Prolific fintech investor and QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman said Friday that he will transition to a partner emeritus role by years end to focus on founding his own startups.But those startups wont necessarily be financial technology companies. In a post on X, Rotman who helped start QED in 2007 declared that the first business that he plans on getting out of the ground is in the music industry.He wrote: Its easy to call me crazy for all the obvious reasons, but its worth reserving judgment until you learn more about the business thats evolved in my head and sat on the shelf for years. It will be fun to build and could actually make a huge difference to an industry that none of us could imagine living without.Rotman started Alexandria, Virginia-based QED, which today has $4 billion in assets under management, nearly two decades ago with Nigel Morris and Caribou Honig. He led the firms investment in Credit Karma and played a role in QEDs investments in unicorns such as GreenSky, Flywire, and SoFi. (In fact, QED was the first institutional money into Credit Karma.) Other companies that the firm has backed include Creditas, Nubank, AvidXchange, and Bitso.QED exclusively invests in companies building financial technology at the pre-seed to Series A stages.Rotman, who goes by the handle The Fintech Junkie on X, said he will transition to his new role on January 1, 2026. He will continue to serve in a part-time advisory role to QED over the coming years.Besides founding music startups, Rotman said he likely plans to write a book centered around his observations and frameworks for the startup and VC worlds.He wrote in the X post: This shouldnt surprise anyone who knows me writing is my oxygen. I cant imagine a life without it even though ChatGPT and Claude are better writers than I am.In a statement, QED Managing Partner Nigel Morris noted that he and Rotman had worked together for over 30 years previously also at Capital One.Frank, at his core, is an entrepreneur and I have no doubt he will excel in his next chapter, he said.QED Investors partner Amias Gerety will be promoted to lead QEDs U.S. investment team.

The Torras MiniMag Power Bank has the thinnest profile of any battery pack I've tested, and it charges surprisingly fast. Plus, it's on sale during Amazon's Spring Sale.

ZDNET's key takeaways The Sleep A20 are Soundcore's earbuds designed for sleep, retailing for $150 (but are discounted to $120 right now) on Amazon The specially designed sleep earbuds are comfortable enough to wear the whole night through and are perfect for listening to ambient noise before falling asleep The noise masking isn't strong for dampening environmental sounds, so I wouldn't recommend these for people looking to silence bedroom noise. more buying choices TheSoundcore Sleep A20 earbuds have been discounted to $120 as part of Amazon's Spring Sale event.Trouble sleeping? Some people get themselves to bed by listening to audiobooks, podcasts, or ambient noise to fall asleep. In fact, one of my best friends told me he couldn't go to bed without listening to an audiobook on his AirPods. But AirPods are deeply uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time and useless if you're a side sleeper.That's where sleep earbuds come in. With their discreet and lightweight design, the Sleep A20 earbuds are made to not only stay in your ears all night but be comfortable enough to sleep soundly with.Also: The best Amazon Spring Sale tech deals live nowWhen my colleague reviewedSoundcore's Sleep A10 earbuds last year, she wrote that they had some pitfalls but were ultimately a refreshing addition to the emerging market of sleep wearables. A year later, with the release of the Sleep A20, I was pleased to see that Soundcore took the feedback to heart in designing the new earbuds, correcting the issues mentioned by reviewers while introducing a host of new and improved features. details View at Amazon The earbuds come in a sleek, matte sandstone case, and their flat, smooth design exudes a subdued and relaxing form factor. This is important, as there are two essential traits sleep earbuds need to get right for me to approve them: comfort and sound-dampening. If a brand can nail these two things, they're 80% there.Let's start with comfort. As someone who has usedsleep mask headphones and earplugsthat jut out while laying on my side, the best sleep wearables, in my opinion, lie flush to my ear. These earbuds are smaller than your thumb and feature a flat bud design with two silicon covers: one on the earbud tip and one on the wing. As a regular side sleeper, I can say that I experienced no discomfort, pressure, or obtrusion while wearing these buds. The A20 buds nail comfort, first and foremost, and get close to being altogether unnoticeable because of their thoughtful, flat design.In other respects, however, the earbuds fell short of masking environmental noises. My bedroom overlooks a busy two-way street in Brooklyn that sees its fair share of nighttime traffic, so it's a great testing ground for all things noise-cancellation. Even with the earbuds on medium