• A man was caught trying to leave Ukraine via the Dniester River — on an air mattress.
• Ukrainian border agents found him paddling with his arms in an attempt to reach Moldova.
• The border service said he was paying another person $4,200 for advice on the crossing.

Ukraine's border service said on Wednesday that it caught a man attempting to cross into Moldova by "swimming" on an inflatable mattress in the Dniester River.

The State Border Service released footage of the 39-year-old man lying on his stomach atop the mattress and paddling through the water with his arms.

He was fully clothed, wearing a hoodie, long pants, and a pair of sneakers while carrying a backpack.

Law enforcement agents spotted him with a drone, then reached the man by boat and detained him, the border service said in a statement.

Border officials said the unnamed Dnipro resident had contacted a person on a messaging app who coordinated his attempted crossing for about $4,200.

The border service said the money was for instructions on using the mattress and how to store a mobile phone and spare clothes.

The man had already paid half of the money in advance, authorities added.

He is being charged with making an illegal attempt to cross the border, and his case will be brought to court, they said.

It's unclear why the man was attempting to cross into Moldova.

Thousands of men have been fleeing Ukraine in hopes of escaping the country's military draft. The recent outflow has risen so much that mountain-region smugglers are turning from importing contraband to guiding draft dodgers, The New York Times reported.

The border service did not say if the man on the mattress was trying to dodge the draft.

But many draft dodgers have tried to swim out of the country, with up to 6,000 men found on the Romanian side of the Tysa River since Russia's invasion began, per NYT.

Some use Telegram groups to help evade draft officers, with several groups numbering up to 100,000 members, The BBC reported in August.

Two years into the war, Russia and Ukraine are still locked in fierce fighting that Ukraine says it will lose without foreign aid. The US, for its part, is contributing about $60 billion in assistance this year, including NATO weaponry and equipment.

Ukraine has been intensifying efforts to replenish its exhausted forces through an expanded draft that, since mid-April, enlists men 25 years old and above. The draft age was previously 27 but was lowered by the Ukrainian parliament on April 11.

In a move to support the draft, Ukraine said on Tuesday that it would temporarily stop issuing passports for military-age men abroad, meaning anyone trying to get a renewal must return home. An estimated 650,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 left the country after Russia invaded.

This isn't the first time the Ukrainian border service has caught someone in an air mattress-related incident. In February, border officials said they arrested two foreign agents planning to ferry a 37-year-old Kyiv resident to Hungary via a river.

Agents found an inflatable mattress and a pump in their car and said the Kyiv resident was dressed in a wetsuit.

The man had agreed to pay $4,000 for the crossing attempt, border authorities said.

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• People living in RVs or cars has surged in Bozeman, Montana, as housing costs have spiked.
• "Urban camping" has made the city's unhoused population more visible.
• Bozeman has the highest rents of any city in Montana, which is dealing with rising housing costs across the state.

So-called urban camping — when people live in RVs or vehicles parked on city streets — has risen rapidly in Bozeman, Montana, where locals are getting priced out by rising housing costs that are impacting many communities in the West.

Bozeman, located in the Rocky Mountains about 80 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, has a population of around 56,000 people. City officials say the number of Bozeman residents living in their RVs or cars spiked by 200% in two years, according to Montana PBS, which cited the city. Since 2020, the overall unhoused population has grown by 50%.

The rise in residents experiencing homelessness comes as housing costs have spiked. The median listing price for a home has gone from $669,000 at the start of 2020 to $1.2 million in 2024, according to city data. Meanwhile, rental costs in Gallatin County, where Bozeman is located, increased nearly 19% from 2019 to 2022 and continued to rise, leaving the county with the highest rents in the state.

"Homelessness has always been on the radar," Bozeman Mayor Terry Cunningham told PBS. "This — with urban camping, RVs, more cars — This is a recent phenomenon."

Though homelessness in the city has been rising since the pandemic, the increase in RVs and campers on city streets made the problem more visible, resulting in tensions over how to address it.

"First, these folks are our residents too," the city website says when discussing how it's addressing urban camping. "Many contribute to the workforce, send their kids to our local schools, and may not appear 'homeless' when you see them at their jobs and in the area."

Bozeman residents are divided over whether the city has been too lenient in addressing the issue. In some locations, the city has installed dumpsters and trash cans near areas with campers to prevent litter and provide the unhoused with a place to dispose of their garbage.

A group of local business owners sued Bozeman last fall, arguing the city was not doing enough to enforce existing laws that would prevent people from camping on public streets. Business owners say they have dealt with theft, vandalism, and instances of harassment.

