The Trump administration says its proposal to roll back vehicle fuel economy standards, announced officially in the Oval Office on Wednesday, is an attempt to shave dollars off the ballooning cost of new cars in the US.
But the intended price drops likely won’t show up on dealership lots and showroom floors for months if not years, given the length of automakers’ product planning schedule. It would also likely force Americans to pay more, long-term, at another place they tend to visit more frequently: the pump.
The proposal from the US Department of Transportation would require automakers to reach a fleet-wide average of 34.5 miles per gallon by model year 2031, down from the 50.4-miles-per-gallon benchmark set by the Biden administration. (The Biden-era rules called for a 49-miles-per-gallon average in 2026.) The department estimates the change could save US auto buyers around $1,000 per car, adding up to $109 billion over the next five years. New vehicles now cost more than $49,000 on average, according to Edmunds. The government will accept public comments on the proposal through mid-January. It could be finalized sometime next year.
The rollback is part of a larger federal about-face on not only auto policy, but the government’s attitude on climate change. The Biden administration took a carrot-and-stick approach to vehicles and their effect on the environment. Light-duty cars and trucks alone are responsible for some 15 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. The previous administration tried to boost electric vehicle adoption by using tax subsidies for consumers and manufacturers interested in building fuel-efficient vehicles and technologies, including batteries. It also introduced penalties for those unable or unwilling to meet stricter environmental standards. Automakers should be able to hit next decade’s goals by selling more electric vehicles, the government then reasoned.
But as consumers failed to take to EVs quite as quickly as once hoped, automakers complained the rules were too onerous. “We’ve been clear and consistent: The current [fuel economy] rules finalized under the previous administration are extremely challenging for automakers to achieve given the current marketplace for EVs,” wrote John Bozzella, the president and CEO of top auto trade organization the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, in a media statement on Wednesday.
The new proposal, though intended to make new cars more affordable, won’t be a quick fix for consumers looking for price relief, analysts and environmental advocates say. “The regulatory landscape remains stop-and-start,” said Jessica Caldwell, the head of insights at Edmunds, in a media statement. The last Trump administration rolled back fuel economy standards, too. What might the next president do? Meanwhile, the administration continues to waffle on auto tariffs, which have forced US and global automakers to think about not only where their vehicles are manufactured but also where parts and base materials are made, too. That complexity adds expenses to automaking.
Also pushing up costs for automakers: the challenge of developing new technology like automated vehicle features and figuring out how to keep selling gas-powered vehicles to Americans while drivers in other countries take the leap to EVs. “Easing these requirements helps at the margins,” says Caldwell, “but it is unlikely to dramatically alter the broader commitments [automakers] have already made.”
The move, if finalized, could be better news for gas companies. “Weakening fuel economy standards won’t do much to make cars more affordable but is certain to make Americans buy a lot more gasoline,” says Albert Gore, the executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, a group that represents companies up and down the electric vehicle supply chain.
Vodafone Group (LSE:VOD) has quietly outperformed the wider market this year, with the share price up about 38% year to date and roughly 40% over the past year.
See our latest analysis for Vodafone Group.
That steady climb, including a roughly 10% 1 month share price return and a 39% 1 year total shareholder return, suggests momentum is building as investors warm to Vodafone Group’s operational reset and earnings recovery potential.
If Vodafone’s rebound has caught your eye, this could be a good moment to broaden your radar and discover fast growing stocks with high insider ownership.
But after such a sharp rerating, is Vodafone Group still trading at a meaningful discount to its long term value, or has the market already moved ahead and priced in the next leg of its recovery?
With the narrative fair value sitting at £0.90 versus a last close of £0.95, the current price leans ahead of those long term assumptions.
The analysts have a consensus price target of £0.858 for Vodafone Group based on their expectations of its future earnings growth, profit margins and other risk factors. However, there is a degree of disagreement amongst analysts, with the most bullish reporting a price target of £1.36, and the most bearish reporting a price target of just £0.6.
