War in Iran could alter economic order in the long term…
Even if the war in Iran ends for good soon, economists say it has already reshaped the global economic order, with lasting effects on energy markets and inflation. Johns Hopkins economist Steve Hanke told Fortune that the conflict benefits resource-hungry powers like Russia and China while leaving the U.S. more exposed.
… and air travel in the short-term
The head of the International Air Transport Association warned reporters that jet fuel shortages could persist for months even if Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz, because refining capacity has been heavily disrupted. Airlines are already responding, with some raising checked-bag fees and fares.
How to look at the AI revolution
George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok told Fortunethat a world with 40% unemployment because of AI and a world with a three-day workweek are essentially the same scenario. He argues that the transition will be slow, but the “difference between catastrophe and wonderland” will be “how society chooses to distribute the gains.”
Did oil traders know Trump was about to halt Iran strikes 15 minutes before his Truth Social post? $580 million in bets placed exactly then. This looks like gaming war for profit – oil swinging $15, risking famines while someone cashes in. Empirical data shows energy cuts slash GDP 1:1, not the trivial 0.4% neoclassical claim. #TrumpIran#OilCrisis#RealEconomics
It’s 2026 and I’d choose a handwritten note over an AI-generated response any day of the week, Axios’ Natalie Daher writes.
I also practice what I preach. I’ve shared written correspondence with friends, former co-workers and family members since I was a kid.
I wrote my cousin, who was a Navy Seal deployed to Afghanistan in the early 2000s, and actually heard back. I wrote thank you notes for birthday gifts, as my mom required. I even wrote Britney Spears (radio silence there).
As an adult, I’ve accumulated fancy stationery, a fountain pen and more stickers than I’ll ever use. Like my colleague Aïda Amer, I treasure snail mail.
So when a novel arrived that put letter-writing and emails at its center, I didn’t just read it — I organized a multi-generational book club.
“The Correspondent,” the epistolary novel by Virginia Evans, became a sleeper hit last year — and it resonated with me deeply enough that I wasn’t surprised to find I wasn’t alone.
Elizabeth Passarella wrote for The New York Times last week about receiving a surprise letter from her sister, who had been inspired by Evans’ book
The novel’s main character, Sybil Antwerp, is a Maryland-based retired lawyer who exchanges letters with everyone from an ancestry company employee to her adopted brother who lives in Europe to novelist Joan Didion.
Through those correspondences, we learn about Antwerp’s experiences with aging, grief and a long career in law — and the major secrets she’s kept along the way.
Evans’ novel reminded me why the act of writing itself matters, not just the sentiment behind it.Tips for getting started:
Keep the bar low. My stationary might be extra, but yours doesn’t need to be. Plain paper works. Don’t overthink your message — start with a shared memory or a quote that reminds you of your recipient.
Make it easy for yourself. Passarella recalls a friend who keeps notecards in her minivan so she can write while waiting for school pickup. Or switch up your usual journaling routine and write someone a letter instead.
Reconnect with an old friend. Falling out of touch doesn’t have to mean forever. A surprise note puts you out there with no pressure. There’s no guarantee, but you might be glad you tried.Pose a question. It gives your recipient an easy reason to write back, and suddenly you have a correspondence on your hands.
I’ll add one: Write notes to the people you live with (no postage required).
Partners, roommates, family — it’s the most charming of gifts, akin to flowers but better in my opinion.
Between the lines: There are real benefits to writing by hand, even as technology gives us plenty of reasons not to bother.
Putting pen to paperactivates parts of the brain associated with creativity, memory and the senses in ways that typing simply doesn’t, Passarellawrites.
And beyond the neurological, there’s something irreplaceable about the physical artifact a letter becomes. They form a record your loved ones can return to long after you’re gone.
The bottom line: Writing letters isn’t just meaningful — it’s personally enriching in ways that a text or email rarely is.
Start with a simple dispatch and see where it goes.Tell us about your correspondences! Have you received or sent a note spontaneously or over time? Did that lead to a reconnection or simply an enjoyable habit? Write us at finishline@axios.com for the chance to be in a future edition.
Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images
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Last week, the New York Times published a rapturous profile of a drug marketing company called Medvi, which the paper declared to be the first one-ish man venture on track to surpass one billion dollars in revenue while leaning almost exclusively on AI to build and scale the business. The news was immediately met with a wave of online backlash over both the framing of the NYT piece and the ethics of the company at the center of it — and the company’s official response raises more questions than it answers.
