Street food is a global phenomenon that’s bringing lots of innovation to the food world. PepsiCo’s biggest innovation is creating a network of entrepreneurs in the Mexican street food market. PepsiCo Global CMO Jane Wakely shares how the brand is doubling down on organic behavior and making it a big growth driver.
Since President Trump took office in January, his administrations Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been on a deregulation spree. So far, the agencys leaders have expressed interest in rolling back regulations around forever chemicals, or PFAs; reversing a cornerstone finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous for public health; and weakening enforcement of coal ash regulations. This week, new court documents indicate the EPA has set its sights on walking back protections from another toxin: asbestos.
Based on court documents released on Monday, the EPA intends to reconsider a ruling, passed by the Biden administration in 2024, that banned chrysotile asbestos, the last form of asbestos used legally in the U.S. Per a release issued at the time of the ruling, 50 other countries had already banned chrysotile asbestos, which is most commonly used in the industrial process of making chlorine and on components in the automotive industry.
The action marks a major milestone for chemical safety after more than three decades of inadequate protections and serious delays during the previous administration to implement the 2016 amendments, the Biden administration wrote. Exposure to asbestos is known to cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and laryngeal cancer, and it is linked to more than 40,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
Now, in response to a petition from the Texas Chemistry Council, its possible that chrysotile asbestos will once again be a permissible manufacturing material. According to the new court documents, EPA leadership has reviewed the Asbestos Rule and now intends to reconsider the Rule through notice-and-comment rulemaking, noting that this process, including any regulatory changes, is expected to take approximately 30 months.
This wont be the first time that a Trump administration has tried to bring back asbestos. In 2018, his first administrations EPA enacted a SNUR (or Significant New Use Rule) allowing the manufacture of new asbestos-containing products to be petitioned and approved by the federal government on a case-by-case basis. Strangely enough, Trump himself also wrote in his 1977 book Art of the Comeback that he believed asbestos bans were a conspiracy led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal.
The EPA did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on the reasoning behind its reconsideration.
Cereal lovers beware: You may not like what you are about to read.
General Mills, the maker of popular breakfast cereal, Cheerios, has sadly decided to discontinue three of its flavors: Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Oat Crunch, Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios Minis. Didn’t know there was more than one kind of Cheerios? Here are all the flavors, from Fruity Cheerios, and Pumpkin Spice Cheeriosto Very Berry.
So, while this may be bad news for cereal junkies everywhere, there is a silver lining here. It turns out the reason they are taking them off the shelf is to make way for some new offerings including, the Cheerios Protein line.
“As weve introduced new innovations this yearincluding Cheerios Protein, available in Cinnamon, Strawberry and Cookies and Creme, Cheerios Oat Crunch Chocolate, and the return of fan-favorite Frosted Lemon Cheerios for a limited time this summerwe have discontinued a few products from our portfolio,” General Mills told Fast Company in an emailed statement.
If you are wondering if there is any hope of resurrecting one of those three discontinued flavors, fear not.
“Much like Frosted Lemon Cheerios, which returned by popular demand, we continue to listen to our fans as we evolve our offerings,” General Mills added.
Cheerios isn’t the only company jumping on the high protein bandwagon, also known as protein-maxxing. They join a number of other food and beverage brands, including Starbucks, who recently announced the addition of a new Protein Cold Foam that adds a whopping 15 grams of protein to each coffee drink.
With the 2025 hurricane season underway in the eastern Pacific, Hurricane Erick is picking up speed as it heads toward southern Mexico, strengthening to a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday afternoon, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.
Erick is currently located in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 105 miles south of Puerto Ángel.
NOAA’s National Hurricane Center forecast that Erick would rapidly intensify, strengthen throughout Wednesday, and reach “major hurricane strength” Wednesday night or early Thursday as it approaches the coast of southern Mexico.
The storm is expected to bring damaging winds and “life-threatening flash floods,” with 8 to 16 inches of rain (20 inches maximum), across the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, which could lead to mudslides. It could also bring 2 to 4 inches (6 inches maximum) across Chiapas, Michoacán, Colima, Jalisco, and Mexico Cityand to Guatemala.
