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Top Univ. of Minn. grads are ‘as good, maybe better’ than Harvard’s best: former Goldman Sachs CEO

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When Lloyd Blankfein was CEO of Goldman Sachs, thousands of newly minted graduates from top universities joined the ranks of the investment banking giant.

But despite being a Harvard alum himself, he wasn’t a snob about where someone went to school and recognized that superior talent can come from outside the Ivy League.

In an interview on the Big Shot podcast two weeks ago, Blankfein pointed out that his colleague Gary Cohn, Goldman’s former president and chief operating officer, attended American University, and current CEO David Solomon went to Hamilton College.

To be sure, the overall population of grads from elite schools should exceed their peers elsewhere, Blankfein conceded.

“The average is going to be higher at these great schools, which are very, very hard to get into and have very high thresholds,” he said. “And the average person may be higher, and certainly the bottom quartile is going to be a lot higher.”

But when assessing the cream of the crop, that advantage disappears, Blankfein added. That’s because a large public university has a much bigger student population.

So surviving such a gauntlet to emerge at the head of the class means more than being the best in a significantly smaller pool.

“If you’re going to look at the tippy, tippy top of Harvard or the tippy, tippy top of the University of Minnesota—where you’re the top of 50,000 as opposed to the top of 1,600—and you’ve gone through that,” he said, “I would say that having gone through that they’re at least as good, maybe better.”

In fact, developing that edge actually begins before college even starts. Students who matriculated into non-elite universities have been “swimming upstream against a much bigger current,” Blankfein said.

But for students who went to top prep boarding schools like Choate or Andover, which send many grads to the Ivy League, “the current’s going with you.”

The comments come as Americans reconsider the value of a college degree as AI shrinks demand for entry-level workers in professional careers. By contrast, interest in skilled trades is booming as those jobs have been less affected by AI and don’t require taking out tens of thousands of dollars, or more, in student loans.

In addition, college students are increasingly using AI to do coursework, which is often graded by professors using AI. The academic rigor of higher education is also in doubt, with Harvard admitting that rampant grade inflation has resulted in about 60% of the marks that are handed out being A’s, up from 40% a decade ago and less than a quarter 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, author Malcolm Gladwell recently urged prospective college students to pick their second or third choice school, where they have a shot at being at the top of their class.

“If you’re interested in succeeding in an educational institution, you never want to be in the bottom half of your class. It’s too hard,” he said in an episode of the Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know podcast. “So you should go to Harvard if you think you can be in the top quarter of your class at Harvard. That’s fine. But don’t go there if you’re going to be at the bottom of class. Doing STEM? You’re just gonna drop out.”

But the proliferation of AI-generated résumés has made many applications appear identical, causing some recruiters to fall back on university prestige to distinguish candidates.

A 2025 survey of over 150 companies found that 26% were recruiting from a narrow range of schools, up from 17% that were doing the same in 2022, according to recruiting intelligence firm Veris Insights.

That means job applicants from top schools or those located near company headquarters have priority, Chelsea Schein, Veris’s vice president of research strategy, told the Wall Street Journal

“Everyone’s not starting from the same place if some people have access to on-campus engagement and some don’t,” she said. 



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Trump vows to protect Venezuela and tells Cuba to ‘make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE’

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Cuba, a major beneficiary of Venezuelan oil, has now been cut off from those shipments as U.S. forces continue to seize tankers in an effort to control the production, refining and global distribution of the country’s oil products.

Trump said on social media that Cuba long lived off Venezuelan oil and money and had offered security in return, “BUT NOT ANYMORE!”

“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!” Trump said in the post as he spent the weekend at his home in southern Florida. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not explain what kind of deal.

The Cuban government said 32 of its military personnel were killed during the American operation last weekend that captured Maduro. The personnel from Cuba’s two main security agencies were in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, as part of an agreement between Cuba and Venezuela.

“Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years,” Trump said Sunday. “Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.”

Trump also responded to another account’s social media post predicting that his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will be president of Cuba: “Sounds good to me!” Trump said.

Trump and top administration officials have taken an increasingly aggressive tone toward Cuba, which had been kept economically afloat by Venezuela. Long before Maduro’s capture, severe blackouts were sidelining life in Cuba, where people endured long lines at gas stations and supermarkets amid the island’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Trump has said previously that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, would slide further with the ouster of Maduro.

“It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.”



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Walmart teams with Alphabet for AI-assisted shopping on Gemini

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Walmart Inc. is partnering with Alphabet Inc. to offer AI-enhanced shopping on Google’s Gemini platform — part of the retailer’s race to apply the technology across its operations. 

Customers will be able to purchase items on Gemini’s browser or mobile app in the coming months, David Guggina, chief e-commerce officer of Walmart US, said in an interview. The selection will include apparel, consumables, entertainment and food products that are currently available at Walmart and Sam’s Club, he said. Customers can build a basket and purchase the items directly on Gemini, with Walmart handling orders. 

“We are moving past the era of the search bar,” Guggina said. “We aren’t just meeting people where they shop, we’re anticipating how they live.”  

Customers will be able to ask Gemini for tips and suggestions — such as which running shoes are the most recommended. Gemini will respond with items, including those sold at Walmart and Sam’s Club if relevant, which they can purchase directly.

Queries that aren’t tied to shopping could also include item recommendations. Gemini will assess people’s purchasing intent — for example an inquiry about removing a wine stain out of a rug could lead to links for related products sold at Walmart.

