Italian confectioner Ferrero, known for brands like Nutella and Kinder, is buying the century-old U.S. cereal company WK Kellogg in a deal valued at approximately $3.1 billion.
The Ferrero Group said Thursday it will pay $23 for each Kellogg share. The transaction includes the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of WK Kellogg Co.s portfolio of breakfast cereals across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean.
WK Kellogg’s shares were up 30% in premarket trading Thursday.
Kellogg, which was founded in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1906, makes Fruit Loops, Special K, Frosted Flakes, and Rice Krispies.
The current company was formed in 2023, when Kellogg’s snack brands like Cheez-Its and Pringles were spun into a separate company called Kellanova. M&M’s maker Mars Inc. announced last year that it planned to buy Kellanova in a deal worth nearly $30 billion.
Ferrero Group, which was founded in Italy in 1946, has been trying to expand its U.S. footprint. In 2018 it bought Nestle’s U.S. candy brands, including Butterfinger, Nerds, and SweeTarts. And in 2022 it bought Wells Enterprises, the maker of ice cream brands like Blue Bunny and Halo Top.
The deal, which still needs approval from Kellogg shareholders, is expected to close in the second half of the year. Once the transaction is complete, Kelloggs stock will no longer trade on the New York Stock Exchange and the company will become a Ferrero subsidiary.
Dee-Ann Durbin and Michelle Chapman, AP business writers
Britain’s WPP named board member Cindy Rose as its new chief executive on Thursday, tasking the senior Microsoft executive with leading its recovery a day after a major profit warning showed the scale of the challenge at the ad group.
Rose has been on the board since 2019 and will take over from outgoing CEO Mark Read on Sept. 1, the company said, with Read departing four months earlier than expected.
Shares in the group, which fell to a 16-year low on Wednesday after it slashed its profit outlook, rose 2% in early deals.
Rose has spent the last nine years in senior leadership positions at Microsoft, where she rose to Chief Operating Officer, Global Enterprise after formerly being head of its UK business. Prior to that she worked at Vodafone and Virgin Media.
WPP Chairman Philip Jansen said she had supported the digital transformation of large enterprises around the world including embracing artificial intelligence to create new business models and revenue streams.
“Her expertise in this landscape will be hugely valuable to WPP as the industry navigates fundamental changes and macroeconomic uncertainty,” he said.
Rose will take on a business reeling from the loss of some big accounts, a downturn in client spend, and fewer new business opportunities, which prompted the profit outlook cut that sent WPP shares down as much as 19% on Wednesday.
WPP, which lost its crown as the world’s biggest ad group to France’s Publicis last year, is also grappling with the transformational impact of AI, which gives clients the tools to create and manage more of their own marketing campaigns.
Rose said: “We have and continue to build market-leading AI capabilities, alongside an unrivalled reputation for creative excellence and a preeminent client list.”
Sarah Young, Reuters
Minh Pham and JJ Ford have a knack for riding the waves of new tech.
The duo joined Uber in its early days, helping to spearhead mobile development. When CEO Travis Kalanick was ousted in 2017, Pham and Ford followed him out. Kalanick soon founded CloudKitchensand Ford was his first call. Fords first call? Pham.
After five years at CloudKitchens, they were ready for the next frontier. Over the years, theyd built a battle-tested engineering team that successfully tackled both the mobile surge at Uber and the infrastructure demands at CloudKitchens. They also had a hunch: While many startups were focused on building single-use AI agents, Pham and Ford saw the future in orchestrating many agents to work together. In 2023, they founded the California-based company Invisible.
How do you build a system that allows one person to manage thousands of agents? Ford asks, noting that he and Pham used their enterprise experience to develop a solution thats different from any theyve seen in the market previously.
Inside Invisible
Most AI agents today handle single tasksordering food, booking travelwithout human input. Pham compares them to task assistants. But Invisibles product stacks these agents, enabling them to tackle multiple tasks in parallel.
We want to turn AI agents into an elastic, reliable, and scalable workforce for a company, Pham says. Most companies think of using a single agent from Anthropic or OpenAI. We think of it as an orchestration platform for multiple agents, acting like how you have a team of humans doing work.
