Honda says its refreshed H logo represents a second founding for the company. Honda 2.0, then, is designed to look like it’s from the future.
The Japanese automaker announced on January 13 that it’s adopting a new logo across its automobile business. The company has had some sort of an H mark since 1963, and its new mark is wider than its last, with stems that slant outward as they move upward. The logo is now freed from being inside a frame, and Honda compares it to “two outstretched hands.” It’s meant to evoke a shape, not just a letter.
From left: Hondas previous logo; the new version [Images: Honda]
As the automotive industry electrifies and upgrades its tech, automakers including Audi, Kia, and Tesla have turned to design tropes from 1980s science fiction to make their logos look futuristic, with stenciled, wide letters that evoke the typography of films like Bladerunner and Back to the Future II. Other brands, such as BMW, Mazda, and VW, have gone flat. All in all, these changes signal a great rebranding during a pivotal moment for the industry.
[Photo: Honda]
Honda now joins the sweep of rebrands with a logo that wouldn’t look out of place on the outside of a spaceship or worn as a communication badge by an alien admiral in a sci-fi film. It’s a clean, simple mark that’s versatile enough to work well at small scales, on digital screens, in a single color, or as a car badge.
Honda first unveiled the mark in 2024 in dramatic fashion. It launched at that year’s Consumer Electronics Show on a pair of Honda 0 Series concept carsthe Saloon and Space-Hubthat look like they were built for the 2025 movie Tron: Ares and NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon, respectively.
[Image: Honda]
The company announced on January 13 that the mark seen on those concept cars will now be used as the symbol to represent the business. It will appear across touchpoints such as dealership locations, communication initiatives, and motorsports events. Next year, it will finally begin appearing on Honda EVs and hybrid-electric vehicles.
This is a future-forward rebrand that’s years in the making.
“The automobile market is currently undergoing a major transformation with electrification and application of intelligent technologies,” Honda said in a statement. “The new H mark will represent the ‘second founding,’ which Honda is pursuing with strong determination to lead the way.”
Known for models like the Accord, Civic, and CR-V, Honda is a brand associated with affordability and value. With its sci-fi-ready new logo, though, the company is aiming for a brand identity that drivers will soon associate with traits like transformation and advancement.
A new mandatory safety feature requires Roblox users in the U.S. to submit to facial age estimation via the app to access its chat feature. The online gaming platform announced it was implementing the system to prevent children younger than 16 from communicating with adults. About 42% of Roblox users are younger than 13.
But a cursory scroll on eBay found that various listings of age-verified Roblox accounts are available for purchase, some for as little as $2.99. This allows the purchaser to sign in to the account without having to use any ID or facial scan, voiding the new safety feature Roblox has implemented.
The description of one listing (since removed) read: The product is an Age Verified Roblox account for users between the ages of 13-15. This account comes with chat unlocked, allowing users to communicate with other players aged 9-17.
After Wired flagged the listings in a recent report, eBay said the company was removing them for violating the site’s policies. At the time of this writing, Fast Company found 27 results when searching for Roblox age verified account.
Thats not the only problem Roblox is contending with. The system has also had trouble correctly estimating users ages, mislabeling some adults as children and vice versa.
One X user wrote that their 10-year-old brother was misidentified as a 16- to 17-year-old. The replies are full of others sharing similar stories. I have a full ass beard and it put my alt on a 13-16 age range, one responded to the post. I’m 23 (nearly 24) and it’s forced me as a 16-17 year old, another wrote.
Another X user posted a video of them circumventing the age verification using a 3D animated avatar, which Roblox’s system identified as over 18. Another user, somewhat unbelievably, fooled the system into thinking he was over the age of 21 by drawing on facial hair with a marker. At present, nearly 80 active lawsuits accuse Roblox of enabling child exploitation, with some parents alleging their children encountered predators on the app.
A Roblox spokesperson told Fast Company: Were excited to see that tens of millions of users have already completed the process, proving that the vast majority of our community values a safer, more age-appropriate environment. To roll this out to a global community of over 150 million daily active users is a huge undertaking and were working to smooth out the transition.”
Roblox has previously put out statements saying the company is constantly evaluating user behavior to determine if someone is significantly older or younger than expected. In these situations, we will soon begin asking users to repeat the age-check process.
Last week the company also became aware of instances where parents age check on behalf of their children, leading to kids being aged to 21+.
