• Low-rise jeans are making comeback as brands like Lucky Brand launch denim campaigns.
• American Eagle said it’s seeking to push into the low-rise trend amid wider denim market pressure.
• Celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Jennifer Lopez have embraced the return of low-rise jeans.

The jeans millennials once swore off are strutting back into stores.

Low-rise jeans are back and catching on so much so that denim brands are taking notice.

For years, high-rise and mid-rise jeans dominated the market. Then, baggy jeans caught hold of Gen Z’s attention. But there are signs that those styles are beginning to cycle out, with jeans featuring a lower waist and a bootcut leg ready to take their place.

From Kylie Jenner to Jennifer Lopez, celebrities have been spotted rocking hip-hugging jeans from brands like True Religion, and Lucky Brand just launched a second campaign with singer Addison Rae featuring low-waisted jeans and denim shorts in time for warmer weather.

On the heels of its success of a controversial campaign with Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle Outfitters talked about the trend on its earnings call on Wednesday.

“I think, definitely, the rises are getting lower. You’re seeing more midriffs being shown,” said Jennifer Foyle, American Eagle and Aerie’s president and executive creative director.

The company told analysts on the call that it expects pressure on its denim category as it learns from past missteps like leaning into fits that consumers weren’t as interested in buying.

In 2025, the American Eagle brand found itself caught up in a denim war with Gap and Lucky Brand, as all three companies dropped their own star-studded campaigns to promote their jeans. It looks like it paid off, with Gap and American Eagle reporting strong earnings for the quarter in which the ads dropped.

Meanwhile, millennials are taking their denim in a different direction and entering their mom jeans era, which can be identified by their relaxed fit and high waists. They may get left behind on the new wave of Y2K style they thought they left behind in the early 2000s.

“This business has changed drastically,” Foyle said. “The lower rise is something that we are addressing.”

• Meta hired the engineers behind the vibe-coding app Gizmo.
• The app lets people use AI to create and share interactive content, like mini apps or games.
• The team from Gizmo’s parent company, Atma Sciences Inc., has joined Meta’s Superintelligence Labs unit.

Meta recently hired the team of engineers behind Gizmo, a buzzy AI startup founded by ex-Snapchat staffers.

A spokesperson for Meta confirmed that the team joined Meta earlier this year. The company declined to disclose the financial details of the deal.

Gizmo is the sole product from Atma Sciences Inc., which was founded in 2024. The team includes Josh Siegel (CEO), Daniel Amitay (CTO), Brandon Francis, and Rudd Fawcett, among several other ex-Snapchat engineers, according to LinkedIn.

Meta has a non-exclusive license to Atma Sciences’ technology.

Gizmo lets users create interactive, touch-enabled content — like a tiny game or mini-app — by typing out a prompt. For example, I made an interactive “Gizmo” of a snail that you can drag around the screen, leaving a trail of rainbow goo. Useful? Not really. Fun? Definitely.

In the app, you can scroll through a TikTok-like feed filled with interactive content instead of videos. Popular posts on the platform appear to have tens of thousands of likes.

One LinkedIn post about Gizmo described the app as if “Lovable and TikTok had a baby.” Another post described it as a “TikTok for vibe-coded toy apps.”

The New York-based startup raised about $5.48 million from investors, according to a 2025 SEC filing. VC funds First Round Capital and Uncommon Projects both list Atma Sciences as a portfolio investment.

Gizmo is one of several vibe-coding tools that use AI to create mini apps and have gained traction in the tech scene over the past year. Wabi, a mini app platform, announced a $20 million pre-seed investment in late 2025. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian led a $9.4 million seed investment in the vibe-coding app Vibecode.

Meta’s spokesperson confirmed that the Atma Sciences team will report into Meta’s Superintelligence Labs (MSL) unit, which is led by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang and ex-Github CEO Nat Friedman.

Meta has made several recent plays to snag AI talent. Last year, it took a major stake in Scale AI and acquired the Singapore-based agentic AI company, Manus.

It’s not yet clear, however, what the fate of the current Gizmo app will be, or what the Atma Sciences team will be focused on building at Meta.

It’s easy to imagine a product like Gizmo somewhere within the Meta ecosystem. Meta, like many other tech companies, is racing to develop scalable consumer AI applications that could usher in a new era for social media.

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• Last month, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made jokes about ICE during an employee event.
• The comments drew criticism from some Salesforce employees and executives.
• On Thursday, President Robin Washington told staff the company is “appropriately adjusting.”

