Financial Mindset

A federal judge on Monday ordered a former OpenAI engineer accused of bugging an executive conference room to stay in jail , after questioning whether a $1 million bond the Saudi government offered to guarantee would bring him back if he fled. Abdulrahman Alfozan, the 35-year-old former OpenAI engineer, appeared in court today wearing an orange jumpsuit and white face mask while escorted by two U.S. marshals. He will remain in federal custody until his next court date, a preliminary hearing on Nov. 6. He has been in jail since the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested him on Oct. 9, alleging he planted the device in a conference room where executives, and sometimes government officials, discussed sensitive information, on Sept. 28. Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse said a $1 million bond had to be weighed against the possibility that Alfozan “potentially has access to much greater wealth.” “Once he leaves, there’s no getting him back, and that’s why this is a bigger ca...

One Los Angeles restaurant group traded $60,000 on Kalshi to hedge against the Dodgers’ abbreviated playoff run, and it’s just one example of how prediction markets are transforming how companies, particularly small businesses, are calculating and responding to risks. Kalshi told Fortune that the hospitality group, which was unnamed but operates 25 bars, including several near Dodger Stadium, made the trade on the platform if the city’s MLB team did not advance to the World Series. The Dodgers lost in the NLCS to the Milwaukee Brewers last week, and the position returned almost twice the original bet. The stake helped the business make up for the revenue it would have gotten had the Dodgers played more playoff games. The use of prediction markets as a financial hedge is likely to grow, a sign that these platforms are not just alternatives to online sportsbooks or prop bet forums, but a financial and decision-making tool. “You could imagine that there are other risks that ...

It’s one of the most urgent problems of the AI age: How to tell if the person you’re chatting with on the Internet is real, or a clever bot pretending to be human. In recent years, the inability to distinguish bots from humans has led to billions of dollars of fraud as AI agents trick companies into providing goods and services. In the most extreme cases, crooks have deployed deep fakes of corporate executives in order to trick employees into sending fraudulent wire transfers. But now a solution may be at hand. On Sunday, a company called World—which makes an orb device that uses iris scans to create a “ proof of humanity “—announced that video conferencing service Zoom, as well as several big financial companies, are adopting its technology to keep out malicious bots. The verification tool is part of a broader suite of services called World ID. “World ID for Zoom is designed to protect sensitive, high-stakes conversations by proving that a real a...

Anthropic  said Sunday it is committing 5% of its shares to a new “public benefit” fund, with the fund’s worth potentially increasing as its shares grow in value. The shares will go to the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, a new entity within the company. The fund “will have increased flexibility and scale, enabling us to pursue our mission in new ways: for example, we might explore large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations,” Anthropic said in a  blog post . It gave labor market impacts as an example, saying that while it has already committed $200 million to study the effects of  artificial intelligence , “given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed.” CEO Dario Amodei and the company’s five other cofounders established Anthropic as a public benefit corporation, a designation that for-profit companies select to balance financial goals and social impact. They have also pledged that they ...

Last month’s announcement from the Dutch central bank that it was moving gold from North America to Europe added to the trend of a global redistribution of reserves. The New York Fed has long served as the custodian of the gold on behalf the U.S. government, foreign governments, other central banks, and official international organizations. Much of it arrived during and after World War II as countries sought to keep their gold reserves in a safe location.  The stockpile reached a high in the early 1970s but began a gradual slide after the U.S. took the dollar off the gold standard and is now about half of its peak. U.S. custodianship continues to decline. France removed all of its gold from the New York Fed between July 2025 and January 2026. Then the Dutch central bank, known as the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), moved more than 78 tons of gold in New York and seven tons in Canada to London, citing “increasing geopolitical unrest” and the need to ...

President Donald Trump  on Sunday announced plans to close a  historic public golf course in the nation’s capital  for 15 months and redevelop it despite a  court challenge  to his long-sought renovation. Trump posted on social media about his intent to shutter the East Potomac Golf Course, not far from the White House, starting Nov. 15 to make it “one of the Best and Most Spectacular Golf Courses anywhere in the World.” A judge last week, however, ordered a halt to his redevelopment plans until at least Oct. 26 after  scolding the government  for starting a  large-scale tree removal  at the course over a holiday weekend while providing little notice to the court or the plaintiffs trying to stop the makeover. Trump did not acknowledge the legal fight in his post, which included an artist’s rendering for the course redesign. “When completed, it will be open to the Public while, at the same time, designed to the Highest Level of Golf and ab...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a final appeal to voters considering a path  toward independence  in his home province of Alberta on Friday, warning that a referendum is a dangerous gamble at a time of growing threats to Canada’s sovereignty. With U.S. President Donald Trump waging a  trade war  and threatening to make Canada the 51st state, Carney warned that the referendum comes at the “worst possible time” and urged Albertans not to take the outcome for granted. “Don’t let anyone tell you this is already decided. Turnout will determine the outcome,” Carney told a pro-Canada rally in Edmonton, where he grew up. “This is not a game. This is not poker. A vote against Canada is a dangerous bluff that will lead to years of deep uncertainty and lost opportunities for Albertans and Canadians,” he said. Monday’s vote is not a direct referendum on independence. Alberta, home to most of Canada’s proven oil reserves — the fourth largest in the world...