Read the complete narrative.
Curious what kind of revenue climb, margin rebuild, and future earnings multiple are needed to back that view? The narrative hinges on bolder assumptions than you might expect.
Result: Fair Value of $0.90 (OVERVALUED)
Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.
However, Vodafone’s weak German performance and complex restructuring efforts could derail revenue growth and margin rebuild expectations if execution stumbles.
Find out about the key risks to this Vodafone Group narrative.
While the narrative fair value suggests Vodafone Group looks slightly overvalued, its 0.7x price to sales ratio looks far cheaper than both peers at 2.0x and its own 1.5x fair ratio. This hints the market may still be underestimating the turnaround.
See what the numbers say about this price — find out in our valuation breakdown.
LSE:VOD PS Ratio as at Dec 2025
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Companies discussed in this article include VOD.L.
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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on December 02, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Stock futures are little changed Thursday night as traders await inflation data that could further inform the Federal Reserve’s upcoming interest rate decision.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 3 points, or 0.01%. S&P futures and Nasdaq 100 futures were both slightly above the flatline.
In the previous session, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite closed slightly higher, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day just below the flatline. The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed its eighth positive session in nine, buoyed by a 3.4% gain in Meta shares and a 2.1% gain in Nvidia.
Traders are keeping a close eye on a variety of economic data points, as the November payrolls report is scheduled to come out after the Fed’s Dec. 10 meeting.
Investors earlier digested a report from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas that showed job cuts in November moved ahead of 1 million for the year, with corporate restructuring, artificial intelligence and tariffs contributing to the losses. Thursday’s release of the latest weekly jobless claims numbers — which showed new applications for unemployment insurance at their lowest level since Sept. 2022 — did not appear to dent sentiment during the trading session.
Investors are hoping that signs of a softening labor market will influence the Fed to lower rates by a quarter percentage point at its next meeting. Traders are pricing in an 87% chance of a cut next Wednesday, far higher than just a couple weeks ago, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
“The data is mixed that we’re getting, and you’re seeing different signals. Inflation is still sticky where it is,” Sonali Basak, iCapital chief investment strategist, said Thursday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.” “2026 is a wild card as it pertains to inflation. No one has that crystal ball. And you have that with the labor market that has generally held up ‘low hire-low fire.’ If that tips over, then you’re in a pretty sticky spot next year.”
The market will be able to sort through a fresh slate of economic releases on Friday. The Commerce Department will release delayed September data on consumer spending and incomes as well as the personal consumption expenditures index, also considered the Fed’s primary inflation gauge. The PCE report will be the first one since the record-setting U.S. government shutdown. The University of Michigan will also release its consumer survey for December on Friday.
Stocks are managing to eke out slight gains this week. The S&P 500 is up 0.1%, while the Nasdaq and 30-stock Dow have added nearly 0.6% and 0.3%, respectively.
Chris ClementsScotland social affairs correspondent
BBC
Nancy Dunnachie wants to know where her husband’s pension contributions went
Public money will be used to plug gaps in a pension scheme run by an iconic bakery firm that collapsed in 2023.
Former workers at Morton’s Rolls Limited – well-known in the west of Scotland for its crispy morning rolls – had complained that their employer missed payments to the scheme in the run-up to its liquidation.
This was despite deductions being made from their salaries for their pension. BBC Scotland News has seen evidence of gaps in payments to the scheme of up to a year.
A spokesperson for the UK Insolvency Service tells the BBC that National Insurance funds will now be used to pay for the missing contributions.
Nancy Dunnachie, 65, the widow of a former Morton’s Rolls employee tells BBC Scotland: “He kept going on about how they were a ‘shower of rogues’.”
She is talking about her late husband’s former employer as she sifts through a pile of letters from his pension company.
Each letter bears the same heading – ‘payment due to your pension plan’ – and they span a period from 2020 to 2023.
