After Massachusetts authorities released a report showing a sharp rise in flavored cigarette and vape seizures under a recent bipartisan statewide ban, a former ATF official and a network of law enforcement veterans specializing in contraband called into question why the ban remains.

An annual multi-agency report from the Bay State’s Illegal Tobacco Task Force showed vape seizures up by more than 200,000 – largely due to large-scale seizures – since 2023, while smokeless tobacco and standard cigarette seizures were down.

Calculations by the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network found that Massachusetts police seized 279,432 vape units in fiscal year 2024, up from about 1,300 the year prior.

Former New York City Sheriff Edgar Domenech, who is also a former ATF official who focused on tobacco and related contraband, told Fox News Digital the findings showed the illegal vape market is "exploding," and that when the Bay State became the first to outlaw flavored tobacco, it was a clarion call for cartels and smugglers to say, "[we’re] open for business."

MIGRANT CRISIS ROILS BOSTON AREA AS SCHOOL STANDS FIRM ON RESIDENCY POLICY

"A 21,000 percent increase in smuggling proves once and for all that the Massachusetts flavor ban experiment has been an embarrassing catastrophe," said Domenech, who had been appointed to his Big Apple post by then-Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg and now works with Georgetown University.

"They are spending so much time seizing so much product they literally can’t find a place to store the contraband," he said.

While the rule of law is important, sometimes new laws themselves may need revisiting, he suggested.

Without the ability to levy taxes on what is now an illegal product that remains ubiquitous elsewhere in New England, bordering states like New Hampshire – less than an hour from Boston – seek to reap the tax benefits of Massachusetts’ ban as customers go a little out of their way to buy their products, he said.

Prohibiting adult products like vapes "never works," Domenech added. "It moves sales out of the stores and into the streets."

RAMASWAMY MOCKS MASS GOVERNOR'S ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT STANCE AFTER FLIP: ‘NOW ACCEPTABLE TO COMPLAIN’

In January, Boston police in the Drug Control Unit arrested a 58-year-old Dorchester man as part of a raid that netted 50 grams of crack and 700 packages of "illegally possessed unstamped menthol cigarettes." The man, Parrish Jones, was charged with trafficking cigarettes.

Separately, a Hopkinton man was arrested in June for allegedly failing to pay nearly $500,000 in excise taxes after he allegedly sought out-of-state distributors in order to market vape-type products, according to FOX Boston.

The ban itself went into effect in December 2019, as the Massachusetts Public Health Council enacted new sales restrictions on vapes and flavored tobacco.

The panel was able to do so after then-Gov. Charles Baker – a Republican – signed a bill from the Democratic legislature "modernizing tobacco control."

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More recently, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office filed a complaint against a vape company in 2024 for allegedly ignoring the flavored tobacco ban. The office previously sued several other companies as well, according to a statement.

In November, several Massachusetts lawmakers announced plans to file legislation this year to phase out all tobacco and nicotine sales in the state, beginning with those Bay Staters who are currently underage to begin with.

Sen. Jason Lewis, D-Middlesex, Rep. Kate Lipper-Garabedian, D-Melrose, and Rep. Tommy Vitolo, D-Brookline, are collaborating on the bill, according to NBC Boston.

Fox News Digital reached out to the AG’s office for further response but did not hear back by press time. 

Some Spotify employees are not happy that the audio streaming giant was, until this week, hosting and profiting from a course about “pimping hoes” by Andrew Tate, according to internal Spotify communications viewed by 404 Media. 

“Pretty vile that we’re hosting Andrew Tate’s content,” one Spotify employee said in a company Slack channel called #ethics-club, and linked to a Linkedin post that criticized Spotify for hosting the course. 

“Happy Women’s History Month, everybody!” another employee said, adding a sweating smiling emoji. 

Tate is an infamous manosphere influencer known for promoting misogyny and anti-semitic conspiracy theories and who was previously charged for human trafficking and rape.