From left: Justin Takamine (CTO), Minh Pham (CEO), Hanna Dang (COO), and JJ Ford (CSO). [Photo: Invisible]
Invisibles system is hierarchical. A top-level agent breaks down a task, delegates subtasks to lower-level agents, and coordinates the process. What we found is, when you have a hierarchy of agents like that, the sum is much larger than what a single agent could do, Pham says.
Three months ago, Invisible launched A3, short for Action Agent API. While they declined to share revenue, Pham and Ford confirmed a $7 million fundraising round last year. Their customers, Pham says, include large-scale companies like mortgage brokers and solar providers.
“Were already running pilots and engaging in active discussions with dozens of Fortune-scale enterprises eager to deploy A3 and streamline their most critical workflows,” Minh says.
Stacking a workforce
A3 operates on a companys existing standard operating procedures. Uber, for instance, has hundreds of thousands of playbooks. Once A3 is trained on these, a company can scale its agent workforce up or down as needed.
Pham cites the example of Know Your Customer checksan expensive compliance requirement in fintech. The work involves compiling detailed reports to verify legitimacy and creditworthiness, often through manual research. We were able to go in and completely automate this process within days of working with the company, Pham says.
Invisible is priced like a workforce, too. Unlike competitors that use a subscription model, Invisible charges 10 cents per action. According to Pham, that usually adds up to about $12 per hourroughly the cost of a human workerand could decrease as AI costs drop.
We want to think of it as a workforce, and we have to come up with a whole new pricing model to match that, Pham says. Ford adds that per-action pricing makes it easy for companies to easily come online, stand up a workforce, make it elastic, and then pull it down.
The implications of an AI agent workforce are far-reachingand potentially disruptive. Still, the founders emphasize the upside. A3, Ford says, allows employees to climb the value chain of what theyre delivering to the company.
For better or worse, the agents are coming. And Invisible is betting theyll be most powerful when stacked.
Yesterday evening, President Trump announced on Truth Social that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would take over as interim administrator of NASA. The space agency has been without an official leader since the president took office in January; Janet Petro, the director of Kennedy Space Center in Florida, has been serving as the acting administrator until now.
The road to nominating a leader for the space agency has been a rocky one for Trump. Back in December, the president-elect named Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4 Payments and a private astronaut, as his nominee for NASA administrator. Critics flagged Isaacmans close ties to Elon Musk as a hurdle to his confirmation (Isaacman conducted the first private spacewalk along with Sarah Gillis on Polaris Dawn, a mission for which he paid SpaceX).
However, the president withdrew Isaacmans nomination on May 31 after a public fallout with billionaire Elon Musk. Trump later cited Isaacmans close ties to the SpaceX CEO as part of the reason for the withdrawal, in addition to his political leanings. (Trump claimed Isaacman is a Democrat, while Isaacman characterized himself as a right-leaning moderate in a post on X.)
Now, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman and reality television star, is set to inherit a tumultuous set of circumstances at NASA. The presidents budget proposes cutting almost 50% of the agencys science funding, which experts say would be a devastating blow, cancelling 19 active science missions. However, members of the Senate appropriations committee have indicated they intend to restore much of NASAs science funding.
Additionally, a recent report from POLITICO indicates that over 2,000 of NASAs senior staff are set to depart the agency in coming months. These civil servants have accepted the early retirements, buyouts, and deferred resignations that were on offer as a result of Trumps budget cuts and efforts to reduce the size of the federal government workforce.
This leadership brain drain will likely have drastic impacts to the agency, and the cuts only make up half of what the president has stated hed like to see for NASA. This means there may be more to come. NASA did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Sketched out on an airplane vomit sack, it became fashion’s must-have accessory.The original Birkin bag, named after the actor, singer and fashion icon that Herms created it forthe late Jane Birkinis up for auction in Paris on Thursday.The so-called Original Birkin is expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars) at the sale by auction house Sotheby’s.Created for the London-born star by the Paris fashion house in 1984, the commercialized version of Birkin’s bag went on to become one of the world’s most exclusive luxury items, with its extravagant price tag and years-long waiting list.The fashion accessory was born of a fortuitous encounter on a London-bound flight in the 1980s with the then head of Herms, Jean-Louis Dumas. Birkin recounted in subsequent interviews that the pair got talking after she spilled some of her things on the cabin floor.Birkin asked Dumas why Herms didn’t make a bigger handbag and sketched out on an airplane vomit sack the sort of bag that she would like. He then had an example made for her and, flattered, she agreed when Herms asked whether it could commercialize the bag in her name.The bag became so famous that Birkin once mused before her death in 2023 at age 76 that obituaries for her would likely “say, ‘Like the bag’ or something,'” adding: “Well, it could be worse.”Sotheby’s said that the all-black leather prototype was handcrafted for Birkin. It described it as a “legendary handbag” and “one of the most iconic fashion items ever created.”The bag has seven unique design elements that set it apart from every Birkin that followed, the auction house said.“More than just a bag, the Birkin has evolved from a practical accessory to become a timeless cultural icon. Its presence spans the worlds of music, film, television and the arts; it is a red-carpet staple, a fashion magazine mainstay, and a coveted piece in the wardrobes of celebrities, artists and stylists,” it said.