volume (high volume kept me awake) and a soundscape playing, I could hear the sirens outside my apartment. Soundcore made some pretty bold claims about these earbuds' ability to block out "a partner sawing wood, chopping logs, or grinding gravel." I don't think they can.Also: The best sleep headphones of 2025While I wouldn't recommend these to people who need a noise-canceling earbud to ease them into sleep or dim down their loud environment, I'd recommend these to people who already have quieter bedroom environments and need to listen to something, like the sounds of running water, audiobooks, or brown noise, to fall asleep. Nina Raemont/ZDNETOther supplemental features make up for what the earbuds lack in noise cancellation. There are more ambient soundscapes in the Soundcore app than you could hope for, including ambient sounds that replicate a spaceship taking off or click-clacking keys on a keyboard. There are snore-masking, storm, and campfire sounds -- and even more obscure selections like microfire sounds (whatever that is). There are also some calming piano sounds, and a singing bowls option for those who like to meditate before bed.You can also layer certain sounds, like the piano music with white noise and snore-masking, for a personalized soundscape. Even if you don't use these for sleep, the A20 earbuds could be delightful for taking quick naps or short meditation sessions during a stressful workday. After you find a sound to help you hit the hay, add it to your library, and it'll play through the earbuds for the night.However, the app experience isn't perfect. After choosing a sound to fall asleep to, I would close the app, and the sound would stop completely. I realized that I had to enable "Sleep" mode instead of "Bluetooth" mode for the sound to keep playing if my phone turned off or I swapped to a different app, which was frustrating and counterintuitive.The sleep tracking feature is a nice touch for people who can keep the buds in their ears all night, but it's useless if you're anything like me and lose track of your earbuds while you're dozing. Speaking of losing track of your earbuds, one feature that Soundcore implemented into the A20 buds is the "Find my earbuds" feature. If your sheets end up swallowing your earbuds during the night, you can play a chime on the app to find them -- it's handy and an excellent example of the brand taking feedback from its first iteration and applying it to the next generation.ZDNET's buying adviceThe Soundcore Sleep A20 earbuds are great for people who snooze in a quiet room and are looking for sweet sounds to help them fall asleep. The form factor is comfortable and flush to the ear, making them far more suitable for side sleepers than almost any other wireless earbuds you'd use during the day. The A20 sleep buds nail comfort and tack on a few special touches that keep this new edition fresh and innovative.Due to their middling noise-masking properties, however, the A20 earbuds may not be ideal for people actively trying to silence their sleep environment. If you want sleep earbuds that have strong noise-canceling capabilities, try the QuietOn 3.1 earbuds. If you aren't fond of objects stuck in your ears while you sleep but still want a level of passive noise-canceling, an eye and ear sleep mask like the LC-Dolida sleep headphones might be a better fit. When will this deal expire? Deals are subject to sell out or expire anytime, though ZDNET remains committed to finding, sharing, and updating the best product deals for you to score the best savings. Our team of experts regularly checks in on the deals we share to ensure they are still live and obtainable. We're sorry if you've missed out on this deal, but don't fret -- we're constantly finding new chances to save and sharing them with you at ZDNET.com. Show more ZDNET Recommends

Table of ContentsTable of ContentsMembership costs and structuresElectronics selection and brandsPricing and dealsCustomer service and return policies (for electronics)Which is better for electronics, Costco or Sams Club?ConclusionWhere should you go for tech deals in an uncertain economic environment? We recently established that Costco and Sams Club, as well as other warehouse retailers, are increasingly interesting to us when we look for places to shop for electronics. But the and does a lot of lifting. If youre already sold on the value of these warehouse retailers, which one should you choose? This time around, were mashing the two main warehouse stores head-to-head a little harder. What is the value proposition of Costco vs Sams Club electronics? What is the experience like shopping at Costco vs Sams Club for TVs, laptops, and more?One of the first things you need to consider when comparing the two warehouse giants is their memberships. As we discussed in our previous article, warehouse retailer memberships have an odd basic premise: pay to pay less. If you buy a membership, you are promised lower prices. And, as before, the advice is the same: only get a membership if you are planning on using it, as they are only worth the cost if you are going to use them