• The Cathys are the family behind Chick-fil-A, known for its pressure-cooked fried chicken.
• The combined net worth of the family is $33.6 billion, according to Forbes.
• In 2022, Chick-fil-A's restaurants generated about $18.8 billion in sales in the US.

When it comes to the Cathy family's multibillion-dollar fortune, it's all about the fried chicken. That's because the Cathys created the Chick-fil-A empire. 

S. Truett Cathy officially founded the popular fast-food chain in the late 1960s, laying the roots for what is today one of America's richest family dynasties, according to Forbes. Like burger institution In-N-Out, solely run by the Snyder family, Chick-fil-A has always been led by a member of the Cathy family.

Truett's son, Dan Cathy, served as CEO from 2013 to 2021, and Dan's son, Andrew, has run the chain since November 2021. He is only the third member of the Cathy family to lead Chick-fil-A since it was founded in 1967. Dan Cathy, whose net worth is $10.7 billion, remains board chairman of the chain. 

Born and raised in the South, the Cathy family has been dedicated to continuing Truett's legacy, growing Chick-fil-A across the US to 2,800 restaurants. In September 2023, the chain announced plans to expand to the UK.

Chick-fil-A has been celebrated for its company culture, customer service, and quality food, but it has also received backlash over anti-same-sex marriage beliefs that align with the Cathys' Christian upbringing.

"At Chick-fil-A, we are very grounded on our corporate purpose, to be a purpose-driven organization," Dan Cathy said during an interview with Chief Executive magazine. "That purpose is defined in the statement that we're here to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that's entrusted to us and have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A."

Take a look inside the rise of Chick-fil-A and the family behind it.

The Cathy family's multibillion-dollar fortune is rooted in the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A.

S. Truett Cathy had three children: son Dan T. Cathy, daughter Trudy Cathy White, and son Donald "Bubba" Cathy.

S. Truett raised his children in a "modest house" but had a car collection that included former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's 1937 Lincoln Continental, George Glaze's Brewster 8 Town Car, and a 1931 Duesenberg.

According to Forbes, the three children are worth $10.7 billion each as of September 2023. 

 

 

 

In 1946, without any management or restaurant experience, S. Truett and his brother Ben opened an Atlanta diner called the Dwarf Grill, later renamed the Dwarf House.

The restaurant had four tables and 10 stools at the counter. On opening day, sales totaled $58.20, according to the Atlanta 100. 

It was there that they first served chicken sandwiches, mainly to Ford factory workers and airport employees who worked nearby.

The Dwarf House name lives on. There are five locations, all in Georgia. Since the late 1980s, the Dwarf House has provided customers with a historical perspective on Chick-fil-A, and sites are modeled after S. Truett's first restaurant. They offer sit-down, counter, and drive-thru service for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

According to Chick-fil-A's website, it offers a typical Chick-fil-A menu plus specialty items such as green beans, fried okra, cornbread, and chicken salad.

In 1949, Ben and another Cathy brother died in a plane crash. S. Truett found himself handling the business on his own.

S. Truett began to expand the Dwarf House. In 1951, he opened a second restaurant in Forest Park, Georgia. It was there that he devised the formula for what would become the Chick-fil-A sandwich, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

In 1963, he trademarked "Chick-fil-A," and in 1967, he opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant at a mall in Atlanta.

Nearly 60 years after the first Chick-fil-A opened, the chain is a massive restaurant empire.

Today, it has more than 3,000 restaurants in the US, Puerto Rico, and Canada, per its website.

In September 2023, the chain announced plans to expand to Europe, the UK, and Asia.

In 2022, it was the third-largest restaurant chain in the US by sales, bringing in $18.8 billion.

Chick-fil-A's franchise fee for a new restaurant is $10,000 — one of the lowest of any major fast-food brand.

In 2022, most locations averaged nearly $8.7 million in annual sales. That's more than double the revenue made in a year by the average McDonald's. And remember, Chick-fil-A isn't open on Sundays.

When S. Truett passed away in 2014, his son Dan was already leading the company. Dan served as Chick-fil-A's CEO from 2013 to 2021.

Dan grew up doing odd jobs at Chick-fil-A, including scraping chewing gum from table bottoms with a butter knife.

In his spare time, Dan plays the trumpet, gardens, and landscapes.

Dan helped grow Chick-fil-A monetarily and geographically, opening restaurants in big cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

Dan and his wife, Rhonda, have two sons, Andrew and Ross, according to Forbes. Andrew now runs the chain. 

