares, while roughly over 20% comes from SpaceX stock.

The rest of his wealth comes from shares in Twitter and The Boring Company, as well as other miscellaneous liabilities.

• I tried every kind of McFlurry at McDonald's to determine which one was the best.
• McDonald's offers three kinds of McFlurries: Oreo, Hershey's S'Mores, and M&M.
• I thought the chain's Oreo-flavored McFlurry was the most satisfying.

With heat waves sweeping the country, you might want to keep it cool the next time you pass by a McDonald's drive-thru.

McDonald's has been selling the McFlurry, its version of an ice-cream sundae, since 1995, when they were introduced in Canada for the first time. McFlurries have since come out in a variety of flavors, including Oreo, M&M, Shamrock Shake, and the new Hershey's S'mores McFlurry.

The McFlurry recently got a bit of a makeover when McDonald's replaced its classic plastic cup with a paper one and swapped the signature hollow-handled spoon for a smaller standard plastic spoon, in an effort to make its packaging more sustainable.

The chain launched its newest flavor option, Hershey's S'mores, on June 10 as an ode to nostalgic summer campfire cravings. Nostalgia is a major trend at fast-food chains, but the actual flavor doesn't always match up to people's childhood memories.

I tried all three McFlurries on offer at McDonald's to determine which was the best use of your $3, and I was surprised by the results.

Here's every kind of McFlurry at McDonald's, ranked from worst to best.

I ordered all three kinds of McFlurries in the mini size.

Each mini-sized, 4-ounce McFlurry cost $2.99, excluding tax, at my local McDonald's in Brooklyn, New York. A McFlurry is also available in a regular 12-ounce size for $5.39, excluding tax.

Based on weight, it's more cost-effective to order the regular-sized McFlurry, but for the sake of trying each flavor, I ordered the smaller size.

McDonald's M&M McFlurry landed last in my ranking.

It came topped with a rainbow of M&M's that, after sitting in the ice cream for a few minutes on my walk home, had partially melted and created a swirl of color in the vanilla ice cream.

The M&Ms added a slight crunchy texture to the ice cream, but I didn't get a ton of flavor from it.

I wanted more notes of chocolate, and overall, didn't find this McFlurry to be the most flavorful of the bunch.

The vanilla soft-serve ice cream was creamy and sweet, but I simply preferred the toppings on the other two sundaes.

Up next was the newest addition to McDonald's McFlurry lineup: the Hershey's S'mores McFlurry.

It's made with vanilla soft-serve ice cream, Hershey's milk chocolate, graham cracker pieces, and mini marshmallows. As a limited-time offer, it's only available at McDonald's through August 11.

The toppings added a lot of flavor and delicious crunch to the ice cream.

Of the three McFlurries I tried, this one packed the most flavor and variety. The graham crackers added a satisfying crunch and a molasses-like sweetness, the chocolate was rich, and the marshmallows brought that classic s'mores taste that reminded me of camping in the summer as a kid.

But all the toppings were concentrated on the top, so once I got through that layer, I was left with plain vanilla ice cream, which made the overall experience feel a bit underwhelming.

The chain's classic Oreo McFlurry impressed me the most.

Oreo was the first flavor introduced in the McFlurry menu, and it's a classic for a reason.

It's made with a base of vanilla soft-serve ice cream mixed with Oreo cookie pieces, which is then topped with additional Oreo pieces.

The mixed-in Oreos ensured that every bite was loaded with chocolatey flavor.

The soft-serve ice cream was exceptionally creamy and blended well with the pieces of crushed Oreos.

I got a strong chocolatey flavor throughout the ice cream, unlike the other two sundaes, where the toppings were mostly concentrated on top.

This is the only McFlurry I'd order again to keep me cool this summer.

From the flavor to the low cost — just under $3 — I could see myself adding an Oreo McFlurry to my next McDonald's order as an affordable sweet treat.

While both the other flavors were tasty in their own right, the Oreo version simply packed the most flavor.

• President Trump restarted collections for student-loan borrowers in default after a 5-year pause.
• A new TransUnion analysis found that nearly 2 million borrowers could default in July.
• They'll be at risk of wage garnishment, and the options to avoid default are complicated and time-consuming.

The student debt collection machine has been turned back on, and it could mean bad news for millions of borrowers later this summer.

President Donald Trump's announcement that collections on defaulted student loans would restart on May 5 left borrowers behind on payments facing a scramble: make payments to avoid entering default, or find a way to get out of default to avoid wage and federal benefits garnishment.

A new analysis from TransUnion, a credit reporting firm, showed an uptick in borrowers at risk of facing those consequences this summer. It found that 31% of borrowers have a payment of more than 90 days past due as of April — up from 20.5% in February — and it estimates that of the 5.8 million newly delinquent borrowers, 1.8 million of them could default in July.

The analysis said an additional 1 million borrowers could default in August, followed by another 2 million in September.

