Tag: News

• A woman hosted a surprise party for her husband at a Costco in Georgia. 
• Her TikTok showing the party racked up over 11 million views. 
• It's one of several viral Costco birthday party TikToks. Here's how they're doing it. 

A Tennessee woman racked up over 11 million views on her TikTok video, which showed her surprising her husband with a birthday party at Costco.

The video charts their trip from entering the store and bumping into friends to her husband realizing it's a surprise party. It ends with a birthday party in the food court: guests are gathered around a Costco birthday cake, and a clown is even shown making balloon animals.

The woman invited around 30 family and friends to her husband's surprise 27th birthday party on May 5 at Costco, she told People magazine.

"We love to be silly and so it was the perfect plan," she told the outlet. Adding that her husband is a big Costco fan: "If I'm out of town or having a girls' night, you know Clint is at Costco."

The party was hosted at the Fort Oglethorpe Costco warehouse in Ringgold, Georgia, a store worker confirmed to Business Insider.

The store worker told BI that Costco doesn't host birthday parties as a habit and doesn't make any exceptions from the typical store rules. Therefore, those on the guest list must be members of the store or come along as guests of members.

But this isn't the only Costco fan to throw a birthday party at the store; several other Costco birthday party TikToks have gone viral recently.

To distinguish the birthday trip from any other day, Costco members have tried new tricks to build on the surprises.

Scatter friends and family throughout the store as a surprise

Another viral TikTok, with over two million views, showed a Costco superfan being surprised with a birthday party at a Costco store organized by his wife.

The husband is seen bumping into his friends and relatives around the store in April, seemingly by coincidence.

He didn't clock the surprise until all the guests gathered in the food court singing happy birthday to him, his wife, @katscollections, wrote on text overlay on the TikTok.

His wife set up a Facebook group to invite his friends and relatives to the Kansas City Costco store, she explained in another TikTok.

Be careful about inviting non-members

One commenter expressed how lucky the couple was that all their guests were members.

"If friends and family didn't have a membership, they just met us in the food court, "@katscollections explained in a follow-up video.

However, Costco has started cracking down recently on non-members visiting the food court.

A storeworker at a Costco in Manhattan told BI they would prevent large groups from entering the store, and non-members wouldn't be able to use the food court — even for a birthday party.

It can be a cheap alternative for a birthday party

Last year, a TikToker went viral for her budget-friendly Costco birthday. Madison Stimmel's TikTok got 3.5 million views, explaining how she spent her birthday in-store and spent just $30.88 on her birthday dinner for seven people.

She and her family donned "Costco wholesale" hoodies, bought hot dog-and-soda combos, and even got a free birthday cake, per the TikTok video.

"Costco is definitely one of my happy places, and I love how my birthday brought so much joy to other people," Stimmel previously told BI.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has long supported the idea of a universal basic income.
• Many in AI think a universal basic income could help mitigate the impacts of the tech on workers.
• Altman floated a new kind of basic income last week that he calls "universal basic compute."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a fancy new idea for distributing free resources to people.

He calls it "universal basic compute."

"Everybody gets like a slice of GPT-7's compute," he said on the All-In podcast. "They can use it, they can resell it, they can donate it to somebody to use for cancer research."

The idea is that as AI becomes advanced — and embedded into more facets of our lives — owning a unit of a large language model like GPT-7 can be more valuable than money. "You own like part of the productivity," he said.

Altman has long supported a universal basic income — a recurring cash payment, no strings attached, made to all adults in a given population regardless of their wealth and employment status. Altman, like many others in the tech industry, sees a universal basic income as a safety net for people as AI threatens their jobs.

Altman started his own UBI experiment in 2016, the results of which he said on the podcast would be released soon. The program provided payments of between $50 to $1,000 a month to more than 3,000 enrollees, according to Fortune.

Cities and states across the United States have experimented with a version of this called guaranteed basic income. These programs give no-strings-attached cash payments to people based on demonstrated need or social and societal status instead of a population as a whole.