Erick is expected to move inland or be near the coast on Thursday, prompting a hurricane warning from Acapulco to Puerto Ángel and a hurricane watch for west of Acapulco to Tecpán de Galeana.
The storm will produce heavy rainfall across portions of Central America and southwest Mexico throughout the week, and a dangerous storm surge is expected to produce coastal flooding.
How to track Hurricane Erick’s path in real time
Erick, the fifth named storm for the current eastern Pacific hurricane season, is currently traveling northeast with sustained winds of about 85 mph (100 mph maximum), with higher gusts and hurricane-force winds extending 15 miles out from its center. It is expected to turn northwest later on Wednesday.
Hurricanes can change paths quickly, which is why tracking the storm is so important. For updated information, advisories, and maps showing projected and traveled paths, check out these resources below:
Esris Hurricane Aware
National Hurricane Center
A major new study published in Nature examines how rising temperatures will impact global food systems, and the results offer a dire warning for wealthy countries.
As the planet warms, the environments that grow the most-consumed crops around the globe are changing, but theres been a lot of disagreement about what those changes will look like. Counter to some more optimistic previous findings, the new study finds that every degree Celsius that the planet warms could result in 120 calories worth of food production lost per person, per day.
The new analysis is the result of almost a decade of work by the Climate Impact Lab, a consortium of climate, agriculture and policy experts. The research brings together data from more than 12,000 regions in 55 countries, with a focus on wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, barley and cassava the core crops that account for two-thirds of calories consumed globally.
When global production falls, consumers are hurt because prices go up and it gets harder to access food and feed our families, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Professor Solomon Hsiang, a senior author on the study, said in an announcement paired with the new paper. If the climate warms by 3 degrees, thats basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast.
Adaptation wont offset farming losses
Some previous research has hinted that global food production could actually go up in a warming planet by lengthening growing seasons and widening the viable regions where some crops can grow. In Western American states like Washington and California, growing seasons are already substantially longer than they once were, adding an average of 2.2 days per decade since 1895.
The new study criticizes previous research for failing to realistically estimate how farmers will adapt to a changing climate. While prior studies rely on an all-or-nothing model for agricultural climate adaptation where farmers either adapted flawlessly or didnt adapt at all, the new paper in Nature systematically measure[s] how much farmers adjust to changing conditions, a first according to the research group.
That analysis found that farmers who do adapt by switching to new crops or changing long-standing planting and harvesting practices could lessen a third of climate-caused losses in crop yields by 2100. But even in a best-case scenario of climate adaptation, food production is on track to take a major hit.
Any level of warming, even when accounting for adaptation, results in global output losses from agriculture, lead author and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Assistant Professor of agricultural and consumer economics Andrew Hultgren said.
The richest countries have the most to lose
While wealthy countries are insulated from some of the deadliest ravages of the climate crisis, the new analysis reveals a U.S. food supply that is particularly vulnerable. Researchers found that the modern breadbaskets that havent yet explored climate adaptations will fare worse than parts of the world where extreme heat and changing weather has already forced farmers to adapt.
Places in the Midwest that are really well suited for present day corn and soybean production just get hammered under a high warming future, Hultgren said. You do start to wonder if the Corn Belt is going to be the Corn Belt in the future.
In a high-emissions model of the future where humans fail to meaningfully slow the march of global warming, corn production would dive by 40% in the U.S. grain belt, with soybeans suffering an even worse 50% decline. Wheat production would decline 30 to 40% in the same scenario.
Because such a large fraction of agricultural production is concentrated in these wealthy-but-low-adaption regions, they dominate projections of global calorie production, generating much of the global food security risk we document, the authors wrote, adding that farming in the U.S. is optimized for high average yields in current climate conditions but is not robust enough to withstand a changing climate.
This is basically like sending our agricultural profits overseas. We will be sending benefits to producers in Canada, Russia, China. Those are the winners, and we in the U.S. are the losers, Hsiang said. The longer we wait to reduce emissions, the more money we lose.