The letters from Standard Life inform William Dunnachie, a former driver for the Glasgow bakery company, that a “payment expected from your employer for [date] was not received for the latest date for payment”.
Mr Dunnachie received multiple letters saying his employer had missed payments
Payments had been missed by Morton’s in various months across the three-year period.
Ms Dunnachie says she has lost count of how many similar letters she has.
She then shows us the payslips from the same period as the letters. They show clear deductions by his employer from William Dunnachie’s earnings for his pension fund.
“He kept getting all these letters in to say that the pension hadn’t been paid,” she says. “But it had been coming off his wages. I think he had asked two or three folk about it, and obviously the boys at work had been talking about it too.
“They [the company] were taking the money off his wages and they weren’t paying it… So where is that money?”
Wullie – to those that knew him – died of a heart attack last October while waiting for redundancy money. He was 66.
At her home in Cumnock, Ayrshire, Ms Dunnachie shows the BBC a redundancy cheque for more than £13,000. It finally arrived last month after a two-year legal battle over who would cover the costs.
She says it is money she can’t yet access due to it being in her husband’s name.
And she still wants answers about his pension deductions made by Morton’s Rolls Limited.
Alan Love worked at Morton’s Rolls for 32 years
The BBC spoke to a number of former Morton’s employees who complained of missing pension payments – money they claim the collapsed company had deducted from their salary but had failed to pass on to Standard Life’s pension scheme.
One worker sent us emails showing how he had been complaining about the issue as early as 2019.
Another is Alan Love, 64, a former driver who served 32 years at Morton’s.
He showed the BBC a statement provided by Standard Life that showed numerous gaps in payments made by Morton’s Rolls Limited. This includes a gap between December 2021 and January 2023.
When asked where his pension payments had gone, he says. “It gets taken off my wages every week, so you tell me.
“For the first couple of years we paid into that scheme, there was never any problem.
“And then, all of a sudden, you’re behind. And then you’re going further behind.
“And then you’re playing catch-up, and then mega catch-up.
“Then the place goes bust and you are two years light on your pension… That isn’t right.”
Alan Love tells the BBC he had contacted the Pensions Regulator (TPR) – a UK body that protects workplace pensions – about the issue before the company went bust.
“It’s not about blowing the lid on anything,” he says. “It’s about getting those payments back, how do I get them back?
“I told them, if this place goes into liquidation, I’ll be playing catch-up.
“And as God is my judge, the only time I didn’t pay into the pension was the week before we went into liquidation.”
A TPR spokesperson said: “We do not comment on individual pension schemes or employers unless appropriate to do so.”
Family handout
William Dunnachie died of a heart attack last October while waiting for redundancy money
William Dunnachie had also worked for Morton’s for 32 years. He was let go in March 2023.
The Drumchapel-based company – well-known across the west of Scotland for its crispy morning rolls – had been suffering financial difficulties before its eventual collapse, with 230 workers being made redundant.
Less than a month later, 110 workers were recalled to work after Morton’s assets were taken over by a new company, Phoenix Volt Limited. A former director of the collapsed company now works for the new company.
Because the former company is in liquidation, there followed a two-year court dispute as 98 workers fought for payouts from the UK government’s Redundancy Payments Service (RPS).
Normally, workers could claim a redundancy payment, but the government argued they were not entitled and said jobs were protected as they had been transferred to the new owner.
Last week, an employment tribunal ruled that workers were entitled to payments as the company was already in liquidation at the time the business was transferred.
The RPS will now pay those funds from the National Insurance Fund.
Paul Kissen, of Thompsons Solicitors, represented the claim.
He estimates his clients could share about £500,000 in redundancy payments.
“There was a level of legitimacy to the government’s challenge because it had to be determined through a complex tribunal process to establish that it was liable,” he says.
“But I think the impact of having to wait so long is unsatisfactory. In my view, if there was a way to expedite this process if there are so many people, that would be the best outcome.”