enough. It sounds obvious, but it is worth stopping for a second and thinking if you are really going to use that Costco or Sams Club membership more than once before snapping one up for a deal.We went into the details of the memberships and all of their benefits (including those beyond electronics) before. For a quick summary, know that Sams Club has a lower upfront cost than Costco and has some perks along with their Plus membership plan that can make getting your $110 back much easier. That being said, Costco memberships are not that much more expensive and there is a wonderful value calculator on the that can guide you to a more precise value of the membership.Winner: Sams Club (Slightly) The slightly lower cost to entry from Sams Club makes it the winner of this category.CostcoSince were looking at Costco and Sams Club as an ideal best place to buy electronics cheap, it only makes sense to look atwhat electronics are offered at each store, because you cant get warehouse retailer electronics savings on products that arent sold at the warehouse. As such, it makes sense to get a feel for the average Costco TV on sale vs. a similar Sams Club TV on sale.First of all, theres good news when it comes to category selection. Though it is easy to think of Costco and Sams Club as glorified grocery stores if youve only heard about them from afar, both stores have about every type of tech you might want. Costco does a slightly better job of breaking down the categories, offering 20 primary categories to Sams Clubs 16, but you can find everything from the best tablets to the best speakers at either store. And, if you keep scrolling, there is an extended category range down near the bottom of the . For some brands, such as Apple, there may be more product categories available at Costco.And that brings us to brands. Again, youll be happy to note that both warehouses offer Apple products, even highlighting Apple as a special store section in their online electronics store pages. Costco has a tendency to show off their brands more, as can be seen by the Shop by Brand panel in the . Upon closer inspection, however, two things become apparent. One, all of the brands represented here are also available at Sams Club. Two, some of the brand labels are doing some heavy lifting for more niche brands Costco only had one iBuyPower PC on offer at the time of this writing (for comparison, Sams Club also only had one). At the same time, we are able to find FitBits at Sams Club but not Costco.Winner: Tie Both companies have some brands they are lacking in, so check your brand loyalties at the door.Now that you know what is on offer, it comes time to figure out the all important question: Is Costco or Sams Club cheaper?[Note: One interesting aspect of buying at a warehouse is the interesting way that minimum advertised pricing (or MAP) rules are circumvented by warehouses unique, store-specific model numbers. By getting special modelsfor their store alone, a warehouse can sell that model much cheaper than they would be allowed to if they were selling the same model numbers that regular stores have. A consequence of this is thatit can be difficult to directly compare prices on a one-to-one basis from warehouse to warehouse on certain, individual items.]If you arent careful, you can fall into a quick trap of just looking at price numbers. Take the singleiBuyPower PC available at both stores. The one at Costco costs $1,200 while the one at Sams Club costs $899. So surely Sams Club is cheaper, right? Well, not so fast. The Costco one has an RTX 4050 (among other superior features) while the Sams Club one has an RTX 3050. This isnt to say that the Sams Club offering isnt the better deal, that would take more time than eyeballing to figure out, it just means thatyou cant quickly glance at prices to determine which store has the best prices.So, to avoid comparing apples to oranges, lets compare apples to apples. Or, at least Apple products against each other. The following prices are taken from the and at the time of this writing to give you an idea of how the prices match:Apple ProductCostco PriceSams Club PriceApple AirTag 4 Pack$70$80Apple AirPods 4 with ANC$149$169Apple iPad Pro 11-inch Wi-Fi with M4 (2024 model)$1,500$1,549Apple MacBook Pro with M4, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD$1,550N/ASo, what can we see? When both places had the product, Costco tended to be cheaper. At least for the items I tested. That last comparison, however, shows something that matters for comparisons like these you can only get what a store has, and Sams Club doesnt have MacBooks right now.I also compared two 14-inch Asus laptops that both cost $250. The has 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage while the has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. From raw stats, the Costco product gives more for the money.Note that both stores have regular deals and sales, with Sams Club having an Instant Savings program and Costco has a coupon book and that any deals currently going on are reflected in the sample prices above.Winner: Costco Costco seems to have better