Imagine youre talking to someone and they suddenly start to add advertising to the exchange. What might that look like? In a 1965 episode of the classic sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, the protagonist uses her magical powers to create fake parents for herself in order to impress a date. She crafts them to be just like the people on television commercials, making them speak using sentences from commercials. Her synthetic parents appear friendly and normaluntil they start talking, reciting ads verbatim for products like streak-away for gray hair, dish soap, Grippo denture adhesive, and deodorant. They have so much to say, yet communicate nothing at all.
Something similar might happen if OpenAI goes forward with its rumored plans to add advertising to ChatGPT. Last December, an article in Futurism, citing internal sources at OpenAI, suggested ad adoption could be near. Recently, The Information reported that the company is hiring digital advertising veterans and that it will install a secondary model capable of evaluating if a conversation has commercial intent, before offering up relevant ads in the chat responses. Annoying ads within ChatGPT could be for things as banal as a grocery product, a local destination to visit, or a handyman service. But they could also be a lot of something elsesomething dangerous. Given ChatGPTs track record, some poor soul might be pouring their heart out to the chatbot, only to be advised of a special on rope at their local hardware store. Im not making light of the latterIt could happen. There cant be true oversight with LLMs. And thats only one of their problems.
Context is the Holy Grail
OpenAIs advertising move is a bold and brilliant, but potentially terrible, crude attempt to automate contextual understanding, a missing link with the push toward combining big data and surveillance. For a long time, newspapers and radio stations were local and distributed. As transportation connected us and technology improved, the opportunity to distribute more centralized news from single, larger sources became possible. Television began with a few channels and concentrated programming that was the same across broad regions. This ushered in a heyday for advertisers who sponsored TV content and could show single ads to millions of viewers.
As a distributed technology, the internet disrupted many forms of traditional media, and advertisers have been scrambling to try to reach us in new ways. While technology has enabled advertisers to benefit from our location in an attempt to hone in on what might appeal to us, internet ads are often not contextually relevant to what we want or need.
What OpenAI intends to do with advertising, via ChatGPTs self-reported 900 million weekly users, will synthesize the local distributed model. This will enable the platform to reach into our homes in the same way that mass television once possessed. Its an attempt to unify and bypass the interfaces of phones and computers that we currentlyuse. In the process, OpenAI willbe creating a super platform for informational use and processing.
The algorithms dont know us
Within its current platform, ChatGPT offers a conversational medium of interaction and query; each chat captures how we use language, more detailed descriptions of the problems we seek to solve, and many of our needs. Thus, the opportunity for OpenAI to have platform control, along with access to our inner thoughts, all with the surveillance capability to compile these into targeted individual ads, is the ultimate goal for advertisers: to really reach us, deep inside our thoughts.
However, this outcome is unlikely. The problem with this model is that it still relies on computational compiling and sorting. The algorithms wont know us, or form relationships with us. Because of that, they cant actually recommend true advertising solutions to our problemsjust like these algorithms cant solve our problems now. But their results can mimic helpfulness, just like Jeannies synthetic parents.
While collecting and compiling our online data has brought advertisers closer to knowing what they think we need, what has been missing is an understanding of the context of what these actions mean to us. Qualitative research, which helps to discover the how, why, and what of interaction, has been pushed aside through the rush to embrace big data.
The LLMs that feed chatbots are not magical: They are algorithms that statistically match words and rank them from sources that the model was trained on. An LLM listening to our conversations will not “understand” context as human qualitative researchers can. Thus, the ads that ChatGPT will suggest from our conversations may seem like a match, but they’re unlikely to offer anything contextually substantial.Another idea OpenAI suggests is that sponsored results could get preferential treatment. Subscribers might get better matching ads, but, again, because this is all based on word matching, it may not matter much. (It hasnt been revealed if there will be an option to avoid such advertising completely.)
The trust is an illusion
An OpenAI spokesperson told The Information: People have a trusted relationship with ChatGPT, and any approach would be designed to respect that trust. But theres a big difference between having a social relationship with someone and having a trusted social relationship.
Many of us are trained to fill in social gaps when we interact with others who are trying to communicate with us. In that context, we may project sociabilityand, thus, trustonto them. By seeming to respond to us with a point of view and a chat style that feels personal, ChatGPT perpetuates that illusion of sociability and trust. By leveraging our innate social behaviors, ChatGPT also leverages that behavioral goodwill. But that sociability and trust is in our heads. It isnt realits just an algorithm.