Amazon is gearing up to make as many as 10,000 robotaxis annually at a sprawling plant near Silicon Valley as it prepares to challenge self-driving cab leader Waymo. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also vying to join the autonomous race.
The 220,000-square-foot (20,440-square-meters) robotaxi factory announced Wednesday heralds a new phase in Amazon’s push into a technological frontier that began taking shape in 2009, when Waymo was launched as a secret project within Google.
Amazon began eyeing the market five years ago when it shelled out $1.2 billion for self-driving startup Zoox, which will be the brand behind a robotaxi service that plans to begin transporting customers in Las Vegas late this year before expanding into San Francisco next year.
Zoox, conceived in 2014, will be trying to catch up to Waymo, which began operating robotaxis in Phoenix nearly five years ago then charging for rides in San Francisco in 2023 before expanding into Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Waymo says it has already more than 10 million paid rides while other would-be rivals such as Amazon and Tesla are still fine-tuning their self-driving technology while tackling other challenges, such how to ramp up their fleet.
Amazon feels like it has addressed that issue with Zoox’s manufacturing plant that spans across the equivalent of three-and-a-half football fields located in Hayward, California about 17 miles (27 kilometers) north of a factory where Tesla makes some of the electric vehicles that Musk believes will eventually be able to operate without a driver behind the wheel.
Since moving into the former bus manufacturing factory in 2023, Zoox has transformed it into a high-tech facility where its boxy, gondola-like vehicles are put together and tested along a 21-station assembly line. For now, Zoox is only making one robotaxi per day, but by next year hopes to be churning them out at the rate of three vehicles per hour.
By 2027, Zoox hopes to make 10,000 robotaxis annually in Hayward for a fleet that it hopes to take into other major markets, including Miami, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Although Zoox will be assembling its robotaxis in the U.S., about half of the parts are imported from outside the country, according to company officials. Waymo is also planning to expand into Atlanta and Miami and on Wednesday took the first step toward bringing its robotaxis in the most populous U.S. city with the disclosure of an application to begin testing its vehicles in New York.
It’s an exciting time to be heading on this journey, Zoox CEO Aicha Evans said during a Tuesday tour of the robotaxi factory that she co-hosted with Jesse Levinson, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer.
Although Zoox will be lagging well behind, it believes it can lure passengers with vehicles that look more like carriages than cars with seating for up to four passengers. Waymo, in contrast, builds its self-driving technology on to cars made by other major automakers, making its robotaxi look similar to vehicles steered by humans. Zoox isn’t even bothering to put a steering wheel in its robotaxis.
As it continues to test its robotaxis in Las Vegas, Zoox recently struck a partnership to give rides to guests of Resorts World. It’s also still testing its robotaxis in San Francisco, where Waymo already has turned driverless cars into an everyday site in a city that has been renowned for cable cars since the 1870s. While testing in San Francisco last month, a minor collision between a Zoox robotaxi and a person riding an electric scooter last month prompted the company to issue a voluntary recall to update its self-driving technology. No injuries were reported in the incident.
Tesla is still angling to compete against Waymo too, although it remains unclear when Musk will fulfill his long-running promise to build the world’s largest robotaxi service. Musk still hasn’t given up on the goal, though his current ambitions are more modest than they were in 2019. when he predicted Tesla would be running a fleet of 1 million robotaxis by now. He is currently aiming for a limited rollout of Tesla robotaxis in Austin this Sunday, although that date could change because Musk is being super paranoid about safety.
Zoox, in contrast, is planning to operate 500 to 1,000 of its robotaxis in small to medium-sized markets and about 2,000 robotaxis in major cities where it eventually operates, according to Evans. The company thinks each robotaxi produced in its Hayward plan should be on the road for about five years, or about 500,000 miles.
Michael Liedtke, AP technology writer
Federal Reserve officials expect inflation to worsen in the coming months but they still foresee two interest rate cuts by the end of this year, the same as they projected in March.