electronics prices, if only slight, but remember youll need to buy more to offset the upfront cost of membership.But what if you dont like something? Can you return it?The Costco electronics exchange/return policy is actually pretty great it lets you return items within 90 days and, for select products, you will also be able to get assistance from Costcos technical & warranty services representatives. If you bought online, you can return online or via any Costco warehouse. However, if you buy from a physical location, you must return to another (it doesnt have to be the same one) Costco warehouse. If you buy a smartphone tied to a particular carrier, there may be some special limitations based on the carrier, however.And what about the Sams Club electronics return policy? Its actually nearly identical to Costcos. You have 90 days with most electronics and, just like with Costco, you can either return it to a store or (if you bought it online) ship it back. You may have to ship some extra large items back instead of returning to a store location, but there is a helpdesk number to support you with this. The main difference between the two is for smartphones; at Sams Club you only have14 days to return smartphones.Winner: Costco (Slightly) Costco offers more easily accessible chances to get help from staff before needing to make a return and has a longer return window for smartphones.To summarize:QualityWinnerMembershipSams Club (Slightly)Product and brand selectionTiePricing/dealsCostcoCustomer service/returnsCostco (Slightly)However, these qualities are noteverything when it comes to doing your electronics shopping. So, if you want to figure out if Sams Club is worth it or if Costco is worth it for more particular scenarios, read on.Sams Club is better if youre happy to pay less upfront and intend to spend less throughout the year.Costcois better if you dont mind the higher upfront costs and know that youre going to spend more throughout the year. It also has a slightly more premium experience outside of just being able to shop for electronics.Ultimately, both of the warehouse retailers are good options, but you might be more inclined to choose Costco vs. Sams Club electronics based on your particular situation. And even then it can be a very tight choice. Sams Club has a lower cost to entry and requires you to spend less per year to make up for the upfront costs.As youre surely aware the availability of some Costco vs Sams Club TVs, printers, tablets, and more will differ throughout the year and as new wares trickle in and old wares sell out. Additionally, prices will change and offers will, too. As such, if you arent sure about which one to pick, it may very well be in your best interest to start with the one that has a physical location closest to you for added value in the non-electronics parts of your life.Editors RecommendationsUnlock Tech Savings: Why Costco & Sams Club are your hidden gems for electronics

The Google Pixel 9 Pro has an amazing offer going on now through the end of March. If you buy a 256GB Google Pixel 9 Pro through Amazons Big Spring Deals event you can get it for just $849, which is $250 less than it normally costs. The Google Pixel 9 Pro is one of the best Android phones you can get at the moment, with its typical $1,099 price being one of its few downsides. Tap the button below to see the phone while it is heavily discounted or keep reading to see why we love this phone so much and why youll love it too.Our Google Pixel 9 Pro review dubbed it the iPhone of Android a statement that should tell you a lot about its capabilities, instincts, and styles. The review also makes detailed observations about the phones legitimately useful AI features. We see that Gemini, for example, replaces the traditional Google assistant as your default helper. The cameras AI is also improved, with features like Add Me and a system to reimagine the surroundings of a shot youve taken. In fact, when we compare the Pixel 9 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro, we actually consider the Pixel 9 Pro the winner when it comes to software and updates.Of course, a phone isnt just AI features, though they are arguably what will define a phones direction in the current year. The phones screen is absolutely gorgeous, with a Super Actua OLED panel that can get a resolution up to 1280 by 2856 pixels. It has four cameras, ranging from 42MP to 50MP. And its all powered by a Tensor G4 processor and 16GB of RAM, a combo that can handle the phones AI prowess.RelatedIf this is all appealing to you, be sure to act now by tapping the button below. The reasoning for this is simple: If you want to get a 256GB Google Pixel 9 Pro at $849 instead of $1,099 (a savings of $250) youll need to get it while this Amazon Big Spring Deal lasts. And thats only through the end of the month. If the Pixel 9 Pro isnt doing it for you, however, you should also check out these phone deals to give yourself a wider selection.Editors Recommendations

A stipulation of the funding round, led by SoftBank, is adding pressure to OpenAIs efforts to convert to a for-profit company.