Most of those programs have shown positive results, though conservatives are increasingly pushing back on what they see as a form of welfare that could discourage people from working. In Texas, the state supreme court recently blocked a Houston area program from giving low-income people $500 a month.

Altman didn't elaborate on how his so-called "universal basic compute" would work, but it's certain to raise some eyebrows — conservative and liberal alike.

• A study linked one Chinese criminal organization to over 75,000 fraudulent online shops.
• The group, known as 'BogusBazaar,' has processed over $50 million in fake orders, the study found.
• The majority of the 850,000 victims are based in the US and Europe.

Have you encountered an online shop with deals too good to be true? Well, they probably are, and the website probably is too.

As the rise of online shopping took hold during the pandemic, so did the rise of fake online shops and products.

SR Labs is a German-based cyber security company that consults with clients in more than 21 countries. The company last week announced the findings of a three-year study, which found that one Chinese criminal organization was linked to more than 75,000 fraudulent online shops.

The group, dubbed "BogusBazaar," mostly runs websites claiming to sell items like designer clothes at cheap prices, the report says. Instead, the sites harvest credit card details and collect payments for the fake merchandise.

The fake shops processed over $50 million in orders between March 2021 and April 2024, SR Labs says.

A spokesperson for SR Labs noted that, since every successful order does not conclude with successful payment, the immediate monetary damage to the victims is likely lower than the figures suggest. But the exposure of credit card details to the scammers will likely "add to the overall damage."

SR Labs said the group is highly organized, using a cloud computing model where a core team manages the system's infrastructure while a "decentralized network of franchisees operates fraudulent shops."

"A typical BogusBazaar server runs about 200 webshops, with a few servers hosting more than 500," the report says. "These servers are often associated with more than a hundred IP addresses each."

Additional data shared with Business Insider showed that victims in France placed the most orders on the phony shops — almost 200,000. Users inside the United States placed the second-most orders — about 168,000 — at a value of more than $12.5 million.

Most of the scam's 850,000 victims come from inside the United States and Western Europe, with almost no victims identified inside China, where the fraudsters are based, SR Labs says.

The credit monitoring company Experian says that the best thing to do if you are a victim of credit card fraud is to notify your card provider, request a fraud alert on your credit report, report the scam to the police, and contact the three major credit bureaus.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wants an international agency to regulate artificial intelligence.
• Altman said an agency approach would be better than inflexible laws given AI's rapid evolution.
• He compared AI to airplanes, emphasizing the need for a safety testing framework.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he's keen on regulating AI with an international agency.

"I think there will come a time in the not-so-distant future, like we're not talking decades and decades from now, where frontier AI systems are capable of causing significant global harm," Altman said on the All-In podcast on Friday.

He believes those systems will have "negative impact way beyond the realm of one country" and wants to see them regulated by "an international agency looking at the most powerful systems and ensuring reasonable safety testing."

In Altman's view, landing on the appropriate level of oversight will be a balancing act.

"I'd be super nervous about regulatory overreach here. I think we get this wrong by doing way too much or a little too much. I think we can get this wrong by doing not enough," he said. 

Legislation to regulate the fast-changing technology is already underway.

In March, the EU approved the Artificial Intelligence Act, which will categorize AI risk and ban unacceptable use cases. President Joe Biden also signed an executive order last year calling for greater transparency from the world's biggest AI models. And this year the state of California has been leading the charge on regulating AI as lawmakers consider more than 30 bills, according to Bloomberg. 

But Altman argued that an international agency would offer more flexibility than national legislation — and that's important given how quickly AI evolves.

"The reason I've pushed for an agency-based approach for kind of like the big-picture stuff and not like a write-it-in-law is in 12 months it will all be written wrong," he said. He thinks that lawmakers, even if they're "true world experts," probably can't write policies that will appropriately regulate events 12 to 24 months from now. 

In simple terms, Altman thinks AI should be regulated like an airplane.

"When like significant loss of human life is a serious possibility, like airplanes, or any number of other examples where I think we're happy to have some sort of testing framework," he said. "I don't think about an airplane when I get on it. I just assume it's going to be safe."