"That begs the question, why is that number so high right now?" Joshua Turnbull, senior vice president and head of consumer lending at TransUnion, told BI. "That number is either high because people cannot afford to pay their student loans, or don't think they can afford to pay their student loans, or people can afford to pay their student loans and they're just either choosing not to, or don't know they need to."

A federal student-loan borrower typically enters default after not making payments for over 270 days. Over the course of the pandemic, borrowers behind on payments were spared from garnishment and negative credit reporting due to a pause put in place by Trump and continued under former President Joe Biden.

Negative credit reporting resumed in October 2024, and while the Department of Education said in early June it would be pausing Social Security garnishment, wage garnishment will resume later this summer. The department did not respond to a request for comment from BI on a specific date that wage garnishment will begin.

The Department of Education said in April that restarting collections will "move the federal student loan portfolio back into repayment, which benefits borrowers and taxpayers alike."

Turnbull said the economic implications of delinquency and default — including hits to credit scores and losing part of a paycheck — could be severe.

"Those are things that, I'm not only behind in paying on my student loan, but now my income stream is impacted as well," Turnbull said. "So, it's kind of a compounding effect that consumers would see."

Options for student-loan borrowers to avoid default

Turnbull said that problems start for borrowers behind on payments once their delinquent status is reported. At that point, their credit scores will decline, and it could immediately impact their abilities to get mortgages, competitive auto loan rates, and more.

"I would just encourage anyone who has a student loan, is not paying on that now, and is confused or worried about where they're going to come up with the funds, don't wait," Turnbull said. "Don't wait until you get that 90-day delinquency to figure out what your plan is, or to figure out where you're supposed to send your payment."

Some borrowers who took the initiative to start a repayment plan are still struggling. Michael George, 31, is in default on his student loans. He said he contacted Federal Student Aid's debt resolution group to begin loan rehabilitation, which requires a borrower to make nine payments within 20 days of the due date over a period of 10 consecutive months.

While Federal Student Aid's website said that wage garnishment will continue until a borrower makes at least five rehabilitation payments, George said his servicer gave him conflicting information regarding the repayment schedule requirements, and he made payments that ended up not counting toward his rehabilitation plan.

"There's no proper information, there's no consistency, there's no one streamlined black or white conciseness," George said. "It literally feels like a dumpster fire of how rapid the announcement was."

Along with loan rehabilitation, borrowers can also consolidate their defaulted student loan into a federal direct consolidation loan. While this option is quicker than loan rehabilitation, a key difference is that the record of the default will remain on the borrower's credit history. Borrowers can also file for bankruptcy using a process that was streamlined under Biden.

Some borrowers who voted for Trump previously told BI that while they support efforts to collect student loans, the abrupt nature of the collections restart has sparked confusion and alarm among those in default, or at risk of defaulting.

Linda McMahon, Trump's education secretary, said in an opinion piece that the collections restart is not intended to "be unkind to student borrowers."

"Borrowing money and failing to pay it back isn't a victimless offense," she said. "Debt doesn't go away; it gets transferred to others."

• Kevin O'Leary says young entrepreneurs should spend 24 months working before starting their business.
• Gaining industry knowledge and connections, he said, increases the probability of success.
• A few years of failure early on "matters," O'Leary said.

Mr. Wonderful's key to success for young entrepreneurs may not be the answer that aspiring startup founders want to hear.

"Shark Tank"'s Kevin O'Leary, who goes by the nickname, appeared on a Monday episode of the podcast "Diary of a CEO," where he shared his advice to 21-year-old entrepreneurs who are wondering where to start.

"Go work for 24 months in a sector you love, that you're passionate about. Even if they don't pay you, go in there and be an apprentice," he said. "Do that first."

To those who don't want to work for someone else, he says it's necessary to do so if you want to understand "how all the cogs work." It could also lead to recognition from someone at the company that could be useful down the line, he added.

After two years, it's time to launch, O' Leary said. With a $10,000 loan from friends and family, start your business with the "baseline knowledge of your industry."

Assuming that's possible, O'Leary said that even with knowledge and financial backing from your parents, don't expect success right away because "the first one will probably fail."

However, a background in the industry — knowing who's who and "how it works" — increases your chances of flourishing. Regardless of how your first launch goes, the key is to do it in your mid-to-early 20s, O'Leary said.

"You need to burn a few years failing, and that matters," he told the podcast's host, Steven Bartlett.

It helps, O'Leary added, if you have an "aura of confidence," which is often projected through your body language. Your eye contact and stance can show if you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur "before a word is spoken," the investor said.

"It's in the way you're standing. It's in the way you're dressed," he said.

"You have to learn how to project yourself in front of your peers," O'Leary said. "If you don't have it, you're going to fail."

The "Shark Tank" judge did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

His company, O'Leary Ventures, is a venture capital platform that invests in early-stage companies. In his "Shark Tank" gig, he and his fellow Sharks hear out business owners looking for financial backing.