• Throughout human history, cities have been abandoned or reclaimed by nature.
• Sometimes people rediscover these cities using technology or by a stroke of luck.
• These five cities, buried under rock, ice, or vegetation, have resurfaced.

Humans have been building cities for centuries, but they don't always last. In some cases, nature has reclaimed them. Other times, people simply built on top of older structures.

Technology, including lidar and radar, helps uncover some lost or abandoned cities. Warming temperatures and drier conditions have caused other towns to resurface.

Here are five hidden cities buried by rock, snow, or vegetation that people have rediscovered.

Ice-penetrating radar recently captured an image of a frozen town in Greenland.

In April 2024, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists accidentally caught a glimpse of the Cold War past, buried 100 feet under Greenland's frozen landscape.

Over 900 miles north of Nuuk, the country's most populous city, there was once a secret town of Army workers. Now the only way to see the frozen city, known as Camp Century, is through ice-penetrating radar.

"It's sort of like an ultrasound for ice sheets, where we're mapping out the bottom of the ice sheet," Chad Greene, the cryospheric scientist who took the picture, told Business Insider.

While there are other radar images of Camp Century, this newer device, the UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), is more powerful. "That is the highest-resolution image that we've ever gotten to see at this camp," Greene said.

Camp Century was a military base that was supposed to operate as a small town while holding Cold War secrets.

Remote and inhospitable, northern Greenland seemed like an ideal place for a Cold War military base. The US Army Corps of Engineers started constructing Camp Century 26 feet below the ice in 1959.

They dug tunnels large enough for an electric railroad to connect to a supply base over 150 miles away. The 2-mile-long complex, powered by a nuclear reactor, was large enough for 200 soldiers. So they didn't miss the comforts of home, they would have access to a gym, game rooms, library, and barber shop, Popular Science reported in 1960, while the base was still under construction.

The Army told journalists that scientists used Camp Century as a base for collecting and researching the world's first ice core samples. While that was true, the frozen city was also part of Project Iceworm. That mission, to launch ballistic missiles from under the ice, was kept under wraps and was eventually scrapped.

Army officials thought Camp Century would remain buried forever, but that now seems unlikely.

The Army's expectation for Camp Century after abandoning it in 1967 was that snowfall would keep it "preserved for eternity," a group of engineers wrote in a 1962 journal article. Over the decades, dozens of feet of ice and snow have further covered the base. The problem is that warming temperatures could reverse that trend.

If Camp Century melts, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste could surface as well. A 2016 study predicted the area will start losing ice by 2090.

Lidar data helped researchers find thousands of Maya structures in Mexico.

Luke Auld-Thomas was deep in a Google search when he hit the jackpot … for a graduate student in archaeology, at least. It was lidar data for environmental analysis, but he was interested in what was under the trees.

To capture that kind of information, a plane flies over an area and the lidar sensor emits millions of pulses of light that are used to measure the distance between the plane and the objects below. Some light slips between the tree canopy to the ground, which can reveal forgotten structures.

The dataset covered an area of Campeche in Southeastern Mexico where Lowland Maya civilizations once flourished. However, the area is so dense with trees, it's impossible to see structures from the sky. Archaeologists had never studied this particular spot, so Auld-Thomas wasn't sure what the data would show.

It turned out that there were thousands of structures under the leaves.

"The locals were aware of the ruins nearby, but the scientific community had no idea," Marcello Canuto, a Tulane University professor and Auld-Thomas' advisor, told Business Insider.

The researchers were surprised to find one of the most densely populated settlements at the time.

When Auld-Thomas and Marcello started looking at the lidar data, they were surprised to see an entire city, packed with buildings. It may have been home to 30,000 to 50,000 people between 750 and 850 CE.

The city covered around 6 square miles. The team found over 6,700 structures, including houses, plazas, temple pyramids, and a ballcourt. Some areas were dense while others were more rural, Canuto said.

"There's also causeways, like roads, terraces, hydraulic canals, reservoirs, things that suggest that the landscape is being modified for a series of reasons," he said, including transportation and growing food.

Based on the city's scope, Canuto said it may have served as a regional capital that would have been home to elites or a royal family.

The researchers called it Valeriana, after a nearby lagoon.

Scientists still haven't visited Valeriana.

Right now, everything the researchers know about Valeriana comes from the lidar data. That information can help see the size and shape of buildings and the size of the city, but they need to visit the site to learn more.

"What lidar doesn't tell you is what's below the surface," Canuto said. The Maya may have buried some objects or structures, or soil may have covered them.

Canuto said many of the stone buildings have likely crumbled over the centuries. They may be decorated or have important architectural features that lidar can't reveal.

While Canuto isn't planning to go to Valeriana himself, he hopes researchers from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History will study the site.

"That's the point of open data is to say, 'Look, it's open to everybody, so make use of it,'" he said.

A Nevada drought uncovered a ghost town.

A decades-long megadrought continues to bake the Southwestern US.

In the early 1980s, Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam's reservoir, was nearing its full capacity of 9.3 trillion gallons of water. In 2022, it was at its lowest level since 1937, when it was first filling up, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Satellite images showed a "bathtub ring" of mineralization where water previously covered the shore. A once-wide section of the lake narrowed and then disappeared in the past 20 years.

As the evaporating water revealed the bed below, the remnants of an abandoned town began to emerge.

A small town had to make way for the Hoover Dam.

In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill ordering the construction of what would become the Hoover Dam. It was completed in 1936, causing the Colorado River to start rising.

As water pooled in valleys, Lake Mead began to form. Unfortunately for the residents of St. Thomas, Nevada, they were right in its path.

Mormons settled the town in 1865, though most burned their homes and moved after a dispute over taxes, according to the National Park Service. By the 1880s, newcomers had found the town, which would eventually become home to around 500 people.

When the river water started flooding, the town had everything from a school to a post office to an ice cream shop.

In 1838, the last resident escaped by boat.

"St. Thomas, for a long time, you couldn't get to without scuba diving," Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor, told The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2019.

The drought changed that.

St. Thomas is a symbol of climate change.

St. Thomas started peeking through the disappearing lake in 2002. Walls, foundations, bits of metal, and broken glass litter the earth now.

The town reemerged in 1945 and 1963 but the lake swallowed it up again. It's unclear when that may happen again because climate change is fueling water loss in the Colorado River, a 2023 study found.

Lake Mead rose 16 feet in 2024 after coming dangerously close to the "dead pool" level, when the Hoover Dam would no longer be able to release water downstream to Arizona and California, SFGate reported.

Archaeologists found a limestone cave leading to an enormous underground city in Turkey.

Midyat, in southeastern Turkey, has long held religious significance, as evidenced by its monasteries and churches, some of which were built in the 6th century.

In 2020, researchers on an excavation project unexpectedly found an entrance to a sprawling subterranean city, Agence France-Presse reported in 2024. Its construction was even older than the above-ground churches, dating back almost 2,000 years.

The city's inhabitants, possibly fearing persecution, fled underground and created an entire world.

As many as 60,000 people may have lived in the city.

Tunnels carved into the rock connect dozens of rooms in the underground city, known as Matiate. Researchers found coins, human and animal bones, and areas for storing food and wine, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2022.

People occupied the site for hundreds of years and had many reasons for seeking shelter under ground.

"To protect themselves from the climate, enemies, predators and diseases, people took refuge in these caves, which they turned into an actual city," Mervan Yavuz, the Midyat conservation director, told AFP.

Some may have been looking for a place to safely practice their religions, Yavuz added. "Pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, all these believers contributed to the underground city of Matiate."

Tourists may start visiting the underground city soon.

Workers have only excavated a tiny fraction of Matiate, which covers an estimated 9 million square feet.

"Our aim is to gradually uncover the entire underground city and open it to tourists," excavation leader Gani Tarkan told Daily Sabah last year.

Eventually, Matiate could rival the size and popularity of another of Turkey's underground cities, Derinkuyu.

Disappearing chickens helped a farmer locate the underground city of Derinkuyu.

In 1963, a man in the Cappadocia region of Turkey kept losing chickens during renovations on his basement, the BBC reported in 2022. They would slip through a gap in the wall and disappear. It turned out the wall concealed a tunnel to a long-forgotten city.

Located nearly 280 feet under the ground, the cavernous rooms and tunnels were once home to 20,000 people.

The region's stony spires hide 18 levels of living space connected by tunnels.