• Furniture flipping is a booming business for content creators on TikTok and Instagram.
• But flips that involve painting over natural wood furniture often elicit backlash and hate comments.
• People get especially worked up when flippers paint over beloved mid-century modern furniture.

Growing up, Christina Clericuzio always thought the dresser at her grandma's house was so ugly — with walnut brown wood and a diamond-like design on the drawer faces.

So when Clericuzio's grandma was getting rid of it, it seemed like the perfect candidate for her new hobby: furniture-flipping, the practice of taking a piece of old furniture and restoring or refinishing it.

Clericuzio sanded down the walnut, removed the wood veneer, added drawer pulls, and painted most of the dresser white. When she posted the before and after shots online, she loved the new beachy look.

"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm a magician. I'm so amazing,'" the Connecticut-based content creator told Business Insider.

But then came the comments.

"This is criminal."

"This is evil."

"You literally ruined it!"

"I got humbled so quick," Clericuzio said, adding there were people calling her dumb and all sorts of names.

She still thought the piece was cute and was able to sell it for $400 — but now she knows a mid-century modern furniture piece like that, restored to its original look, can sell for much, much more.

Up to $8,160, to be exact, according to a current Chairish listing for what appears to be the exact same dresser — a mid-century nine-drawer lowboy piece made by United Furniture.

Clericuzio is among countless furniture flippers on Instagram and TikTok who regularly get berated or even threatened in their comments over some of their work — especially when they paint over wood furniture, and even moreso if the color they go with is white, beige, or the widely mocked "millennial gray."

Jennifer Beck, a Tennessee-based furniture flipper who runs Saved By Design with her mom, told BI she's considered making shirts for her brand that say, "Forget about politics. How do you feel about painted furniture?"

Still, furniture flipping is booming. Some content creators, like Clericuzio, got into it during the pandemic and have been able to turn it from a side hustle into a full-time gig. Furniture flippers also give new life to a piece that might otherwise end up in a landfill — which happens more than you'd think with donated furniture — and buying secondhand is increasingly appealing to Gen Z, who view it as a more environmentally friendly way to shop.

So why all the hate?

Demand is up for vintage wood furniture — without paint

Part of the backlash certainly stems from the current state of the furniture industry, in which it's increasingly difficult to get your hands on brand-new, high-quality furniture.

The decline in quality in mass-market furniture has led many people to seek out vintage or secondhand pieces, especially those made of real wood, which was common in American furniture production in the mid-1900s but makes up a much smaller share of the retail market today, which is saturated with products made from engineered wood and other cheap materials.

As a result, the secondhand furniture market is booming, with vintage furniture sellers proliferating on places like Instagram and Facebook Marketplace.

The flippers said most of the hate comments tend to come from flips of midcentury modern furniture, in particular, a beloved and lasting design aesthetic from around roughly the 1930s to 1970s.

Many of the flips that draw the most backlash are of distinct midcentury pieces getting transformed into a more modern, and often more generic, painted piece that would fit in at Anthropologie — a brand Clericuzio loves and takes inspiration from for her flips.

But now that she's been doing this a few years and is more knowledgable about furniture in general, Clericuzio said she understands where some of the critics are coming from, if not the hateful way they express their distaste.

"I really try to only work on midcentury modern pieces that, in my opinion, are just objectively ugly," she said, or pieces that are so damaged they might be beyond a classic restoration job.

As for how she'd handle her grandma's old dresser today?

"I probably wouldn't even touch it," she said, adding now that she knows more about furniture, she even sees more beauty in the original piece.

Furniture restoration vs. painting

Ask any flipper and they'll tell you how divisive painting furniture is, but some acknowledge that the desire to just paint over any old piece of furniture can come from a lack of skill.

"When I first started out, I did not know what I was doing," Beck, the Tennessee-based flipper, said. When she started furniture flipping, painting was the only thing she knew how to do.