Residents have also complained that some people living in their cars are not doing so out of necessity but just to save money on rent, pointing to the presence of new cars and generators on the some of the campers, PBS reported.

Mayor Cunningham told the outlet part of the issue is that the city cannot easily determine why individuals are living in their cars or RVs, and people are not required to disclose that information.

In November, the city implemented an ordinance aimed at limiting urban camping. It prohibits camping at the same location for more than 30 days without getting an extension and also prohibits camping in front of certain places, like businesses and schools.

The result has been like playing musical chairs, people living in their campers told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, which reported the city has hired three roles to enforce the ordinance.

"They're making it harder to be homeless. It's already hard enough," Steven Ankney, who lives in an RV with family, told the outlet. "I understand they don't want us on the street, but it's going to happen until they get livable places for us, or affordable houses for us, or places that we can live."

The city says it is working on bringing more affordable housing to Bozeman and is working with the nonprofit Human Resource Development Council to build a 24/7 shelter.

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• Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows are among those indicted in an Arizona election interference case.
• Multiple Trump allies and Arizona GOPers were charged with felony counts, including conspiracy.
• The indictment also appeared to list former President Donald Trump as "Unindicted Coconspirator 1."

Prosecutors charged Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and a slate of Arizona Republicans with multiple felonies in a 58-page indictment made public on Wednesday. The charges are related to what prosecutors allege were efforts to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump, who was also deemed an unindicted coconspirator in the case.

The indictment, which was obtained by The Washington Post, was handed up by a grand jury on Wednesday in Maricopa County, Arizona. Prosecutors charged the defendants with conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and forgery.

In the indictment, prosecutors accused the defendants of trying to keep Trump in the office of the presidency "against the will of Arizona's voters."

Eleven Arizona GOP "fake electors" were named as defendants; they were each charged with nine felony counts.

Other defendants' names were redacted. The Post reported that they included former Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, and Christina Bobb; former Trump campaign aide Mike Roman; and Trump campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn. Giuliani's and Meadows' names were also redacted from the indictment. The Post said descriptions of the individuals' actions made their identities evident, and that the names were redacted until the individuals could be served the indictment

Ted Goodman, a political advisor to Giuliani, said in a statement to Business Insider when reached about the indictment: "The continued weaponization of our justice system should concern every Americans as it does permanent, irrevocable harm to the country."

Meadows, Ellis, Eastman, Bobb, Roman, and Epshteyn, or their representatives, did not respond to requests for comment from BI. The Arizona Republicans did not respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.

George Terwilliger, a lawyer for Meadows, told the Post he hadn't seen the indictment but said, "If Mr. Meadows is named in this indictment, it is a blatantly political and politicized accusation and will be contested and defeated."

The indictment also referred to "Unindicted Coconspirator 1," who is described as "a former president of the United States who spread false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election." Another four people who are not named are referred to as unindicted coconspirators.

A representative for Trump and the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Arizona was one of several states, including Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, in which so-called fake electors tried to cast electoral votes for Trump despite Joe Biden winning the election in their state.

The Arizona attorney general's office did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

The indictment comes as Trump runs for president again while also facing several criminal cases, including two cases related to efforts to overturn the election— one in Georgia and one at the federal level — and one related to documents found at Mar-a-Lago. Trump is currently on trial in New York for a case related to a hush-money payment.

He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in all four cases.

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• Mark Zuckerberg has recently become "more ambitious" about Meta's ability to win in AI.
• He now plans to spend around $40 billion this year, largely on AI investments.
• In the next few years, Zuckerberg sees three ways AI can become a "massive business" for Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg is now convinced that Meta is a top AI company, and he even knows how the technology will become a significant source of profit in the years ahead.

With the recent release of Llama 3, Meta's latest AI model, Zuckerberg said he became "more ambitious and optimistic on AI" and his company's ability to deliver on the tech.

He made it clear during a Wednesday earnings call with analysts that he intends to "invest significantly more over the coming years to build even more advanced models and the largest scale AI services in the world."

"With the latest models, we're not just building good AI models that are capable of building some new good social and commerce products," the CEO told analysts. "I actually think we're in a place where we've shown that we can build leading models and be the leading AI company in the world. And that opens up a lot of additional opportunities beyond just the ones that are the most obvious for us."

Heavy spending again

Such ambition does not come cheap. Meta increased its guidance on capital expenditure for this year, saying it now plans to spend between $35 billion and $40 billion, largely on AI investments. Its stock slumped 16% in after-hours trading.