Just say "I don't know" Why do LLMs make stuff up? New research peers under the hood. Claude's faulty "known entity" neurons sometime override its "don't answer" circuitry. Kyle Orland Mar 28, 2025 6:33 pm | 19 Which of those boxes represents the "I don't know" part of Claude's digital "brain"? Credit: Getty Images Which of those boxes represents the "I don't know" part of Claude's digital "brain"? Credit: Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOne of the most frustrating things about using a large language model is dealing with its tendency to confabulate information, hallucinating answers that are not supported by its training data. From a human perspective, it can be hard to understand why these models don't simply say "I don't know" instead of making up some plausible-sounding nonsense.Now, new research from Anthropic is exposing at least some of the inner neural network "circuitry" that helps an LLM decide when to take a stab at a (perhaps hallucinated) response versus when to refuse an answer in the first place. While human understanding of this internal LLM "decision" process is still rough, this kind of research could lead to better overall solutions for the AI confabulation problem.When a known entity isn'tIn a groundbreaking paper last May, Anthropic used a system of sparse auto-encoders to help illuminate the groups of artificial neurons that are activated when the Claude LLM encounters internal concepts ranging from "Golden Gate Bridge" to "programming errors" (Anthropic calls these groupings "features," as we will in the remainder of this piece). Anthropic's newly published research this week expands on that previous work by tracing how these features can affect other neuron groups that represent computational decision "circuits" Claude follows in crafting its response.In a pair of papers, Anthropic goes into great detail on how a partial examination of some of these internal neuron circuits provides new insight into how Claude "thinks" in multiple languages, how it can be fooled by certain jailbreak techniques, and even whether its ballyhooed "chain of thought" explanations are accurate. But the section describing Claude's "entity recognition and hallucination" process provided one of the most detailed explanations of a complicated problem that we've seen.At their core, large language models are designed to take a string of text and predict the text that is likely to followa design that has led some to deride the whole endeavor as "glorified auto-complete." That core design is useful when the prompt text closely matches the kinds of things already found in a model's copious training data. However, for "relatively obscure facts or topics," this tendency toward always completing the prompt "incentivizes models to guess plausible completions for blocks of text," Anthropic writes in its new research.Fine-tuning helps mitigate this problem, guiding the model to act as a helpful assistant and to refuse to complete a prompt when its related training data is sparse. That fine-tuning process creates distinct sets of artificial neurons that researchers can see activating when Claude encounters the name of a "known entity" (e.g., "Michael Jordan") or an "unfamiliar name" (e.g., "Michael Batkin") in a prompt. A simplified graph showing how various features and circuits interact in prompts about sports stars, real and fake. Credit: Anthropic A simplified graph showing how various features and circuits interact in prompts about sports stars, real and fake. Credit: Anthropic Activating the "unfamiliar name" feature amid an LLM's neurons tends to promote an internal "can't answer" circuit in the model, the researchers write, encouraging it to provide a response starting along the lines of "I apologize, but I cannot..." In fact, the researchers found that the "can't answer" circuit tends to default to the "on" position in the fine-tuned "assistant" version of the Claude model, making the model reluctant to answer a question unless other active features in its neural net suggest that it should.That's what happens when the model encounters a well-known term like "Michael Jordan" in a prompt, activating that "known entity" feature and in turn causing the neurons in the "can't answer" circuit to be "inactive or more weakly active," the researchers write. Once that happens, the model can dive deeper into its graph of Michael Jordan-related features to provide its best guess at an answer to a question like "What sport does Michael Jordan play?"Recognition vs. recallAnthropic's research found that artificially increasing the neurons' weights in the "known answer" feature could force Claude to confidently hallucinate information about completely made-up athletes like "Michael Batkin." That kind of result leads the researchers to suggest that "at least some" of Claude's hallucinations are related to a "misfire" of the circuit inhibiting that "can't answer" pathwaythat is, situations where the "known entity" feature (or others like it) is activated even when the token isn't actually well-represented in the training data.Unfortunately, Claude's modeling of what it knows and doesn't know isn't always particularly fine-grained or cut and dried. In another example, researchers note that asking Claude to name a paper written by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy causes the model to confabulate the plausible-sounding but completely made-up paper title "ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks." Asking the same question about Anthropic mathematician Josh Batson, on the other hand, causes Claude to respond that it "cannot