"All we were trying to do was change the look so that we could have a before and after photo and sell it," she said, adding that meant her products were not as high quality as they could've been and she was selling some pieces for much less than she could if she actually restored them.

As she learned more about furniture and improved her skills, Beck said she was able to be more discerning about painting. Now she does high-end restoration and refinishing work, often selling her pieces for thousands of dollars.

She still uses paint, but in a much more limited capacity, like when the piece is too damaged for full restoration or some use of paint will add to the design and make it more appealing for her customers.

Beck said she also considers what kinds of pieces will actually decline in value if they are painted, according to appraisers, like high-quality antique, historic, or mid-century modern pieces, typically with a maker's mark indicating the craftsmen who produced them.

It's not just about making the most money. Beck believes there are some pieces that should be restored and preserved simply because they are rare, beloved, and culturally valuable.

But ultimately, it comes down to what she can sell to her customers. Despite all the vocal online haters of painted furniture, there's a reason furniture flippers do it: the pieces sell.

Mike Coleman, a vintage furniture seller and the owner of Big Mike's Vintage in Chicago, said he used to be strongly against painting over pieces, but after meeting skilled dealers who do it well, he's opened up to it.

"It's your house, your furniture," he said, adding, "Do want you want at all times."

But he said he's seen plenty of TikTok flippers who just don't know how to do it well in a way that will actually last, and he thinks most people should leave it to the pros.

"You can't just spray paint over lacquered walnut," Coleman said.

Critics of furniture flippers don't always know what they're talking about

One flip that drew hate comments and frustrated Clericuzio involved a brown shelving unit she picked up from Goodwill for $12.

She sanded down the shelf — which revealed it had previously been painted over three times: red, blue, and then brown — then painted over most of it with a light blue paint and added some mirrors, unique drawer panels, new knobs, and legs. She left the top wood visible, meaning there was actually more of the original wood showing than when she bought it.

Still, the hate comments rolled in. One that got over 4,100 likes read: "the way u take beautiful vintage pieces, n make em boring n modern should be put in the bible as a sin." Many commenters were especially exasperated that Clericuzio threw away the "original" knobs.

But after the TikTok of the flip went viral, the woman who originally donated the shelf got in touch with Clericuzio.

The shelf had come from somewhere like Ikea, and the woman had painted it over herself several times in the years she owned it.

As for the "beautiful antique knobs" that commenters couldn't believe Clericuzio tossed?

They sell for $3.99 a piece from Hobby Lobby.

Have a news tip or story to share? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@businessinsider.com.

• Hong Kong authorities warned about a scam using deepfake Elon Musk videos to trick investors.
• The group claimed to provide an AI-driven cryptocurrency trading service.
• This is not the first time scammers have used deepfake versions of Elon Musk.

No, Elon Musk didn't create the shady crypto trading website that a random person on Facebook is telling you to invest in.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission issued a warning last week about deepfake scams. According to the statement, a group calling itself Quantum AI or AI Quantum, is using deepfake videos of Elon Musk to trick people into thinking he is behind the software.

The group is not to be confused with NASA's Quantum AI Lab (QuAIL), which focuses on quantum computing research.

As the technology behind artificial intelligence advances, scammers are increasingly using deepfakes to dupe their victims into handing over cash.

"Deepfakes" leverage artificial intelligence to mimic the face and voice of a person in a video or audio clip. Scammers will use deepfakes to set up video calls with victims. They then use a webcam paired with software that changes their facial features to look like the person with whom the victim thinks they are communicating.

The notorious Nigerian scam group, The Yahoo Boys, for example, uses deepfakes to trick people into romance scams.

The group in Hong Kong claimed to provide a cryptocurrency trading service using underlying artificial intelligence. But Hong Kong authorities said they suspect it is a front for "virtual asset related fraudulent activities." The group used three websites and two Facebook pages to run its crypto scams, the warning says.

Authorities said the group used deepfake videos of Musk to deceive victims into thinking that he was the developer of the technology, lending the fake company an air of legitimacy. They even went as far as creating a fake "news" website to promote false information about the service, authorities said.