Cappadocia's rock is made from volcanic ash and forms natural spires. Known as tuff, the rock is easy to carve and shape, which may have helped residents build the underground tunnels and dwellings.

The city is ancient, with some estimates of its age at around 3,000 years. In 370 BCE, Xenophon of Athens described a site that seemed to match what's now known as Derinkuyu.

After its rediscovery, archaeologists and others began excavating Derinkuyu, eventually finding over 600 openings leading to the city. Storage rooms, stables, and schools covered 171 square miles. There was a well for water and ventilation shafts bringing in fresh air.

While residents didn't seem to live underground permanently, they could hide from violence or harsh weather for months at a time, the BBC reported.

Derinkuyu is now a tourist draw.

In the 1920s, Cappadocian Greeks left the city behind after the Greco-Turkish War. They likely knew about the metropolis beneath their feet but took that knowledge to Greece.

Following Derinkuyu's rediscovery, it became a huge draw for the region.

Visitors can now explore several levels of Derinkuyu to see how people sought refuge for hundreds of years in the claustrophobic caves.

• A brush fire erupted in Pacific Palisades amid a powerful windstorm Tuesday.
• The Palisades Fire quickly grew to 200 acres, prompting mandatory evacuations in the area.
• Santa Ana winds, with gusts up to 100 mph, are creating extreme fire conditions.

A major brush fire erupted in the Pacific Palisades, an affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles, in the first hours of a powerful windstorm on Tuesday.

The Palisades Fire broke out around 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time and quickly ballooned to 200 acres.

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for the area all the way down to the Pacific Ocean.

Westwood Recreation Center was open to evacuees as of Tuesday afternoon.

Further evacuation warnings prompted residents to prepare for evacuation in the Topanga Canyon area and an additional swath of the hills down to La Costa Beach.

Palisades Drive, the major road out of the neighborhood, was packed with slow-moving lines of cars as people evacuated beneath a smoky haze and bright-orange flames licking the hillside in the distance, shown live on ABC7 shortly after noon.

The state agency CalFire reported that the fire was on both sides of Palisades Drive.

ABC7 reported that some people were evacuating on foot and spoke with one family who abandoned their car on the road.

An LA Fire Department captain told the news station that they had not yet confirmed any property damage.

Highway 1 has closed between Santa Monica and Malibu.

Officials have not yet determined how the fire started, but it erupted during a high-risk major windstorm that created extreme fire conditions in the area.

Warm, dry Santa Ana winds from the deserts of Nevada and Utah are expected to bring gusts up to 100 mph to Southern California through Wednesday morning.

The National Weather Service called the windstorm "life-threatening and destructive" and warned that these could be the strongest north winds in 14 years. The NWS urged residents to be ready to evacuate, as such winds can rapidly spread any fire that breaks out.

"This is pretty much the worst possible scenario for a firefight," David Ortiz of the LAFD told local news station KTLA.

• Meta announced Tuesday it's doing away with third-party fact-checking in favor of community notes.
• Several lawmakers told BI the move is an indication Mark Zuckerberg is catering to Trump.
• Some business leaders praised Meta for the change while others expressed concern.

Meta is carrying out the biggest overhaul to its content moderation system in years.

The company announced on Tuesday that it's replacing third-party fact-checking program with user-generated community notes, like those on Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter.

In another page from Musk's playbook, Meta said it's moving some teams — specifically its trust and safety teams, responsible for writing the company's content policies and reviewing content — out of California into Texas and other locations in the US.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the decision was about getting "back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

Democrats: Zuckerberg's sucking up to Trump

Democratic lawmakers told BI at the US Capitol on Tuesday that they saw the move as a sign that Zuckerberg is trying to appease President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his return to the Oval Office.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Zuckerberg was "kissing Trump's ass" in making the change.

"I think that Mark Zuckerberg is trying to follow in Elon's footsteps, which means that actually, they're going to use this guise of free speech to actually suppress critics of Trump and critics of themselves," Ocasio-Cortez said. "That's why they're moving to this system. It's a model for their own self-aggrandizement."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told BI that Big Tech CEOs "want a government that works for them, and they're making clear that sucking up to Donald Trump is one of the ways they think they'll get that."

Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida said the change appeared to be symptomatic of authoritarianism.

"It's not just about the legislation they pass, or what they push, but it creates this environment of fear and self-censorship, and a place where companies will begin to do the things he wants them to do without him forcing them to do it," he said, referring to Trump.

"They're surrendering essentially to implied threats by the government, which is very dangerous," Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York said.

Trump himself told reporters Tuesday that he believed Zuckerberg's changes at Meta were "probably" in response to previous threats Trump has made to the Meta chief executive, including to jail him.

Republicans: A good sign, but we'll see

Republicans offered more mixed reactions to Zuckerberg's decision, with some expressing skepticism while others saw it as a win. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told reporters at the Capitol that what the Meta CEO said "sounds good" but that the "proof will be in the pudding."

He also said he saw Zuckerberg's move as the product of both political positioning and a sincere evolution in his thinking.

"I've had multiple conversations with Mark on this topic," Cruz said, "and I will say, he had previously expressed an interest in protecting free speech."

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, meanwhile, called the decision a "ploy to avoid being regulated." For several years, she's been pushing a bill to increase social media protections for kids.

"Can any of us assume Zuckerberg won't return to his old tricks?" wrote Sen. Mike Lee of Utah on X.

Republican Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, meanwhile, wrote on X that it was "a great day for freedom of speech."

"It seems like Meta is finally taking a page from Elon Musk's playbook & letting Americans make decisions for themselves. It's about time Meta owned up to censoring Americans," he added.

Tech and business leaders react

In the tech and business world, some of Zuck's peers congratulated him and Meta on the move.

Musk said in separate tweets that the decision was "cool" and "awesome."

X CEO Linda Yaccarino called it "a smart move by Zuck."

"Fact-checking and moderation doesn't belong in the hands of a few select gatekeepers who can easily inject their bias into decisions. It's a democratic process that belongs in the hands of many," she wrote.

David Marcus, the former Meta exec in charge of the company's Libra cryptocurrency project, said the change marked a "massive step in the right direction towards free expression for Meta."

Other tech and business figures were more skeptical of the decision.

Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter's trust and safety department, said, "Genuinely baffled by the unempirical assertion that Community Notes 'works.' Does it? How do Meta know? The best available research is pretty mixed on this point. And as they go all-in on an unproven concept, will Meta commit to publicly releasing data so people can actually study this?"

And in response to a message from Zuckerberg saying Meta will work with Trump to "push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more," Mark Cuban wrote on Bluesky: "Translation: Americans are going to see Tariffs on products from countries you believe censor Meta services as a means of pressuring them into removing any restrictions that impact your profitability in those countries. Also: You'll have carte blanche to take posts that no longer have restrictions, making them a more explicit representation, and train your AI Models."

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Ted Farnsworth is the former CEO of Helios and Matheson Analytics, which previously owned MoviePass.
• The documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash" shows how he blew through hundreds of millions of dollars.
• He and former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to securities fraud.

In the HBO documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash," Ted Farnsworth is the CEO of the publicly traded Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY) when the company takes a majority stake in the movie-theater-subscription startup MoviePass in 2017.

Under Farnsworth's watch, MoviePass became a sensation after he and then-CEO Mitch Lowe dropped the monthly subscription fee from $30 a month to $10. It led to millions of subscribers and the company being hailed as the Netflix of movie theaters. Farnsworth and Lowe touted themselves in the press as the masterminds behind it all.

The documentary — based on reporting by Business Insider —reveals the more complicated reality of the phenomenon, showing how MoviePass cofounders Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt were pushed out of the company after the arrival of Farnsworth and Lowe.

With Farnsworth and Lowe at the helm, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to not just keep the unsustainable $10-a-month plan going, but also on lavish parties at Coachella, and starting a movie production arm best known for releasing the 2018 movie "Gotti," a biopic on notorious crime boss John Gotti starring John Travolta that received a 0% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes.

In 2020, both HMNY and MoviePass went bankrupt (Spikes has since relaunched MoviePass), and two years later, Farnsworth and Lowe were charged with securities fraud.

As the documentary shows, the crash of MoviePass is just one of many failed ventures of the 61-year-old Farnsworth. Business Insider reached out to Farnsworth for comment but didn't get a response.

Here's a rundown of many of those companies (some of which went bankrupt), what Farnsworth did after MoviePass, and why he's currently in jail.

Note: "MoviePass, MovieCrash" is based on Business Insider's award-winning reporting on the company.