ChatGPT is merely a way for OpenAIs LLM outcomes to be presented to us. Is it trusted and social to siphon peoples knowledge and work to train a model? If OpenAI were a person, wed say no, pointing out how thats akin to a sociopath stealing our ideas and work and presenting them to others. But because we converse with ChatGPT, we project a trust upon it that it cant earn because it is not human.
OpenAI adding advertising to ChatGPT seems like an inevitability. If we use this tool, we need to remember that we cannot form bonds to it, that it cannot have a relationship with us, and that all it can do is word atch. Any ad it serves us will be based on what we tell it, but it can’t “think” about all we tell it and propose an ad that speaks explicitly to us as a trusted friend who knows us would do. It is best to keep that in mind as these tools evolve to seemingly understand us. OpenAI as a company could try to earn its customers’ trust by discovering what its customers want and need using qualitative research rather than foisting its advertising decisions upon us. Even so, the idea that this advertising model will scale and deliver contextually relevant advertising to 900 million weekly users seems unrealistic. Context, especially driven through LLMs that already have issues with slop, hallucinations, and outright lies, can be a challenging match for advertisers, who need reliable recommendations to keep the integrity of their brands and reputations.
Without trust formed between entities, were all at risk of being played: OpenAI, who believes their algorithms will deliver what they promise, the advertisers who trust that their ads will accurately match the users context and interest, and those who use ChatGPT, a service they trust that, in fact, seems intent upon using them for revenue instead.
The new year is a time for resolutions. This year, governments, platforms, and campaigners all seem to have hit on the same ones: Children should spend less time online, and companies should know exactly how old their users are.
From TikToks infinite scroll to chatbots like xAIs Grok that can spin up uncensored answers to almost any question in seconds, addictive and inappropriate online options leave legislators and regulators worried. The result is a new kind of arms race: Lawmakers, often spooked by headlines about mental health, extremism, or sexual exploitation, are turning to age gates, usage caps, and outright bans as solutions to social medias problems. Just in the past week, weve seen Grok become Exhibit A in the debate about harmful content as it helps undress users, while states consider or enact bans, blocks, and time limits on using tech.
Right now, the regulatory debate seems to exclusively focus on how certain internet services are net negatives, and banning access to minors to such services, says Catalina Goanta, associate professor in private law and technology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. That black-and-white approach is easy for politicians to parse, but doesnt necessarily communicate the nuance involved in tech and its potential for good. The scientific debate shows us a much more nuanced landscape of what can be harmful to minors, and that will depend on so many more aspects than just a child having a phone in their hands, says Goanta.
Legislators are moving quickly to throw a protective shield around younger users. A December 2025 proposed law in Texas would have required Apple and Google to verify user ages and get parental consent for minors app downloads, but was blocked just before Christmas.
Meanwhile, as outright bans are being blocked, states are pushing forward with rules that cap social media access. Virginias default one-hour daily cap for under-16s was launched with a requirement for commercially reasonable age checks. However, it has already been challenged in court by a lawsuit filed by NetChoice, an association that seeks to make the Internet safe for free enterprise and free expression. The group, which includes Amazon, Google, Meta and OpenAI as members, says imposing a time block on social media is like limiting the ability to read books or watch documentaries.
All of the laws have been challenged, and the court’s ruling on the Texas law doesn’t bode well for the other state laws, says Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the Chamber of Progress, which he describes as a center-left tech industry policy coalition.
But, he says, some of this tough talk is also allegedly helped by big tech firms themselves, It’s important to keep in mind that the app store age verification bills have been written and advanced by Meta, largely as a way of getting themselves from defense onto offense.
The Texas law is just one out of many that are cropping up around the United Statesand around the world. Across the Atlantic, France is pursuing an Australia-style ban on social media for under-15s this year, while the U.K.s official (if not likely) opposition party, the Conservatives, has also backed a social media ban for under-16s.
That court challenge is an augur of whats to come in 2026, reckons Kovacevich. Legislators keep pushing and pushing with age verification mandates, warning labels, and design mandates, and they keep running into the same two buzzsaws again and again, he says: Users’ privacy rights and the First Amendment.
The legislative surge is part of a broader tech temperance movement aimed at social media, apps, and AI. In the U.K., the Online Safety Act’s child-safety provisions came into practical effect in July 2025, requiring platforms likely to be accessed by children to implement “highly effective” age-assurance measures and shield young users from content promoting self-harm, suicide, violence, and pornography.