Dan's brother, Bubba, has held a number of positions in the company, including construction apprentice and executive vice president.

Bubba grew up in the business.

He is currently the president of Dwarf House, the string of modern restaurants modeled after S. Truett's first one.

Their sister, Trudy, began working for the family business at age 19 when she became the operator of a new Chick-fil-A restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama.

She's also an author — her book "Climb Every Mountain" was published by Simon & Schuster. Her also father published five books about business, motivation, and parenting during his lifetime.

Trudy is co-founder of Lifeshape, an organization supporting at-risk children.

The Whites served for 20 years with the International Mission Board. For half that time, they served as missionaries in Brazil, where they started a small church.

The Cathy family is known for their Southern Baptist values.

Restaurant openings often include prayer, and Chick-fil-A locations are closed on Sundays even though it likely costs the chain more than $1 billion in sales yearly.

"Truett Cathy always maintained he wasn't in the chicken business, but the people business," the chain says on its website.

S. Truett and his wife created the WinShape Foundation.

The organization donates money to Christian organizations and offers residential camps, a retreat center, and a foster home.

WinShape was criticized for donating to anti-gay marriage groups — about $5 million since 2003, Forbes reported in 2012.

In 2012, Chick-fil-A restaurants across the US faced backlash after Dan, then chain president, said he did not support same-sex marriage.

In an interview with Baptist Press, he said he's "guilty as charged" when it comes to supporting what he calls the "biblical definition of the family unit."

Dan later said the chain didn't have an anti-gay agenda.

"While my family and I believe in the biblical definition of marriage, we love and respect anyone who disagrees," he said.

In 2019, Chick-fil-A said it would no longer donate to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army, two groups that have been criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates.

Chick-fil-A may be considered controversial by some, but it also has a reputation for its commitment to customer service and employee experience.

Chick-fil-A has been rated the most beloved restaurant chain in the American Customer Satisfaction Index's annual survey for nine years in a row. It remains a top chain for customer satisfaction, according to various fast-food surveys.

In April 2020, Chick-fil-A donated $10.8 million to local communities for pandemic relief.

In 2022, Chick-fil-A donated $3.5 million to Feeding America to help provide more than 17 million meals to communities in need. The company has also provided 14,000 employees with more than $24 million in scholarships to pursue higher education.

Franchisees have been known to cover costs for not just a worker's education but for support during a personal emergency.

The Cathy family has been working together for more than 70 years, and third-generation members continue to carry on the tradition.

Like In-N-Out, Chick-fil-A is privately held, and there aren't any plans to take the company public.

In November 2021, Andrew, son of Dan, assumed the role of CEO. He was 43.

Under Andrew's watch, Chick-fil-A has pursued digital and store design innovation. The chain has more than 30 drive-thru-only locations.

In July 2023, Chick-fil-A said it plans to test a restaurant with four drive-thru lanes that flow below an elevated building with a large kitchen.

• Tyler Boebert, son of GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert, says he still doesn't have a lawyer for his criminal case.
• The 18-year-old faces multiple charges in connection to car break-ins and thefts in Colorado.
• The teen told a judge Thursday that he applied for a public defender "only a couple days ago."

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert's teenage son, Tyler Boebert, appears to have dragged his feet in getting a lawyer to represent him in his criminal case.

During an appearance Thursday at Colorado's Garfield County Courthouse, the 18-year-old told a judge that he had only sent in the paperwork to sign up for a public defender days earlier.

"I've sent it in. I haven't gotten a message back, but it was very recently. It was only a couple days ago," Tyler Boebert, wearing a dark-colored suit and tie, told Ninth Judicial District Judge John Neiley.

However, the teen said, "I've gotten a lot closer on working things out with the lawyer to get that figured out, so it seems like I do have options, but I am still waiting to get the 100%."

Tyler Boebert then asked the judge to postpone the court date so he could "get that finished up."

"Alright, well, it sounds like we're making some progress. I wish you'd turned in that application a little sooner," Neiley told Tyler Boebert. "But if you've done that, we just have to wait for the public defender to make their decision."

The judge set a new court date for June 13.

This comes after Tyler Boebert told Neiley at a previous court appearance about a month ago that he was having trouble affording a lawyer to represent him.

"We are working to hire an attorney, but it's just been kind of hard with the prices, but we are working on it," the teenager said at the time.