Since those Slack messages were posted, Spotify appears to have removed the “pimping hoes” class from its platform. Another course titled “How to get girls FAST AND EASY by Andrew Tate (PHD Course),” is still hosted on Spotify, and has over 70 comments from users calling for its removal. 

Before it was removed, the “pimping hoes” course had 276 comments on Spotify that unanimously called on the company to remove it. 

“These courses actively teach men how to manipulate, control, and profit from the exploitation of women,” one comment says. “They are in breach of Spotify’s own terms of use, and they are promoting criminal activity.” 

The Tate class was available through Spotify for Creators, a special program that’s supposed to make it easier for podcasters to monetize their content. A subscription costs $4.99 a month and according to Spotify Tate would keep 100 percent of the revenue with the exception of processing fees.

Internal Spotify Slack messages viewed by 404 Media show that Spotify employees attempted to report the Tate show via Spotify’s public “report content on Spotify” form, but that some of them encountered technical issues. In testing those claims, 404 Media was able to report the show for “hateful or abusive content” without issue. 

Tate’s “Pimping Hoes Degree” course has been available on Spotify since 2023. Its existence on Spotify gained renewed attention this month when multiple people flagged the course on social media, and some trade press outlets covered it too.

“I cancelled my Spotify Premium subscription on Sunday night,” Sam Taylor, a now former Spotify user, said on LinkedIn. “When a company like Spotify gives a home to so-called 'educational' content like Andrew Tate's 'Pimping Hoes Degree course'—which gives people a playbook for coercive [sic] and control and sexual manipulation—I can't continue to give that company money each month.”

A Change.org petition called “Demand Spotify Remove Andrew Tate’s Harmful Courses on How to Traffic Women” had more than 55,000 signatures by Wednesday.

In mid-February, the Financial Times reported that the Trump administration had pressed Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the Tate brothers, who are both dual US and UK nationals. At the end of the month, the brothers were allowed to leave Romania and flew on a private jet to the United States. The Romanian justice minister has denied that U.S. pressure led to the decision.

Florida’s attorney general has since said they are investigating the brothers over allegations of human trafficking and sex with a minor.

Spotify did not reply to multiple requests for comment. The first was sent earlier in the week, asking if Tate’s course violated the platform’s terms of service. The second was sent after 404 Media reviewed the internal Spotify communications. The third was sent after Spotify removed the PHD Course.

• The Department of Education began terminating half its staff on Tuesday.
• It's the Trump administration's first major move to dismantle the agency.
• Eliminating a federal agency would still require an act of Congress.

DOGE slashing has begun at the agency that oversees trillions of dollars of student loans, disburses grants to low-income students and those with disabilities, and collects data on kids' reading and math outcomes.

The Department of Education announced on Tuesday night that it is terminating over 1,300 workers as part of the agency's workforce reduction plans and the broader culling of the federal government inspired by the White House's DOGE office. A senior administration official said that those terminations, combined with nearly 600 employees who already voluntarily resigned, will effectively cut the department's workforce by 50%.

It's the agency's first major step toward advancing President Donald Trump's goal of dismantling the Department of Education. He told reporters in early February that he wants the department to be closed "immediately" and for its new head Linda McMahon to "put herself out of a job."

"Already, parents, teachers, and students across the country are worried about the chaos and confusion that Trump's dismantling of the agency will unleash," Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement. "Shutting down an agency that provides financial aid to families, funds afterschool programs, and enforces our nation's civil rights laws doesn't help our students learn and doesn't make our country better."

The senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday that these terminations will not impact the agency's external-facing functions, like the disbursement of Pell Grants and student loans. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the cuts reflect the department's "commitment to efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents, and teachers."

While the Trump administration affirmed that the department would continue to meet the needs of Americans despite the cuts, it's likely more changes are coming in an attempt to fulfill the president's aim to abolish the agency altogether.

