Sun’s Closest Solo Star May Have Company

Farmers at Kakadoodle, a family chicken farm in south suburban Matteson, were in its coops on a recent Sunday because a water pipe had frozen when they discovered about 30 dead birds. MariKate Thomas, who owns Kakadoodle with her husband, said that at first they thought the deaths were tied to the low temperatures. “It was right when the weather was shifting,” Thomas said.

Four out of five game developers are currently working on a project for the PC, a sizable increase from 66 percent of developers a year ago. That's according to Informa's latest State of the Game Industry survey, which partnered with Omdia to ask over 3,000 game industry professionals about their work in advance of March's Game Developers Conference. The 80 percent of developers working on PC projects in this year's survey is by far the highest mark for any platform dating back to at least 2018, when 60 percent of surveyed developers were working on a PC game.

On Thursday, OpenAI released a research preview of "Operator," a web automation tool that uses a new AI model called Computer-Using Agent (CUA) to control computers through a visual interface. The system performs tasks by viewing and interacting with on-screen elements like buttons and text fields similar to how a human would. Operator is available today for subscribers of the $200 per month ChatGPT Pro plan at operator.chatgpt.com.

UnitedHealth Group will promote one of its top insurance executives to replace Brian Thompson, the slain CEO of its UnitedHealthcare arm. The company said Thursday that Tim Noel will become the next UnitedHealthcare leader. Noel most recently led UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare and retirement business. He joined the company in 2007. UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest insurer, covering more than 49 million people.

All federal agencies received a memo Wednesday requiring the termination of remote work options, with return-to-office plans due by end of day Friday. In the memo, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, Charles Ezell, told the heads and acting heads of all departments and agencies that the change is due to Donald Trump's Return to In-Person Work presidential memorandum, which carved out space for some exemptions and ordered: Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary. Empty offices a “national embarrassment” According to the memo, "most federal offices presently are virtually abandoned," with "the vast majority of federal office workers" having "not returned to in-person work" after transitioning to remote work during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has pledged cheaper prices and lower interest rates, but an economy transformed by the pandemic will make those promises difficult to keep. Economic growth is solid, driven by healthy consumer spending. And budget deficits are huge and could get even larger. Meanwhile, businesses are borrowing more to step up their investments in data centers and artificial intelligence, leading to a greater demand for loans that can raise interest rates. And if Trump follows through on his promises to impose widespread tariffs on imports and deport millions of immigrants, economists expect inflation could worsen — making it less likely the Federal Reserve will cut its key interest rate much this year. All of these trends will likely keep borrowing costs higher, including for homes and cars. Yet on Thursday during the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said he would reduce oil prices, and then “I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately, and likewise, they should be dropping all over the world.” Later, in Washington, Trump told reporters that lower energy costs would reduce inflation, which would “automatically bring the interest rates down.” Asked if he expects the Fed to listen to him on rates, Trump said: “Yeah.” Yet Trump may be facing a bigger challenge than he expects.