作者： root

Stocks slump as inflation, AI worries rattle investors

Updated on: February 27, 2026 / 4:51 PM EST / CBS/AP

Stocks slid on Friday as higher-than-expected inflation data and mounting fears about artificial intelligence’s economic impact weighed on investors.

The S&P 500 fell 30 points, or 0.4%, to close at 6,879, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 521 points, or 1.1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sank 0.9% on the day.

The losses followed the release of the Producer Price Index, which measures price changes before they reach consumers. Inflation at the U.S. wholesale level rose 2.9% in January on an annualized basis, much higher than the 1.6% that economists had expected. The hotter-than-expected reading could persuade the Federal Reserve to hold off on rate cuts, experts noted.

Oil prices also climbed as tensions between the United States and Iran escalated over a potential nuclear deal. President Trump has threatened to attack Iran if the country does not agree to rein in its nuclear capabilities.

The price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rose 2.8% to settle at $67.02, while Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.4% to $72.48 per barrel.

AI-related fears shake Wall Street

Fears over AI disruptions that escalated last week continued to rattle Wall Street on Friday, with investors dumping stocks of software companies they suspect could get supplanted by AI-powered competitors.

“A year ago, the prevailing thought was that generative AI would provide a boost to sales and overall growth in this sector,” Logan Purk, a senior research analyst at financial firm Edward Jones, said in an email Friday. “Now the narrative has shifted, and investors believe generative AI will replace all software currently being used.”

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Block, the company behind Cash App and Square, gave a potential signal of what AI could do after CEO Jack Dorsey said he was cutting its workforce by nearly half, from around 10,000 employees to 6,000. The company’s stock jumped 16.8% on Friday.

“Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Dorsey said in a letter to investors while announcing Block’s latest profit results. “We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better.”

Block is the latest company to cite a shift to AI as part of its rationale for layoffs. Pinterest and Dow made similar declarations earlier this year when they announced job cuts.

Capable AI tools that can replace humans could also replace entire companies, or at least eat away at their profit margins. Fears about AI disruption have been causing sudden and swift sell-offs for stocks seen as potentially under threat, rolling through industries as different as trucking logistics and legal services.

The pain has also filtered out to private-equity companies that have lent money to software companies, which need to withstand the AI threat to keep repaying their debt. Apollo Global Management, for example, dropped 8.5%.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has pushed back against the notion that AI will make legacy software companies obsolete.

“While these use cases are impressive, the reality is that these new AI tools will not rip and replace existing software ecosystems and data environments, with these AI tools only as useful as the data it can reach,” Ives said in a research note earlier this week.

Winners on Wall Street

On the winning side of Wall Street was Netflix, which climbed 13.8% after the streaming company dropped its bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business, paving the way for a deal with Paramount Skydance.

Netflix walked away after Paramount Skydance, which owns CBS News, raised its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery to $31 per share earlier this week. Paramount Skydance shares climbed 20.8% on Friday, while Warner Bros. Discovery fell 2.2%.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was at 3.96%. It briefly swiveled higher following the inflation report, but it’s down from its 4.02% level late Thursday. Treasury yields often fall when nervousness is high and investors are moving into investments that are considered safer.

Book excerpt: “Streetwise” by Lloyd Blankfein

February 27, 2026 / 5:05 PM EST / CBS News

[Image 1: streetwise-cover-penguin-press-1280.jpg ]

Penguin Press

We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.

In his new memoir, “Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs”(to be published March 1 by Penguin Press), former CEO Lloyd Blankfein writes about a life that stretched from the projects of New York City to the pinnacle of Wall Street.

Read the excerpt below, and don’t miss Jo Ling Kent’s interview with Lloyd Blankfein on “CBS Sunday Morning” March 1!

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“Streetwise” by Lloyd Blankfein

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Chapter I: Advantages

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When I go into a room full of people, I have to decide whether I’m going to be the member of the establishment or the kid from Brooklyn.

I am a product of East New York, Brooklyn, where I grew up in the projects, and I still see the world through those eyes. To this day, I have to concentrate to say rather and not rath-uh. I can’t compare myself with people I’ve worked with who overcame really severe disadvantage, like broken homes, civil wars, extreme poverty, or forced emigration. But growing up in public housing, in a family that was getting by, and attending public schools that were failing, left its mark on me. I struggle with ambivalence. I spend half my time wanting to give stuff to my kids, the other half tormenting them for having stuff I gave them that I didn’t have.