Neiley told Boebert during that court appearance that he had time to decide whether to hire private counsel or apply for a public defender.

"I always think it's a good idea to maybe do both because if you qualify, you have options, and options are always good," the judge said then. "But we can set this off for a little bit of time for you to make that decision."

Tyler Boebert was arrested by the Rifle Police Department in February in connection to a string of car break-ins and property thefts in Rifle, Colorado. He faces more than a dozen charges, including several felony charges for criminal possession of ID documents.

According to an arrest affidavit, Tyler Boebert is one of four people accused of breaking into four cars in the city of Rifle, Colorado, and stealing wallets to make purchases at businesses including McDonald's, Starbucks, and gas stations.

A woman who reported her wallet stolen as part of a spate of thefts that led to the arrest of Tyler Boebert told investigators she had a brain tumor and wouldn't be able to pay for surgery, according to the court documents.

At the time of his arrest, Lauren Boebert said in a statement to Business Insider that her son should be "held accountable for poor decisions just like any other citizen."

"I love my son Tyler, who has been through some very difficult, public challenges for a young man and the subject of attention that he didn't ask for," the Colorado congresswoman said. "It breaks my heart to see my child struggling and, in this situation, especially when he has been provided multiple opportunities to get his life on track."

She added, "I will never give up on him, and I will continue to be there for him. As an adult and father, Tyler will take responsibility for his actions and should be held accountable for poor decisions just like any other citizen."

• This year's Victory Day military parade in Moscow's Red Square featured a single WWII-era tank.
• Russia's war with Ukraine has resulted in the loss of thousands of tanks.
• Russia has, at times, sent out obsolete Soviet-era tanks onto the front lines.

Russia often uses its annual Red Square military parade in Moscow as an opportunity to show off its weaponry. This year's showing was a bit lackluster, and its modern tanks were again absent.

While a range of tanks, both new and old, are typically present in the May 9 Victory Day military parade, which commemorates the lives lost and victory achieved when the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in 1945, in this year's event, there was only one WWII-era T-34 on display.

This year marks the second year in a row the tank element in the Russian parade has been notably muted, featuring only one tank from a bygone era. Analysts characterized last year's event as embarrassing for Russia, and there were similar observations this year.

The lack of modern tanks in the military parade, in some ways, reflects Russia's war in Ukraine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about during the event, praising the heroes of the "special military operation."

Even though Russia has been able to noticeably rebuild its military strength to what it had at the start of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has also lost thousands of tanks and many of its armored personnel in Ukraine to anti-tank missiles, mines, and drones.

In February, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Russia lost over 3,000 tanks since its invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this month, Ukraine's forces claimed to have destroyed dozens of Russian tanks on the battlefield in Donetsk.

Moscow can't reliably field what is supposed to be its most advanced tank, the costly T-14, and it has lost enough of its other tanks, like its T-72s, T-80s, and T-90s, in battle that it has at times sent out obsolete Soviet-era tanks, such as the ancient T-62s and T-54s, from storage to the front lines.

During the parade, Russian soldiers were seen carrying what appeared to be drone jammers, likely a reaction to the potential for attacks from Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles. The Russian capital has been hit before, and Ukraine has been increasingly conducting long-range drone strikes into Russia territory.

While the Russian tank display was notably lacking, other modern Russian weapons did make an appearance, such as Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles. Throughout the war in Ukraine, Russia has regularly rattled the nuclear saber.

In his speech at the event, President Vladimir Putin spoke of Russia's strength and preparedness, taking aim at Western nations and Ukraine.

"We will not let anyone threaten us," he said. "Our strategic forces are always on combat alert."

• Millions of recyclable materials are put into incorrect waste streams every year.
• The UK startup Greyparrot uses AI to help mitigate environmental harm from improper waste disposal.
• This article is part of "Build IT," a series about digital tech and innovation trends that are disrupting industries.

The proverbial "reduce, reuse, and recycle" approach to waste disposal is easier said than done. In the past few decades, global conservation initiatives have tried to promote an eco-friendlier attitude toward recycling, but their impact has been relatively lackluster. Valuable recyclable materials are still thrown in with the trash and sent to landfills or incinerated.

Advanced waste-management technology is an underexamined market that could be the key to stopping precious materials from falling through the cracks. Thanks to the startup boom, it's starting to get more attention.