He is now looking to secure compensation – a “protective award” for Morton’s Rolls failing to consult its employees before redundancy.
Mr Kissen said total payments for his clients could reach £1m – all paid for from the National Insurance Fund.
“Some of these people worked at the company for over 30 years. As a result of the sudden dismissal, they were without any financial means for a long period of time,” he adds.
“Many people managed to secure benefits, many of them didn’t. Some people took very unwell and one of my clients sadly passed away.”
He also told the BBC that some of his clients – William Dunnachie, Alan Love and others – had complained of missing pensions payments.
‘Established process’
A spokesperson for Standard Life tells the BBC there is an “established process” when employer pension contributions are late.
“This was triggered in the case with Morton’s Rolls Limited prior to its insolvency,” he says.
“Employers have until the 21st of the following month to pay outstanding contributions, after which the pension provider initiates a 90-day process to chase contributions.
“If payments are still outstanding at this point, the provider is obliged to inform the Pension Regulator who has a number of enforcement powers to try and pursue contributions with the employer.
“At this point, the pension provider also issues letters to members to inform them about the outstanding contributions.”
In 2023, FRP advisory Trading was appointed administrator of Morton’s Rolls Limited.
The administrator told the BBC that a fresh application was being made to the RPS to cover unpaid pension contributions.
Under the scheme, employees can reclaim contributions deducted from their pay, but not paid into their pension, for the 12 months before the employer became insolvent.
An Insolvency Service spokesperson said: “The Insolvency Service has reviewed the ruling and has decided not to appeal the decision, and the Redundancy Payments Service is currently making payments, including pension payments, to affected employees.”
(Bloomberg) — Asian equities looked set for a weak start after a lackluster session on Wall Street weighed on tech stocks and bonds and saw Bitcoin halt its rebound ahead of next week’s Federal Reserve decision.
Equity index futures for Japan and Hong Kong pointed to declines with stocks in Australia opening lower. US futures were little changed after the S&P 500 climbed 0.1% in the previous session. The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose three basis points to 4.1% on Thursday, the dollar fluctuated and Bitcoin dropped below $93,000.
The muted moves underscore that risk sentiment remained fragile even as the S&P 500 has rebounded in the past two weeks to be within 0.5% of its record closing high. Those gains partly reflected easing concerns over tech valuations and confidence among traders that the Fed will deliver a 25 basis point interest rate cut next week in its last meeting of the year.
Small-caps were a bright spot during the US session though. The Russell 2000 Index climbed 0.8% to a record high, in a sign gains in the stock market are broadening to companies more sensitive to economic growth.
“The key question hanging over markets is whether a potential Federal Reserve rate cut next week can trigger a so-called Santa rally,” said Fawad Razaqzada at Forex.com. “For now, the S&P 500 forecast remains cautiously constructive, albeit with more hesitancy creeping in.”
Bets on a Fed reduction remained intact despite a slide in jobless claims — a noisy reading that captured the Thanksgiving period. Meta Platforms Inc. shares jumped 3.4% after people familiar with the matter said executives are considering budget cuts for the metaverse group.
MSCI Inc.’s gauge for Asian equities rose nearly 1% in the previous session, capping a third straight day of gains. Focus today will be on an interest-rate decision in India and data releases on household spending in Japan, inflation in the Philippines and Taiwan. Markets are closed in Thailand.
US government bonds were sold off on Thursday as data showed signs of resilience in the jobs market. Applications for US unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest in more than three years, indicating that employers are still largely holding onto workers despite a wave of recent layoffs. Separate data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed announced layoffs at US companies fell last month after surging in October, but were still the highest for any November in three years.
“Overall, the net takeaway from the data served to confirm the crosscurrents evident in the labor landscape,” said Ian Lyngen at BMO Capital Markets.
Federal Reserve
Policymakers will not yet have the government’s November jobs report in hand for their meeting next week. The report, originally due Dec. 5, was delayed until Dec. 16 as a result of the record-long government shutdown. That release will also include October payrolls figures.