With Grok, the law is facing its first big test for the body in charge, communications regulator Ofcom. Across the European Union, the Digital Services Act’s rules on minors’ data and recommender systems are also tightening. The question now is whether courtsand userswill tolerate the friction these laws create.
Regulators have to resolve an inherent tension, says Goanta. Do we want children to have agency over their access to and conduct on the internetthe childrens rights narrative. Or do we consider that they have limited capacity because they are not yet fully developed, and their guardians get to make decisions for them? She points out that there can be plenty of solutions that fall between both extremes. But the resulting spectrum should be the focus of debates, and not moral panics.
Next week’s “Free America Walkout” is asking Americans to walk out of work (and school) on Tuesday, January 20, to disrupt “business as usual” in protest of the Trump administrations recent actions and policies, including its treatment of immigrants, attempts to curb democracy, recent abuse by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and the recent fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
The protest’s main organizers are the Women’s March. The group came to prominence the day after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, when it organized a massive nationwide protest, drawing hundreds of thousands of Americans to Washington, D.C. At that time, the protest on January 21, 2017, was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.
Now, nearly nine years lateralmost to the daythe Women’s March is back, marking the one-year anniversary of Trump’s second inauguration.
On January 20, were calling on people everywhere to turn their backs on fascism and walk out, Rachel OLeary Carmona, executive director of Womens March, tells Fast Company. Authoritarianism runs on our obedience, and were withdrawing it. We walk out because a free America is the only America worth calling great.
By disrupting “business as usual,” organizers explain they are sending a message to the administration that its actions will not be tolerated. This is a protest and a promise. In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable, the Free America website says.
Here’s what to know.
What’s happening on Tuesday, January 20?
More than 450 events are scheduled in all 50 U.S. states, as well as in Canada, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Walkouts, sit-downs, vigils, and meetups are set to take place in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Boulder, Houston, New York City, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Portland (Oregon and Maine), San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Tucson, and Washington, D.C.
These include school walkouts; marches to federal buildings, city halls, local court houses, and capitals; and more.
Why a walkout, not a march?
“Marches show how many people care. Walkouts show how much power we have,” the website says. “And we have seen the power of walkouts around the worldpeople from Poland to Chile who have fought peacefully and successfully to dismantle injustice and topple authoritarian regimes.”
“At this moment, visibility alone isnt enough,” the website continues. “We need action that tests our strength, builds coordination, and proves that noncompliance is a legitimate response to injustice.”
Historically, walkouts and sit-insalongside protestshave been an effective nonviolent tool to create change. From the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements to the current New York City nurses’ strike, workers, students, teachers, and ordinary Americans have walked off the job and sat in protest to register their discontent.
Who else is helping to organize the Free America Walkout?
The day’s events are organized by the Women’s March organization along with 50501, a progressive grassroots movement, with a coalition of national and local partners including Feminist, Free DC, and the Immigrant Rights Committee in Tampa.
As we head into the new year, I am facing a daunting prospect. After over 34 years in higher education as a professor and administrator, Im moving to the private sector to support more effective teaching practices. I would classify this change as a significant career pivot. I am changing market sectors (public sector to private) and shifting from serving a single institution to a global base of clients.
Decisions like this are not to be made lightly. It is important to ensure that you are making this move to run toward something attractive and not just away from something that frustrates you. Here are three important considerations if you think a significant career move may be in your future.
Why do you want to do this?
Career pivots are generally rooted in dissatisfaction. There is something about the work youre doing now that is frustrating or unsatisfying. For many people, there is a particular crisis that initiates the real desire to take a pivot. It could be an illness, accident, or death in the family, or it could be a crisis at work.
Crises are helpful, because they allow people to take stock of their lives. Significant milestone events like a birthday or the end of a year can play the same role. However, dissatisfaction provides energy to run away from something. A career pivot also involves running toward something.
So, a successful career pivot must also involve a reason to take on a new role. One common career switch involves moving from a position that no longer fits your personal values to one that is a better fit to the values important to you. For example, you may have been focused on achievement early in your career and now feel like doing something that benefits society is more important than personal gain. It is useful to be explicit about the ways that a new job may be a better fit to your personal values, because that compatibility is a crucial source of long-term satisfaction.