The future of the Department of Education

Closing a federal agency requires 60 Senate votes, meaning Trump cannot shut down the Department of Education on his own.

It's something McMahon has previously acknowledged, telling NewsNation last week that her "job is to convince Congress that the steps that we are taking are in the best interest of the kids, and that they would vote to close the Department of Education if they feel confident that at the state level, that those kids are going to receive a better education."

Trump has not yet signed an executive order directing McMahon to shut down the agency.

While the administration official said that the latest cuts are aimed at eliminating department redundancies, some advocates raised the alarm about what this means for the agency's future.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that making cuts at "an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it."

"The massive reduction in force at the Education Department is an attack on opportunity that will gut the agency and its ability to support students, throwing federal education programs into chaos across the country," Weingarten said.

Even before these latest terminations, some Education Department employees told BI last month that they were concerned about the agency's future. The Trump administration cut over $900 million in research contracts at the department, and one employee said that following kids' low reading scores, "this is the absolute worst time to divest from education research."

GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate education committee, wrote in a post on X that he spoke to McMahon, and she affirmed that the cuts would not impact the department's "ability to carry out its statutory obligations."

Beth Maglione, the interim president and CEO of NASFAA — an association for student financial aid administrators — isn't convinced.

"Claiming that eliminating half the Department won't affect its services — without any clear plan to redistribute the workload — is, at best, naive and, at worst, deliberately misleading," Maglione said. "It also raises serious concerns about how billions of dollars in federal student aid will continue to be disbursed to students without interruption."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal at asheffey.97 or via email at [email protected]. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Warren Buffett is being praised for paring Apple and stacking cash before the market slumped.
• Social media is full of Buffett quotes about market downturns, and memes featuring the investor.
• Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sold a net $134 billion of stocks in 2024 and built a record cash pile.

Warren Buffett has sparked a raft of comments and memes on social media after the legendary investor sold most of his massive Apple stake and built a record cash pile before the stock market tumbled earlier this week.

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway nearly doubled its stockpile of cash, Treasury bills, and other liquid assets last year to $334 billion (or $321 billion if you subtract payables for T-bill purchases).

The conglomerate's cash hoard ballooned largely because it sold a net $134 billion of stocks in 2024, and spent less than $3 billion on buybacks, halting them entirely in the second half. For comparison, it sold a net $24 billion of stocks and repurchased more than $9 billion worth of Berkshire stock in 2023.

Sell, sell, sell

Berkshire owned about 906 million shares of Apple worth $174 billion at the start of 2024, meaning the iPhone maker accounted for 49% of the total value of its stock portfolio. Over the next nine months, it cut its top holding by 67% to 300 million shares, worth $75 billion at the end of December.

Buffett and his team also pared their number-two holding, Bank of America, by 34% to 680 million shares in the second half of 2024, cutting the position's value from $41 billion to just under $30 billion.

As of Tuesday's close, Apple and Bank of America shares have dropped 15% and 20% each from their November highs.

However, Apple is still up 15% since the start of 2024, meaning Buffett left money on the table by cashing out when he did. If he kept his stake intact throughout 2024 it would be worth nearly $200 billion.

Bank of America is trading around the $40 mark, as it was at the end of June last year, meaning Buffett probably hasn't won or lost big from selling.

There's nothing to say the market sell-off, which has pulled the S&P 500 down 9% and the Nasdaq Composite down 13% from their record closes on February 19, won't worsen as the Trump administration's policies continue to fuel recession fears.

Moreover, it's important to consider where Buffett has invested the sale proceeds. Owning Treasurys is more lucrative than in the past; the 1-year yield has jumped from under 1% to over 4% in just over three years, primarily because rising inflation spurred the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to relieve upward pressure on prices.

Buffett is also a long-term investor who's owned stocks such as Coca-Cola and American Express for decades. It's unlikely he pared his portfolio because he saw trouble coming and wanted to cash out before the next market crash — and he probably won't care much about a few months of stock performance.