confidently name a specific paper... without verifying the information." Artificially suppressing Claude's the "known answer" neurons prevent it from hallucinating made-up papers by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy. Credit: Anthropic Artificially suppressing Claude's the "known answer" neurons prevent it from hallucinating made-up papers by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy. Credit: Anthropic After experimenting with feature weights, the Anthropic researchers theorize that the Karpathy hallucination may be caused because the model at least recognizes Karpathy's name, activating certain "known answer/entity" features in the model. These features then inhibit the model's default "don't answer" circuit even though the model doesn't have more specific information on the names of Karpathy's papers (which the model then duly guesses at after it has committed to answering at all). A model fine-tuned to have more robust and specific sets of these kinds of "known entity" features might then be able to better distinguish when it should and shouldn't be confident in its ability to answer.This and other research into the low-level operation of LLMs provides some crucial context for how and why models provide the kinds of answers they do. But Anthropic warns that its current investigatory process still "only captures a fraction of the total computation performed by Claude" and requires "a few hours of human effort" to understand the circuits and features involved in even a short prompt "with tens of words." Hopefully, this is just the first step into more powerful research methods that can provide even deeper insight into LLMs' confabulation problem and maybe, one day, how to fix it.Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 19 Comments

US President Donald Trumps executive orders have led to drastic cuts across the sciencesSHAWN THEW/POOL/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockIn a letter to Michael Kratsios, director of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Trump administration said on 26 March that the US needs to revitalise its science and technology enterprise and accelerate research and development. But President Donald Trump has spent the early months of his second term dismantling the very research apparatus built for this purpose.His latest directive invokes the idea of the endless frontier, a vision set out at

A common symptom of measles includes a rashAleksandr Finch/ShutterstockThe US is currently facing its most severe measles resurgence in years. On 26 March, Ohio became the fifth state to declare a measles outbreak this year, joining Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Kansas.How many measles cases are there in the US?As of 27 March, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed 483 measles cases in the US this year. This is the highest number of infections since 2019, when there were more than 1200 confirmed cases. The CDC is aware of more potential measles cases but is waiting for confirmation before including them in the case count.Which states are affected by measles?So far, 19 states have confirmed at least one measles case this year: Alaska, California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Washington. Fourteen of these states have reported only isolated incidences, meaning the infection didnt spread to more than one other person.AdvertisementHowever, five states declared a measles outbreak, defined as at least three related measles cases. As of 28 March, confirmed measles cases totalled 400 in Texas and 44 in New Mexico. There were seven cases in Oklahoma as of 25 March. Kansas and Ohio have confirmed 23 and 10 measles cases, respectively, as of 26 March.Has anyone been hospitalised or died?The CDC reports that 70 people have been hospitalised for measles so far this year. One unvaccinated child also died from the virus on 26 February in Texas the countrys first recorded measles death in a decade. A second possible measles-related death is under investigation in New Mexico.When did the outbreak start?Texas was the first state to declare a measles outbreak. The Texas Department of State Health Services issued an alert on 23 January after identifying measles in two unvaccinated adults who lived together in Houston and had recently travelled abroad. A week later, the state confirmed an additional two cases in unvaccinated children on the other side of the state in Gaines county. It isnt clear if these two incidents were related.Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday.Sign up to newsletterSince then, measles has rapidly spread through Gaines county, located in western Texas, infecting at least 270 individuals. Gaines county has a large rural population and low vaccination rate: just under of children in kindergarten which usually starts at age 5 were vaccinated against measles. The real rate may be lower, as the data doesnt include home-schooled children.The outbreak has since spilled into neighbouring communities, including those across the state border in New Mexico, which announced its first case on 11 February, and Oklahoma, which announced its first two cases on 11 March. The New York Times reported that state health officials also believe the Kansas outbreak, which began on 13 March, is related to those in New Mexico and Texas.The latest outbreak in Ohio is unrelated to those in other states. The Ohio Department of Health declared the first case on 20 March in an unvaccinated man who had contact with someone who had recently travelled abroad. All nine of the other confirmed cases are related to