In addition, you want to ensure that you are clear-eyed about what a new career path entails. Just about every job has a certain number of frustrating tasks you have to put up with. You want to acknowledge the frustrations and drudgery of the path youre selecting so that you are not just engaging in the mythical belief that the new career path will be free of BS.
How does your experience and expertise transfer?
If you are going to be successful in the new role, there has to be something about your knowledge and skills that will enable you to contribute. Psychologists use the word transfer to name the capacity to take what you know and what you can do in one area and use it in another.
As you contemplate this career pivot, talk to people who are already doing this work about their day-to-day work life. If possible, shadow one of them for a while. Think about how you would react or solve problems in the new work you would be doing. Are you able to take your experience and apply it in the new setting?
At the same time, you want to be realistic about your willingness to learn. Some people are very comfortable in situations in which they are a relative novice. They dont mind being someone who needs to be helped along and may make a certain number of rookie mistakes. Making a career pivot involves learning a lot. Youre not going to be the most effective person at work when you start in the new role. If you find that exciting, then you are a good candidate to make a change.
Where does your life satisfaction come from?
Earlier, I mentioned one big source of life satisfaction, which is the fit between the results of the work you do and your values. But, that is not the only thing that will make your life satisfying.
For one thing, you may not derive your greatest satisfaction from your work. Instead, you may have organizations, hobbies, or relationships that are a deeper part of what makes your life worth living. If so, you want to think about how the new responsibilities at work will relate to what is most important to you in life.
For another, your happiness with work is not just in the relationship between the mission of the organization and your personal values. The day-to-day engagement with work is also going to affect how you feel. Long commutes can suck the life out of you, even if you like the work youre doing. If you are someone who needs to be around people a lot, then a job that is mostly done remote may not feed your desire for social interaction.
How does the work youll be taking on relate to the things you do and do not like to do? Look for some ways that your daily work life will bring with it a few elements that will be truly enjoyable so that you can envision yourself getting out of bed excited to take on the day rather than wishing that the weekend would arrive sooner.
I explored all of these questions as I moved toward my new career path. Im excited to share more details about it over the next few weeks.
Well, this could be awkward for Americans traveling abroad.
Beginning on January 21, the U.S. will indefinitely suspend immigrant visa processing from 75 countries as part of the Trump administrations crackdown on immigration. While the suspension only applies to those visas needed for employment or to join family in the U.S.and not student or tourist visasit includes many beloved travel destinations for Americans.
The countries selectedincluding the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Thailandwere deemed high risk of public benefits usage by the State Department, according to a statement on Wednesday. The ban goes into effect next week, at which time no immigrant visas will be issued to nationals of the 75 affected countries until further notice.
Under President Trump, we will not allow foreign nationals to abuse Americas immigration system and exploit the generosity of the American people, Tommy Pigott, spokesperson for the State Department, posted on the X platform on Wednesday.
This announcement follows one from last week in which the U.S. added seven countries to a list of mostly African nations whose passport holders must post bonds of up to $15,000 to apply to enter the country.
EFFECTS ON LEGAL IMMIGRATION
This latest visa crackdown also builds upon prior bans that affected 40 countries, effectively barring entry for nearly half of the immigrants who came to the country legally in 2024, David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, wrote in a blog post.
Linking the crackdown to concerns about welfare use among legal immigrants is not good justification for this type of immigration restriction, partly because immigrant visa recipients are already barred from receiving any federal means-tested public benefits for five years, Bier said.
President Trump is leading the most anti-legal immigrant administration in American history, Bier wrote. This is just the latest action to slash legal entries to the United States.
WHAT THE BAN COVERS
The list also has notable exceptions, including several countries that are otherwise the subject of scrutiny by the current administrationChina, Mexico, and El Salvador, for example. Whats more, it doesnt target nationals from several countries for which the U.S. processed the most visas in recent years, such as the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, India, and Vietnam.
In addition to the exception for tourist and student visas, dual nationals who have a valid passport from a country thats not on the list are exempt from the pause, according to the State Department. And no visas have been revoked, the agency said.
POTENTIAL RIPPLE EFFECT
Even though tourism visas arent affected, the change in visa policy could have a ripple effect. The U.S. is expected to see a boom in foreign tourism this year, bringing in more than 1.2 million visitors for the matches scheduled for June and July, according to estimates by Tourism Economics.
In 2025, the U.S. welcomed 6% fewer foreign than in the previous year, according to figures released this week by the World Travel and Tourism Council. And a survey conducted in October by Global Rescue found that, as a result of U.S. international policy announcements in 2025, some 61% of American travelers believe theyll be viewed more negatively while traveling abroad.