Mid-1990s: Farnsworth ran the Psychic Discovery Network, promoted by La Toya Jackson, that received more than 50 complaints from the FTC

Farnsworth's first major attention came when he ran the 900-number psychic network, which became famous thanks to its star promoter, La Toya Jackson.

A 1998 bulletin from the Federal Trade Commission noted the Psychic Discovery Network as a company that received more than 50 complaints in 1997. It had a total of 60.

2000: Auction site Farmbid.com lasts less than a year

Farnsworth tried to use the popularity of the Psychic Network and the dot-com boom to capitalize on the multitrillion-dollar agricultural business in the early 2000s with the site Farmbid.com.

A 2000 Wired story touted the company as a site that featured "farm auctions, links to wholesalers, a detailed weather center, and even a 'farm chat' area."

But the farming industry wasn't that into it. According to Sunbiz, the official Florida business registry, the company folded in less than a year.

2001: He gets into the beverage space with XStream

Farnsworth founded the company XStream Beverage Network Inc. in 2001, touting it as "an emerging developer, marketer and distributor of new age beverages."

He tried to buy a European energy drink called Dark Dog, but that deal never closed, according to Bloomberg.

By 2007, he was able to buy Global Beverage, which had in its stable Rudy Beverages, founded by famed 1970s Notre Dame football player Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger.

In November of that year, Farnsworth resigned as chairman of XStream, and its stock dropped 99%, according to Bloomberg.

2007: Farnsworth becomes CEO of Purple Beverage

Farnsworth's failure with XStream didn't stop him from trying another venture in the drink space. He became the CEO of Purple Beverage Co., touting an antioxidant-rich drink.

The stock for Purple Bev went as high as $3.24 in April 2008, according to Bloomberg, thanks partly to Farnsworth landing celebrity spokespeople like Chaka Khan and New York Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Mariano Rivera. But by the time he resigned a year later, the stock had plummeted by 99%.

2012: He oversees a vitamin company that flatlines within a year and is sued by FedEx

Farnsworth became the chairman of LTS Nutraceuticals Inc., a multilevel-marketing vitamin company. In 2011, it traded as high as $4.85. But by 2012, with Farnsworth running things, the stock fell 99%. It's unclear when he left the company because it didn't make periodic regulatory filings, according to Bloomberg.

In 2013, FedEx sued the vitamin company, saying it was owed $26,000. According to The Miami Herald, the judge ruled in FedEx's favor.

2016: Farnsworth’s Zone Technologies merges with HMNY to become publicly listed on the Nasdaq

Over a decade after Farmbid, Farnsworth went back into the tech space with an app called RedZone Maps (through a company called Zone Technologies). The app flagged where crimes were being reported in a user's area.

A year later, Zone Technologies merged with Helios and Matheson to become publicly listed on the Nasdaq. That same year, Farnsworth was named CEO of HMNY.

2017: HMNY acquires a majority stake in MoviePass

Since its birth in 2011, MoviePass had been trying to figure out a monthly subscription price that attracted moviegoers and would make a profit. By 2017, the company was on the brink of running out of money when Farnsworth got connected with MoviePass' then-CEO, Mitch Lowe. A deal was made for HMNY to take a majority stake in MoviePass. By that summer, Farnsworth and Lowe dropped the price to $10 a month, and the rest is history. With a huge rise in subscribers for MoviePass, the HMNY stock initially soared. But by 2020, MoviePass and HMNY went bankrupt.

At the time of bankruptcy, the company said it was under pending investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, SEC, four California district attorneys, and the New York attorney general.

In 2021, Farnsworth and Lowe settled with the FTC and reached a $400,000 settlement with the California district attorneys.

2021: Less than a year after MoviePass' bankruptcy, Farnsworth founds Zash Global Media and Entertainment

After MoviePass' bankruptcy, Farnsworth quickly landed back on his feet by starting a media company called Zash in less than a year. He later merged it with the publicly traded company Vinco Ventures. He acquired a TikTok rival called Lomotif and even tried (unsuccessfully) to buy the National Enquirer.

By the end of 2022, Vinco stock had cratered and is now worth less than one cent.

In 2024, Business Insider reported on Farnsworth's business tactics while at Zash. They mirror how he operated at MoviePass and some other ventures over the decades: Get involved with a publicly traded company, help raise funding from his finance connections at favorable terms for them, drive up the company's stock with splashy announcements, and leave retail investors with big losses when the stock crashes.

2022: Farnsworth is charged with securities fraud related to his time at MoviePass

In 2022, Farnsworth and Lowe were each charged with one count of securities fraud and three counts of wire fraud by the Department of Justice, which alleged the two "engaged in a scheme to defraud investors through materially false and misleading representations relating to HMNY and MoviePass's business and operations to artificially inflate the price of HMNY's stock and attract new investors."

2024: Farnsworth sits in jail

Farnsworth has been in a Florida jail since August 2023.

During Farnsworth's time out on bail, he traveled from his home in upstate New York to Miami on multiple occasions without notifying his probation officer and was involved in a domestic incident that resulted in a restraining order, which he also didn't report, according to Bloomberg.

His bail was revoked in an August 2023 hearing. He's now in jail awaiting sentencing.

2025: Farnsworth pleads guilty to defrauding investors

In January, Farnsworth pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in the movie-ticket subscription service MoviePass, the US Department of Justice announced.

This came on the heels of Lowe pleading guilty to securities fraud conspiracy in September 2024.

Farnsworth also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for a second scheme related to a video-sharing platform he was involved with while under investigation for MoviePass.

January 7, 2025: This story has been updated to reflect new details.

Bonita Mersiades is a FIFA whistleblower and a former head of corporate and public affairs at Football Australia. She played a key role in Australia's bid to host the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups, a bidding season at the heart of a major FIFA corruption scandal that led to the indictment of 14 officials and executives.

After she was fired in 2010, Mersiades became a prominent whistleblower and helped expose "the FIFA way," the culture of bribery and corruption within FIFA. Her efforts contributed to investigations that led to high-profile FIFA arrests in 2015. She is the author of "Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way" and the founder of Fair Play Publishing, a company specializing in nonfiction stories about football.

Mersiades speaks with Business Insider about the ongoing culture of corruption within FIFA, the controversial 2018 and 2022 selections of Russia and Qatar, and the history of misconduct and misogyny within the world of football. She speaks about the future of the World Cup tournament, which has been awarded to Saudi Arabia for 2034.

For more: https://www.amazon.com.au/Whatever-Takes-Inside-Story-FIFA/dp/1925914682

• Rebecca Yarros is best known for writing "Fourth Wing."
• The third book in her romantasy series will be released on January 21.
• Yarros has already published over 20 novels, and two are being adapted into shows and films.

Rebecca Yarros has been busy for the past two years.

Since January 2023, Yarros, 43, has become a household name thanks to her bestselling novel "Fourth Wing" and its sequel, "Iron Flame."

She also released two titles unrelated to "Fourth Wing" and had two of her works optioned for screen adaptations while raising six children with her husband, Jason.

The third book in the "The Empyrean" series, "Onyx Storm," will hit bookshelves on January 21, and readers are on the edge of their seats to see how dragon rider Violet Sorrengail's story will continue.

Ahead of its release, take a look back at the prolific author's career, from writing her first novel to hitting The New York Times bestseller list with her romantasy debut.

The military defined much of Rebecca Yarros' early life

Both of Yarros' parents were lieutenant colonels, so she moved around frequently during her childhood, as she told The New York Times.

Yarros shared on her website that she enrolled in the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, for college, where she had a vocal scholarship. When she was 19, she met Jason Yarros at a karaoke bar. The New York Times reported that he was a private in the Army at the time.

The couple tied the knot in 2002, and Yarros dropped out of school when they were expecting their first child shortly after they got married.

Yarros and her husband have six children, including their adopted daughter Audrey-Grace, who inspired them to found the nonprofit One October. Today, the couple lives in Colorado, and they have a cat, two dogs, and two chinchillas in addition to their children.

Yarros published her first book in 2014

Yarros got her degree in history and English from Troy University online while she was raising her children.

Her husband Jason continued to serve in the military until 2019, and he was deployed to Iran and Afghanistan multiple times throughout their marriage.

The "Fourth Wing" author told the Times that she started reading romance books and writing them at night when she developed insomnia after her husband was injured during one of his deployments.

She first wrote an urban fantasy in 2011 but couldn't sell the book. Then, in 2014, Entangled Publishing released her debut novel "Full Measures," the first installment in the "Fight & Glory" series.