Salesforce leadership addressed the controversy around CEO Marc Benioff‘s recent jokes about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to audio of an internal meeting reviewed by Business Insider.

Salesforce President Robin Washington spoke at an all-hands meeting on Thursday, the first companywide gathering since the episode in February when Benioff joked that ICE was tracking international employees.

Washington, also the company’s chief operating officer and CFO, didn’t mention Benioff’s specific comments, but assured employees that the company was listening to them and taking appropriate action.

“We’ve got different ways of thinking, different opinions, different ways that we approach things,” Washington said, according to the audio. “What unites us is our values and how we take care of our employees.”

“It doesn’t mean we get it right all the time, but what it does mean is when we don’t get it right we appropriately engage and we’ve got various ways in which we do that,” she added.

Benioff’s comments drew criticism from some employees and executives, including Salesforce cofounder Parker Harris who said “Marc made a very bad joke,” and that he was “not OK with it.”

“We’ve been doing a lot of listening a lot of engagement from a lot of leaders and their all-hands meetings,” Washington said on Thursday. “It’s really important feedback and I want you to know that you’ve all been heard, that we’re listening and that we’re appropriately adjusting.”

The controversy comes in the midst of concern about AI disrupting software-as-a-service business models, including Salesforce offerings. Benioff downplayed those fears during the company’s latest earnings call, and did not address the ICE controversy.

Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

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• The UAE has partially opened its skies, allowing airlines to pick up stranded travelers.
• Most airlines’ regular schedules to and from much of the Middle East remain suspended.
• The State Department encouraged stranded Americans to fill out a monitoring form.

It’s been a confusing six days since missile attacks across the Middle East stranded travelers and planes in airports across the world.

Things are still far from normal as of Wednesday, but some travelers are getting home.

There is a slow-growing recovery in the United Arab Emirates, which has partially opened its skies and designated “safe” corridors for rescue planes to use.

There are a lot of people to move: cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi host large expat populations and tourists, and their hubs usually handle tens of thousands of transit passengers a day.

Working with local officials, Emirates, Flydubai, IndiGo, and Etihad Airways were among the first airlines to depart the UAE with passengers, crews, and cargo. Over 100,000 people followed these aircraft live on the aviation tracking website Flightradar24.

Even as Iranian threats continue to disrupt flying — forcing diversions, holds, and U-turns — airlines are still transporting passengers to destinations across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Fortunately, Emirates and Etihad have big planes: many of their Airbus A380s, capable of carrying up to 615 passengers, have flown to cities such as London, Istanbul, Jeddah, Singapore, Paris, and Düsseldorf.

Although these flights don’t always take travelers all the way home, they offer a crucial escape from limbo — getting people into countries with open airspace and far more onward flight options.

Flightradar24 data shows several other carriers have joined the crowd: Air India, Air Arabia, Uzbekistan Airways, Kenya Airways, Morocco’s Royal Air Maroc, Saudi airline Flynas, Royal Jordanian, and India’s SpiceJet are all flying from Dubai to their respective hubs.

European carriers, including Lufthansa, Swiss International Air Lines, Prague-based Smartwings, Aegean Air, and British Airways, are running special rescue flights from neighboring Muscat, Oman. Smartwings and Croatia Airlines are running select flights from Dubai.

Air France scheduled a repatriation flight from Dubai to Paris on Thursday evening, but suspended the plan shortly after the announcement due to “the ongoing security situation.”

Russian carriers Aeroflot and S7 Airlines have similarly departed with passengers, though their flights to Moscow are taking up to three hours longer because they have to fly the long way around closed airspace rather than fly directly over it.

Still, most airlines’ regular schedules to and from much of the Middle East remain suspended until at least the weekend, and they have asked passengers not to go to the airport unless they have been specifically notified.

No US airlines have sent rescue planes as of Thursday. Mark Dombroff, an aviation attorney with the law firm Fox Rothschild, told Business Insider that even if US carriers like United or American wanted to help, they legally can’t.

“The decision-making resides with the Federal Aviation Administration,” he said. “If the FAA says you can’t fly there as a US certificated carrier, that’s it. And in a sense, it’s no different than any other restricted airspace in this country, like Washington, DC.”

Some Americans have gotten home with the help of the State Department; it previously told those in over a dozen Middle Eastern countries to evacuate. The agency said it flew a charter flight to the US on Wednesday, and that more will be “surged across the region.”