"If you want to actually have a circular economy, you're going to have to get into mining our waste stream for resources, and as technology develops, that's going to get more and more efficient and more effective," said Steven Cohen, the director of the Earth Institute's research program on sustainability policy and management at Columbia University.

The rate of recycling in the US has grown nearly fivefold in the past 60 years, standing at 32%. The Environmental Protection Agency is aiming to raise that number to 50% by 2030.

Using AI and imaging to sift through trash

Founded in 2019, the UK startup Greyparrot uses specialized tech to enhance waste management. The company's software, installed at waste-management sorting facilities, uses artificial intelligence to identify misplaced materials in waste streams.

Mikela Druckman, a cofounder of Greyparrot, told Business Insider she saw an opportunity to enter waste management after observing a lack of data collection in the industry. She said only a small percentage of processed waste is measured and qualitatively examined. "This led us to see the opportunity of basically digitizing and building the leading waste-intelligence platform," she added.

Greyparrot devices are installed above incoming waste streams and designed to use AI-powered imaging to identify recyclable materials including plastics, aluminum, and paper. These objects can then be sorted out of the waste stream and sent to recycling facilities.

Greyparrot devices also catalog what enters the facility so that waste-facility managers can better understand what they're collecting.

Waste that enters a facility essentially has a "negative value" until it's sorted and sold to recycling facilities, Druckman said. "The role of the waste managers is basically to transform that into a clean, pure commodity," she added.

Greyparrot has 50 devices in 14 countries, including the United Kingdom, South Korea, and the United States. The company sells its devices directly to major waste-management companies.

The company decided against developing hardware like robotics to sort trash. Druckman said she wanted the company's AI tech, analyzers, and software to fit into existing systems.

Data is transforming the way waste-management facilities operate

Since 2020, the UK waste-management company Grundon has been using Greyparrot devices in three of its facilities.

"My colleagues would be looking at ways of how we can improve data collection for what our facilities are doing," said Owen George, the commercial and resource strategy manager at Grundon.

Before installing the Greyparrot system, Grundon's only way of estimating the type and number of materials entering waste streams was to take small samples of collections throughout the facilities and manually go through the materials.

Greyparrot devices gave Grundon's waste-management plants a data visibility they didn't have before. "It even gives us the value to say that we have seen X amount of paper which is valued at X," George said. "We can see how the plants are performing from a revenue perspective."

Grundon's feedback also led to updates in the Greyparrot device's capabilities. When they were installed, the devices were focused on counting materials. "It kind of didn't speak the waste-industry language, which is in weight," George said. A feature that included weight data was later installed.

George described the adjustment to Greyparrot's system as difficult for plant managers at first: The waste-management industry's reliance on manual systems and its limited data collection meant they had to interpret an immense amount of new data. But after they learned the system, their responses changed. "We're at the point now where our people are saying, 'I want to have these units in, because it just makes my life so much easier,'" George said.

AI and robotics could be a new future for waste management

Waste-management facilities are a crucial part of mitigating improper trash disposal, but they're not very attractive to communities. "Nobody wants it located near where they live," Cohen said.

Grundon has tried to demystify the waste-management process by hosting tours of its facilities for locals.

AI development is also promising a brighter future for waste-management facilities and their perception. Druckman said her goal is to create "smart material-recovery facilities" that are constantly "adjusting and in real time adapting to different types of materials and different types of mixes of composition of waste."

Greyparrot recently struck a strategic partnership deal with Bollegraaf, one of the largest waste-management companies, to build facilities designed to be fully integrated with AI systems.

Cohen said a fully automated system of waste collection and disposal — with self-driving vehicles that collect garbage and facilities that operate autonomously — could be made possible through AI and robotics.

He said these could also be used to separate all waste in a single stream at a facility, removing the need for people to sort their own garbage. This, he said, "is probably going to be the most promising technology."

At Grundon, George is already seeing a change in the kinds of jobs becoming available because of AI integration and data expansion. "It's less people with hammers and more people with laptops," George said.

Cohen said that to make progress, the waste-management industry needs people outside facilities to rethink garbage. "That would be the long-term vision: trying to have garbage reconceptualized as a resource as opposed to something that smells and is ugly," he said.

• Hoping to say goodbye to high credit card late fees?
• You may need to keep dreaming.
• A judge could side with credit card companies trying to stop a new cap on fees at the last minute.

Credit card companies aren't giving up their late fees that easily.

In March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that the federal government had made a new rule capping credit card late fees.