The Fed kept its key rate unchanged for the fourth straight meeting Wednesday, and said the economy is expanding at a solid pace.” Changes to the Fed’s rate typically though not always influence borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards, and business loans.
The central bank also released its latest quarterly projections for the economy and interest rates. It expects noticeably weaker growth, higher inflation, and slightly higher unemployment by the end of this year than it had forecast in March, before President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs April 2. Most of those duties were then postponed April 9. The Fed also signaled it would cut rates just once in 2026, down from two cuts projected in March.
Fed officials see inflation, according to its preferred measure, rising to 3% by the end of this year, from 2.1% in April. It also projects the unemployment rate will rise to 4.5%, from 4.2% currently. Growth is expected to slow to just 1.4% this year, down from 2.5% last year.
Despite the gloomier outlook, Fed chair Jerome Powell and other officials have underscored that they are holding off from any changes to their key rate because of the uncertainty surrounding the impact of the tariffs and economic outlook. Many of the Fed’s policymakers have expressed particular concern that the duties could boost prices, creating another surge of inflation just a couple of years after the worst inflation spike in four decades.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. APs earlier story follows below.
The inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve are expected to keep their key interest rate unchanged Wednesday for the fourth straight time. That’s likely to shift attention to how many interest rate cuts they forecast for this year.
It’s widely expected that the 19 Fed officials that participate in the central bank’s interest-rate decisions will project two rate cuts for this year, as they did in December and March. But some economists expect that one or both of those cuts could be pushed back to 2026.
The Fed will almost certainly keep the short-term rate it controls at about 4.3%, economists say, where it has stood since the central bank last cut rates in December. Since then, it has stayed on the sidelines while it evaluates the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other policy changes on the economy and prices.
Inflation has been cooling since January, and many economists say that without the higher import taxes, the Fed would likely be cutting its rate further. According to the Fed’s preferred measure, inflation dropped to just 2.1% in April, the lowest since last September. Core inflation which exclude the volatile food and energy categories was 2.5%.
Those figures suggest inflation is largely coming under control, for now. Yet the Fed’s short-term interest rate remains at an elevated level intended to slow growth and inflation. Some economists argue that with inflation cooling, the Fed could resume its rate reductions.
When the Fed reduces its rate, it often though not always leads to lower costs for consumer and business borrowing, including for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards. Yet financial markets also influence the level of longer-term rates and can keep them elevated even if the Fed reduces the shorter-term rate it controls.
But Fed officials have said they want to see whether Trump’s tariffs boost inflation and for how long. Economists generally believe a tariff hike should at least lead to a one-time increase in prices, as companies seek to offset the cost of higher duties. Many Fed officials, however, are worried that the tariffs could lead to more sustained inflation.
While theory might suggest that (the Fed) should look through a one-time increase in prices, I would be uncomfortable staking the Feds reputation and credibility on theory, Jeffrey Schmid, president of the Fed’s Kansas City branch and a voting member of the Fed’s interest-rate setting committee, said earlier this month.
The Trump White House has sharply ramped up pressure on Powell to reduce borrowing costs, with Trump himself calling the Fed chair a numbskull last week for not cutting. Other officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, are also calling for a rate reduction.
The Bank of England has cut its rate twice this year but is expected to keep it unchanged at 4.25% when it meets Thursday.
Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
As anti-ICE protests intensify across the country, kids are turning Roblox into a protest ground online.
Last week, thousands took to the streets to protest the Trump administrations immigration policies. Meanwhile, on Roblox, avatars faced off with players dressed in police SWAT gear in the popular Brookhaven roleplay world (based on the real city of Brookhaven, Georgia), as Taylor Lorenz first reported in User Mag.
After her story published, Lorenz shared an update that Roblox protesters are now facing police violence. A screenshot of a text shared with Lorenz (which she then posted on X) reads: I was in a Roblox ice protest but then we all got shot. By the police.