My earliest memories are from the South Bronx, where my family lived in a tenement building on Leggett Avenue. I used to love watching the coal that heated the building get delivered. It made a roar as it poured from the truck down a chute into the cellar. Another memory: the organ- grinder who sometimes played on the sidewalk outside our apartment. My mother wrapped a coin in paper and threw it out the window for his monkey to pick up.

When I was three, we moved from the Bronx to East New York, in search of a better life— which, for a time, we found. The year was 1957 and the city hadn’t yet finished paving the streets of the new public housing development we were moving into, the Linden Houses, run by the New York City Housing Authority. This was subsidized housing for the working class, with buildings arrayed in an irregular pattern bordered by bits of landscaped greenery. They were not yet “the projects.” At the time, it must have seemed like Shangri-la to my parents. Everything was clean and new. Children had an actual playground, with swings and monkey bars to climb. The neighborhood was reasonably safe. Those nineteen largely identical redbrick high-rises were not yet blighted in the ways they would be by the time I was in high school.

My mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother, and I occupied a small apartment with two bedrooms and a bathroom, maybe eight hundred square feet, on the fourth floor of a fourteen-story tower at 243 Wortman Avenue. My sister, Jacky, and I shared a bedroom, while my grandmother, Lilly, slept on a foldout couch in the living room. It was tight but neat. You weren’t allowed to sit on a bed—beds were for sleeping, not sitting, according to my mom. There were plastic slipcovers on every piece of furniture that anyone could sit on or lean against. When we got our first TV, a big console set that I watched every afternoon and evening while lying on the living room floor, my mom made me rotate to different places on the floor so I wouldn’t wear out the rug unevenly. When my parents retired to Florida decades later, the furniture they left behind was in pristine condition.

My Blankfein ancestors were Yiddish-speaking Jews who emigrated in the 1880s from a shtetl that was then in Russia and is now part of Poland. Isaac Blankfein, my paternal great-grandfather, worked as a tailor on Delancey Street, on the Lower East Side. He started a wholesale garment business that moved around Lower Manhattan, first to Greene Street— long before that neighborhood was called SoHo—then to Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, then to East 14th Street. My grandfather Saul, who died when I was six, was the youngest of Isaac’s five sons, and the only one who stayed involved in the family business. When that business went bad during the Depression, our branch of the family became the poor relations. Over the years, as I became more famous (or notorious), I’ve heard from various Blankfeins descended from the other four brothers. They ended up as professionals—teachers, doctors, and lawyers. Not our side of the family. My dad worked as a clerk in the post office, while his younger brother, my uncle Sheldon, worked as a cutter in the Garment District.

After my grandfather Saul died, my grandmother Hannah Blankfein stayed in their apartment in a brownstone in the South Bronx, which I remember surrounded by rubble-strewn vacant lots as the neighborhood declined. On the long drive from Brooklyn to visit her, I would sleep, or pretend to sleep, stretched out in back seat of our car. Because Hannah’s mother was from Austria and spoke German rather than Yiddish, I understood that she was from a slightly higher social class among descendants of Jewish immigrants. A voluble, outgoing woman, my grandmother was uneducated but might have been the most accomplished person in our family. She was active in Bronx politics, served as a district leader, and even attended the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City as an alternate delegate.

My mother Blanche’s family, the Krellmans, came to the United States a little later, around the turn of the twentieth century. They were also from the Pale of Settlement at the western edge of the Tsarist Empire. My mother’s parents had a bitter divorce when she was young, and she broke off relations with her father, who subsequently remarried and had another family. My mom stuck with her mother, my grandmother Lilly, so I never knew my grandfather on my mother’s side. When I shared a room with her as a kid, Grandma Lilly never talked about him. She worked at S. Klein, a department store on Union Square in Manhattan, which was a long ride on the 2 train from New Lots Avenue. Her job at Klein’s was “floorwalker,” which meant helping lady customers find the right size dresses and assisting the regular salespeople.