Since then, Yarros has published over 20 books, and many of her works are inspired by the role the military played in her life.

However, none gained the traction "Fourth Wing" did when it was released in 2023.

'Fourth Wing' changed everything

In 2020, Yarros and four of her children were diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome after she started passing out frequently and getting migraines, The Times reported. The rare group of genetic disorders weakens the body's connective tissues and can cause an array of health problems.

The diagnosis helped inspire Yarros to write "Fourth Wing," which Entangled's burgeoning romance imprint, Red Tower, published in April 2023.

In the novel, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail's mother forces her to enter the Rider's Quadrant at Basgiath War College to train to be a dragon rider, even though she spent her life preparing to become a Scribe.

Violet not only hasn't been preparing to be a Rider, but her medical condition — which isn't named in the novel but Yarros confirmed on Instagram is Ehlers-Danlos — makes training more risky for her than her classmates. Plus, many of her peers have it out for Violet, as they are the children of the Rebels her mother helped destroy.

But Violet proves surprisingly powerful, and her success at the school brings her closer to Xaden Riorson, the son of a rebel and someone she never expected to fall for.

"Fourth Wing" became an instant New York Times bestseller and BookTok sensation, finding an eager audience as the romantasy genre, which blends romance and fantasy, grew in popularity.

Red Tower published the second book in "The Empyrean" series, "Iron Flame," in October of 2023, just six months after "Fourth Wing" came out. It was a massive success despite a messy rollout, with the books selling over 1 million copies combined in the first half of 2024 alone, according to Publisher's Weekly.

Yarros isn't slowing down anytime soon

The third installment of "The Empyrean" series, "Onyx Storm," will be released on January 21. Yarros is attending a midnight release party for the book at Barnes & Noble The Grove in Los Angeles to celebrate.

The author has started sharing snippets of the book on her Instagram, hinting at how Violet and Xaden's story will continue.

Yarros plans for the series to have five books in total, and she is still publishing titles unrelated to Violet's world amid the rollout of "The Empyrean" series. Indeed, Yarros published "Variation," a contemporary romance, in November 2024.

In addition to writing books, the author will be busy with adaptations of her works in the coming years.

Amazon MGM Studios bought the rights to "The Empyrean" series and already started working on making a TV show based on "Fourth Wing," as Deadline reported in October 2023. Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society will produce the show, with Yarros serving as an executive producer. Moira Walley-Beckett, who produced "Breaking Bad" and "Anne with an E," will be the showrunner.

Casting has yet to be announced for the series, nor has a release date. In a clip of a Q&A shared on TikTok, Yarros said she doesn't have control over casting, though she made clear to the team working on the project that she doesn't want Xaden to be whitewashed.

"They know how staunch I am against whitewashing Xaden," she said. "I think that's the biggest thing."

In the series, Xaden is described as having "warm tawny skin," dark hair, and stubble.

The Hollywood Reporter also revealed in October that Yarros' 2023 novel "In the Likely Event" is being adapted into a Netflix film by Lindsey Ferrentino. Yarros will be an executive producer on the project as well.

Red Tower and Yarros have not announced a release date or title for the fourth "Empyrean" book, though it likely won't come out too far in the future given the author's rapid writing pace.

• The parent company of fast-casual chain Panera Bread has a new CEO.
• The restaurant has undergone a menu overhaul and seen lawsuits over highly caffeinated beverages.
• It's the latest in a series of leadership switches at restaurant chains over the past 12 months.

The parent company of fast-casual chain Panera Bread is getting a new chief executive, the latest in a series of CEO transitions at major restaurant chains.

Panera Brands said Tuesday that current CEO José Alberto Dueñas, who has held the job for the last 1 ½ years, would step down immediately but remain as a "special advisor" to the new CEO until the end of March. Paul Carbone, Panera's CFO, will serve as interim CEO as the company looks for a permanent leader.

"I am immensely proud of leading Panera during this transformative period for the Company," Dueñas said. Panera Brands includes the eponymous chain as well as Caribou Coffee and bagel chain Einstein Bros.

Dueñas joined Panera in mid-2023, with the chain describing his appointment as its "next generation of CEO leadership and Board governance in preparation for its eventual IPO." While the company reportedly filed confidentially to go public in late 2023, it has yet to list.

Dueñas also oversaw the Panera chain's "largest menu transformation ever" in 2024, which included more focus on items like mac and cheese and sandwiches and bigger portion sizes.

The menu changes also eliminated Panera's Charged Sips range of beverages, which contained high levels of caffeine. The drinks were the subject of multiple lawsuits, which alleged that they left some customers with permanent injuries and problems such as body shakes.

The executive change at Panera is the latest of several CEO switches at major restaurant chains over the past year amid a tough consumer spending environment for brands from McDonald's to Nike.

Brian Niccol, formerly the CEO of Mexican grill chain Chipotle, took over the top job at Starbucks in September in an abrupt end to former CEO Laxman Narasimhan's time in the role. Starbucks has reported falling sales in key markets, including the US and China, for much of the past year.

Scott Boatwright, previously Chipotle's COO, took over as interim CEO in August.

Meanwhile, former P.F. Chang's CEO Damola Adamolekun has helmed Red Lobster since September, the same month that the seafood-focused chain emerged from bankruptcy.

Subway CEO John Chidsey retired at the end of 2024, the year after he oversaw the sandwich chain's sale to private equity firm Roark Capital in a deal worth about $9 billion.

Do you work at Panera and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Ted Farnsworth pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in MoviePass and Vinco.
• Farnsworth has been in prison since August 2023.
• MoviePass's $10 plan led to its popularity but was unsustainable, causing bankruptcy.

Ted Farnsworth pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding investors in the movie-ticket subscription service MoviePass, the US Department of Justice announced. He bought the company in 2017 while CEO of Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY).

Farnsworth, 62, also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for a second scheme related to a video-sharing platform he was involved with while under investigation for MoviePass.

Farnsworth has been in federal custody since August 2023.

"Farnsworth was anxious to accept responsibility for his conduct," Farnsworth's lawyer, Sam Rabin, told Business Insider in a statement. "The most important step in doing that was to plead guilty to the crimes with which he is charged. He did that today."

The Department of Justice charged Farnsworth and then MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe with securities fraud in 2022. The DOJ alleged that Lowe and Farnsworth "engaged in a scheme to defraud investors through materially false and misleading representations relating to HMNY and MoviePass's business and operations to artificially inflate the price of HMNY's stock and attract new investors."

The DOJ also recently charged Farnsworth and others with using "the same strategy to defraud" investors in Vinco Ventures, another publicly traded company.

Lowe, the former MoviePass CEO, pleaded guilty to securities fraud conspiracy in September 2024.

The rise and fall of MoviePass

In 2017, HMNY became the parent company of MoviePass. Farnsworth and Lowe launched a $10-a-month plan that made the service very popular. As subscriptions soared into the millions, HMNY's stock skyrocketed.

However, the $10 plan — which allowed subscribers to see a movie a day in theaters — was not sustainable, and the company burned through hundreds of millions of dollars. By 2020, both MoviePass and HMNY went bankrupt.

MoviePass founder Stacy Spikes, who was ousted by Lowe and Farnsworth from MoviePass in 2018, bought back the company in 2021.

MoviePass — under Spikes' leadership — is currently available nationwide.

The story of the rise and fall of MoviePass is chronicled in the documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash," which was released in May and is based on BI's award-winning reporting.

• Amazon delayed its full RTO plan in some locations due to insufficient office space.
• An internal list shows the where Amazon employees will work three days a week until space is ready.
• The list shows more than 40 locations where the full five-day RTO policy is delayed.

Amazon delayed its five-day return-to-office plan in some locations due to a lack of space, as Business Insider recently reported.

An internal Amazon list viewed by Business Insider shows where employees are being asked to continue following the company's previous policy, requiring only three days a week in the office.

The locations include major tech hubs such as Santa Clara, Austin, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Bangalore.

Amazon's original guidance required employees to work from the office five days a week, beginning January 2. An Amazon spokesperson told BI on Tuesday that buildings were ready for a majority of employees on that day.

The company's real estate team late last year started notifying employees that they could continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces were ready, with delays stretching to as late as May, according to internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.