Hong Kong police shut down all of its websites and social media pages, according to Crypto News. The Hong Kong Police Force did not return a request for comment from BI.

It's not the first time scammers have used deepfakes of Musk to steal money from their victims. In April, a South Korean woman said she lost $50,000 after scammers pretending to be Musk reached out to her on Instagram. She even held a video call with whom she thought was the ubiquitous billionaire.

"'Musk even said 'I love you, you know that?' when we made a video call," the woman told 60 Minutes of the deepfaked conversation.

• The ongoing Trump hush-money case wrapped its third week on Friday.
• The unprecedented criminal trial of a former US president has supplied no shortage of wild moments.
• From a porn star's testimony to wacky tweets, here are the 5 top takeaways so far. 

For three weeks, jurors in a Manhattan criminal courtroom have heard testimony about lascivious affairs and complicated financial records as former President Donald Trump stands trial on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, which center on a hush-money scheme to silence porn actor Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.

The prosecution's case is nearing its end. On Friday, the DA's office announced it would present only two more witnesses — one of them is expected to be former Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen — and will likely conclude its case by the end of next week.

The trial was expected to run six weeks in total.

The unprecedented criminal trial of a former US president has delivered several stunning moments so far. Here are the top five.

Hope Hicks' tearful testimony

Hope Hicks' bombshell testimony — which helped both the defense and prosecution at times — was most notable for her waterworks on the stand. The former White House aide and longtime Trump advisor took the stand on May 3 and told jurors about working with Trump and Cohen as campaign press secretary amid the 2016 Daniels scandal.

Parts of Hicks' testimony didn't play well for Trump, Business Insider previously reported. She illustrated how much he and his campaign worried about Daniels going public with the story ahead of the election. When the story finally came to light in 2018, Hicks said Trump was almost relieved.

"I think it was Mr. Trump's feeling that it was better to be dealing with it now," she said, "rather than just before the election."

But when she took the stand on cross-examination, Hicks also helped bolster the defense's case, saying Cohen wasn't looped in on the "day-to-day" of Trump's campaign in 2016, confirming that the fixer sometimes "went rogue."

Hicks also testified that Trump cared about protecting his family from the infidelity stories.

"I don't think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed by anything that happened on the campaign," she said.

Jurors get a peek at the 34 records at the heart of the case

Two weeks into Trump's trial, jurors finally saw the paperwork at the heart of the matter. Two key witnesses — longtime Trump Organization employees Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarassoff — testified about their handling of the company's checks, invoices, and other records, which make up the 34 business records District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges Trump falsified.

The prosecution showed the paperwork on big TV screens in the courtroom. Though less exciting than the rumors of salacious extramarital affairs and campaign PR techniques, the accounting details constitute the crux of the case, Business Insider previously reported.

Prosecutors carefully walked through what they say was the falsified paperwork that led to Cohen's reimbursement checks. The business records were disguised Cohen's reimbursement checks as "legal fees" to cover up a conspiracy to sway the election, prosecutors say.

Jurors also saw eleven checks, including nine Capital One personal checks written out to Cohen that Trump signed over the course of his first year in office.

BI's reporters noted that while key evidence, the May 6 financial testimony bored many in the courtroom.

Stormy Daniels tells her story

Daniels took the stand on May 7, delivering her long-awaited testimony during which she described being scared and ashamed after the sexual encounter she says she had with Trump in 2006.

Wearing black-rimmed glasses and a sweater, the porn actor, whose name is Stephanie Clifford, came face-to-face with Trump for the first time in a decade. Trump spent much of Daniels' testimony staring down at the defense table, avoiding looking at her.

On the stand, Daniels described how she met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July 2006, saying she ended up in his penthouse hotel suite after accepting a dinner invitation from the businessman.

Daniels says the two then had sex — a claim Trump has repeatedly and strongly denied. On the stand, Daniels said Trump told her she reminded him of his daughter, commenting on her blond hair and beauty. She testified that Trump told her not to "worry" about Melania, saying he and his wife slept in separate rooms.