Associated Press
The internets latest obsession: training and cheering on anthropomorphized anime horses as they race around a track.
First released in 2021 as a mobile game for iOS and Android, Umamusume: Pretty Derby is both a racing simulator and a gacha game. In the game world, iconic racehorses of the past are reborn as horse girls (umamusume)anime humanoids with horse ears and tails.
The characters get the chance to race again for prizes and glory. Players dont directly control their horse girls; instead, they train them and cheer them on.
The game was already a hit in Japan following its early 2021 release, even inspiring a multi-season anime adaptation. But it remained largely under the radar for U.S. audiencesuntil this summer.
On June 18, the English version of Umamusume: Pretty Derby launched. The game quickly went viral, picked up by popular streamers like Ludwig and Northernlion. On July 9, it hit its all-time peak with 50,725 concurrent players on Steam.
As more and more fans discover the game, theyve started sharing clips and posting TikTok edits of their favorite horse girls.
@jpartnmaaa Playing Umamusume and becoming the greatest trainer in the world Catch Me LIVE THURSDAY #umamusumeprettyderby #tokaiteio #funny #viral #gaming original sound – JPartNMA
What makes the game even more compelling is that each horse girl has a real-life racehorse counterpart. TikTok creators are diving deep into their backstories, and searches for the original racehorses have spiked more than 800% since the games release.
@gameyokai Haru urara is a symbol of never giving up! Her real life horse inspires you to always try your best! #umamusume #umamusumeprettyderby #anime #horse #greenscreen 60sec.Ver – (CV. ) & (CV. ) & (CV. )
Haru Urara is a fan favorite. As one X user wrote: even though shes just a bunch of pixels on my screen i need haru urara to know that i would do literally anything in the world for her.
even though shes just a bunch of pixels on my screen i need haru urara to know that i would do literally anything in the world for her pic.twitter.com/wpUJYfHWug— Mug (@Mug4Times) June 30, 2025
The real-life racehorse behind the character became a cultural icon in Japan in the early 2000s. Despite ending her five-year career with 0 wins in 113 races, Haru Uraras unwavering spirit made her a national symbol of resilience.
Now the farm where Haru Urara is living out her retirement has responded to the wave of new fans. I dont know if this will reach the overseas bros and sisters, but Haru Urara is doing super well, and honestly, shes probably healthier and more energetic than I am! reads an X post.
1400 pic.twitter.com/E9MKbUaPRj— (@animal_love_kaz) July 3, 2025
Whatever you do, dont look up the backstory of the racehorse Rice Shower.
As job-seekers look for work in a challenging environment, an increasing number are falling victim to job scams that promise good pay for completing easy online tasks, according to the Federal Trade Commission.The scams start innocuously, often with a tailor-made text or WhatsApp message, and the scammers take time to build trust with the victim before cashing in on the relationship.“Most of the people who end up losing money to a scammer are behaving pretty rationally,” said Kati Daffan, assistant director of the Federal Trade Commission’s division of marketing practices. “Scammers are sophisticated, and they keep changing their tactics.”Reported losses to job scams increased more than threefold from 2020 to 2023. In the first half of 2024, they topped $220 million, according to the FTC. Gamified job scams, or task scams, represented a significant portion of that growth. About 20,000 people reported experiencing gamified scams in the first part of 2024, compared to 5,000 in all of 2023.Daffan said that that the number is certainly an underestimate, because many people don’t report their experiences of job scams to law enforcement or government trackers.“Only 4.8% of people complain,” she said.Here’s what to know:
How the scams work
The scam typically begins with an unexpected text or WhatsApp message from a “recruiter” offering online work, according to the FTC. The mystery texter will say you can “make good money” by “product boosting” or doing “optimization tasks” for an online platform or in an app, which might involve liking videos or rating product images.This “job” promises to earn you money from “commissions” per click. Once you complete the tasks, you’ll see an increasing tally of “earnings” on the platform or in the app. These earnings are fake.Eventually, the app or platform will ask you to deposit your own money, typically in crypto, to complete more tasks and withdraw your (non-existent) earnings. But if you do make the deposit, you lose your real money, and you never receive the illusory pay.