“There remain some negative payroll employment readings. But the US labor market is not collapsing based on timely data and reports that have leading indicator properties,” said Don Rissmiller at Strategas. “We continue to believe the Fed will cut the fed funds rate again by 25 basis points in December.”
While investors are largely betting policymakers will cut rates again, officials have rarely been so divided as many still prefer leaving rates elevated to keep inflation in check.
Before their meeting, Fed officials will get a dated reading on their preferred inflation gauge. On Friday, the September income and spending report — also delayed because of the government shutdown — is due to be released.
The figures will include the personal consumption expenditures price index and a core measure that excludes food and energy. Economists project a third-straight 0.2% increase in the core index. That would keep the year-over-year figure hovering just below 3%, a sign that inflationary pressures are stable, yet sticky.
“We continue to expect two rate cuts by the end of the first quarter of 2026, with Friday’s personal consumption expenditure index likely to show price pressures under control,” said Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi at UBS Global Wealth Management.
Corporate News
Australian data center group NextDC Ltd. and ChatGPT-developer OpenAI agreed to partner on the development of a large-scale data center in Sydney. NextDC’s shares jumped. The cloud-computing startup Fluidstack is in talks to raise roughly $700 million in a funding round that would value the company at $7 billion, according to a person familiar with the situation. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. plans to team up with Morgan Stanley in asset management, deepening their 17-year partnership. Jane Street Group’s record haul this year has been boosted by savvy bets on the artificial intelligence boom that are showing up as big gains in its trading results, according to people familiar with the matter. China’s crackdown on borrowing by local governments is forcing state-run entities in even some of the wealthiest provinces to tap costly credit from non-bank lenders, a stopgap that’s building up risks in an opaque corner of the financial system. Nvidia Corp. would be barred from shipping advanced artificial intelligence chips to China under bipartisan legislation unveiled Thursday in a bid to codify existing US restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors to the Chinese market. Some of the main moves in markets:
Stocks
S&P 500 futures were little changed as of 8:20 a.m. Tokyo time Hang Seng futures fell 0.2% Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.2% Currencies
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed The euro was little changed at $1.1642 The Japanese yen was little changed at 155.16 per dollar The offshore yuan was little changed at 7.0696 per dollar The Australian dollar was little changed at $0.6607 Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin rose 0.1% to $92,300.2 Ether rose 0.5% to $3,139.49 Bonds
Australia’s 10-year yield declined one basis point to 4.69% Commodities
West Texas Intermediate crude was little changed Spot gold was little changed This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.
Aptar today announced that it has been named one of America’s Most Responsible Companies 2026 by Newsweek for the seventh consecutive year. Aptar is ranked number 56 out of 600 U.S. companies.
“Being recognized by Newsweek for the seventh consecutive year underscores our strong commitment to sustainability as a responsible corporate citizen. Our leadership in sustainable solutions positions us at the forefront of industry transformation, enabling global brands to meet evolving customer and consumer expectations. We continue to invest in renewable energy, certify sites as landfill free, and develop innovative products that are more recyclable, reusable, refillable and incorporate sustainable materials. This is progress that strengthens our competitive advantage and creates long-term value for all stakeholders,” said Stephan B. Tanda, Aptar President and CEO.
In addition to the recognition by Newsweek, Aptar was recently recognized by Forbes as a World’s Top Companies for Women, one of the World’s Most Sustainable Companies by TIME and was also named to the CDP A-list for the fourth consecutive year.
Aptar actively strives to create new opportunities through product innovation while respecting the planet. As an active member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBSCD) the company is working alongside other leaders to further actions towards a more circular economy. Aptar publishes an annual Sustainability Report and GRI Index to record and highlight its sustainability efforts.