As Daniels began to describe their alleged sexual encounter, Trump appeared furious, BI's reporters noted. Presiding Judge Juan Merchan later reprimanded Trump for "cursing audibly" during her testimony.

Merchan barred some explicit details of Daniels' story, but she did tell jurors that Trump did not wear a condom during the act. She added that she didn't tell very many people about the encounter afterward because she was ashamed.

Daniels testified that she and Trump remained in contact after that night, and she avoided having sex with him again even though he indicated he wanted to.

She also described being approached by a man in a parking lot years later who she said warned her about discussing her "encounter with Mr. Trump."

When Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, Daniels said her agent told her she could sell the rights to her story to Cohen for $130,000.

Trump's legal team requested a mistrial on the basis of Daniel's testimony. Merchan rejected the motion.

Judge Merchan holds Trump in contempt of court

Since Trump's trial began four weeks ago, the former president has been held in contempt of court not once but twice.

The first slap on the wrist came on Thursday, April 25, when Judge Merchan ordered Trump to pay a $9,000 fine for violating his gag order nine times. His offenses include questioning the impartiality of his jury and launching tirades against trial witnesses, including Cohen and Daniels, on Truth Social.

Trump's legal team attempted to argue the judge's decision by noting that Trump was merely reposting attacks made by others in some cases, but Merchan rejected their argument.

The April shaming didn't quite work, however, and Merchan slapped Trump with another fine on May 6 in response to an April 22 phone interview Trump did with a right-wing network. During the call, Trump talked about the hush-money jury, calling them "95% Democrats."

In a written order, Merchan repeated much of what he had already chastised Trump for previously in the trial, emphasizing that Trump was in criminal contempt over three separate motions.

"It is apparent that monetary fines have not, and will not, suffice to deter Defendant from violating this Court's lawful orders," Merchan wrote.

Any future violation of the gag order will result in Trump's incarceration, Merchan said, adding that he did not want to go through the hassle of imprisoning the former president.

'ShitzInPantz' is entered into the court record

Perhaps the weirdest entry in the court record thus far was the inclusion of one of Cohen's favorite insulting nicknames for the former president: Donald "Von ShitzInPantz."

Todd Blanche, defense attorney for Trump, complained in court on May 2 that President Joe Biden and Cohen are allowed to bad-mouth Trump, while Trump isn't able to respond.

Blanche cited Biden's jokes about Trump during the White House Correspondent's Association Dinner, which he said "Trump can't respond to" because of the ongoing hush-money case.

Then Blanche moved on to his complaints about Cohen's ramblings, reading into the record the former Trump ally's offensive post.

"This one says, oh my, ShitzInPantz," Blanche read to the courtroom as a screenshot of the social media post was added to the court record, with no objection from prosecutors.

• Kari Lake remains the heavy favorite to win the Arizona GOP Senate primary this summer.
• But some Republicans are skeptical of Lake's candidacy in one of the nation's premier swing states.
• The NRSC is set to unveil a joint television ad buy in conjunction with Lake, per Politico.

When Kari Lake jumped into the Arizona GOP Senate primary last October, many conservatives were thrilled with the decision, confident she'd energize base voters in the general election.

But Lake, a former television journalist who narrowly lost the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race to Democrat Katie Hobbs, remains a polarizing figure among the electorate. Lake excites former President Donald Trump's most fervent supporters, but Arizona, in recent years, has morphed into a purple state where independents are critical and statewide Republicans are not assured of easy victories.

A recent survey released by Emerson College Polling/The Hill showed that Lake was only winning 80% of Republicans and losing roughly 15% of GOP voters to her likely Democratic opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego. It's still early in the campaign, but the numbers are a sign that she has so far not consolidated GOP support around her candidacy.

And there's a similar sentiment among GOP leaders. While many are backing her campaign, others are less than thrilled.

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the chair of the Senate Republican Conference, told Politico that while he anticipates most GOP candidates will be outspent this year, Arizona is too important of a state for the party on the national Senate map. (Barrasso speaks with Lake often, according to Politico.)