The rule limits fees for a first violation to just $8, a move that the CFPB estimates will save US customers billions.

But the blowback from the credit card industry has been fierce, and they've taken the government to court over it.

This week, a federal judge in Texas is expected to rule on a request to pause the new cap on late fees while a lawsuit is pending, CNBC reported.

If the judge sides with the companies — and the US Chamber of Commerce who joined the lawsuit — the changes to fees wouldn't go into effect.

The cap was set to begin on Tuesday.

Business Insider's Emily Stewart recently warned that it was too early to start celebrating the death of high fees. Despite an election-year push by President Joe Biden to cut down on so-called "junk fees," credit card companies won't go quietly, she wrote.

Even as they fight the rule changes in court, companies will likely just find other ways to make up the money by increasing other fees, Stewart reported.

Matt Schulz, the chief credit analyst at LendingTree, told BI at the time: "I would imagine that we will see other fees increase over the next little while."

One place could be annual fees, which are already rising and could be pushed even higher to sneak them past customers who aren't paying attention to their statements, BI previously reported.

• A hiker discovered the 400-year-old remains of a wealthy man on a glacier in the Swiss Alps.
• Melting ice revealed the mysterious man had traveled with many coins, weapons, and possibly mules.
• The discovery points to an ancient economy supported by dangerous routes through high mountain passes.

The Theodul Glacier was expanding when a mysterious man in thin leather shoes trekked across its surface about 400 years ago.

This field of ice high in the Alps, below the iconic and imposing Matterhorn, formed a treacherous pass between what is now Switzerland and Italy. It was the middle of the Little Ice Age, and more ice was forming along its edges every year.

That had totally changed by 1984. The glacier was retreating, and the leather-shoed man was slowly melting out into the sun when a hiker first stumbled upon his remains.

Slowly, as archaeologists returned to the site through the 1980s and early 90s, the melting glacier revealed a skull with auburn hair clinging to it, several knives, nearly 200 coins, jewelry, glass buttons, bits of silk clothing, a shaving razor, a dagger, a sword, and a pistol scattered across the area.

All these items dated to around 1600 AD. The remains of two mules were also discovered nearby, though it's unclear if they belonged to the man.

At first, archaeologists thought the well-armed man was a mercenary. Upon further inspection, though, that didn't make sense.

"They're not combat weapons. These are fencing weapons. These are ceremonial weapons that the rich had on them," said Pierre-Yves Nicod, a curator at the Valais History Museum in the Swiss Alps. Business Insider spoke with Nicod in French and translated his words into English.

"And then the clothes are not combat clothes. They are also the clothes of a wealthy person, of a gentleman," he added.

The man's bones show no signs of trauma, and clearly he wasn't robbed, so archaeologists believe he must have died by accident, perhaps by falling into a crevasse in the glacier or an unfortunate turn of bad weather.

What was a rich man doing up there on the snow and ice in the first place?

Clues point to an answer: This man may have been part of an ancient economy that spread across the peaks of the Alps. He's a snapshot archaeologists wouldn't have if the mountains weren't changing so drastically.

You see, the mysterious man, his belongings, and the mules were frozen deep in the ice for hundreds of years. Then humans started burning coal, oil, and gas for energy.

How the climate crisis reveals ancient artifacts

For about two centuries now, our use of fossil fuels has been releasing greenhouse gases into the air, mainly carbon dioxide and methane.

As a result, the atmosphere is holding in more heat from the sun, raising the planet's average temperature and causing glaciers like Theodul to melt away.

Receding ice across the planet has revealed mummified mammoths, Ice-Age squirrels, a 46,000-year-old roundworm that came back to life, and ancient human artifacts such as skis, arrows, and other tools.

The new scientific field of glacial archaeology thrives in the Alps. For about four decades, archaeologists have been trekking the glaciers of Switzerland and Italy, retrieving artifacts that are thawing into view.

The problem is that these artifacts aren't surfacing within ancient buried towns or temples.

"It's one of the difficulties of glacial archaeology that we find these objects in the ice, and therefore out of all archaeological context," Nicod said.

In short, it's often hard to know what exactly you've found.

A clue in an old illustration

Though the wealthy traveler's remains surfaced decades ago, archaeologists haven't really understood him until recently.

He wasn't a soldier-for-hire after all, a 2015 paper concluded. He carried a silver pendant engraved with a cross and anointed with wax, possibly from a religious candle.