Who gets targeted
Eva Velasquez, CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, said these types of scammers typically prey on job-seekers who are new to the job market, people who have been out of the job market for some time (such as homemakers re-entering the workforce, whose children are grown), and immigrants, who may be less familiar with the employment landscape or who face language barriers.“Often the job will have an easy interview or no interview, promise to let you work from home, and let you start right away,” Velasquez said. “Sometimes they’ll start with praise, and the person will feel their skills are recognized. ‘Oh, you think I’m great? Tell me more.'”Velasquez emphasized the vulnerability of people looking for work, especially given ongoing economic uncertainty, who may choose to accept a role even if it initially feels shady.“Sometimes the ask is to leave phony reviews for products,” she said. “The scammers are probably selling those reviews illegally, but a job-seeker might look at a line and say, ‘I’ll cross that line. I’ve got to eat.'”
Tips for spotting a task-based scam
Ignore any generic and unexpected texts or WhatsApp messages about jobs, no matter how specific or complimentary the messages. Never pay to get paid, or to get a job. That requirement is a red flag that the position is a scam. Don’t trust employers who says they’ll pay you to rate or like things online, without an above-board process for using the actual products or services you’re rating.
The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.
Cora Lewis, Associated Press
A federal judge will consider on Thursday whether to prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing his executive order limiting birthright citizenship after the U.S. Supreme Court restricted the ability of judges to block his policies using nationwide injunctions.
American Civil Liberties Union lawyers are set to ask U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante at a hearing in Concord, New Hampshire, to grant class action status to a lawsuit they filed seeking to represent any babies whose citizenship status would be threatened by implementation of Trump’s directive.
Granting class status would empower Laplante, if he is inclined to do so, to issue a fresh judicial order blocking implementation of the Republican president’s policy nationally.
The ACLU and others filed the suit just hours after the Supreme Court on June 27 issued a 6-3 ruling, powered by its conservative majority, that narrowed three nationwide injunctions issued by judges in separate challenges to Trump’s directive. The suit was filed on behalf of non-U.S. citizens living in the United States whose babies might be affected.
Under the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump’s executive order would take effect on July 27.
Looking to seize upon an exception in the Supreme Court’s ruling, the lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the decision allows judges to continue to block Trump policies on a nationwide basis in class action lawsuits.
The three judges who issued nationwide injunctions found that Trump’s directive likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The amendment states that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The Justice Department has argued that Trump’s order conforms with the Constitution and has asked Laplante to find that the plaintiffs cannot sue as a class.
The Supreme Court’s ruling did not address the legal merits of Trump’s order, which the Republican president issued as part of his hardline immigration agenda on his first day back in office in January.
Trump’s order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also known as a “green card” holder.
More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually if it takes effect nationally, according to Democratic-led states and immigrant rights advocates who have challenged it.
The justices ordered lower courts to reconsider the scope of the three injunctions that had blocked Trump’s order from being enforced anywhere in the country against anyone after finding judges lack the authority to issue so-called “universal injunctions” that cover people who are not parties to the lawsuit before the judge.
Although the Trump administration hailed the ruling as a major victory, federal judges have continued to issue sweeping rulings blocking key parts of Trump’s agenda found to be unlawful.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote the decision for the court, made clear that it did not prevent plaintiffs from obtaining essentially the same type of relief as provided in a nationwide injunction by instead bringing class action lawsuits that seek to represent all similarly situated people, among other exceptions.
Immigrant rights advocates launched two proposed class actions that same day, including the one before Laplante, who in a related case also concluded in February that Trump’s order was likely unconstitutional.
Laplante, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, ruled that Trump’s order contradicted the 14th Amendment and a 1898 Supreme Court ruling interpreting it. In that case, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court interpreted that amendment as recognizing the right to birthright citizenship regardless of the immigration status of a baby’s parents.