He's publicly soured on banks and pointed to higher bond yields and the prospect of steeper taxes on capital gains as two reasons he was happy to take some Apple profits and buy Treasurys instead. He's also explained his growing cash pile reflects a dearth of bargains with both private and public companies trading at heady valuations.

It's also worth noting that quarterly portfolio filings provide limited insight into an investor's strategy. They're only a snapshot of their holdings on a single day with a six-week lag, and they exclude shares sold short, foreign-listed stocks, private investments, and non-stock assets.

Even if Buffett isn't selling stocks and stacking cash because he expects a market downturn, his bearish positioning could still make him a winner if this one continues.

Not only will the strategy temper the impact on his stock portfolio, it means he'll have plenty of dry powder to deploy on cut-price businesses and discounted stocks, as he did during the financial crisis.

Words to remember

Buffett's social media followers aren't only applauding the timing of his Apple sales and cash build. Likely in a bid to shore up market sentiment, they're lining up to quote his famous advice to "be greedy when others are fearful."

Moreover, they're sharing the column he published in the depths of the financial crisis, in which he urged others to buy stocks on the cheap.

Buffett has also won plaudits for getting wealthier when many of his billionaire peers are taking big blows to their fortunes. That reflects a 9% rise in Berkshire stock this year while many blue-chip tech stocks have declined.

The "Oracle of Omaha" has often faced skepticism and claims that he's lost his touch during previous booms. Now the market mood has turned, he's back in fashion.

• I went to college at 40 — when I was a mother of five children.
• My first statistics class was so difficult that I became stressed and ignored my motherly duties.
• When my schoolwork became so stressful that I fought with my husband, I dropped the class.

When I was 40, I decided to finally go to college. My father told me I shouldn't enroll in college right after high school, so I waited. It took me several decades to finally work up the courage to apply.

At the time, the problem wasn't just my age; I was also a mother of five children. My youngest were twins in the second grade, while my oldest was starting high school.

My calendar was crammed with family obligations, yet I tried to fit in three courses per semester at a community college. I decided to focus on general education requirements first before transferring to a four-year university to study English.

At that time, I was an integral part of my children's education — and played a key role in feeding and caring for the whole family. I promised the children and my husband they would remain my first priority — but that proved more difficult than I thought.

I struggled with one class, which caused a lot of stress

Math has always been difficult for me. I took a statistics class because Statistics I and II would transfer to a four-year university so I could complete my bachelor's degree in English.

This was only the beginning of my college career, and already, I was taking far too much time away from caring for the family. It got worse when my new statistics professor wouldn't allow questions in class. He wrote his notes on the board, and we were supposed to magically understand.

I tried to make an appointment to meet with him outside class, but he didn't have office hours. He was an adjunct who taught at a few different colleges.

So, I set up an appointment at the tutoring center on campus, taking more time away from the family. However, the young tutor's idea of solving statistics problems only confused me more.

To feed my fear of failure, the professor gave weekly quizzes that I failed to complete in the allotted five minutes. I couldn't teach myself to become faster in constructing a frequency table.

That college degree seemed to slip from reach as I doubted my ability to pass college-level math.

I started to damage relationships at home

I often stayed home trying to accomplish homework I didn't understand while my husband took the kids to family parties. I rarely left the house to buy groceries. I lived with a statistics book in my hand, burning dinners, and undercooking pancakes — the children's favorite. I snapped at the kids whenever they tried to ask me questions about their homework.

My husband and I no longer discussed family difficulties. Instead, I became the difficulty. All we did was argue. I could no longer concentrate on anyone besides myself and my inability to pass one of my first college courses.

I had broken the promise to my family. I was miserable, and so was my family.

I couldn't allow this course at the beginning of my college career to destroy us. Family has always been my main priority, and a college degree shouldn't come between me and my love for them.