"To me, Arizona is a top-tier state. Because it's an open Senate seat," he told the outlet.

Lake is beginning to obtain some much-needed investment from Washington Republicans.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is set to unveil a joint television ad buy in conjunction with Lake's campaign, according to Politico.

But former Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, who ran against Lake in the GOP gubernatorial primary two years ago before withdrawing from the race, wasn't optimistic about his onetime opponent's viability.

"When you don't really have a core belief in anything, and you're willing to take whatever position you think is politically expedient at the moment, you end up getting caught between a rock and a hard place before too long," he recently said of Lake during a Politico interview.

"Ultimately, the Republican Senate committee is probably going to realize before too long that there's far better opportunities for victories in other parts of the country," he added.

Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, who chaired the NRSC from 2019 to 2021, told the publication that Arizona is "certainly not" on his current list of top pickup opportunities for the GOP this year.

Republicans are virtually assured of picking up the West Virginia seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. But in addition to Arizona, they're angling to flip seats in Montana, Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

"It's really important that Republicans control at least some lever of power in Congress," Young told Politico.

But he was seemingly unsure if he'd become involved in Lake's campaign down the line.

"I don't know that I'm participating in that one. It's possible," he added.

• The wine industry is embracing environmental sustainability. 
• Whitehall Lane Winery planted 100 acres of Oakville bluegrass, a cover crop that combats erosion.
• The winery also plans to use sheep to chew away weeds and fertilize its eight vineyards.

Wineries are embracing sustainability as the industry navigates shifting consumer values, so one winemaker is taking a tried and true approach: sheep.

The heart of the United States' wine country is nestled in California's Napa Valley, where the Leonardini family purchased a small St. Helena winery in 1993. Now, Whitehall Lane Winery has eight vineyards, including six in Napa Valley and two in Sonoma Valley.

Production is overseen by Jason Moulton, director of Winemaking and Viticulture, who began looking into sustainability practices when he joined the team in 2016. He told Business Insider that winemakers are leaning into regenerative farming, the practice of restoring soil health and biodiversity.

"You are seeing a shift from herbicides and tilling to no-till," Moulton said. "The general public doesn't want to see glyphosate in their wines or vineyards."

While some wineries have turned to artificial intelligence to deal with the industry's ebbs and flows, Whitehall Lane Winery hopes sheep and bluegrass can get the job done.

Sheep grazing is a centuries-old practice that could chomp down on weeds and add natural fertilizer

Although sheep grazing wineries might seem trendy, the American Sheep Industry Association said sheep and other livestock have grazed vegetation for "centuries."

Moulton said studying in New Zealand in the Lincoln University Viticulture and Enology program opened his eyes to the possibility in the mid-2000s. New Zealand has many wine regions, including Auckland and Hawke's Bay.

"The whole country is dotted with cows and sheep," Moulton said, referring to the 9.6 million cattle and 26 million sheep that live there.

Moulton said he hopes acquiring sheep can help phase out traditional tilling, which is turning the soil to oust weeds and unwanted pests. Tilling can kill topsoil and release CO2 into the environment, contributing to the climate crisis.

"This loss of soil carbon can reduce productivity within the soil profile," Moulton said. "It actually forces us to add more synthetic fertilizer."

Moulton said soil should have rich biodiversity or, in other words, be "alive."

"We want our soil to be alive and have beneficial insects like earthworms moving around those root zones," Moulton said. "By tilling, you're just killing it year after year. It's a constant life-and-death cycle."

Sheep, he said, will graze the vineyards and eat away at the weeds. They'll also leave behind natural fertilizer.

"Their byproduct will be all over our property, and I won't have to supplement synthetic nitrogen to our vines," he said.

Moulton has noticed other vineyards the area using sheep, adding that he hopes to get a herd onto the Whitehall Lane Winery vineyards in December or early 2025 before bud break.

The process involves working with shepherds who can provide and oversee herds at the vineyards, typically before bud break. Moulton said one shepherd he's spoken with is based in Nevada. The price for such services will vary, but Moulton said one estimate he viewed cost $210 per acre.

