MicroWave

KEY POINTS

Life Time and Planet Fitness both reported strong growth, but their results highlighted a widening divide in consumer spending habits.

Life Time’s revenue jumped 12% as higher-income members paid higher dues and spent more on premium services like training, spa treatments and food.

Planet Fitness saw strong growth, but its weaker 2026 outlook raised concerns about slowing demand among lower- and middle-income members.

The Trump administration on Friday formally designated Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detention, the latest move to ratchet up pressure and penalize Iran for its history of imprisoning US citizens.

Trump told FBI Director Kash Patel that he was disappointed by Patel’s behavior while partying with the U.S. men’s hockey team during the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, NBC News reported Friday.

The team had won the gold medal after defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime. Patel, a hockey fan, was seen yelling, banging on a table and gulping down a bottle of beer during the locker room celebration on Sunday. Video of the incident, first shared by ProPublica, went viral.

Trump, who doesn’t drink alcohol, told Patel that he was not happy with the incident and disliked Patel using a government aircraft to fly to Milan, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.

More than 300 Afghan Taliban fighters were killed in the latest airstrikes and border clashes, according to Pakistan officials. Meanwhile, the Taliban claimed to have shot down a Pakistani jet.

Concerns are mounting about the state of the US media landscape now that it looks increasingly likely that Paramount Skydance—a company controlled by the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, a donor to President Donald Trump—will succeed in its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

One day after Netflix announced that it was dropping its previously accepted bid to buy Warner, many critics demanded that antitrust laws be invoked to block the Paramount-Warner merger from going through.

Alvaro Bedoya, former commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, warned that the Ellison family could soon use their control over vast swaths of US media properties to engage in mass censorship, and he pointed to their decisions to cancel Stephen Colbert’s program and to refuse to air an interview with Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico.

The U.S. has recorded more than 1,100 measles cases so far this year, according to data published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's a troubling milestone that has many in public health bracing for the worst.

According to the CDC, out of every 1,000 children who are infected with measles, one may develop encephalitis, which is a dangerous swelling of the brain. Up to three out of every 1,000 infected children will die.

The U.S. is on track for another record-breaking year for measles: The number of measles cases reported in the first eight weeks of the year — 1,136 as of Feb. 26, according to CDC data — is already six times more than typical for an entire year. A tracker from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Outbreak Response Innovation has tallied an even higher annual case total than the CDC.

Trump has directed his White House counsel to explore a voter ID executive order, even as his own lawyers warn it would likely be stricken down — the latest test of his executive authority over American elections.

Donald Trump has directed his White House counsel’s office to explore the feasibility of an executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration and photo identification at polling locations nationwide, even as his own lawyers have warned the moves would likely run into legal trouble, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and White House staff secretary Will Scharf are among those overseeing the effort to determine whether a legally viable path forward exists.

It is the latest sign that the president intends to reshape American elections unilaterally and without congressional buy-in, testing the limits of his executive authority.

Mamdani wooed the president with much property talk and showed the real ‘art of the deal’ might have been soft power via Photoshop

In the hours after Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump for an undisclosed sit-down in the Oval Office on Thursday, a meme quickly circulated on X.

It resembled the screengrab of a TikToker who doles out dubious financial advice, but instead had the mayor’s picture front and center. On the left it read “I receive 12,000 homes” and “the release of a constituent kidnapped by ICE” and on the right “you receive fake newspaper cover”.

It was a neat summary of two unexpected wins Mamdani seemed to clinch in Washington for little in return, as part of an unexpectedly congenial relationship that continues to grow between city hall and the White House. Mamdani’s office later confirmed the mayor pitched a proposal to secure $21bn in federal grants to make good on a central promise to create more citywide affordable housing. This would include the construction of a deck over the busy rail yard in Sunnyside, Queens to build 12,000 housing units. The president appeared “enthusiastic”, according to the mayor’s chief spokesperson.

Anthropic said on Friday it will challenge in court the Pentagon's decision to declare the AI firm a supply-chain risk, hours after U.S. Donald Trump also directed every federal agency to stop work with the company.

DoJ says it will not ask US supreme court to rehear tariffs case despite president’s complaint on Truth Social

The Trump administration said refunds of tariffs struck down by the US supreme court “will take time”, according to court documents filed by the Department of Justice.

Businesses including FedEx have lined up to demand reimbursement for US tariffs they have paid but that the court last week deemed were imposed illegally, prompting heavy criticism from Donald Trump.

The justice department did not say it plans to ask the supreme court to rehear the case, despite Trump’s comments earlier on Friday. Claiming that refunds could ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars, the president wrote: “I am sure that the supreme court did not have this in mind!”

The Trump administration on Friday ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI technology and imposed other major penalties, culminating an unusually public clash between the government and the company over AI safeguards.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he was designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a move that could prevent U.S. military vendors from working with the company.

Hegseth’s remarks, delivered in a social media post, came shortly after the Pentagon’s deadline for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology or face consequences — and nearly 24 hours after CEO Dario Amodei said his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Defense Department’s demands.

The health secretary thought he was offering practical advice to people who can’t afford their groceries anymore.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy is addressing the affordability crisis by asking Americans to eat more liver and less steak.

“There’s a lot of good food in grocery stores that goes to waste. Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive. If you buy a porterhouse steak … it is gonna set you back,” the secretary said as he gave the keynote address at the “Eat Real Food” rally in Austin, Texas, on Thursday. “You can buy liver, or the cheaper cuts of steak that are very very affordable.”

Nothing’s wrong with eating liver. But to put the burden of the affordability crisis on the choices of everyday Americans rather than the administration he works for is woefully out of touch.