I had to rethink my approach to stress and college courses

If I couldn't change my ability, I needed to change my perspective. This professor was simply not right for my learning style. But I couldn't afford an "F" on my school transcript.

I had to shed any feelings of killing my role model status for the children. I couldn't worry about losing the money for the course or the time needed for my college career. I had to keep my family together and discover a way forward in my education.

Counselors at the school informed me I could withdraw from statistics without penalty to my GPA. It would be a lateral move. I had to remind myself that withdrawing from a class does not make you a failure.

Then, I looked for a professor who permitted countless questions in class and could explain the math procedures with different methods. It took two semesters, but I rescheduled Statistics I with a professor who was better suited for me. I survived and moved on to Statistics II with the same professor.

Obtaining a college degree takes time and determination for parents. It took 10 years to receive my bachelor's from the University of Pennsylvania — but it was worth it, and my family is all the better for it.

• $23 billion hedge fund Balyasny has adoped a new approach to recruiting young talent.
• A stock contest serves as an early application pool for the firm's internship program.
• A former participant and two firm execs explain how to snag an invite and make a good impression.

When Sophia Guiter arrived in New York City last October, it was her first time in the Big Apple.

Despite the allure of Broadway, Times Square, and the city that never sleeps, the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, college student had a bigger mission: making an impression on executives of the $23 billion asset manager Balyasny. She and two of her Marquette University classmates were set to compete in the firm's first-ever US stock pitching competition the next day.

Guiter's focus paid off: Her team placed third, and she scored an interview that led to an internship with Balyasny's proprietary research team, set to start in 2026.

Balyasny, meanwhile, has now adopted the competition as a regular part of its recruiting pipeline. It held a second stock-picking contest at the end of February and plans to host two such competitions a year in the US from now on.

While only the first-place winners receive a $10,000 check, the top two teams, plus other standout students, are granted hard-to-get interviews for Balyasny internships. For example, six out of 15 participants from the February contest were interviewed for Balyasny's 2026 internship program.

"It's basically an early application pool for us, and we would love to be able to fill a good amount of our summer internship class via the stock pitch competition," said Hannah Dinardo, the firm's head of campus recruiting.

Balyasny is just one of many "buy-side" firms ramping up campus recruitment — that is, getting talent in the door earlier through internships versus waiting until they've had job experience. In the past, hedge funds and private equity firms recruited almost exclusively from investment banks. But campus recruiting has become increasingly important to the sector, which has ballooned in size in recent years due to growing interest in their investments.

"Having a cohort of young talent — I don't want to say that it's inexpensive, but it's an earlier investment," explained Steve Schurr, a Balyasny portfolio manager who conceived of the stock-picking competition as a talent pipeline. Today, most of Schurr's 10-person team counts Balyasny as their first job out of college, he said.

Guiter, Schurr, and Dinardo sat down with Business Insider to give their advice on how college students interested in a finance career can get invited to the competition and make an impression on the asset manager's top execs once there.

Inside the competition

Here's how it works: Balyasny recruiters, including Dinardo, identify campus clubs with students they can invite to submit stock pitches, which act as applications to the competition. The firm prioritizes sophomores.

Pitches are reviewed blind, meaning the school names are withheld until the final selection round. Then, five schools are invited to and hosted in New York to participate in an in-person competition.

At the event, student teams present their pitches to the judges — who are also portfolio managers — and the other teams for 10 minutes, followed by a seven-minute Q&A.

In addition to traditional Wall Street target schools, Dinardo says the firm also aims to include lesser-known universities like Marquette University — a small private school in Wisconsin. (The winners of the February competition hailed from The University of Alabama.)

"It's such a great way to evaluate students' skill set through their work product and to really see how they're thinking about markets, how they're thinking about stocks, and just see them in a totally different light versus just a one-to-one interview," said Dinardo. "You're able to also, from a recruiting perspective, see how they stack up against their peers."

Get strategically involved on campus

Key to scoring an invite is being in the right college clubs.