The company has said the return to office will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon made the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Here are more of the Amazon locations where employees are being told to continue working three days a week in the office:

Raleigh, Annapolis Junction, Baltimore, Columbia, Austin, Cupertino, Irvine, Nashville, Boulder, Charlotte, Houston, Jersey City, Newark, Atlanta, Dallas, East Palo Alto, Mexico City, Santa Clara, Sao Paulo, Tampa, Miami, Brooklyn, Columbus, New York, Sacramento, Hamburg, Munich, Tel Aviv, Amman, Milan, Cairo, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai, Istanbul, Beijing, Hyderabad, Shenzhen, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact the reporter, Ashley Stewart, via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

• I left a stable job to pursue freelance tech work because I wanted more flexibility and freedom.
• My family, especially my mother, was concerned about my choice and didn't understand.
• After some trial and error, I finally found a stable career in the freelance tech world.

I was lucky to land a job immediately after college as an IT support intern, which later transitioned into full-time employment. For three years, I followed the path most expected of me. Eventually, I felt trapped and chose to resign.

That one decision set many things in motion, including a complete shift in how I viewed work.

My mother was the first to voice her concern. She had always pictured a traditional life for me: a stable job, a marriage, and a family. But I wanted something different.

"Samedi, where are you going?" she asked when she heard the news. I shared an outline of my plans but kept the finer details to myself.

In Africa, where I live, stable employment is seen as the cornerstone of success. My decision to freelance was culturally dissonant.

The pressure mounted as relatives mobilized to "help." A cousin offered a position at a leading telco. Family members called with job suggestions, each well-meaning but missing the point; I wasn't looking for another traditional role.

I sought something they couldn't understand: the freedom to build a borderless career.

It wasn't easy to jump into freelance work

No one in my family had taken this path before, so I had no role model. I had to do this mostly on my own.

Freelancing wasn't easy. When I left my job, I had no savings and struggled for months. It was a humbling experience.

A year later, I decided to move countries and needed a soft landing to acclimate to a new culture. That's when I decided to go back to a full-time job. I landed a junior web developer position at a media company. It felt like a fresh start, but the role wasn't what I thought it would be. The demands were relentless — late nights, weekend shifts, and tight deadlines. The long hours drained me, and I became burned out and increasingly frustrated.

Eventually, the job that once seemed like an opportunity had become a burden, and it was time to move on.

When I tendered my resignation, my managing director asked me, "Where are you going?"

It's a simple question in traditional work culture, where careers follow linear paths. But in the gig economy, the answer isn't always neat. I gave a vague response about joining another company, though truthfully, I was stepping back into the unknown to take another shot at freelancing. I'd tasted the freedom of freelancing and wanted to do it again. Thankfully, this time, I had more clients to work with.

I eventually found stability in flexibility

My second shot at freelancing has been much more successful. I've worn many hats: web designer, content marketer, copyeditor, and technical writer. Currently, I work as a content marketer and digital career coach.

This variety is simply the nature of modern tech work. Each role has added to my skill set, allowing me to serve clients across time zones.

While it hasn't been easy, the career I built outside a traditional role has been rewarding and freeing. All the opportunities have helped me grow my skill sets. I've built a stable career in my own way.

Bridging the generational divide will take time

Still, my mom's skepticism comes from a place of care and experience. Her preference for traditional employment is understandable in Africa, where economic stability is precarious. Even though I have made a successful career out of freelance, she and my family are still confused about what I do for a living.

But the nature of work is evolving. When companies downsize or restructure, freelancers with diverse clients can adjust more quickly than those tied to one employer. I feel more stable in my career now more than ever, and I hope my family realizes that one day.

I've now realized that the future is borderless. Younger generations like me are becoming global citizens, working across time zones and cultures in ways our parents never imagined.

The question is no longer, "Where are you going?" but "How far can you reach?"

• Mark Zuckerberg said Meta is loosening some of its policies in an effort to avoid limiting free speech.
• Meta will remove restrictions on topics like gender, which means users may see more controversial opinions in their feeds.
• The policy shift is expected to change how your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads feeds appear.

Don't be surprised if your Instagram or Facebook feed looks different as Mark Zuckerberg's overhaul of Meta's moderation policies rolls out in the coming weeks.

In addition to replacing its third-party fact-checking system with community notes similar to Elon Musk's X, Meta is also looking to change things up with a return to promoting political content. Other changes include eliminating restrictions on topics like immigration or gender and shifting its enforcement policies on lower-severity violations.

"We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms," Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the changes.

So what will Facebook, Instagram, and Threads look like with the changes? Based on Zuckerberg's comments, this is how your feed could appear different.

You'll likely see a wider range of views — including controversial ones

In the next few weeks, you might start to notice more controversial content on your social media feeds.

In an announcement about the new changes, Meta said it "removed millions of pieces of content" daily in December 2024 — and that "one to two out of every 10" of those pieces of content may not have violated Meta's policies.

In an effort to reduce instances of accidentally removing content through its automated moderation tools did not violate a policy, Meta said in a blog post that it will remove restrictions on topics frequently discussed in political conversations and debates, like "immigration, gender identity, and gender."

"It's not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms," the company said in the announcement.

What does that mean in practice? An update Tuesday to Meta's "Hateful Conduct" policy offers more detail.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"

Posts that are 'lower-severity violations' won't be reviewed unless people report them

Meta will also be loosening its guidelines around enforcement of policy violations and raising the bar for content removal.

The company said its automated systems have resulted in "too many mistakes and too much content being censored," as well as demoted content that is predicted to violate its guidelines.

Moving forward, Meta platforms will focus on addressing "illegal and high-severity violations," including terrorism, child sexual exploitation, or drugs.

For "less severe policy violations," the company will rely on users reporting the content before it considers taking action. Meta will also eliminate most demotions and require a "much higher degree of confidence" before content is removed. The company will also raise its standards around removing content by requiring multiple reviewers to remove content.

You'll see more politics and news content

Following what it described as feedback from people not wanting to see political content on their feeds, Facebook announced changes in 2021 to reduce the amount of political content seen, including content about elections or social issues.

In Tuesday's announcement, the company referred to that approach as "pretty blunt" and said it would start recommending political content again on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The political content will take a more "personalized approach," by ranking and showing content based on users' interactions with content, like liking or viewing different posts.

"We are also going to recommend more political content based on these personalized signals and are expanding the options people have to control how much of this content they see," the announcement said.

In 2022, Meta said that political content only made up about 3% of posts on Facebook. So the change doesn't necessarily mean your feed will be flooded with political news and content — but it may be an increase from what you've seen in recent years.

You won't see fact-check notes anymore — instead, you'll sometimes see community notes

Part of the shift will be focused on reversing changes that Meta executive Joel Kaplan said the company made to moderate content that resulted in "harmless content" being removed and people "wrongly locked up in 'Facebook jail.'"

Meta is now ending its third-party fact-checking program, which was implemented in 2016. Instead, it said it will launch a community notes program over the next couple of months, which will follow rival social network X's approach of allowing contributors to add context to content.

By eliminating its fact-checkers, Meta will no longer demote fact-checked content or include full-screen warnings that users have to click through before viewing a post. Instead, users will see a "much less obtrusive label indicating" and have the option to view additional content, Kaplan said.

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment by Business Insider.

• I wasn't prepared for how lonely motherhood can be.
• I started using "pebbling" to stay connected throughout the day with other moms.
• We send each other reels or TikTok videos, and I forget that I'm alone at home.

If there's one aspect of parenthood I don't think I ever saw coming, it's the loneliness. After all, wasn't I embarking on a journey millions of people had traversed before me? If anything, shouldn't I be overwhelmed by others walking the same path and experiencing the same experiences?

But instead of being surrounded by like-minded people overcoming similar challenges, the long road of parenthood often felt shockingly deserted. The promised "village" failed to appear when I needed it most, and living away from all of my relatives meant even family support was limited.

Even when I made other "mom friends," finding time to connect and support each other became increasingly difficult amid the tall task of simply making it through the day.

Then, one simple thing changed how I felt during those lonely days.

I started 'pebbling' with other moms

It's an unfortunate truth that isolation and loneliness seem to have become hallmarks of modern parenthood. While our ancestors boasted the benefits of the community that it apparently requires to raise a child, parents today too often find themselves struggling in a vacuum, unsure if it's just them but nearly certain they're probably doing it wrong.

As a result, most of us can agree that this isn't the parenthood nature intended. So, it should come as no surprise that a simple solution can be borrowed from the natural world: pebbling.