Newsweek, in partnership with Statista, evaluated the top 2,000 largest public companies with U.S. headquarters by revenue, based on publicly available data encompassing the three pillars of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) and a company perception study of 26,000 individuals. Both the survey and analysis evaluated over 30 key performance indicators (KPIs), including emissions, energy use, board diversity, as well as disclosure and transparency. The ranking represents the 600 U.S. companies with the highest overall CSR scores, across 14 industries.
The full list of America’s Most Responsible Companies 2026 by Newsweek can be found here.
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A US private equity firm has agreed to postpone a disputed deal to sell its stake in a large gas driller to one of its own funds, after a large Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund sued to block the transaction.
Houston-based Energy & Minerals Group has consented to the delay of the planned sale of a 30 per cent stake in Ascent Resources, one of the largest private natural gas drillers in the US, to one of its sister funds after the Abu Dhabi Investment Council alleged the deal short-changed investors.
The lawsuit, reported exclusively by the Financial Times on Wednesday, asked for an emergency halt to EMG’s planned sale of its Ascent stake to a new so-called continuation fund managed by the PE group by the end of the year. The two parties agreed on Thursday morning to delay the transaction until at least late February, after it was vetted by a commercial arbiter, they said in a motion approved by a Delaware court.
The dispute between the sovereign wealth fund, which is part of the $300bn investing giant Mubadala and EMG, an energy investor founded by John Raymond, son of longtime Exxon chief executive Lee Raymond, shone a further spotlight on the potential conflicts that can arise as PE groups resort to selling assets between funds to exit ageing investments.
Abu Dhabi Investment Council accused EMG of forcing a “conflicted sale” of Ascent Resources at too low a valuation in an effort to “reap a massive benefit for themselves at the expense of ADIC and the other investors”.
The sovereign wealth fund objected to the price EMG was offering for Ascent Resources, which holds vast gas reserves in Ohio’s Utica shale. It also accused the PE group of using the fund-to-fund sale to reset performance fees on a deal it said was unlikely to generate lucrative “carried interest” fees, if it were sold to an independent buyer or taken public.
The lawsuit comes as many private equity investors and advisers have warned about the fraught nature of fund-to-fund deals, with PE groups acting as both the seller and the buyer in the transactions. Such deals have soared in popularity as private equity groups have struggled to find buyers for trillions of dollars in unsold assets. Continuation deals amounted to a record 19 per cent of all PE asset sales in the first half of 2025, the FT previously reported.
In addition to asking for an injunction against its continuation fund deal, the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund is calling for EMG to run a full sale process for Ascent Resources, which it believes would have interest from strategic buyers or could be taken public.
The sovereign fund declined to comment on ongoing litigation. EMG and its lawyers did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Chinese hackers target critical infrastructure with “Brickstorm” malware
China denies involvement, calls accusations “irresponsible”
US, Canadian governments share details on Brickstorm
Dec 4 (Reuters) – Chinese-linked hackers used sophisticated malware to penetrate and maintain long-term access to unnamed government and information technology entities, U.S. and Canadian cybersecurity agencies said on Thursday.
The Chinese-linked hacking operations are the latest example of Chinese hackers targeting critical infrastructure, infiltrating sensitive networks and “embedding themselves to enable long-term access, disruption, and potential sabotage,” Madhu Gottumukkala, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in an advisory, opens new tab signed by CISA, the National Security Agency and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.
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Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in an email that the Chinese government does not “encourage, support or connive at cyber attacks,” and that “we reject the relevant parties’ irresponsible assertion” about the activities in question, when the parties had “neither put forward any request related to the issue nor presented any factual evidence.”
Chinese-linked hackers have been targeting a host of U.S. and global telecommunications companies and other sensitive targets in recent years, according to U.S. government warnings. In October, sources linked a hack targeting U.S. cybersecurity company F5 to Chinese-linked hackers.
According to the advisory, which was published alongside a more detailed malware analysis report, opens new tab, the state-backed hackers are using malware known as “Brickstorm” to target multiple government services and information technology entities. Once inside victim networks, the hackers can steal login credentials and other sensitive information and potentially take full control of targeted computers.