Laplante agreed at the time that an injunction was warranted, saying that “the denial of citizenship to the plaintiffs’ members’ children would render the children either undocumented noncitizens or stateless entirely.”
But Laplante limited the scope of his order to members of the three immigrant rights nonprofit organizations who pursued the case before him.
ACLU lawyers are now urging Laplante to go further by certifying a nationwide class of babies and their parents who would be affected by Trump’s order, saying that absent a court order thousands of families nationally would be unprotected.
Trump’s administration counters that the three noncitizens parents and expectant parents seeking to serve as lead plaintiffs have immigration statuses that are too different to be able to pursue a single class action together and that an injunction at this time would “short circuit” the usual lengthier process required for them to obtain relief.
Nate Raymond, Reuters
In recent years, people have welcomed AI into their lives with open arms: as personal assistants, friends, therapists, even lovers. But one concern with having a chatbot in your pocket is that it can be hard to ignore. Reddit support groups are springing up for those struggling with chatbot addiction.
404 Media interviewed one self-confessed addict who had been staying up well into the night, compulsively talking to chatbots on Character.AI. The more I chatted with the bot, it felt as if I was talking to an actual friend of mine, the 18-year-old told journalist Ella Chakarian. Most people will probably just look at you and say, How could you get addicted to a literal chatbot?
Now addicts are trying to break the cycle. Forums such as r/Character_AI_Recovery, which has more than 900 members, and r/ChatbotAddiction are serving as support groups for those struggling.
While I have deleted the app, I keep going back to the website its practically reflex to me now, clicking back into my character ai tab. I hate it, one post on r/Character_AI_Recovery read. Nobody else knows about this addiction I have except myself because its humiliating. Another wrote: “I’m on my probably hundredth attempt of quitting.
Others use the group to share their wins and hold themselves accountable. Ive been clean for a week! one posted. Another wrote: Been off three days now and everythings going well, but I have this feeling that I wont be able to get away from character ai.
Character.ai says its striving to strike a balance between keeping its platform both engaging and safe, especially for teens, noting that this challenge is shared across the AI industry. A company spokesperson told Fast Company, Engaging with characters on our site should be interactive and entertaining, but its important for our users to remember that characters are not real people, adding that every chat includes disclaimers to that effect.
To support younger users, Character.ai offers a suite of safety tools, including filtered content, time-use notifications, and Parental Insights, the latter of which gives guardians visibility into how teens use the platform. The company says users younger than 18 interact with a separate version of its language model designed to reduce exposure to sensitive material. We added a number of technical protections to detect and prevent conversations about self-harm, the spokesperson said, noting that in some cases this includes directing users to suicide prevention resources.
While some have successfully weaned themselves off the chatbots, the likelihood of relapse remains high. Some platforms even encourage it, sending follow-up emails promoting different chatbots or offering incentives like a free months subscription to reengage users.
I hated it whenever I’d see an email from the bot that had sent you a message, one former addict wrote. Or the emails telling me that a bot misses me. Just why? Isn’t this parasocial enough to them?
YouTube is cracking down on mass-produced and repetitive content. The Google-owned video-sharing platform has released additional guidance for its YouTube Partner Program (YPP) in response to the growing popularity of AI-generated videos.
In order to monetize as part of the YPP, YouTube has always required creators to upload original and authentic content, the update states. YouTube is updating our guidelines to better identify mass-produced and repetitious content. This update better reflects what inauthentic content looks like today. The update comes into effect on Tuesday, July 15.
How much AI is too much?
However, the announcement was met with concern from some creators over whether any AI use would demonetize a video.
Rene Ritchie, YouTubes head of editorial and creator liaison, released a video in an effort to put some of these worries to bed. Ritchie called the update minor, explaining that it should help with identifying unwanted content.
This type of content has already been ineligible for monetization for years, and its content viewers often consider spam, he added.
YouTube is in a unique position when it comes to AI. Its parent company, Alphabet, is backing a series of AI initiatives, benefiting from AIs widespread use. It runs the Google AI Studio and develops AI models such as the Gemini series.
At the same time, Alphabet has to acknowledge not only the downsides of AI, but its potential to overwhelm platforms that rely on user-generated contentin other words, rein in instances of repetitive, inauthentic slop created with the very technologies that it’s investing so heavily in.