It added that, as of Wednesday, “nearly 18,000 Americans have safely returned to the US,” including 7,300 helped by the State Department. It said thousands of others made it to Europe and Asia and are in transit back, and told those still stuck to get in touch for help by calling +1 (202) 501-4444 or filling out this form.

Some airlines remain effectively frozen. Qatar Airways has not flown a plane since Saturday due to Qatar’s airspace closure, leaving practically no options for those in Doha except to wait or drive hours to Saudi Arabia and fly out from there.

Flight options are still extremely limited

While some flights are better than none at all, special airline operations remain limited to certain routes and airports.

Flightradar24 data shows that Dubai International has seen just 100 takeoffs and landings since Saturday. Operations ramped up from Monday to Tuesday — but that was still less than 10% of the roughly 1,200 flights in and out on a usual day.

Rescue flights are largely restricted to the UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia: the skies over Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Qatar, and Bahrain remain closed.

Aviation analytics Cirium estimates there are normally about 900,000 daily seats to, from, and within the Middle East; it said about 4.4 million seats in and out of the Middle East have been canceled since Saturday.

While airlines are actively adding flights to the schedule — despite the on-and-off missile threats in the region — there are nowhere near enough rescue seats yet to accommodate the tens of thousands of stranded travelers. British Airways said on social media on Wednesday that the rescue flights it planned through Saturday are already full.

Some wealthy travelers have abandoned commercial flying altogether, instead paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to charter private jets. Flightradar24 data shows a number of business aircraft flying to and from Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE since Sunday.

Those with less deep pockets have chosen to travel by bus to Oman and Saudi Arabia, hoping to secure seats from airports still operating flights as normal.

But the drives are hourslong, and Oman Air warned Muscat-bound travelers crossing in from the UAE to arrive 12 hours early as traffic backs up for miles.

• Amazon shed employees in its robotics division this week.
• Overall, the company has eliminated more than 57,000 corporate roles since 2022.
• CEO Andy Jassy is trying to reset Amazon’s corporate culture and reduce bureaucracy.

Amazon cut jobs inside its robotics division this week, the latest reductions in a sweeping cost-cutting campaign.

In a message to employees on Tuesday, seen by Business Insider, Amazon Robotics VP Scott Dresser described the changes as “difficult but necessary.” He stressed that robotics remains a “strategic priority” even as the company restructures and pares back certain efforts.

It’s unclear how many employees were affected by Tuesday’s cuts. However, the decision underscores that Amazon is still trimming its ranks, even after slashing more than 57,000 corporate roles since late 2022, including rounds of layoffs in October and January.

In parallel, Amazon has been winding down underperforming initiatives, recently closing its Fresh and Go grocery chains after years of experimentation.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the company eliminated a “relatively small number of robotics roles” this week. Amazon continues to “hire and invest in strategic areas,” the spokesperson added.

“We regularly review our organizations to make sure teams are best set up to innovate and deliver for our customers,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting employees whose roles are affected with severance pay, health insurance benefits, and job placement support.”

Amazon’s vast fulfillment network relies on thousands of robots to shuttle goods across warehouses. But the team recently pulled back on Blue Jay, a warehouse robot project that launched just a few months ago, and is shifting toward a new robotics system, Business Insider previously reported.

After January’s broader layoffs by Amazon, which eliminated 16,000 corporate roles, HR chief Beth Galetti said the company was not aiming to establish “a new rhythm” of sweeping job reductions every few months, though she did not rule out further cuts.

As of the end of last year, Amazon employed about 1.58 million people worldwide, the bulk of them in warehouse and logistics positions. Roughly 350,000 of those workers are in corporate and technology roles.

Amazon has been shrinking its workforce since a pandemic-era hiring spree that dramatically expanded headcount to meet surging demand for e-commerce and cloud services.

CEO Andy Jassy has pushed to strip out layers of management and reshape Amazon’s culture to function more like the “world’s largest startup.” He has set internal goals to flatten the organization and introduced a “no bureaucracy” email alias to crowdsource ideas for operating more efficiently.

Even as it trims staff, Amazon is ramping up spending. The company has projected that capital expenditures could reach $200 billion in 2026, fueled by aggressive investments in AI data centers.