Fragments of wool and some silk indicate the fine clothes he wore. His weapons were all manufactured in present-day Germany. His coins were mostly minted in northern Italy.

In a 2022 report, Nicod and his colleague Philippe Curdy point to an illustration from 1643 that shows a caravan of merchants ascending to an Alps mountain pass.

"In the background, there are the mountains and then a merchant with all these loads, who has his mules, who's climbing up to the peaks," Nicod says.

The man in the illustration is just like the Theodul traveler. In fact, Nicod added, "he has the same type of clothes with the same type of buttons and the same sword."

The wealthy man in the glacier was a merchant, they believe, representing a remarkable economy that has long persisted between towns separated by 15,000-foot peaks. Throughout the Alps, from ancient times into the modern period, people have braved frozen mountain passes to hawk their wares.

"We see that the passage over the glacier was used all the time — Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman time," local archaeologist Romain Andenmatten told Business Insider. "The simplest way is to go over the glacier."

The Theodul Pass was a common route from the Valais region of modern-day Switzerland to the Aosta Valley of modern-day Italy.

Today, it's a ski slope and occasional archaeological site.

Not everything in the ice is archaeology

Carefully cushioned in custom-cut foam inside a plastic storage bin, the ancient traveler's belongings emit the faint smell of rot, of decaying wood and leather.

Organic materials like this must be retrieved quickly once they're exposed on the ice. Laying in a melty puddle under direct sunlight, they can decompose in just a couple years. Even dried out and stored carefully indoors, the putrid scent gives away their age.

"It smells like the past," Nicod said. "This isn't too bad."

The melting ice yields fouler-smelling findings, like the belongings of a couple who disappeared in the 1940s, Nicod said. Glacier hikers have discovered the bodies of people who went missing still more recently. Sometimes the findings themselves are dangerous. Nicod says people have found undetonated bombs on the ice.

It's not just the Alps. Across the planet, the shifting environments caused by climate change are revealing other terrors that were once buried deep.

Thawing permafrost in Russia released anthrax from a once-frozen reindeer carcass, causing a deadly outbreak in 2016.

Droughts are withering rivers and reservoirs so much that their receding banks have revealed shipwrecks, human remains, Spain's very own Stonehenge, and a couple of once-submerged villages.

Erosion from rising sea levels has exposed Indigenous burial grounds in Florida.

Searching for the next Iceman

Some tragedies melting out of the ice are such ancient history that they only evoke wonder — such as Ötzi the Iceman, one of the most significant archaeological finds ever.

Like the wealthy traveler of Theodul, Ötzi was discovered by a hiker. He had surfaced on a melting glacier on the other side of the Alps, on the border of Italy and Austria, in 1991.

The ice had kept Ötzi mummified since his death in about 3300 BC, making him older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. His impeccably preserved body offers an otherwise impossible glimpse into Neolithic life — everything from his male-pattern balding to his hand-poke tattoos and meaty diet.

Andenmatten is hopeful that the glaciers dwindling away on the Swiss side of the Alps will yield the next Ötzi.

Archaeologists have a unique window into the sheer breadth of humans' footprints on our environments — both the wonder and the terror of our capabilities over the ages. As human-caused climate change devastates mountain glaciers, archaeologists discover more high-altitude feats of ancient human history.

Andenmatten and his colleagues go searching for artifacts in August and September, when the glacier is meltiest and most likely to reveal new objects. But as temperatures rise, the season of ice melt expands and so does their archaeological season.

"The good time slot is every year bigger," Andenmatten said.

• Google is conducting waves of ongoing layoffs intentionally, according to Sundar Pichai. 
• Sundar Pichai said the company is "taking the time to do it correctly and well" in a Bloomberg interview.
• The company started 2024 with thousands of cuts, particularly from engineering and hardware teams.

Google has conducted multiple layoffs this year — and the slow burn is intentional.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Bloomberg reporter Emily Chang that the company is "taking the time to do it correctly and well."

While Pichai has received criticism of his leadership and the culture around layoffs, he said that as a leader of a large company, he makes "fewer consequential decisions, but they need to be clear."

Pichai said in some cases, Google is simplifying teams, and in others, it's moving people to focus on new areas. The company is also removing some teams entirely to "improve velocity."

Google cut about 12,000 people in 2023 and started off 2024 with thousands more laid off from core engineering and hardware teams.

At the time, Pichai said more layoffs were to come — and they did.