Fresh, frozen and marketplace items won’t be included in the initial offering, although the assortment will expand with time. 

AI is making inroads into consumers’ shopping habits, with people increasingly using the technology to research items or compare deals. Brands and retailers are creating new partnerships in order to capitalize — Walmart is also working with OpenAI

That deal, which lets shoppers buy items through ChatGPT, is in “very early days,” Guggina said. He added the retailer is aiming to make shopping experiences simpler, more personalized and anticipatory through AI.  

Other retailers are forging their own partnerships. Target Corp. is working with OpenAI to enhance shopping and help employees, with a goal of “weaving AI throughout the business.” 

The Bentonville, Arkansas-based company gained market share last year and has benefited from its scale as consumers hunt for deals. It’s pushing to incorporate AI into everything from supply-chain management to the shopping experience. 



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Iran threatens U.S. and Israel as protests enter third week

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Tehran warned the US and Israel against any intervention over nationwide protests in Iran while it sought to placate its citizens, as demonstrations entered their third week and fatalities mounted. 

Saturday marked the third night of intensified nationwide demonstrations, following calls by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former shah, to seize city centers and stage strikes. Since the unrests first began on Dec. 28, Donald Trump has repeatedly warned the Iranian regime not to fire on demonstrators, with the US president receiving a briefing in recent days on new options for military strikes.

The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights group said on Sunday it had confirmed the deaths of at least 192 protesters, including nine individuals under 18. Separately, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said deaths linked to the recent unrest had reached 116, with most killed by live ammunition or pellet gunfire. 

On Sunday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian struck a conciliatory tone in a state TV interview, offering condolences to families affected by the “tragic consequences” of the unrest.

“Your protests must be heard, and we must address your concerns. Let’s sit down together, hand in hand, and solve the problems,” he said, without offering details on how that would be done. “I promise the dear people, perhaps ninety percent of whom have concerns, that we will address their worries. We will get through this crisis.”

Still, Pezeshkian accused the US and Israel of bringing in “terrorists from abroad,” whom he claimed had set mosques and markets on fire, “beheaded some, and burned others alive.” Other officials took an even harder line. 

“In the event of a US military attack, both the occupied territories and US military and shipping centers will be legitimate targets for us,” Iran Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in remarks broadcast on state television earlier on Sunday. 

He reiterated a warning that Iran could act preemptively against potential threats. “Within the framework of legitimate self-defense, we do not limit ourselves to responding only after an attack,” he said.

Trump has been briefed in recent days on a range of options for military strikes in Iran, including nonmilitary sites, a White House official said, confirming an earlier New York Times report. The US president is seriously considering authorizing an attack, according to the official.

Israel’s Army Radio reported Sunday that the country’s security establishment views it as unlikely that Iran will attack Israel at this stage. “No such immediate willingness is identified in Israel — but rather an Iranian focus on internal matters,” it said, citing unidentified defense officials. 

Footage from Iranian cities suggests that hundreds of thousands, including many elderly, are defying stern warnings from authorities to stay off the streets, despite a nationwide internet blackout and severe telecommunications restrictions that have blocked calls and text messages since Thursday.

The NetBlocks internet‑monitoring group said in a posting on X early Sunday that internet connectivity in Iran “continues to flatline around 1% of ordinary levels.”

Still, multiple social media videos, reportedly from a warehouse in southern Tehran, show people searching through dozens of corpses in body bags, lined up on the ground and on stretchers. Wailing can be heard as individuals bend over the bags, trying to identify their loved ones.

A video published later on Sunday by the state-run IRIB News appeared to show scenes from the same warehouse — one of the first glimpses by official media into the scale of the fatalities. In the video, a reporter described the site as a complex of the state forensic organization in Tehran, with dozens of bodies inside a large indoor facility. Outside, dozens of people are seen huddling around ambulances and the back of what appears to be a refrigerated truck, searching for their relatives.

Protests erupted last month among pockets of traders in Tehran over worsening economic and living conditions but have since grown into the largest anti-regime demonstrations to grip the country since 2022, when the death in custody of Mahsa Amini triggered nationwide anger and mass protests.

Read more: How Sanctions and a Currency Crash Fueled Iran Unrest: QuickTake

Other videos, reportedly from west of Tehran on Saturday night, show thousands of protesters packed into the streets, waving phone flashlights in the dark as city lights remain shut down, amid whistles and chants of “Death to the dictator.” A truck was seen on fire in Mashhad, while footage purportedly from Sunday shows a state tax administration building burned out overnight in eastern Tehran. Bloomberg couldn’t independently verify any of the footage. 

In an X post on Sunday, Pahlavi urged protesters to continue their demonstrations through the weekend. He described Trump as “the leader of the free world” who is observing the unrest and “is ready to help you.”

Late on Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the US and Israel of fueling violent unrest and warned against any action directed at Tehran.

“The only ‘delusional’ aspect of the current situation is the belief that arson does not ultimately burn the arsonists,” Araghchi said.

Alongside those killed, another 2,638 people had been detained, the Human Rights Activists organization said. Some of those killed included medical personnel, and seven of the victims were under 18, it added.

Iran’s prosecutor general warned on Saturday of swift trials and death penalty charges against detainees, a day after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the security apparatus won’t tolerate “vandalism” or “people acting as mercenaries for foreign powers.”



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