If you haven't heard of it, "pebbling" is a term in psychology that describes the act of sharing small tokens of affection with someone to build a connection. Inspired by the mating behaviors of birds like penguins, who bestow their love interests with small items like rocks and other trinkets. As for the actual "pebble," a tangible gift is in no way required, and most modern examples are usually digital, such as short-form videos, online quotes, and other social media memes.

We share videos and memes

A fellow mother and close friend of mine and I started pebbling each other with reels and TikToks encapsulating some of the more maddening aspects of life and motherhood, firing off a handful of links throughout the day designed to make each other laugh or simply feel validated that it wasn't just us.

Within just a few weeks, I noticed a decisive shift in my feelings throughout the day. When I experienced a particularly challenging day with my kids, all it would take was a ping from my phone and a link from my friend to instantly lift my mood and provide some much-needed perspective on whatever I was dealing with.

It didn't minimize or distract from what I was going through, and it didn't force any toxic positivity — it just reminded me that despite literally being in my house with no one to witness my struggles, I was not alone.

It's quick but thoughtful

Pebbling works for a number of reasons. For one, it's quick. Instead of struggling to find a matching gap in our schedules and then making plans for our families so we can escape for an hour over a meal out we probably shouldn't be spending money on right now, connections can happen in a matter of seconds with zero planning or cost ― while we simultaneously wrangle a fussy baby, fold a mountain of laundry, or get dinner on the table.

Despite its quickness, though, the thought behind pebbling is anything but shallow. Whenever we send a link, it says, "I saw this and thought of you." Or, "This seemed like something you would like, and I like making you happy." Or, "This reminded me of that thing you mentioned that one time that I remember because I care about the things you say." Or, "I'm struggling with this and sharing it with you makes it feel a little less heavy."

This leads to another benefit of pebbling: it can help you open up about something you're not sure how to talk about yet. It can be a quiet cry for help or crack the door on a vulnerable topic you don't know how to discuss but need to share with someone. (Also known as sending a TikTok with the caption, "LOL so me right now.")

But, of course, pebbles aren't always about the heavy stuff. Sometimes, it's a funny animal or baby video, a clever time-saving cleaning hack, or Kelly Clarkson crushing her latest cover song. Sometimes, the point of the pebble is simply to share a moment of joy with someone who likes the same things you do.

It doesn't solve the actual problem

The thing about pebbling is that it doesn't solve the problem. We are still drowning under waves of invisible labor, still struggling to connect with our partners over issues unique to our personal trauma and experience, and still feeling overwhelmed with the state of the world and our place in it.

The difference is that now, instead of facing these issues alone, someone is making eye contact with us and letting us know we're not alone in it.

My friends and I might not always be able to make time for in-person connections, but pebbling allows us to send out tiny lifelines throughout the day, reminding each other that she is seen and appreciated by someone who really gets it.

Not bad for a little pebble.

• Instagram has shut down a program that paid creators for ads placed on their profiles.
• Meta began testing the program in 2022.
• Instagram has launched several creator-monetization tests since 2020 — and some haven't survived.

Instagram has ended a program that allowed creators to earn money from ads placed between content on their profiles, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

The Meta-owned platform began testing the program with US creators in 2022 and expanded it in 2024 to eligible profiles in Canada, South Korea, Japan, and Australia.

Meta will continue to place ads in between content on nonteen public Instagram profiles. Businesses will still be able to prevent their ads from running on specific profiles.

According to court documents filed in 2024, Instagram has generated billions in ad revenue for Meta. In 2022, when the platform began testing the ads-in-profile program, it generated $16.5 billion, the same court filing said.

This isn't the first creator-monetization program that Meta has tested and shuttered.

Other programs you may remember include:

• IGTV (Instagram's now defunct YouTube competitor) shared ad revenue with creators from 2020 to 2022.
• Instagram briefly had a native affiliate program between 2021 and 2022 that allowed creators to earn revenue from shopping tags on their posts.

The Instagram Reels Bonus, which paid creators a sum of money based on how their reels performed, was paused in 2023. It was reintroduced in 2024 as a series of limited-time bonuses.

• Meta is ending US fact-checking partnerships and shifting to crowdsourced moderation tools.
• The International Fact-Checking Network called an emergency meeting after the announcement.
• Meta's decision affects the financial sustainability of fact-checking organizations.

The International Fact-Checking Network has convened an emergency meeting of its members following Meta's announcement on Tuesday that it will end its third-party fact-checking partnerships in the US and replace them with a crowdsourced moderation tool similar to X's community notes.

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, the IFCN's director, Angie Holan, confirmed that the meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, was organized in direct response to Meta's decision.

"We hold these meetings monthly, but we called this one specifically because of today's news," she said.

The meeting is expected to draw between 80 and 100 attendees from the IFCN's network of fact-checkers, which spans 170 organizations worldwide. Not all the expected attendees are Meta fact-checking partners, though many of them have a stake in the program's future and its global implications.

The IFCN has long played a crucial role in Meta's fact-checking ecosystem by accrediting organizations for Meta's third-party program, which began in 2016 after the US presidential election that year.

Certification from the IFCN signaled that a fact-checking organization met rigorous editorial and transparency standards. Meta's partnerships with these certified organizations became a cornerstone of its efforts to combat misinformation, focusing on flagging false claims, contextualizing misinformation, and curbing its spread.

'People are upset'

Holan described the mood among fact-checkers as somber and frustrated.

"This program has been a major part of the global fact-checking community's work for years," she said. "People are upset because they saw themselves as partners in good standing with Meta, doing important work to make the platform more accurate and reliable."

She noted that fact-checkers were not responsible for removing posts, only for labeling misleading content and limiting its virality.

"It was never about censorship but about adding context to prevent false claims from going viral," Holan said.

A last-minute heads-up

An employee at PolitiFact, one of the first news organizations to partner with Meta on its Third-Party Fact-Checking Program in December 2016, said the company received virtually no warning from Meta before the program was killed.

"The PolitiFact team found out this morning at the same time as everyone else," the employee told BI.

An IFCN employee who was granted anonymity told BI that the organization itself got a heads-up only "late yesterday" via email that something was coming. It asked for a 6 a.m. call — about an hour before Meta's blog post written by its new Republican policy head, Joel Kaplan, went live.

"I had a feeling it was bad news," this employee said.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Financial fallout for fact-checkers

Meta's decision could have serious financial consequences for fact-checking organizations, especially those that relied heavily on funding from the platform.

According to a 2023 report published by the IFCN, income from Meta's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program and grants remain fact-checkers' predominant revenue streams.

"Fact-checking isn't going away, and many robust organizations existed before Meta's program and will continue after it," Holan said. "But some fact-checking initiatives were created because of Meta's support, and those will be vulnerable."

She also underscored the broader challenges facing the industry, saying that fact-checking organizations share the same financial pressures as newsrooms. "This is bad news for the financial sustainability of fact-checking journalism," she said.

Skepticism toward community notes

Meta plans to replace its partnerships with community notes, a crowd-based system modeled after X's approach.

Holan expressed doubt that this model could serve as an effective substitute for expert-led fact-checking.

"Community notes on X have only worked in cases where there's bipartisan agreement — and how often does that happen?" she said. "When two political sides disagree, there's no independent way to flag something as false."

It's not yet clear how Meta's implementation of community notes will work.

'We'll be here after' Meta's program

Despite the uncertainty, Holan remains steadfast in the IFCN's mission.

"The IFCN was here before Meta's program, and we'll be here after it," she said. "We may look different in size and scope, but we'll continue promoting the highest standards in fact-checking and connecting organizations that want to collaborate worldwide."

Holan said Wednesday's meeting would focus on supporting IFCN members as they navigate this transition.

"We're here to help them figure out the best way forward," she said.

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

Dangerous conditions left thousands stranded and many more without power as Winter Storm Blair dropped record-breaking snowfall over parts of the US. Hard freezes are expected to reach as far south as Florida.

• After years of writing about financially independent individuals, I've picked up on commonalities.
• One is that they have multiple revenue streams — at least one of which is from their own business.
• In 2025, I'm starting my own side business to see if the wealth-building strategy works for me.

My job involves interviewing people who are good with money — self-made millionaires, early retirees, and "super savers" who keep the majority of their income — and asking them to share their wealth-building strategies.

After nearly a decade of talking to these money-savvy individuals and absorbing their knowledge, I've implemented a lot of what they advise: I automate my savings and investments, live within my means, track my expenses and net worth, and take advantage of an HSA.