On Monday I reported on anti-ICE protests taking over Roblox. One of the kids I interviewed texted me this morning to share that the Roblox protesters are now facing police violence. https://t.co/bmGLJmKXd0 pic.twitter.com/0qvdZvwGv7— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 18, 2025
Players have been sharing updates across TikTok and Discord, posting dates and times for upcoming protests. Some Roblox players are even enacting their own ICE raids. One TikTok video shows a player dressed as an ICE agent, barging into another players Roblox home and violently arresting him.
@riobandzblox Know your rights #iceraids #ice #scared #skit #besafe #robloxskit #dahood i was only temporary – my head is empty
Roblox hosts around 85 million daily active users globally, about 40% of whom are under the age of 12. Brookhaven is Robloxs most-visited experience ever, with over 65 billion visits, and recently won two Roblox Innovation Awards 2024 categories: “Best Roleplay/Life Sim” and “Best Social Hangout.”
A study published earlier this year in Cornell Universitys preprint server arXiv found that in-game roleplay and avatar customization help kids aged eight to 13 explore their identities. As the iPad generation grows up, gaming platforms like Roblox are becoming spaces where they process major world events.
Virtual protests arent new. In 2016, young users took to Club Penguin to protest President Donald Trumps victory in an election they were too young to vote in, declaring not my president and penguins of color matter in the speech bubbles above their penguin avatars. In 2020, gamers staged virtual sit-ins in Habbo and held demonstrations in Toontown during the Black Lives Matter protests amid lockdown restrictions.
These protests may be virtual, but that doesnt make them any less real. Gen Alpha has grown up online, and with many still too young to vote or take their activism to the streets, it makes sense theyre showing up in droves in the spaces they inhabit every day.
As one TikTok user shared, her younger sister couldnt attend the anti-ICE protests in person because of safety concerns. Instead, her sister told her: Its ok I protested on Roblox yesterday.
More Americans are watching TV via streaming platforms than both broadcast and cable combined for the first time ever.
The finding comes from Nielson’s monthly Gauge report, which was launched four years ago to provide insight on what viewers are watching, as well as how they are watching it. The latest report found that streaming accounted for 44.8% of total TV viewership in Maythe largest share on record. Meanwhile, broadcast and cable TV only made up 20.1% and 24.1%, respectively, for a total of 44.2%.
Its fitting that this inflection point coincides with the four year anniversary of Nielsens The Gauge, which has become the gold standard for streaming TV measurement, said Karthik Rao, Nielsen CEO, in the report. Its also a credit to media companies, who have deftly adapted their programming strategies to meet their viewers where they are watching TVwhether its on streaming or linear platforms.
Previously, the Gauge reported another big milestone for streaming platforms. In July 2022, for the first time, streaming topped cable viewership. At the time, it accounted for 34.8% of viewership while cable made up 34.4%. Broadcast made up 21.6%. However today, the combined total for both cable and broadcast viewing still falls behind the percentage of monthly streamers.
Predictably, streaming usage has steadily been increasing in recent years. Since 2021, viewers streamed their entertainment 71% more than they used other sources. During the same time period, TV viewers watched (and binge-watched) 21% less via broadcast. Likewise, cable viewing plummeted by 39%.
Per the report, free services have been a major part of the uptick in viewers streaming content over the past four years. YouTube, the most-used streaming platform, saw streaming surge by 120% over the time period. Last month, the platform accounted for 12.5% of all TV viewership. Netflix, the leading Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) service, saw an increase in viewership by 27% since 2021.
As viewers keep turning toward streaming platforms, the services are evolving to keep up with demand. In April, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos explained the platform’s goals for expansion, which included becoming a trillion-dollar company. Sarandos explained that video podcasts could soon be viewable on the platform, saying, the lines are getting blurry between podcasts and talk shows, adding, as the popularity of video podcasts grows, I suspect youll see some of them find their way to Netflix.
Streaming platforms have expanded to include some major events, too, which were once only available on cable or broadcast. In 2021, the Olympics were shown on Peacock, NBCs streaming platform. And this year, even The Super Bowl streamed on Tubi. Likewise, in 2025, the Oscars was viewable on Hulu, making it accessible to those without cable or broadcast TV for the first time.