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• Golden Hour Medical develops products to help bystanders in emergencies.
• Its automatic tourniquet provides an easy-to-follow audiovisual guide for controlling bleeding.
• Community outreach and word of mouth have helped the company grow organically across industries.

This as-told-to is based on a conversation with Hannah Herbst, CEO of Golden Hour Medical, a Boca Raton, Florida, company that created AutoTQ, an automatic tourniquet system. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Blood loss is the leading cause of preventable death and trauma, and over a million people bleed to death each year.

Every time you turn on the news, you might see something that’s a consequence of blood loss, or people who are victims of it. I thought to myself: What would I do if something happened in my community? How would I help someone who’s bleeding out?

The reality is, if a million people are bleeding out every year, there are probably many millions more standing by and watching, who are helpless in that moment. That was the inspiration for AutoTQ — how do we empower bystanders to jump in and intervene at the moment of injury rather than wait for a professional to arrive?

We founded Gold Hour Medical in 2021. We’re based in Boca Raton, Florida, and have about 10 full- and part-time employees. But we’re hiring over the next few months.

We launched our first product, AutoTQ, a patented, FDA-registered automatic tourniquet, last year. AutoTQ didn’t come from one breakthrough moment; it came from hundreds of small decisions made by engineers, clinicians, manufacturers, and operators, each solving different problems together. It’s been amazing to see the adoption so far, and we’re excited.

We’re filling an important medical need

A tourniquet is a 2,000-year-old compression device. When someone is bleeding from their arm or leg, applying a tourniquet is the first intervention to stop a major bleed.

The problem is that most tourniquets on the market are designed for professionals, not for bystanders. AutoTQ provides audio and visual instructions to guide anyone through stopping a bleed. We also offer a training platform with demonstrations.

The company’s name, Golden Hour, represents the critical moments after an injury occurs. You have just seconds between injury and successful intervention before the person bleeds out.

Generating awareness has helped us grow

Our growth has always been driven by one question: How do we serve someone on the worst day of their life?

If you look at construction sites, for example, accidents happen. Those are the groups that really see the value in AutoTQ and want to implement the device.

When we show the product, people immediately want it, especially safety professionals who are overseeing hazardous industries like construction and manufacturing. Every day, 27 US workers experience work-related amputations or hospitalizations. They realize the need for this product.

Generating awareness has led to our growth. Over the past four years, we’ve focused on education and community-driven efforts, such as meeting with organizations like schools and manufacturing plants, rather than traditional paid advertising. We wanted to understand their first-response realities and shape the product around the people who would actually act in an emergency. So, we sought their feedback.

Because AutoTQ is considered a new device category, once people understand what it does and experience it firsthand, adoption follows naturally. When people realize that the product can boost their confidence in an emergency, often for the first time, they naturally share our tools with others.

Our research shows that 92% of people who tried AutoTQ under pressure applied the tourniquet correctly on their first try after watching our 30-second demo video.

Now, we have a national network of sales representatives and distributors who push AutoTQ out to their customers. A lot of the growth has been organic, word-of-mouth.

I didn’t anticipate how powerful word of mouth would be. Once someone saw the device or tried it, they told others. Our growth has been driven by people realizing they could actually help in an emergency and wanting others to feel that same confidence.

The most surprising and exciting part of the launch was how quickly people understood the need. Customers didn’t just evaluate the product; they immediately saw where it fit in their environment and wanted to implement it.

People see the product, and the most common reaction is, “Where has this been? Why has no one come up with this?”

I hope we’re in the right place at the right time

Hundreds of AutoTQ kits are currently used nationwide across different industries, including construction sites, manufacturing facilities, sports venues, hospitals, schools, and more. This includes Lee County, Florida, which has deployed the kits in several parks.

We view AutoTQ as following the Automated External Defibrillator model. We see more and more similar devices coming out to enable bystanders to intervene. We’re developing additional products that are easy for bystanders to use to help others, and we’ll release more details about them later this year.

Our goal in the first full year is to become the best in the industry at serving our customers. AutoTQ has gone through dozens of revisions to get to this point because we are relentless about building something that is right for the people using it.

Every feature, every adjustment, and every refinement has been driven by real-world feedback. We don’t see the launch as the finish line. It’s the beginning of listening, improving, and supporting our customers at the highest level.

Although I hope AutoTQ is not used, we live in a world that needs something like this. I hope that we’re in the right place at the right time.

We want to be in those places and support people in that moment where no help is coming, and it’s just them and the victim. We want to empower them to save a life.