Medvi is a company that Futurism has been aware of for some time now. It effectively operates as a marketing wrapper for telehealth companies that prescribe and fulfill orders for GLP-1 agonists and other compounded drugs — and as we first reported all the way back in May 2025, Medvi has engaged in a range of dishonest marketing practices.It’s plastered its website with AI-deepfaked images of phony patients passed off as the real deal, flaunted media logos insinuating that it garnered editorial coverage from mainstream media outlets when it hadn’t, and featured the name and likeness of at least one medical practitioner who told us that in reality he had nothing to do with the company.
The NYT‘s profile either downplayed or omitted all of these glaring ethical red flags. The article also definitively stated that Medvi had ceased its practice of using AI-fabricated before-and-after client photos — a declaration that, as we pointed out in a follow-up, wasn’t true.
We weren’t the only ones with qualms. As folks from across the health, tech, and business worlds were quick to point out online, at the time the NYT article was published, Medvi was being marketed on social media by a trove of Meta accounts featuring clearly fake doctors. In fact, in February 2026, Medvi LLC was issued a warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pointing to multiple violations on a Medvi-branded site, Medvi.io. In that February warning, the FDA said that the site, Medvi.io, was misleading consumers by featuring images of Medvi-branded pill bottles and vials of injectables — Medvi isn’t actually the compounder of any drugs it sells, leaning instead on various pharmacies — and suggesting that certain drug compounds Medvi peddles are FDA-approved when they aren’t.Both the fake doctors on social media and the FDA warning went unmentioned in the NYT piece.
Yesterday, in response to public backlash and new reporting from outlets including Futurism, Techdirt, Business Insider, and the pharma-focused outlet Drug Discovery & Development, Medvi and its founder, 41-year-old Matthew Gallagher, issued a statement that it characterized as a “response to external speculation” about the company and its marketing practices.
The statement Medvi provided focuses heavily on the context surrounding the FDA warning, noting that “in September 2025 and February 2026, the FDA sent an unprecedented number of warning letters to dozens of telehealth companies, drug companies and pharmacies regarding their direct-to-consumer advertising practices.” This is true: as we noted in our previous story, Medvi was one of numerous companies issued stark warnings amid a broader crackdown on the unruly GLP-1 marketplace.
But while the FDA letter is addressed to Medvi LLC, Medvi is insisting that it was an affiliate — basically, another marketer that funnels patients to Medvi in exchange for a financial kickback — that was technically in violation of the FDA’s warning.
“In one of the FDA’s letters, the URL mentioned is medvi.io — not MEDVi’s actual address of medvi.org,” reads the statement, which is attributed to Gallagher. “The letter addressed to MEDVi was directed at an affiliate marketing agency whose website contained outdated copy. We immediately reached out to the affiliate and required them to remove the materials allegedly at issue. We understand the affiliate also directly responded to the FDA.”
“My company MEDVi has never received a letter from the FDA,” the statement continues. “If we were to receive such a communication from any regulatory authority, we would act swiftly and collaboratively to address the matter.”
In response, we asked whether Medvi LLC — the company the FDA letter was addressed to — is Gallagher’s company that was featured in the NYT. We haven’t received any response.
When we first reported on the stolen before-and-after images on Medvi.io, the site had no affiliate disclaimers, and directed us to contact help@medvi.org with inquiries — the email that Medvi.org, which Medvi insists is its primary domain, still directs site-goers to today.
We asked Medvi when Medvi.io changed hands to an affiliate, and who this affiliate was, which also went unanswered.
Further, at the time the letter said Medvi.io was in violation of FDA guidelines — December 2025 — Medvi.org’s homepage featured the same AI-generated Medvi-branded bottles that the FDA warning said were “false or misleading” to consumers, as they suggested that Medvi is the compounder of the drugs it sells when it isn’t. According to archived versions of the site, Medvi.org appeared to have taken these images down after the FDA warning in February.
And yet, as of publishing this article, a functioning “welcome” page hosted by Medvi.org continues to prominently feature images of Medvi-labeled drugs — including a Medvi-branded bottle of oral tirzepatide tablets. Words on the bottle describe the tablets as “compounded medication” for “medical weight management.”
But oral tirzepatide isn’t FDA-approved for weight loss. In fact, while injectable tirzepatide is FDA-approved — tirzepatide is the active ingredient found in Eli Lilly’s Zepbound shot — the tablet version of the drug has no proven benefits. There’s no evidence that it’ll actually help buyers lose weight.