"The competition as a whole has been really helpful for us to better understand where we're spending our time on campus and which groups really align well with what we're looking for," Dinardo said.

She advises students whose groups aren't yet on their radar to hone in the club's educational program and mission.

"Think about the curriculum of the club. Is it a group where students by their sophomore year are going to be prepared to compete and participate in a competition like this?" she said, adding: "Are they well versed in diligencing an idea soup to nuts and from start to finish being able to build out a stock pitch and an investment pitch?"

In choosing which clubs to work with, Dinardo also looks at a club's relationship with its members, preferring a loyal base versus a handful of students aiming to fill out their resumes.

"A one-semester engagement opportunity on campus to build out your resume and get on an email distro list. I would say that's typically what we try to avoid," she said.

Put in the hours

It can be hard to juggle classes, jobs, friends, and other club commitments, but Guiter advises students prioritize the stock-picking competition if they want to succeed.

"We were putting in over 80 hours a week, especially that last week," Guiter said. I mean, we'd wake up in the morning and we would work on that until we went to bed. We were really focused on it and really wanted to stand out to the judges and come as prepared as possible."

She had never worked so hard on anything in her time as a student.

"It was definitely the most I've ever juggled on my plate at one time, but worth every minute of it."

Practice getting 'grilled'

Rehearse presenting your ideas and answering questions as much and as often as possible.

"Don't show up and have only practiced your pitch like, three times," Guiter said.

She and her team did multiple run-throughs in front of their entire investment club and professors.

"We'd go up during class or have Friday pitches where people would come, and they would just grill us," she said. "There was a time where it went on for an hour and a half."

Ahead of the competition, the top five teams get a 45-minute pitch revision session with members of Balyasny's analyst development team to prepare for the final event and get a better sense of the types of questions they might be probed on.

Think of ways to be different

Balyasny doesn't give students tight parameters for picking a stock, just a market cap amount. So when thinking about which equity they'd showcase, Guiter and her team went for something they thought would be a less popular choice: a healthcare stock.

"We wanted to branch out from the tech and AI space because we figured a lot of our competitors would choose a stock within that space," she said. "We wanted to differentiate within a market that has a lot of research that we could build off of."

Indeed, the skill set required to be a successful equity investor is "evolving rapidly," said Schurr.

"You need to have a high degree of creative intelligence. You need to be a really independent thinker, but you also have to have an adaptive mindset," he said.

Guiter and her team used ChatGPT to assist with the extensive research project and show they could harness technology.

"We analyzed how often management fulfilled their promises by analyzing 10 years of earning calls," she said.

Focus on process

Looking back, Guiter said her group should've included more details about the time spent on the project as well as their research approach when delivering their 10-minute pitch. It's something she now encourages other students to do.

Indeed, Shurr (who was a judge at her competition) said he is looking to hear about research processes and conclusions that say something interesting. Even if the judges don't agree with the stock call, this will give them insight into the process.

Schurr added that successful teams "did a deep amount of interesting and variant work and could articulate their thoughts quite well about the nature of the business and where they believe the perception was misplaced," he said. "And they could show their work."

This focus helps him and other PMs determine the competition winners and identify which students to invite to Super Days.

"Really what you're trying to do with this is not identify one great idea, you're trying to identify someone who has an innate strength as a sleuth to go and dig for information in a unique way," he said.

Pokemon Go has had an exceptionally wide reach over the last few years. Since launching in 2016, it has become one of the most successful mobile games on Android and iOS with a cult following to this day. The team at Pokemon Go has announced that a new owner will be buying the rights to the game, though they suggest the current dev team will remain unchanged.

After being exposed for some shady practices last year, PayPal’s popular Honey extension has finally been forced to disclose that, yes, it takes advantage of merchant affiliate programs.

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When Apple launched its iPhone 16e last month, it included a brand new component: A16 iPad haven’t included it. Here’s where the C1 will appear next, and which products are not expected to get it.