this first unvaccinated man.Who is most affected by measles?Nearly all of the confirmed measles cases 97 per cent have occurred in people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown. Only 2 per cent of cases are in people who have received two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Two doses of the vaccine is 97 per cent effective against measles while one dose is only 93 per cent effective.Children and adolescents are particularly susceptible to measles. The majority of cases 75 per cent are in people 19 years old and younger. Children are also at risk of developing serious complications from measles. About 1 out of every 20 children with measles develops pneumonia and about 1 out of every 1000 with the illness experiences brain swelling, which can lead to hearing loss, intellectual disability and death.Why are there so many measles cases?The US declared measles eliminated in 2000. However, occasional outbreaks still occur due to waning vaccination rates. Measles is a highly contagious virus. Each case can lead to an additional 12 to 18 cases if people arent protected against the disease. When more than 95 per cent of people in a community are fully vaccinated against measles, most people in the area are protected through herd immunity.In the 2019 to 2020 school year, more than 95 per cent of US kindergarteners were vaccinated against measles. Yet that number fell to less than 93 per cent in the 2023 to 2024 school year, leaving roughly 280,000 kindergarteners at risk of infection.What is the US doing to contain the outbreak?Vaccination is the best protection against measles. The fact that we now have a measles case in Ohio adds emphasis to the importance of being fully vaccinated, Bruce Vanderhoff at the Ohio Department of Public Health said in a press release announcing the states first case. This disease can be very serious, but it is preventable. I strongly encourage you to protect yourselves and your children by getting vaccinated.However, the US secretary of health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has stopped short of calling on people to get vaccinated. The decision to vaccinate is a personal one, he wrote in a Fox News article on 2 March. Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.Topics:

Elon Musk, who runs Tesla, xAI, X, and SpaceX, has also been busy with his new role as a special government employee for the White House. Kenny Holston/The New York Times 2025-03-29T02:43:35Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Elon Musk says his companies are "suffering" because of his work with the White House.He said his White House role has been "disadvantageous" for his business empire.President Donald Trump has tried to prop up Musk's EV company amid Tesla's recent stock decline.Elon Musk said his companies are "suffering" due to his work with the Trump Administration, pointing to recent attacks against his EV company.In the second half of a two-part interview on Fox News' "Special Report" that aired Friday, Bret Baier asked the CEO to address any conflict of interest between his business empire and his work at the White House.Musk, who runs SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, X, and a tunneling company, was designated a special government employee after President Donald Trump's electoral victory.He has put much of his focus on cutting federal spending. The White House has said that Elon Musk is not the head of the DOGE office, which is leading the administration's efforts to downsize the government, but the CEO has repeatedly been referenced as the de facto leader.Musk said it has been "disadvantageous for me to be in the government, not advantageous," adding that his "companies are suffering because I'm in the government."Musk pointed to the recent troubles at Tesla. The company has experienced a stock dip amid disappointing global sales figures and investor concern that the CEO is spending too much time away from his company. Tesla also has faced a series of protests, vandalism incidents, and attacks against its showrooms and vehicles which Musk cited to Baier raising concerns from some on Wall Street that Musk has damaged the brand of his company. It's unclear what the impact has been on his other companies.Musk previously said he was overseeing his companies with "great difficulty," and, in a surprise all-hands Tesla meeting on March 20, urged stakeholders to "hang on to your stock."The Tesla CEO's business empire has been supported by billions of dollars worth of government contracts or subsidies and still stands to gain during Trump's second term.The White House's DOGE office, for example, has moved to either de-fang or entirely shut down government agencies that were once investigating Musk's companies.Earlier this month, Trump stood in front of the South Lawn of the White House with several Tesla models for a media event, praising the electric vehicles he was once hesitant to endorse.The president's second term has created an uncertain economic landscape with his reliance on tariffs as a leveraging tool against global trade partners and as a way to urge companies to produce domestically.Wall Street estimates that Trump's recent 25% tariffs against all auto and auto part imports could cost the industry as much as $82 billion.Musk said in an X post on Wednesday that his company would not be "unscathed" by the tariffs, but Tesla could be the winner in the outcome as the company would be relatively insulated from the tariffs' impacts since all of its cars are final-assembled in the US.A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.Recommended video