The last time Zuckerberg got excited about a new technology (the metaverse), Meta spent wildly and freaked investors out. The stock collapsed and didn't recover until the company embarked on a "Year of Efficiency" marked by mass layoffs and a more business-minded CEO.

Zuckerberg on Wednesday made a concerted effort to head off Wall Street panic that his new AI enthusiasm is lacking in business acumen.

He sees "several ways" generative AI can make money, and laid out three specific paths to this becoming "a massive business" for Meta. Although getting there is a "long-term" prospect, he warned.

"Business messaging"

One of the ways AI can make money is by building up "business messaging," where companies pay Meta for generative AI tools, such as services that support automated interactions with users and customers. Zuckerberg envisions Meta's AI moving beyond just being a chatbot and becoming an AI "agent" that handles more complex tasks, and processes multiple queries to solve user problems, instead of coming back instantly with rote answers.

Revenue from AI business messaging is "one of the nearer term opportunities," Zuckerberg said. While it may not become a reality this year, he noted that it's less than five years away. The immediate goal on this front is to "get many hundreds of millions or billions of people to use Meta AI as a core part of what they do," he explained.

Ads appearing in "AI interactions"

Another way generative AI could make money for Meta is by "introducing ads or paid content into AI interactions," Zuckerberg said. Although brands and companies paying for products to show up in generative AI results is not yet the standard for AI chatbots, Meta's entire business is effectively driven by selling digital advertising. Inserting ads into its social and messaging products is at the core of Meta as a company.

AI is already being more widely deployed by Meta in its newer "unconnected content" algorithm for social content recommendations, which Zuckerberg said is leading to more app engagement. That, in turn, leads to more people seeing more ads. Right now, 30% of the content Facebook users see is recommended by AI, and the same goes for 50% of the content seen by Instagram users, he said.

Selling access to AI models

A third distinct way Meta may make money from AI is by selling access to models as they get larger. "Enabling people to pay to use bigger AI models and access more compute," as Zuckerberg put it on Wednesday.

Right now, Llama 3 and the Meta's other large language models are freely available to users and companies below a certain size threshold. Charging for access might be a move away from Meta's "open source" approach here.

"So if the technology and products evolve in the way that we hope, each of those will unlock massive amounts of value for people and business for us over time," Zuckerberg said. "I think it makes sense to go for it, and we're going to."

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• Mark Zuckerberg appeared to take a jab at Apple's Vision Pro during Meta's Q1 earnings call.
• The CEO said he sees a mainstream market for AI glasses without a display.
• Meta's smart glasses, developed with Ray-Ban, feature AI, a camera, and built-in speakers.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed to take a hit at Apple's Vision Pro in Meta's first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg said he didn't think augmented reality glasses would make it in the mainstream market until it had "full holographic displays." The comment appears to show his skepticism of the potential success of a product like Apple's Vision Pro.

"And I still think that that's gonna be awesome and is the long-term mature state for the product," the CEO said. "But now, it seems pretty clear that there's also a meaningful market for fashionable AI glasses without a display," Zuckerberg said.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify Zuckerberg's comments.

Meta launched its latest version of Ray-Ban smart glasses in September. The device has a starting price of $299 and includes access to Meta AI, a camera, the ability to make calls, and built-in speakers.

"Glasses are the ideal device for an AI assistant because you can let them see what you see and hear what you hear," the CEO said. "So their full context on what's going on around you."

The CEO said he thinks the glasses have "the ability to be a pretty meaningful and growing platform sooner than then I would have expected so."

While Meta's Quest virtual reality headset competes with Apple's Vision Pro, Zuckerberg has said before that he doesn't imagine a future of people walking around with virtual reality headsets.

"That's certainly not the future that I'm hoping we get to," Zuckerberg said to podcast host Andrew Huberman in an interview in October 2023.

It's not the first time the CEO has thrown shade at the Apple Vision Pro and tried to one-up Meta's competitor. In February, Zuckerberg posted a video of himself reviewing Apple's competing device and said the Quest didn't just have better value but that it was "the better product period"

In the video, Zuckerberg also listed a number of features on Meta's Quest that he said were better than the Vision Pro, like a brighter screen and wider field of vision.

Zuckerberg isn't the one executive at the tech giant to drag the Apple Vision Pro. Meta's CTO, Andrew Bosworth, previously said the product was "very uncomfortable."

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• The effects of California's $20 minimum wage for fast food workers are starting to show.
• Chipotle said the law raised wages at its restaurants by roughly 20%.
• This translated to a 7% menu price increase at Chipotle locations in California. 