“Why don’t I just compound a little piece of cardboard and give it to you?” Dr. Jon Slotkin, a neurosurgeon and hospital executive at a large hospital system in Pennsylvania, told Futurism of the dubious compound. “There is exactly as much human data published that oral tirzepatide will help you lose weight as there is published data that compounded cardboard in a little tablet will help you lose weight. They’re identical in their amount of evidence.”
The same page also features images of AI-generated doctors in Medvi-branded lab coats. A label of one bottle reads “Medvi Pharmacy” and features instructions urging patients to “take one table [sic] by mouth twice daily.”
The page directs to a Medvi patient portal, and there are no affiliate caveats or disclaimers about FDA approval.
We asked Medvi whether Medvi.org was in violation of FDA guidelines at the time the warning was sent, and to clarify whether the operational “welcome” page we found was operated by Medvi LLC and in compliance with FDA rules. Again, we haven’t received any answer.
Elsewhere, Medvi’s statement addresses the controversy surrounding what the company describes as “‘so-called’ fake doctors,” claiming that it only “recently become aware of what appear to be advertisements featuring potentially AI-generated medical practitioners.” (Many of these accounts were deleted or altered almost immediately following inquiries from journalists.)
“Since we became aware of this issue, we have updated our marketing practices to make clear that this type of advertising and / or promotion is prohibited,” the statement continued. “We continue to proactively address this issue.” (“Proactively” means addressing something before it becomes an issue, not after you’re called out for it.)
Medvi’s response also failed to address the venture’s continued use of AI-generated before-and-after patient pictures. Asked whether it believes the use of fake, AI-generated patients is ethical, Medvi didn’t respond.
Still, the statement went on to say that Medvi is committed to “operating transparently.”
“Building a company the size of MEDVi and scaling so quickly involves many learning moments. At each of these stages, I have course-corrected immediately and appropriately. I will continue to do so,” Gallagher said in the statement. “The New York Times was recently given unprecedented access to MEDVi’s business information and also interviewed our business partners and other collaborators.”
“As I continue helping our customers achieve their health goals,” he added, “I remain committed to building and operating transparently.”
I’m a senior staff writer at Futurism, investigating how the rise of artificial intelligence is impacting the media, internet, and information ecosystems.
UK accuses Russia of covert submarine operation threatening undersea cables
Together with allies, the UK tracked “every mile” of the deployment involving an Akula-class and a pair of Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research (GUGI) surveillance submarines, according to British defense secretary John Healey.
Satellite imagery shows what the UK says Russian vessels based at Olenya Guba, Russia. (UK MoD)
BELFAST — The UK said today it had uncovered what it described as a secret Russian attack submarine and underwater spy vessel mission in and around British waters that lasted over a month and threatened undersea cables.
British Defense Secretary John Healey said there was “no evidence” that the cables or underwater pipelines had been damaged, but said, “I’m making this statement to call out this Russian activity, and to President [Vladimir] Putin, I say ‘we see you.’”
Healey told media during a press conference in London that over the last few weeks and together with allies, the UK tracked “every mile” of the deployment involving an Akula-class and a pair of Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research (GUGI) surveillance submarines.
He said that the Akula was “likely” used as a decoy to distract from the GUGI-led activities, as the sister vessels “spent time over critical infrastructure relevant to us and our allies in the North Atlantic.”
Healey said there would be “serious consequences” if “any attempt” is made by Moscow to destroy subsea infrastructure, though he refused to reveal any options that the UK and allies could consider, on grounds that it would “make the Russians wiser.”
He noted that at a national level alone, the effort to track the foreign subs involved a Royal Air Force P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft logging over 450 flight hours. In support, the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigate HMS St Albans, covered “several thousand” nautical miles. Both services also deployed sonobuoys to monitor the Russian subs.
A related UK statement outlined that the Akula-class vessel was also tracked by Merlin naval helicopters and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s Tidespring – a logistics support ship.
The coordinated response to counter the submarine incursion included support from Norway. Norway’s defense minister, Tore O. Sandvik, said in a separate statement that the Nordic nation’s contribution involved a P-8 and a frigate.
The UK MoD also released a satellite image on X of Russia’s naval base Olenya in the High North, pictured with what the UK identified as a Yantar spy ship and the two GUGI submarines prior to leaving port for British waters.
As stated by Healey, the subs are specifically designed to “survey underwater infrastructure during peacetime and sabotage it in conflict.”
In comments widely shared with media, John Hardie, Russia program deputy director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington DC-based national security think tank, said GUGI vessels have “long engaged in suspicious activity near undersea cables.Russia can use these vessels to place wiretaps or collect intelligence to support contingency planning to disrupt NATO communications in the event of war.”