In one case, the attackers used Brickstorm to penetrate a company in April 2024 and maintained access through at least September 3, 2025, according to the advisory. CISA Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity Nick Andersen declined to share details about the total number of government organizations targeted or specifics around what the hackers did once they penetrated their targets during a call with reporters on Thursday.
The advisory and malware analysis reports are based on eight Brickstorm samples obtained from targeted organizations, according to CISA. The hackers are deploying the malware against VMware vSphere, a product sold by Broadcom’s (AVGO.O), opens new tab VMware to create and manage virtual machines within networks.
A Broadcom spokesperson said in an email that the company was aware of reports of hackers using Brickstorm “after obtaining access to customer environments.” The company encourages all customers to apply up-to-date software patches and adhere to strong operational security, the spokesperson said.
In September, Google’s Threat Intelligence Group reported responding to Brickstorm-linked intrusions across a range of industries, including legal services, software service providers, business process outsourcers and technology.
In addition to traditional espionage, the hackers in those cases likely also used the operations to develop new, previously unknown vulnerabilities and establish pivot points to broader access to more victims, Google said at the time.
Reporting by AJ Vicens in Detroit; Editing by Matthew Lewis
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Cybersecurity correspondent covering cybercrime, nation-state threats, hacks, leaks and intelligence
Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek has released a mathematical reasoning model that can identify and correct its own errors. The model beat the best human score in one of the world’s most prestigious undergraduate maths competitions.
The model, DeepSeekMath-V2, scored 118 out of 120 points on questions from the 2024 William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, beating the top human score of 90. The model also performed at the level of gold-medal winners in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) 2025 and the 2024 China Mathematical Olympiad. The results are described in a preprint1 posted on arXiv on 27 November.
“We are at a point where AI is about as good at maths as a smart undergraduate student,” says Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London. “It is very exciting.”
In February, AlphaGeometry 2, an AI problem solver created by Google DeepMind in London, also achieved a gold-level performance in the IMO. The feat was repeated in July by Gemini’s Deep Think, which is owned by DeepMind.
Reasoning over answers
Early approaches to training large language models for mathematical reasoning focused on the accuracy of final answers, the preprint authors write. But a correct answer does not guarantee correct reasoning. At times, a correct final answer might just be a result of a fortunate error. Moreover, an exclusive focus on the end result is not useful in proving mathematical laws or formulae, when the logical reasoning is more important than the final answer.
Tong Xie, a chemist specialising in AI-driven discoveries at UNSW Sydney in Australia, says the researchers behind DeepSeek, as well as those developing Gemini’s Deep Think, have been working on overcoming this problem by rewarding reasoning over the final answer.
DeepSeekMath-V2 introduces self-verifiable mathematical reasoning for the first time. The model consists of a verifier trained to evaluate mathematical proofs — which are built on a series of step-by-step deductions — to identify logical flaws and assign scores based on how rigorous the proof was. A meta-verification system then checks whether the verifier’s critiques are accurate, reducing the likelihood of hallucinations and improving trustworthiness. These components work with a proof generator that constructs solutions and evaluates its own work, refining arguments until no further issues can be found.
The design creates a feedback loop: the verifier improves the generator, and as the generator produces more-challenging proofs, these become new training data to strengthen the verifier.
The system was able to solve five out of six problems, scoring 83.3%, in the 2025 IMO. It was, however, unable to solve the hardest problems set in 2025 and in past IMOs.
Math-V2 relies on self-verification using natural language in the model itself, Xie says. This reduces human involvement and makes the model more cost-effective and scalable.
Gemini’s Deep Think, by contrast, verifies mathematical reasoning using an external, symbolic language called Lean, and its verification process requires extensive expert input. The method is nearly free of hallucination, but it is computationally expensive and resource-intensive, Xie says.