I have a lot of the personal finance basics down, but in the spirit of a new year and always trying to improve, I've decided to think bigger for 2025 and tackle one particular wealth-building strategy I've written about but never dared to try: starting a business.

One observation from talking to financially independent individuals is that they don't rely on a single source of income. They have at least two and, oftentimes, multiple revenue streams. Even the super savers tell me that there's a cap on how much you can save. But how much you can earn, they point out, is limitless.

Another commonality is that one of their revenue streams comes from their own business.

I've spoken to Amazon and Etsy sellers who have built e-commerce empires, content creators who drive passive income from courses and affiliate links, and a millennial who went from broke to seven figures by building websites and flipping domains.

Starting an e-commerce business

The business model that most intrigued me — and seemed doable on a budget — was e-commerce. Essentially, selling a product on platforms like Amazon.

I learned through interviews that there are three main ways to make money on Amazon.

There's arbitrage, which is the most basic, low-cost way to start selling on Amazon. This is when you source products from different marketplaces to sell. To be profitable, you must buy the product for less than it sells on Amazon. After reselling, you keep the difference.

The next tier is wholesaling. This is when you buy products in bulk and resell them on Amazon. Like arbitrage, you aren't making your own product — you're simply reselling an existing product — but you're spending more money upfront on inventory.

Finally, there's the private label route. E-comm experts have explained to me that starting a private label brand is the most time-consuming and costly but has the most upside. It requires actually creating a product and brand.

I went with the latter and technically started the company in 2024 when a friend and I designed a pickleball paddle and ordered inventory from a manufacturer in Asia. My goal in 2025 is to sell the 500 paddles that are on their way from China to my apartment in LA, build a brand I'm proud of, evaluate whether selling a product online is a suitable side hustle for me and my strengths, and write about every step of the process.

I don't expect building a side business to be easy. And everything I've done so far has cost more and taken more time than anticipated.

Most of the financially independent entrepreneurs I've spoken to started with a side hustle — and, in some cases, simply a side project or hobby that cost them money, let alone brought any in. They put their heads down from 9-to-5, worked for an employer to cover their bills, and then reserved 5-to-9 for building businesses.

Carving out time and energy to work on a side project that might not generate sales while simultaneously working a full-time job isn't for the faint of heart. These self-made entrepreneurs put in a lot of hours for an unknown outcome.

NeuroGum cofounder Kent Yoshimura, who worked at a music studio and as a muralist while building a caffeinated gum and mint company, admitted to pulling "an all-nighter once a week" in the early days of his startup.

Jatz Naran said he built his Amazon business between the hours of 6-and-10, after his day job would wrap up. "Forget work-life balance," he told me. At the end of the day, "you have to sacrifice one thing for another."

What's intriguing about starting a business is that you're in the driver's seat. The success or failure of the company is up to you. How much you and the company earn is up to you.

I'm reminded of something real-estate entrepreneur Dion McNeeley told me during an interview: Think beyond your day job.

His revenue streams at the time included his day job running a commercial truck driving school, long-term rental income from his portfolio of 16 properties, and a side hustle as an expert witness, which is someone who is called to testify during a trial because of their specific knowledge. He provided expert testimony for cases involving truck driving accidents.

"I make way more money spending two hours a month on real estate and one to two hours a month providing expert testimony than I make running a truck driving school," said McNeeley, who has since retired from his day job. "The mistake a lot of people make is selling their lives one hour at a time and not realizing that you make a lot more money when you get paid on the value you produce."

• Donald Trump said that Mark Zuckerberg may have taken notice of his threats.
• The president-elect previously threatened to jail the Meta CEO for life.
• Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for changing how it moderates political content on its three major social media platforms.

Trump, who previously threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison, said his comments might have led to the announcement.

"Probably," Trump said when asked if Zuckerberg is "directly responding to the threats you've made to him in the past."

Zuckerberg and Trump once had a frosty relationship, but both sides appear to be warming up.

"Honestly, I think they have come a long way, Meta, Facebook" Trump told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference.

Zuckerberg made the major shift on Tuesday, announcing that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers and will relax moderation policies on topics like gender and immigration.

"We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship," Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Facebook. "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

Joel Kaplan, recently promoted to lead Meta's global policy team, outlined the announcement during an interview on "Fox and Friends," Fox News' morning show that Trump has long watched.

"There is a real opportunity here, with President Trump coming into office, with his commitment to free expression, for us to get back to those values," Kaplan said.

Trump said he saw Kaplan's comments and called the former Bush White House official "very impressive."

Zuckerberg recently dined at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, part of a larger wave of tech CEOs hoping to reset relations with the incoming administration. Meta is also donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration.

Zuckerberg and Trump haven't always gotten along.

Trump's first administration and several states teamed up in 2020 on a major antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. In 2021, Trump, then-a former president, sued Facebook and other platforms for banning him in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Trump and his allies have also been highly critical of Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's charitable giving ahead of the 2020 election to help local election officials deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We are watching him closely," Trump wrote in his book earlier this year in a section about Zuckerberg," and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election."

Before the presidential election, Zuckerberg announced he would not make any donations to election officials again, and he called Trump a "badass" after the president-elect survived an assassination attempt in July.

A representative for Meta didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• The Netflix docuseries "Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action" premiered on Tuesday.
• It explores the controversial rise of Springer's daytime talk show, which gained fame for its brawls.
• Former producers describe manipulative tactics they used to get guests riled up and ready to fight.

The unruly guests on "The Jerry Springer Show" were not professional actors — but their infamous brawls were encouraged and teased out behind the scenes, producers say.

Netflix's new two-part documentary, "Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action," unpacks the show's outrageous premise and its rise to the top of daytime TV ratings in the late '90s. It features several interviews with former producers, who describe the tactics they used to recruit real people with real problems and coax them into having emotional meltdowns on air.

"Just like any other manipulative situation, you need to instinctually pull out of them those points of tension that create a soap opera," Melinda Chait Mele, a producer who'd been hired from the tabloid world, says in the doc.

"A lot of the guests were earnest. They literally did think they were coming on to solve a problem. You wouldn't believe how many people said to me on the telephone, 'I can't wait to meet Jerry. I really hope he can help me with this,'" Mele tells the camera. "Jerry didn't help anybody with any of it. He just stood there and did his thing."

As the show was gaining popularity and producers were under more pressure to orchestrate shock and awe, Mele hired Toby Yoshimura, a former bartender with no talk show experience. He proved exceptionally skilled at convincing people to publicly air their grievances.

"These are small-town folk, right? And you're really trying to sell it to them, like, 'You've got this great story. We want to give people an opportunity to see that,'" Yoshimura explains. "In order for them to deliver, they have to like you. So you treat them like they're kings."

Yoshimura says producers would send limousines to ferry guests to and from the airport. A "Jerry Springer" guest identified as Melanie says they were also supplied with plenty of alcohol.

"They did everything in their power to get us as crazy as possible," Melanie says. "They were like, 'Go hog wild! Have fun!' And so we got wasted." By the time she arrived on set the following morning, Melanie says she was hungover, sleep-deprived, and "ready to fuck it up." Meanwhile, producers were with her backstage, coaching her on "what to say and how to act."

Yoshimura describes the environment as a "pressure cooker" and admits that some stories went too far. (Some of the show's most controversial episodes include "I'm Pregnant By My Brother" and "I Married a Horse.")

"You had to reach into their brain and tap on the thing that would make them laugh, cry, scream, or fight. You rev 'em up to tornado level, and then you send 'em out onstage," Yoshimura says, adding later, "This was basically the Stanford Prison Experiment, in that you were playing with people's psyches until you get a result."

This methodology was designed to generate higher ratings, which spiked after an episode that saw a member of the Jewish Defense League start a fistfight with members of the Ku Klux Klan.

"It was brilliant. And it rated through the roof," says Richard Dominick, the executive producer for "Jerry Springer" who's widely credited as the show's mastermind. "If you're producing a show that you want to be insane, and unlike anything that's ever been on TV before, there's your goal. That's what you want."

From that point onward, producers were instructed to pursue on-camera confrontations — and for a while, Dominick's method got results. In 1998, Springer even beat out Oprah Winfrey in the ratings for the most-watched daytime talk show, a feat that producers previously thought was impossible.

"There was no question: Jerry and Richard were on top of the world. I mean, the riches that it gave them, and the fame, were very compelling," says Robert Feder, a longtime media critic who worked for the Chicago Sun-Times during the "Jerry Springer" era.