In addition to the three-vessel submarine episode, the UK also says that it has undertaken a further “ten days of intensive monitoring operations of Russian warships and a submarine which entered UK waters in the English Channel and North Sea,” per the government statement.
In response, Royal Navy surface ships and wildcat helicopters monitored the journeys of a Russian destroyer, frigate, landing ship, and Kilo-class submarine.
The Russian deployments come at a time when analysts say UK naval resources are overly stretched, highlighted in particular by the recent reported struggle to deploy one of six Type 45 destroyers to the eastern Mediterranean, in response to regional defensive operations spawned from the war in Iran.
Since then, Germany’s frigate Sachsen has been forced to step in and fill a gap left by the British destroyer, which was initially planned to be the flagship of a NATO mission in the North Atlantic.
Healey acknowledged that the Royal Navy has been “hallowed out” over the last 14 years, as he accused previous Conservative governments of cutting warships, mine hunters and delaying the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
“We can’t turn that [legacy] round as a relatively new government overnight, but we’re spending £300 million [$403 million] more on ship building,” he stressed.
Healey did not provide any new information about when the long-delayed UK defense investment plan will be published. The document, originally planned for release in the fall of 2025, is set to spell out MoD acquisition commitments and cuts over the next decade.
“We will” publish the plan “as soon as possible,” he explained, consistent with messaging from the MoD and other ministers dating back over several weeks.
Mathematical understanding should be a goal for every student and something they feel capable of achieving. But translating that belief into classroom practice remains one of the central challenges in mathematics education.
“We really want students to sink their teeth into the math and really deeply understand it — all of our students,” says Professor Jon Star. “All students are capable of really wrestling with some fundamental deep issues and questions about mathematics.”
The issue is not a lack of commitment among teachers, but the difficulty of making abstract mathematical ideas accessible in real time, for all learners. Star, who, in addition to his role at HGSE, teaches middle school math in a nearby K–12 school, shares a small set of practical strategies for teachers designed to deepen student understanding, shift classroom culture, and move beyond simply getting the “right answer.”
Four approaches to building deeper mathematical understanding:
Ask more open-ended questions Rather than relying on yes-or-no or purely numerical answers, Star encourages teachers to use questions such as, “Why do you think that?” or “How do you know that’s true?” These prompts require students to explain their reasoning, make sense of mathematical ideas, and engage in shared thinking with classmates. “By asking these kinds of questions in my class, I’m trying to create a culture in my classroom where everyone is expected to do a lot of thinking, that this is a place where we think together,” Star says.
Prepare extension and “back-pocket” tasks Teachers are urged to plan for students who finish quickly by having follow-up questions or variations ready. “It’s always going to be the case that some students are going to finish faster than other students,” Star says. Acceleration — having those students move on to the next lesson — isn’t always the best approach, he says, and instead suggests teachers think about additional ways to challenge students such as asking extension questions. These might include, “Can you solve it another way?” or “If the problem changed slightly, would your answer still be true?” The aim is to deepen thinking rather than accelerate ahead. He advises trying to enter each day’s math lesson with some ideas about extension questions and having tasks — in your back pocket — to use when a student accomplishes the daily objective.
Talk less, listen more A key shift in classroom practice is giving students more space to explain their thinking, even when it is incorrect. By listening carefully to student reasoning and encouraging peer discussion, teachers can surface underlying misconceptions and support more meaningful mathematical conversations. “I’m trying to get students to engage in mathematical conversations where they can share their thinking and they can listen to each other, they can challenge each other, they can share their thinking,” he says, noting that this is a key way to develop mathematical understanding.
Encourage multiple problem-solving strategies Students benefit from seeing that there are often many ways to solve the same problem. Discussing different approaches — and comparing their strengths, limitations, and underlying logic — helps students move beyond superficial knowledge to genuine deep understanding. Star notes that this also challenges the idea that the only thing that matters is getting the right answer. “Math problems can always be solved in a lot of different ways,” he says. “And I have found in my work and in my teaching that students benefit from the opportunity to produce and discuss the different ways that a problem can be solved. …Too often teachers implicitly or explicitly communicate to their students that the most important thing is you get the right answer.”
![A webpage for medvi.org/welcome featuring an AI-generated bottle Medvi-branded medication. The bottle reads "Medvi pharmacy" and instructs people to "take on table [sic] by mouth twice daily."](https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/3.png?strip=all&quality=85&w=1200)
canisgallicus 