FULL LIST OF AFFECTED COUNTRIES
The full list of countries affected by the ban on visas that goes into effect next week is: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote dIvoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, The Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
A surging stock market and a flurry of deal-making padded the profits of Wall Street’s two big investment banks, which both saw a double-digit jump in profits in the fourth quarter.
Goldman Sachs’s net earnings rose 12% from a year earlier, posting a profit of $4.62 billion, or $14.01 a share. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley said it earned $4.4 billion, or $2.68 per share, compared to a profit of $3.71 billion, or $2.22 per share, compared to a year earlier.
Wall Street has been bolstered by the Trump administration’s deregulatory policies, which have led corporations to seek out mergers and acquisitions, as well as the surge of investor interest in artificial intelligence companies and those who stand to benefit from the mass adoption of technologies like ChatGPT.
Fourth-quarter investment fee revenues over at Goldman were up 25% year-over-year and Morgan Stanley saw a 47% jump in revenue in its investment banking division. Both banks said their investment fee backlog, which is a signal of how much deal-making is still pending that banks are working on, increased significantly in the fourth quarter.
Goldman and Morgan’s results reflect the strong earnings out of the other big banks that reported their results this week. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup all saw jumps in fourth-quarter profits, but their results were dampened by the ongoing tensions that Wall Street is having with the White House over the issue of the independence of the Federal Reserve and President Donald Trump’s interest in capping credit card interest rates at 10%.
Along with a strong investment banking performance, Goldman Sachs also agreed to sell off its Apple Card credit card portfolio to JPMorgan Chase last week, effectively exiting its brief experiment in consumer banking. The bank sold the credit card portfolio at a discount to JPMorgan, a sign of how desperately Goldman wanted to exit the business and put the Apple Card behind it.
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This story has been corrected to show that Morgan Stanley’s investment banking revenues rose 47%, not 22%.
By Ken Sweet, AP business writer
The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate is now down to its lowest level in more than three years.
The benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate eased to 6.06% this week, down from 6.16% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the rate averaged 7.04%.
The last time the average rate was lower was Sept. 15, 2022, when it was at 6.02%.
Meanwhile, borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also fell this week, dropping to 5.38% from 5.46% last week. A year ago, that average rate was at 6.27%, Freddie Mac said.
Lower mortgage rates boost homebuyers purchasing power, good news for home shoppers at a time when the housing market remains in a deep slump after years of soaring prices and elevated mortgage rates have shut out many aspiring homeowners.
Uncertainty over the economy and job market are also keeping many would-be buyers on the sidelines.
Mortgage rates began easing in July in anticipation of a series of Fed rate cuts, which began in September and continued last month.
The Fed doesnt set mortgage rates, but when it cuts its short-term rate that can signal lower inflation or slower economic growth ahead, which can drive investors to buy U.S. government bonds. That can help lower yields on long-term U.S. Treasurys, which can result in lower mortgage rates.
The pullback in mortgage rates helped drive sales of previously occupied U.S. homes higher on a monthly basis the last four months of 2025. Even so, home sales remained stuck at a 30-year low last year, extending the housing markets slump into its fourth year.
Lower mortgage rates have been helpful for home shoppers who can afford to buy at current rates. The median U.S. monthly housing payment fell to $2,413 in the four weeks ending Jan. 11, according to Redfin. Thats a 5.5% drop from the same period a year earlier and near the lowest level in two years.
The latest drop in rates comes after President Donald Trump announced last week that the federal government would buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds in a bid to reduce mortgage rates.
Lower rates spurred a sharp increase in homeowners seeking to refinance their existing home loan to a lower rate last fall, a trend that has continued into this year.
Applications for mortgage refinancing loans soared 40% last week from the previous week and accounted for 60% of all home loan applications, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Applications for loans to buy a home climbed 16%.
With mortgage rates much lower than a year ago and edging closer to 6%, MBA expects strong interest from homeowners seeking a refinance and would-be buyers stepping off the sidelines, said MBA CEO Bob Broeksmit.
Economists generally expect mortgage rates to ease further this year, though most recent forecasts show the average rate on a 30-year mortgage remaining above 6%, about twice what it was six years ago.