In April, the company laid off more staff from several finance and real estate teams. It also announced it would move roles to Bangalore, Mexico City, and Dublin to build out its "growth hubs."

Google did not respond to a request for comment about the number of roles impacted.

Pichai said in the interview that Google is "reallocating people" to its "highest priorities."

The cuts are an attempt to cut back on costs as it advances AI and ramps up efforts with a series of cloud advancements. Some of these include an Arm-based CPU, the general availability of TPU v5p, the new release of Gemini 1.5, and various changes to Google Workspace.

In his 2023 layoff announcement, Pichai said Google experienced "dramatic growth" over the last two years, which led to hiring "for a different economic reality than the one we face today."

"A number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers, and align their resources to their biggest product priorities," a Google spokesperson told BI in April before the latest layoffs were announced.

• Thieves riding e-scooters stole two Bronze Age artifacts from the Ely Museum, police say.
• The stolen items, a gold torc necklace and bracelet, were among the museum's "most prized" objects.
• Cambridgeshire police have released security footage in the hope someone recognizes the thieves.

Authorities are hunting for two people who stole 3,000-year-old gold artifacts from a museum in England.

Cambridgeshire police said in a statement that thieves stole a gold torc necklace and a gold bracelet dating from the Bronze Age from the Ely Museum on Tuesday. Police said the two suspects were riding "e-scooters" at the time of the burglary.

Security camera footage of the break-in obtained by Business Insider shows two people wearing hoods pushing their way through a window before hurrying through the inside of the museum.

Ellie Hughes, the museum's curator, said in a statement that the museum is "devastated" by the loss of the items, which were significant to the "local heritage of the region."

"It is a huge blow after the incredible support from the community in acquiring the torc in 2017," Hughes said. "As a culturally significant object, it cannot be replaced. Our priority now is working with the police to locate the stolen objects."

The torc, a type of rigid necklace described by the museum as its "most prized object," was valued at about 220,000 pounds when the museum acquired it in 2017, according to BBC.

The torc weighs 730 grams and is made up of almost entirely pure gold, the museum says. A metal detectorist found the piece in 2015 while searching in a field. Museum historians believe the torc was buried to hide it from invading enemies or as an offering to a god.

The thieves broke into the museum at about 2 a.m., according to police. Detective Kiri Mazur said police released the footage hoping someone would recognize the two suspects.

"I am very keen to hear from anyone who may be able to provide information or saw two people on e-scooters in the vicinity of the museum, car park and pedestrian walkways at the back of the museum, the council offices, and the Grange Car Park, between 12 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Tuesday," Mazur said.

• The percentage of "seriously underwater" mortgages rose in the first quarter. 
• In the US, 2.7% of homes carry a mortgage that's at least 25% more than the market value of the house. 
• That's according to ATTOM, which notes the South has seen a bigger jump in seriously underwater mortgages. 

The percentage of homes in the US that are worth significantly less than the mortgage they secure rose in the first quarter of 2024, according to data from ATTOM. 

The share of "seriously underwater" mortgages — defined as having a balance that's 25% more than the fair market value of the house — edged up from 2.6% to 2.7% nationally in early 2024. That translates to roughly one out of every in 37 homes, the real estate firm said in a report on Wednesday. 

Though the percentage of seriously underwater mortgaged homes rose slightly nationwide, it remains lower than pre-pandemic levels.

Interest rates have been elevated since 2022 as part of the Federal Reserve's effort to bring down inflation. With that effort, mortgage costs have gone up steadily for about two years, with home loan rates peaking last October at 8% while the market went through a particularly sharp bout of volatility. This week, the rate on the 30-year mortgage is hovering at about 7.1%. 

A mortgage can become significantly underwater if a buyer pays much more than what the home may be worth or if they don't have a large equity cushion that can protect against declines in value.  

ATTOM said the South and Midwest regions account for nine out of the 10 states with the highest share of seriously underwater mortgages. 

Zooming in, Kentucky's share of seriously underwater loans spiked to 8.3% from 6.3% in the quarter, with West Virginia rising to 5.4% from 4.4%. Oklahoma climbed to 6.1% from 5.5%, and Arkansas edged up to 5.7% from 5.2%.

Meanwhile, among 107 metropolitan areas with over 500,000 people, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, topped the list with 13.4% of all mortgages seriously underwater. New Orleans followed with 7.3%, trailed by Jackson, Mississippi at 6.5%, Little Rock, Arkansas at 6%, and Syracuse, New York at 5.6%.