California's $20 wage for fast food workers is just a few weeks old, and the effects on workers and customers are beginning to emerge.

At Chipotle, the law drove a 20% increase in wages for its restaurant staff in the Golden State, the company said during its earnings call on Wednesday.

To offset that cost, menu prices notched up about 6% to 7% for customers in California, CEO Brian Niccol said.

CFO Jack Hartung added that the average ticket in California before the increase wasn't all that different from other states, even though the cost of doing business there is generally higher than other areas of the US.

Chipotle is based in California and has 475 restaurants there, representing about one-eighth of the company's total count.

"After the increase, we still have burritos that are going to be reasonably priced," Hartung said. "That chicken burrito is gonna be around $10."

Still, he added that it's a bit early to see the real effect on customer behavior.

And, of course, Chipotle is not the only restaurant chain trying to figure out the math to make the new rule work.

Hartung said the company is passing on less of the cost to consumers than its competitors.

"We still think we offer a great value here," he said. "As the consumer figures out how do they want to balance their budget, we think Chipotle will stay in their budget."

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• Meta's Q1 earnings report reveals it was off by at least $5 billion in capital expenditures.
• The report said costs are expected to increase as the company invests "aggressively" in AI.
• Meta also cited higher infrastructure and legal costs as the factors behind the increase. 

Meta's first-quarter earnings report reveals the company's AI plans are costing more than anticipated.

The tech giant is upping their estimate of capital expenses and expects the increase to continueas it invests "aggressively" in "AI research and product development efforts."

The expenses are expected to be roughly $5 billion more than the original estimate, reaching between $35 and $40 billion. The original prediction was between $30 billion and $37 billion.

Meta's minimum estimate for full-year 2024 total expenses will also be $2 billion higher than expected.

"We expect full-year 2024 total expenses to be in the range of $96-99 billion, updated from our prior outlook of $94-99 billion due to higher infrastructure and legal costs," the report said.

The increase isn't just coming from AI. It's also coming from product development and legal costs.

Meta is currently facing ongoing legal issues, including an antitrust lawsuit and being sued by 33 states who claim the tech giant is negatively impacting children's mental health.

The company also expects significant increases in Reality Labs' operating losses due to "ongoing product development efforts" and investments to scale its ecosystem, according to the report.

Reality Labs is a division of Meta that focuses on human-computer products through virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses.

Max Willens, senior analyst at market research firm Emarketer, a sister company to Business Insider, said it's not surprising that Meta changed its guidance.

"Companies investing in this space, especially at the scope Meta is investing in it, may struggle with costs in the near term," Willens said.

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• Michael Cohen said he would briefly stop talking about Donald Trump during Trump's Manhattan criminal trial.
• Cohen is a key witness to what prosecutors allege was a scheme to falsify business records to cover up hush money.
• But until now, Cohen has continued to talk about Trump and the case.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's ex-personal attorney, has now pledged to stop talking about the former president until after his testimony in the former president's ongoing hush-money trial over.

"Despite not being the gagged defendant, out of respect for Judge Merchan and the prosecutors, I will cease posting anything about Donald on my X (formerly Twitter) account or on the Mea Culpa Podcast until after my trial testimony," Cohen wrote on X.

Cohen's loquaciousness about his time as a fixer for Trump should be legendary. He has a book and a podcast and is a frequent guest on cable TV — all will the goal of furthering his quest for redemption after his time working for Trump.

As Trump's personal attorney, Cohen is at the core of what New York prosecutors allege was an effort to falsify business records to cover for hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Cohen was also a major witness in Trump's fraud trial.

Unlike Trump, Cohen is not under a gag order. But legal experts have been dismayed at how Cohen continued to talk about the case, potentially providing Trump's lawyers with additional ammunition for their cross-examination during Cohen's expected testimony.

The former president has also attacked Cohen, one of a series of actions that prosecutors argued violated Judge Juan Merchan's gag order on Trump. Merchan upbraided Trump's attorney on Tuesday when considering the former president's statements but has yet to release a ruling on where the gag order stands.

Cohen is already likely to have a rough time on the stand during the trial.

He was sentenced to prison for lying to Congress and other offenses.

Trump has repeatedly attacked Cohen's credibility — including noting that Cohen is now a convicted liar.

The former president doesn't mention, though, that Cohen was convicted of lying to Congress about something that was supposed to help Trump.

