Month: September 2025

Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted Thursday. The news came just days after President Donald Trump forced out a US attorney who declined to bring such charges, publicly pushed for prosecutions of Comey and other political foes, and installed a loyalist who quickly gave him what he wanted.

Tehran – Iran recalled its ambassadors to France, Germany, and the UK on Saturday to consult over the dispute mechanism for reinstating UN sanctions, reports 24brussels.

The decision follows a failed last-minute attempt by the UN Security Council to postpone sanctions, with Western nations citing weeks of negotiations that did not yield a “concrete” agreement. As a result, the deadline for reinstating sanctions arrives today.

This move came after a Russian and Chinese initiative to defer the reinstatement of international sanctions on Iran, which had limited support at the Security Council, ultimately facilitating the path for sanctions to be reimposed. Only four countries backed the resolution proposed by Russia and China, leaving it unpassed.

China, Russia, Pakistan, and Algeria supported extending Iran’s negotiation period with the E3 countries—comprising the UK, France, and Germany—and the United States, which exited the nuclear accord in 2018.

What happened at the UN Security Council meeting?

During the Security Council proceedings, Iran’s foreign minister condemned the US for undermining diplomatic efforts, accusing France, the UK, and Germany of having “buried” diplomacy.

“This sordid mess did not come about overnight. Both the E3 and the U.S. have consistently misrepresented Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”

Following the vote, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed journalists and Iran experts at a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, asserting that despite earlier threats, Iran would not withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which North Korea exited in 2003.

The reinstated sanctions are expected to lead to the freezing of Iranian assets abroad, inhibit arms agreements with Tehran, and impose penalties on advancements in Iran’s ballistic missile program, tightening economic pressure on the country.

Why did Europe trigger the snapback sanctions mechanism last month?

In the previous month, European leaders activated the “snapback” mechanism, citing Iran’s failure to comply with the nuclear accord and the lack of successful high-level diplomatic negotiations.

The UK, France, and Germany initiated these sanctions due to Tehran’s non-cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and its avoidance of direct discussions with the US.

Beginning in 2007, the European nations implemented sanctions against Iran due to its nuclear program, with significant actions taken in June of that year when Britain, France, and Germany announced sanctions for Iran’s uranium enrichment expansion and limited access for UN inspectors.

• 137 Ventures mostly invests in secondary markets, holding stakes in SpaceX and Anduril.
• It scaled an early “few million bucks” in Palmer Luckey’s Anduril into a $100 million position.
• The firm also focuses on deep tech, with investments in Applied Intuition and Impulse Space.

From Capitol Hill gatherings with President Donald Trump to Silicon Valley boardrooms, 137 Ventures has built its edge by scooping up stakes in hot startups like SpaceX and Anduril through the secondary market. This means it buys and sells stakes in companies that have already been issued or owned by another investor. It’s now doubling down on deep tech bets that other VCs have stayed away from.

“Can we find the next four Facebooks?” Christian Garrett, 33, a partner at the firm, asked, bluntly framing the firm’s ambition. “Or 40 Facebooks?”

“Our thesis is driven by wanting to build concentrated positions over longer durations in what we think are generational technology companies,” he told Business Insider.

The fund’s investments have also extended Garrett’s reach in DC. In 2021, Garrett cofounded the Hill and Valley Forum, a gathering of tech titans and DC power players focused on countering China’s technological rise. Politico reported that Garrett played host to the July AI summit’s afterparty this summer and is reportedly raising money for a new film production company aimed at making patriotic-coded films, according to Semafor.

“Christian is a super connector,” Chris Power, the CEO of AI manufacturing startup Hadrian, said, adding he is “helpful in thinking about how the world is going and where we can be best positioned.”

‘Zero to One’

Moments before President Donald Trump took the stage at July’s Winning the AI Race Summit in Washington, DC, Garrett, seated in the front, stuck his arm out for a selfie.

He says he “always knew he wanted to be a venture investor” because they can “use their position to do a lot of good.” His inspiration came largely from his grandfather, Bernard Garrett, a prolific investor who became one of the US’s wealthiest Black men of the last century. Bernard was also the subject of Apple TV’s movie, “The Banker,” and started a children’s scholarship fund.

Like many in Silicon Valley, the younger Garrett read Peter Thiel’s 2014 book “Zero to One” when it first came out, which he says was “a big unlock.”

Justin Fishner-Wolfson, 43, 137 cofounder and managing partner, didn’t always have as high a conviction as Garrett: “Honestly, I doubt most kids could even tell you what venture is,” he told Business Insider.

Fishner-Wolfson received a master’s degree in computer science and a bachelor’s degree in management science and engineering from Stanford and eventually landed at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. In 2010, he cofounded 137 Ventures with S. Alexander Jacobson and Kathy Chan.

Garrett joined the fund in 2019 and graduated from the University of Kansas, where he played Division 1 basketball.

While venture capital firms and retail investors alike are warming up to secondary markets as a way into the most coveted companies, 137 Ventures has bet on this model since the beginning.