Still, rates would have to drop considerably for homeowners, who bought or refinanced when mortgage rates hit rock bottom earlier this decade, to take on a new loan at a far higher rate.
Nearly 69% of U.S. homes with an outstanding mortgage have a fixed-rate of 5% or lower, and slightly more than half have a rate at or below 4%, according to Realtor.com.
By Alex Veiga, AP business writer
An investigation into a sprawling betting scheme to rig NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association games ensnared 26 people, including more than a dozen college basketball players who tried to fix games as recently as last season, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
The scheme generally revolved around fixers recruiting players with the promise of a big payment in exchange for purposefully underperforming during a game, prosecutors said. The fixers would then place big bets against the players teams in those games, defrauding sportsbooks and other bettors, authorities said.
Calling it an international criminal conspiracy, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf told reporters in Philadelphia that this case represents a significant corruption of the integrity of sports. The indictment suggests that many others including unnamed players had a role in the scheme but werent charged, and Metcalf said the investigation was continuing.
The varying charges against the 26 defendants, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, include bribery, wire fraud, and conspiracy.
Concerns about gambling and college sports have grown since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on the practice, leading some states to legalize it to varying degrees.
According to the indictment unsealed Thursday, fixers started with two games in the Chinese Basketball Association in 2023 and, successful there, moved on to rigging NCAA games as recently as January 2025.
The fixers scheme grew to involve more than 39 players on more than 17 different NCAA Division I mens basketball teams, who then rigged and attempted to rig more than 29 games, prosecutors said.
They wagered millions of dollars, generating substantial proceeds for themselves, and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to players in bribes, prosecutors said, with payments to players typically ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per game.
Prosecutors named more than 40 schools that were involved in games that were targeted by the scheme.
Rigged games included those played by teams in major conferences, such as Big East and Atlantic 10, prosecutors said.
Some were games against nationally ranked programs while some were playoff games, including the first round of the Horizon League championship and the second round of the Southland Conference championship.
Some of the allegedly targeted teams were Tulane University, Buffalo State University, DePaul University, Robert Morris University, University of Southern Mississippi, Abilene Christian University, Eastern Michigan State University and the University of New Orleans.
Players often recruited teammates to cooperate by playing badly, sitting out or keeping the ball away from players who werent in on the scheme to prevent them from scoring. Sometimes the attempted fix failed, meaning the fixers lost their bets.
To entice players, fixers would text photos of stacks of cash. In one case, a fixer encouraged a player to recruit a St. Louis University teammate by texting him one such photo: send that to him if he bite he bite if he dont so be it lol, the indictment said.
Four of the players charged Simeon Cottle, Carlos Hart, Oumar Koureissi and Camian Shell played for their current teams in the last few days, although the allegations against them do not involve this season, but the 2023-24 season.
Of the defendants, 15 played basketball for Division I NCAA schools during 2024-25 season, prosecutors say. Five others last played in the NCAA in the 2023-24 season while another, former NBA player Antonio Blakeney, played in the Chinese Basketball Association in the 2022-23 season.
The remaining five defendants were described as fixers who recruited players and placed bets. They include two men who prosecutors say worked in the training and development of basketball players. Another was a trainer and former coach, one was a former NCAA player and two were described as gamblers, influencers and sports handicappers.
One fixer reassured another by texting him there were no guarantees in this world but death taxes and Chinese basketball, court papers said.
At the end of the Chinese Basketball Association’s 2022-23 season, fixers put nearly $200,000 in bribe payments and shared winnings from rigged games into Blakeney’s storage locker in Florida, authorities said.
In many instances, the defendants wagers on the rigged games were successful. The sportsbooks would not have paid out those wagers had they known that the defendants fixed those games, the indictment said.
One betting scandal after another has rocked the sports world, where gambling revenue topped $11 billion for the first three-quarters of last year, according to the American Gaming Association. Thats up more than 13% from the prior year, the group said.
The NCAA does not allow athletes or staff to bet on college games, but it briefly allowed student-athletes to bet on professional sports last year before rescinding that decision in November.
The indictment follows a series of NCAA investigations that led to at least 10 players receiving lifetime bans this year for bets that sometimes involved their own teams and their own performances. And the NCAA has said that at least 30 players have been investigated over gambling allegations. More than 30 people were also charged in last years sprawling federal takedown of illegal gambling operations linked to professional basketball.
Marc Levy and Tassanee Vejpongsa, Associated Press
Associated Press writer Maryclaire Dale contributed.