"But what did they have to do in order to achieve it?" Feder continues. "The degree to which Jerry sold himself out, and the degree to which he was complicit with Richard in exploiting the people who came on the show, is something that had serious consequences."

"The Jerry Springer Show" ran for 27 seasons before it was canceled in 2018; Springer died of pancreatic cancer in 2023. In the final years of his life, Springer disavowed his own show and publicly apologized for the role he played, declaring, "What have I done? I've ruined the culture."

"I look at some of the stuff that's being done now, and I go, 'We're kind of responsible for this crap,'" Dominick says in the doc, which pairs the quote with clips from "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," "The Real Housewives of New Jersey," and "The Apprentice." He adds: "Maybe I am gonna go to hell."

However, Yoshimura suggests the show's success reflects just as negatively on viewers — including any viewers of the Netflix doc today — as it does on hosts, creators, and producers.

"Look at the history of the show. A guy punches a girl in the face, it gets huge ratings. We put a girl without clothes on the show, everybody loses their mind," he explains. "All you guys wanna talk about is all that shit."

"But, you know, we're the problem," he adds. "If none of that happened, there's no documentary on Netflix. Full stop."

• A Russian attack submarine that was stationed in Syria has officially left the Mediterranean Sea.
• The departure of the Kilo-class Novorossiysk leaves Russia without any known submarines in the region.
• The uncertain fate of Russia's naval presence in Syria amid other setbacks could spell trouble for its submarine force.

Strategic Russian naval bases have been upended by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, creating headaches for the Kremlin's navy, including its submarine force.

Moscow no longer appears to have any attack submarines in the Mediterranean Sea after NATO forces spotted its last known submarine leaving the region last week.

Portugal's military said that it observed a Russian Kilo-class submarine moving through the country's continental exclusive economic zone near northern Spain on Friday. NATO Maritime Command later identified the vessel as the Novorossiysk.

The Novorossiysk was spotted several weeks earlier at Tartus, a naval base in Syria that Russia had used for years. The future of Moscow's military footprint at the facility — and in the country in general — was, however, thrown into uncertainty after the shocking collapse of the Assad regime last month.

There are indications that Russia is drawing down forces at its bases in Syria. Losing Tartus for good would be a significant blow to Moscow's navy — including its capable submarine force — which relies on the warm-water port to project power across the region and beyond.

Early December satellite imagery showed the Novorossiysk docked in Tartus, but by the middle of the month, it was gone, along with the rest of the Russian warships that had been there. Some of the Russian naval vessels have been spotted in recent weeks loitering off the Syrian coast, but the whereabouts of this submarine were less certain.

Should Syria's new leadership decide Russia can no longer station its forces at Tartus, it would mark another setback for Moscow's navy, which has suffered a string of stunning losses in the nearby Black Sea since the start of the full-scale Ukraine war nearly three years ago.

Ukrainian forces have used missiles and naval drones to damage or destroy dozens of Russian naval vessels, including one of six improved Kilo-class submarines Moscow's Black Sea Fleet operates, during the conflict.

These attacks have forced Moscow to withdraw the Black Sea Fleet from its long-held headquarters in Sevastopol, a major city in the southwestern corner of the occupied Crimean peninsula, across the region to the port of Novorossiysk along western Russia's coast. If Russia is unable to move back into Sevastopol, that creates complications.

For Russia, losing the ability to keep submarines at Sevastopol and Tartus is less than ideal.

Bryan Clark, a former US Navy officer and defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said that the remainder of the Kilo-class vessels are based in St. Petersburg, where there is a large naval facility and dry docks for maintenance.

"The Russians are now having to redeploy their submarine force back up to the north" instead of relying on warm-water ports that "you could get in and out of them year-round," Clark told Business Insider. "St. Petersburg, you can't get in and out of year-round."

Recent developments also seriously undermine Russia's military influence in the Mediterranean and southern Europe, Clark said.

The Novorossiysk is a newer improved Kilo sub. Submarines of this class are diesel-electric vessels and formidable long-range strike platforms that can attack ships and land targets, deploy for weeks on end, and stay relatively undetected. They are effectively Russia's most capable non-nuclear subs and can carry Kalibr missiles.

Russia has kept a Kilo-class vessel in the region for years. The boat's departure from the region, though Russia could ultimately opt to move another sub into the area later, may signal a broader decline in Russian naval might in the Mediterranean.

In four years, Russia appears to have gone "from being a pretty big player in the Med — in terms of naval forces — to now being a nonexistent player," Clark said.

Russia's basing challenges could ultimately hinder its ability to project power. The uncertainty with Tartus and nearby Hmeimim Air Base — underscores a broader issue for the Russian military.

Satellite imagery captured on Monday by Maxar Technologies, a commercial imaging company, shows no obvious signs of any major Russian naval vessels at Tartus, as has been the case for weeks. Ukraine's military intelligence agency has said Russia is withdrawing from the base.

Whether Moscow is able to negotiate an arrangement with the new Syrian leadership to stay in the country or is forced to relocate to a new hub in North Africa to sustain its operations remains to be seen.

• Jensen Huang has unveiled a platform called Cosmos to simulate scenarios to train real-world robots.
• Huang likened it to Marvel superhero Doctor Strange simulating millions of versions of the future.
• The Nvidia boss said at CES that physical AI is the "next frontier" of artificial intelligence.

In "Avengers: Infinity War," Marvel superhero Doctor Strange looks into the future to see over 14 million different outcomes of the galactic battle against supervillain Thanos. Jensen Huang thinks it's the kind of power needed to reach "the next frontier of AI."

In a keynote address at CES in Las Vegas on Monday, the Nvidia CEO introduced Cosmos, a platform that aims to make "physical AI" a reality by simulating endless real-world scenarios for robots and autonomous vehicles to study and gain a deeper understanding of their environment.

According to Huang, the path to this next frontier — in which autonomous hardware becomes a common sight in daily life — has been limited until now because of data availability. As he put it, "Physical world data is costly to capture, curate, and label."

That's where Nvidia Cosmos comes in, for Huang at least. "You could have it generate multiple physically-based, physically plausible scenarios of the future," he told the Las Vegas audience. "Basically, do a Doctor Strange."

Nvidia's next frontier is coming

Here's how it works. Cosmos ingests text, image, or video prompts to generate videos with virtual renderings of real-world environments, lighting, and more.

Developers of robots and autonomous vehicles can then use these virtual creations to provide their technology with synthetic data for reinforcement learning — a research technique used to teach AI models — as well as test and validate the models behind the physical AI.

According to an Nvidia blog post, Cosmos can also be used along with Omniverse, the company's platform for creating 3D graphics and metaverses, to "generate every possible future outcome an AI model could take to help it select the best and most accurate path."

Cosmos itself starts with a strong, foundational understanding of real-world environments. It has been trained on 20 million hours of video focusing on everything from humans walking and "dynamic nature" to camera movements, Nvidia said.

If robots and autonomous vehicles are to become a widespread reality, as other industry leaders like Elon Musk think, they'll need a highly sophisticated understanding of these kinds of scenarios.

"It's really about teaching the AI, not about generating creative content, but teaching the AI to understand the physical world," Huang said.

There's a good reason Huang is talking up physical AI. While Nvidia has grown by roughly $3.3 trillion since the start of the generative AI boom, thanks to high demand for its chips needed to train AI models, the business isn't completely free of threats.

Some of Nvidia's Big Tech customers, such as Amazon and Google, are developing chips of their own to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. The company made 87.7% of its $35.1 billion revenue last quarter from its chip and data center business.

As Business Insider's Emma Cosgrove also notes, the semiconductor industry has historically been brutal. Companies typically experience boom and bust cycles as interest in niche chips can come in waves. There is an incentive then for Huang to diversify Nvidia's sources of income.

Time will tell if Cosmos can offer the path forward to Nvidia's next frontier. Development of robots that can navigate complex world environments has taken shape slowly, despite companies like Google, Boston Dynamics and Figure AI deploying increasing amounts of capital on developing these technologies.

Huang himself noted during his CES keynote that he expects autonomous vehicles to represent the "first multi-trillion dollar robotics industry."

With autonomous cars already on the road in certain locations from companies like Waymo and Cruise, this could be the case. During CES, Huang shared that Nvidia had struck a new partnership with Toyota to help power its autonomous vehicle ambitions.

Getting to a world where robots roam freely among humans will take considerably more effort, however. Huang will hope that Cosmos starts to provide the superpowers needed to pull off such a feat.