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• House Speaker Mike Johnson wants Columbia University's President out.
• Johnson and other House Republicans have criticized her handling of campus protests and antisemitism.
• Pro-Palestinian student protests have been roiling Columbia's campus since last week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson wants Columbia University's president to resign, calling her "inept" and "weak."

Johnson, who is visiting Columbia on Wednesday, has railed against Nemat "Minouche" Shafik's handling of pro-Palestinian student protests and antisemitism on campus following Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza.

Upon his arrival to campus Wednesday evening, Johnson was greeted by a crowd that booed and heckled him, while a few cheered, according to an Axios reporter who posted a video to X.

Though Johnson does not have the power to directly oust a college president, similar calls from political figures have fueled recent resignations.

After lawmakers and powerful figures urged the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn to resign following their congressional testimony about on-campus antisemitism in December, both Harvard's Claudine Gay and UPenn's Elizabeth Magill did resign, though MIT's president Sally Kornbluth has maintained her role.

"What we're seeing on these college campuses across the country is disgusting and unacceptable," Johnson said on "The Hugh Hewitt Show" on Wednesday. "Every leader in this country, every political official, every citizen of good conscience has to speak out and say that this is not who we are in America, and we have got to have accountability."

"It's unconscionable," Johnson added. "This president, Shafik, is shown to be a very weak, inept leader. They cannot even guarantee the safety of Jewish students? They're expected to run for their lives and stay home from class? It's just, it's, it's maddening."

Columbia students began camping out on campus last week to protest Israel's war in Gaza, arguing that the country is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. They're also demanding that the university divest from companies that support Israel.

As the protests were ramping up, Shafik testified to Congress, where she took a much stronger stance against antisemitism than her college president peers had done at their hearing months before. When Congress asked Harvard's Claudine Gay, for example, whether students calling for a Jewish genocide would violate university policies, she answered with, "It can be, depending on the context."

On the second day of protests, Shafik called in the NYPD, which arrested more than a hundred pro-Palestinian student protesters on suspicion of trespassing. The protests have continued in the days since, with some student groups saying Jewish students have been targeted with offensive, antisemitic rhetoric on campus.

In response to the ongoing campus unrest, House Republicans have been threatening to withdraw federal funding from Columbia and other schools experiencing similar protests, arguing that they've failed to protect Jewish students' safety.

"We're going to call on educational institutions like Columbia, if you cannot control what is happening at your university, if the president at this university is failing to keep students safe, then she shouldn't be eligible for any federal aid coming into this university," NY Republican Rep. Anthony D'Esposito said on Monday after visiting campus, according to The Washington Post.

Johnson echoed those calls on "The Hugh Hewitt Show" on Wednesday, adding that the visas of protesting students can be revoked.

Johnson is scheduled to meet with Columbia Jewish students and the university's Rabbi Yuda Drizin on Wednesday before holding a press conference where he and other House Republicans are expected to formally call for Shafik's resignation, The Washington Post reported.

"The decibel of our disagreements has only increased in recent days," Shafik wrote in a statement on Monday following her decision to call NYPD to campus. "These tensions have been exploited and amplified by individuals who are not affiliated with Columbia who have come to campus to pursue their own agendas. We need a reset."

Representatives for Shafik did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.

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• TikTok's CEO is calling its users to action to support the app against US lawmakers seeking a ban.
• President Biden signed a bill that forces TikTok to be sold to an American company or face a ban.
• Users are freaking out over potentially losing access to their favorite app.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew has issued a rallying cry to users that the company plans to fight a possible US ban.

A foreign-aid bill passed Tuesday by the US Senate and signed by President Joe Biden Wednesday has millions of Americans who use TikTok freaking out over a potential ban.

Chew responded to the latest moves in a video posted by the official TikTok account. "Make no mistake, this is a ban," Chew said in the video. "A ban on TikTok and a ban on you and your voice."

The clip has over four million views as of Wednesday afternoon, and the comments show that users aren't ready to say goodbye to TikTok anytime soon.

Many expressed support for Chew, whose call to action hints at the pressure building against TikTok and its Chinese owners, Bytedance.

"I trust you with my life," one comment read.

Others credited the platform for helping users find "their voice and livelihood" and providing "a sense of community here that we don't have anywhere else."

Meanwhile, some reminisced about what they learned on the app, from restaurant recommendations to beauty product reviews.

"bro i learned how to change my air filters for my car and how to do an oil change," a commenter said.

Despite Chew's defiant video and the growing outrage from the app's users, a TikTok ban won't happen in the immediate future.

Bytedance has nine months to a year to find a buyer for TikTok — and that's only if the bill holds up in court.

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