“Our belief was that it wasn’t going to be an anomaly,” Fishner-Wolfson said, referring to Facebook, which remained private for eight years before going public in 2012. “It was this longer-term trend, which is, as it turns out, exactly what happened.”

The through line remains the same: Gain access to breakout winners, no matter the entry point.

Like many other venture capitalists, Fishner-Wolfson thinks he gets the best deal flow from relationship building. “How do you befriend people?” he asked. “That’s the question. I don’t think it’s that complicated.”

Betting Big on Deep Tech

137 Ventures, with $6 billion in assets under management, has always leaned into deep tech, betting early on category winners like defense tech-and-data-juggernaut Palantir.

Fishner-Wolfson said he wrote the firm’s first check into SpaceX on “day one,” and scaled an early “few million bucks” in Anduril into a $100 million position.

The firm’s flexibility on funding rounds and types of investment has allowed it to double down on defense tech, especially as the industry has gone mainstream. “There’s been a real shift,” Fishner-Wolfson said, noting the widespread change in tone since Google employees protested “the most prosaic of tech products,” he added, during the Project Maven fallout in 2018.

Today, 137’s current deep-tech portfolio also includes autonomous vehicle startup Applied Intuition and satellite startup Impulse Space.

“The goal is to get into the best companies,” Fishner-Wolfson said. “If you are, who cares about the other details?”

• Dr. Steven Austad is the scientific director of the American Federation for Aging Research.
• Austad believes too many people are obsessed with longevity, focusing on dubious trends.
• Austad follows 2 habits for his health: heavy exercise and time-restricted eating.

Dr. Steven Austad, the scientific director of a nonprofit researching healthy aging, never fretted too deeply about his own longevity.

“I used to train lions for a living,” Austad told Business Insider. “It was not something that you would do if you were thinking about living a long time.”

Prior to his career at the American Federation for Aging Research, Austad was a biologist who focused on field work in places like Venezuela and East Africa. He became interested in aging research not because he wanted to crack the code to living forever, but to learn why healthy cells age at all. When he entered the field, he said many researchers had the same question, and were not necessarily motivated by extending their own lifespans.

Things have changed since, as more people pursue anti-aging trends — often, Austad said, with dubious science backing the claims. “I’m not one of those people who spends an hour a day in a hyperbaric chamber or gets infusions of some weird protein-vitamin cocktail,” he said. “But in fact, I’m quite healthy, despite the years I spent in the field, and I had malaria.”

For example, Austad doesn’t take supplements, citing a lack of strong-enough evidence of their guaranteed longevity benefits, and he enjoys a glass of wine here and there. “If you spend all your time thinking about how long you’re going to live, you kind of forget to live,” he said.

Austad shared a few simple longevity habits he’s followed for years, which he said are both science-backed and “basically the things that my mother probably told me.”

He exhausts himself at the gym

When Austad was a field biologist, he traveled to Papua New Guinea. Upon landing, his group had to climb to the top of a mountain. The village headman gave Austad’s bag to his 12-year-old daughter to carry, because Austad would “slow them down too much.” Offended at first, Austad was grateful to be baggage-free an hour later. He was also stunned by the girl’s level of fitness.

“To me, that was a window into what our bodies evolved to be like,” he said. The villagers never had osteoporosis or other conditions caused by sedentary lifestyles.

It’s a huge reason he prioritizes serious exercise almost every day of the week.

“I am kind of a gym rat,” Austad said. Because of an old lion injury on his knee, he bikes for his cardio, ranging from 40 minutes to an hour and a half. He also prioritizes strength training, alternating areas of his body and always including some core exercises.

“I probably spend one to two hours a day in the gym, which it’s a big commitment for someone who’s in academics,” he said. “I basically physically exhaust my body into submission.” Being athletic since youth, he said he always loved the feeling extremely tired at the end of a workout.

Research shows many benefits of exercise. “It used to be that we thought this exercise good for your heart and lungs, good for your muscles, keeping your bones strong,” Austad said. “Now we know there are cognitive benefits, there are immune benefits, there are all kinds of benefits that we never appreciated.”

One of the biggest ones for him is quality sleep, so much so that he sets strict boundaries around his workout time. “I don’t have great sleep unless I physically exhaust myself, and I just figure I have to live with that.”

He only eats twice a day

Austad was practicing time-restricted eating, a form of intermittent fasting, before it became trendy in the longevity space. It felt like his “natural rhythm” to eat a late breakfast around 11 a.m., skip lunch, and finish the day with dinner around 6 or 7 p.m.

“Now, recently it’s come out that there are all kinds of health benefits associated with that kind of timing, and I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t appreciate that earlier,” he said.

Intermittent fasting schedules vary and can potentially be risky, according to some studies. Austad’s schedule aligns with his circadian rhythm, which researchers believe can improve metabolic health.

He also generally follows the Mediterranean diet, eating lots of fish as his protein source, cutting back on red meat, and eating a diverse range of fruits and vegetables. “But again, I don’t obsess,” he said.

He recalled speaking at a calorie restriction conference and attending the banquet after. “It was basically leaves and nuts and zero-calorie dressing,” he said. “Even if it made you healthier, and I’m not convinced that it does, it’s just too much for me.”