But the sheep alone won't address the problem. Moulton also began using a cover crop called Oakville bluegrass at the vineyards.

How Oakville bluegrass can have a lasting impact on vineyards

A cover crop is a plant that can bring several benefits to a vineyard. Cover crops smother weeds, slow erosion, boost soil health, help keep pests and diseases at bay, and encourage water infiltration.

Moulton has implemented about 100 acres of Oakville bluegrass at the Whitehall Lane Winery vineyards over five years. This particular cover crop lasts 10 years, which is an important selling point for Moulton.

Oakville bluegrass competes with weed growth — meaning fewer herbicides — and requires fewer tractor passes. Tractor passes is the process of taking a tractor down a vineyard row for a job like seeding or tilling.

"That's labor, money, and diesel fuel," Moulton said. "We're trying to do carbon sequestration, so by reducing those tractor passes, we're doing that."

Moulton added that Oakville bluegrass could also combat the three-cornered alfalfa hopper, an insect that spreads red blotch virus.

"By removing the ability for this insect to even live in a vineyard, I just improved longevity," he said.

Are sheep and bluegrass a tangible solution? Moulton thinks so.

Moulton hopes to eliminate herbicides and tilling from the winery's regiment between 2026 and 2028.

He added that Whitehall Lane Winery works with sustainability partners to set benchmarks, so utilizing long-lasting cover crops and sheep could help reach those goals.

"I think it's going to be absolutely necessary to achieve what we're after," he said.

• Floods in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul have sparked a number of online conspiracy theories. 
• Some say the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program has caused the extreme weather.
• Scientists have dismissed such theories.

The state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil has been facing heavy rains since last week, with 143 people confirmed to have lost their lives in the resulting floods so far, the local civil defense agency has said.

Eduardo Leite, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, described the weather on X as "unprecedented" in the state's history, adding that it would need "a kind of 'Marshall Plan' to be rebuilt."

The state is prone to periods of severe rain and droughts due to its position at a meeting point of tropical and polar climates.

Brazil's National Institute of Meteorology has said the current extreme conditions have likely been influenced by El Niño — the warming of sea surface temperature.

Nevertheless, a number of bizarre online conspiracy theories have cropped up over what's behind it.

"What's happening in Rio Grande do Sul is definitely not natural," one user wrote on X. "Let's open our eyes!"

The user said they believed that the cause of the heavy rains was HAARP, the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a North American scientific project that uses antennas to study a part of the Earth's upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere.

The program has long faced unfounded rumors that it was designed to control the weather, with former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez even claiming it caused the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

vapor trails — "chemtrails" — spread by the government and then activated by HAARP antennas in Alaska to alter the weather, AFP reported.

So-called chemtrails are the contrails of water vapor with soot particulates produced by burning jet fuel that freeze into ice crystals at certain temperatures, per BBC News. In the 1990s, a conspiracy theory evolved that they contained dangerous chemicals purposely put in the trails.

In recent years, influencers such as Russell Brand have promoted the theory to their big media followings

But Carlos Nobre, who heads Brazil's National Institute of Science and Technology for Climate Change (INCT), told AFP that scientists believed climate change has certainly played a key role.

"The warmer atmosphere can store much more water vapor, fueling more frequent and intense episodes of rainfall that lead to disasters like this," he said, while also dismissing the HAARP theory.

"There's no way an instrument in the ionosphere could make weather events more extreme," he said.

It comes after recent heavy flooding in Dubai.

Dubai's media office said the city experienced the heaviest downpour in the United Arab Emirates since records began.

Once again, social media was abuzz with claims about geoengineering — technologies could be used to alter weather or climate — and a conspiracy theory that has arisen around the term, linked to the chemtrails narrative, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge.

After the heavy rainfall flooded Dubai, cloud seeding was blamed by some on social media.

Scientists said the storms behind the floods in the city were likely made worse by the climate crisis, adding that the El Niño pattern also helped intensify the weather.