Financial Mindset

Hackers tried to break into at least 30 municipal water systems in Minnesota on July 26-27, 2026. Since then, Michigan , New Jersey and several other states have reported similar cyberattacks . The attackers did not try to infiltrate the computers that utility offices use. Instead, they tried to seize control of small computers in equipment like pumps and valves that deliver drinking water to millions of people. The utilities countered the attacks by shutting down the control computers and sending personnel out into the field to operate equipment manually. Utility officials have said that water remained safe to drink. As a scholar who researches cyber conflict , I find that the methods used in these incidents are typical of international cyberattacks . Initial suspicion has fallen on hackers allegedly aligned with Iran , but the U.S. government has yet to attribute the attack to anyone. How can someone from far away seize control of a water system and possibly shut ...

A lot has changed since college athletes began earning compensation in 2021. A small percentage have become rich due to their talent and marketability. The vast majority, however, have earned much more modest additional income , if any at all. But one thing hasn’t changed: Opponents of college students cashing in on marketing their name, image and likeness, or NIL, still argue that athlete compensation has ended the supposed purity of college sports. The NCAA has a long history of opposing college athletes profiting from their intellectual property. And even President Donald Trump has voiced his concerns, suggesting current NIL policies “ could cause serious damage to college athletics ” and issuing not one but two executive orders so far in his second term to “save” college sports. However, as a professor of sport management who has been studying name, image and likeness policies since they were implemented in 2021, I believe there are a lot of misconceptions ...

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed  Dr. Erica Schwartz  as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, placing her in charge of a public health agency beleaguered by political meddling and low morale. Schwartz was confirmed in a 51-44 vote. The 54-year-old becomes the 22nd leader of the Atlanta-based CDC, which is charged with protecting Americans from preventable health threats, and the agency’s first confirmed director in nearly a year. Her resume includes medical and law degrees, a stint as deputy surgeon general, and a leadership position at the U.S. Coast Guard. Schwartz’s nomination appeared to be on shaky ground after a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last month. The chairman, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and others questioned whether she would be willing to stand up to  Republican President Donald Trump’s  health secretary,  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , if he ordered CDC to do somethin...

One filmed a widely regarded publicity “stunt” outside the other’s $238 million penthouse. The latter responded by telling the former he was doxxing him, told him to read a history book, and waved a major $4.5 billion project over the former’s head. Months passed, a new tax was introduced, and fans of both sides charged the other. And after all this back and forth, nothing changed. Ken Griffin’s public feud with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not stopped Citadel from doubling down in Manhattan. The past few months have been a point of contention for the Citadel CEO and the young self-ascribed Democratic Socialist mayor of the nation’s biggest city, complete with video call outs and threats to remove the Citadel’s funding of a major Midtown skyscraper. But on a Tuesday morning earnings call from Vornado CEO Steven Roth, Citadel will carry forward with the 350 Park Avenue redevelopment after all. Citadel is expected to remain involved in the project as a “60% partner,”...

Water levels on the Danube River, the second longest in Europe, have dropped so low because of drought that the hulks of dozens of World War II German battleships are emerging into view. They are a curious distraction from the summer heat crisis. The Danube’s  record low water levels  also have forced power plants to the brink of shutting down, and governments across Central and Eastern Europe are taking steps to conserve electricity. In the middle of the river separating Serbia and Romania near the Serbian port of Prahovo, a rusty hull is now visible along with a broken mast where the Nazi flag used to fly. The ships, some still laden with weapons, belonged to Nazi Germany’s Black Sea fleet that the Germans deliberately sank as they retreated from Romania and as Soviet forces advanced deeper into Europe near the end of the war. Historians say up to 200 German warships were scuttled in September 1944 near Prahovo in the Danube gorge as they came under Soviet ...

A record-breaking hot and dry summer tightened its grip on Europe on Monday, as water-dropping planes swooped over a major wildfire in Greece, firefighters in France sought to stabilize a blaze in Provence, and much of the United Kingdom recorded its driest July in nearly two centuries. Wildfires west of Athens jumped containment lines a day after  a midair collision  between two helicopters killed two crew members. A Greek and a Danish national died and two others were hospitalized following the collision on Sunday. All four were private operators chartered by the Greek firefighting service. In France, firefighters in the region around Bordeaux guarded against potential flare-ups inside a still-burning scar  four times the size of Paris . A prolonged heat wave and lack of rainfall led to the driest July in England and Wales in nearly 200 years of recordkeeping, according to provisional statistics, the U.K.’s weather service said Monday. All of Wales ...

At Goldman Sachs , Morgan Stanley , and Bank of America , the fastest route from the Ivy league to a corner office might not run through the career center at all, but through the football roster.  That’s the implication of a new National Bureau of Economic Research study from Harvard, Duke, and Wharton researchers who tracked the first jobs of 120,306 Ivy League graduates between 1950 and 2020. The team—Paul Gompers, George Hu, Will Levinson and Sachin Srivastava—set out to test something Wall Street recruiters have long insisted anecdotally, namely that being a college athlete is a hiring edge.  What they found was more specific: the team bond is a far more potent career driver than the diploma itself, sharpening the narrative about elite college graduates hiring each other on Wall Street into something more concrete.  “Broad school ties do relatively little; the pull comes from intensive shared experiences like a varsity team,” Srivastava, a co-autho...