My mother was an extrovert and a schmoozer, always engaging strangers in conversation—an instinct she passed along to her children. But while she projected a lot of warmth to the outside world, she was all business at home, where she was the principal decision-maker about everything in our crowded household. During the day, she worked as a receptionist at a burglar alarm company—one of the few growth industries in the neighborhood. Other than watching TV in the evening, her main form of recreation was playing mah-jongg with women friends. She was only nineteen in 1940 when she married my father, Seymour, who was five years older. They met while working in the same dry-goods store in the Bronx. When he was drafted into the army in 1942, he was sent to Omaha, Nebraska, to work as a mechanic at the Army Air Corps base there. My mom moved there to be with him. My older sister was conceived there and was born on V-J Day, September 2, 1945.

My father was a big man—223 pounds at the time of his enlistment, according to his army records— but quieter than my mother and somewhat overshadowed by her. My dad liked to point to new car ads and say, “I can’t wait to buy that car in six years.” I inherited both his sense of humor and his anxiety.

Excerpted from “Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs” by Lloyd Blankfein, courtesy Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Copyright © by Lloyd C. Blankfein.

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• “Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs”by Lloyd Blankfein (Penguin Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available March 3

Pentagon chief Hegseth says officers will stop attending Ivy League programs

February 27, 2026 8:19 PM UTC / Reuters

Feb 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Defense Department will stop sending officers on professional courses and graduate programs at Ivy League colleges, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said on Friday, declaring the schools had become “anti-American”.

The ban will come into effect from the academic year 2026-27, he said in a video posted to X.

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The Trump administration is cracking down on universities over a range of issues, including diversity programs, transgender policies and pro-Palestinian protests against U.S. ally Israel’s assault on Gaza.

“For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain,” Hegseth said in a video posted on X.

“I’m ordering the complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance at institutions like Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Brown, Yale and many others starting next academic year,” he added.

Earlier this month Hegseth said he would cancel professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard University.

Reporting by Ismail Shakil; Editing by Daphne Psaledakis and David Ljunggren

This small business owner is already giving her customers a tariff refund

2026-02-27 / CBS News

As some of the biggest U.S. companies sue the Trump administration to obtain tariff refunds, one small company is already giving money back to consumers.

Alexandra Fine, CEO of Dame Products, a sexual health and wellness company, said she is giving consumers automatic refunds for costs they incurred from import tariffs President Trump imposed last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Supreme Court ruled last week that the emergency tariffs were illegal.

“We are giving that money back to the people because if somebody charges you something and it’s unlawful, they should give you your money back,” she told CBS News.

Dame, which last year implemented a $5 Trump tariff surcharge on customer purchases, in 2025 paid a total of $70,000 in tariffs stemming from IEEPA. Fine also said she hopes the federal government, as well as other businesses, will follow suit and provide customers with tariff refunds.

“Just clicking a button”

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“We have all the information. We can see every customer that had this surcharge tacked on, so we are just clicking a button and sending them their money back,” Fine, who co-founded Dame in 2014, told CBS News.

Alexandra Fine, the founder and CEO of sexual wellness company Dame, said she is reimbursing customers for tariff costs on their purchases. Aurielle Sayeh

Consumers and businesses last year paid nearly 90% of U.S. tariffs in the form of higher costs, according to a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, although other analyses have found somewhat lower “pass-through” rates to shoppers.

The Trump administration, which claims that foreign governments and exporters absorb most tariff costs, vehemently disputes the New York Fed’s findings.

Businesses could be owed up to $165 billion in refunds of IEEPA tariffs they paid in 2025 and early 2026, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research initiative focused on public policy analysis.

Fine introduced her business’ tariff surcharge in April 2025, after Mr. Trump announced country-based tariffs on dozens of U.S. trade partners. Tariffs on China, where Dame manufactures its products, ultimately settled at 20%.

Today, Dame now faces 15% tariff on imports from China after Mr. Trump, responding to the high court’s ruling against his use of IEEPA, last week invoked another trade law to impose a temporary, across-the-board duty on U.S. imports.

Fine said Dame paid a total of roughly $100,000 in tariffs last year, about $70,000 of which stemmed from IEEPA duties. She has already processed some customer refunds and expects to deliver rebates on thousands of additional product orders within a few weeks.

The Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t touch on the issue of tariff refunds, leaving open the question of how businesses could file for reimbursement.

A field day for lawyers

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Another consumer goods company, Cards Against Humanity, said in a post on social media this week that it will give customers who “overpaid” for one of the company’s games a partial refund. The catch: That refund is contingent on the business getting its own tariff refund from the federal government.

Meanwhile, several major companies, including Bausch & Lomb, Dyson, FedEx and L’Oreal, have sued the federal government for IEEPA tariff refunds.

“If refunds are issued to FedEx, we will issue refunds to the shippers and consumers who originally bore those charges,” FedEx said in a statement on Thursday. “When that will happen and the exact process for requesting and issuing refunds will depend in part on future guidance from the government and the court.”

Consumers are also suing retailers to demand refunds for tariff-related costs. Law firm Morgan & Morgan on Friday filed a proposed class action against FedEx on behalf of a plaintiff who paid the duties for imported tennis shoes. A similar suit has been filed against Ray-Ban sunglasses maker EssilorLuxottica.

“Our goal is to return to American consumers every penny they were improperly charged,” Morgan & Morgan attorneys John Morgan and John Yanchunis said in a statement to CBS News.

Hegseth says Pentagon cutting ties with top universities, calling them “woke breeding grounds”

February 27, 2026 / 4:30 PM EST / CBS News

Washington — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the Pentagon would be canceling troops’ attendance at graduate programs at some of the nation’s top universities, calling them “woke breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination.”

“Today, just like we did with Harvard, I am ordering the complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance at institutions like Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Brown, Yale and many others, starting next academic year, 2026-2027,” Hegseth said in a video statement.

“We cannot and will not continue to send our most capable officers, senior officers, into graduate programs that undermine the very values they have sworn to uphold,” Hegseth said.

The Pentagon announced earlier this month that it would be ending all military training, fellowships and certificate programs with Harvard amid the Trump administration’s adversarial relationship with the Ivy League school.

Hegseth accused the universities of becoming “factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain.”

“They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness,” he said. “They’ve traded true intellectual rigor for radical dogma, sacrificing free expression for the suffocating confines of leftist ideology. What is the purpose, you may ask, of investing in an education that teaches our warriors to despise the very nation they swore to defend?”

Hegseth himself holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard.

The secretary also said he would be initiating a “top-to-bottom review” of the war colleges to ensure they are “wholly dedicated to the singular mission of developing the most lethal and effective leaders and war fighters the world has ever known.”

Trump starts week with State of the Union and ends with an unexpected meeting with Mamdani | CNN Politics

By Ileya Robinson-Williams, CNN
Published 5:27 PM EST, Fri February 27, 2026

President Trump addresses the nation at the State of the Union as tensions rise over Iran’s nuclear program. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answer questions from House Oversight Committee members as part of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reports on the week at the White House.

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UN Human Rights Council chief cuts off speaker criticizing US-sanctioned official

Anne Bayefsky was interrupted during a 90-second video statement after naming Francesca Albanese and other officials

By Rachel Wolf
Fox News
Published February 27, 2026 5:39pm EST

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) abruptly cut off a video statement after the speaker began criticizing several United Nations officials, including one who has been sanctioned by the Trump administration. The video message was being played during a U.N. session in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday morning.

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the and president of Human Rights, called out several U.N. officials in her message, including U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who is the subject of U.S. sanctions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against Albanese July 9, 2025, saying that she “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West.”

“That bias has been apparent across the span of her career, including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,” Rubio added.

“I was the only American U.N.-accredited NGO with a speaking slot, and I wasn’t allowed even to conclude my 90 seconds of allotted time. Free speech is non-existent at the U.N. so-called ‘Human Rights Council,’” Bayefsky told Fox News Digital.

Bayefsky noted the irony of the council cutting off her video in a proceeding that was said to be an “interactive dialogue,” an event during which experts are allowed to speak to the council about human rights issues.

“I was cut off after naming Francesca Albanese, Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti for covering up Palestinian use of rape as a weapon of war and trafficking in blatant antisemitism. I named the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, who is facing disturbing sexual assault allegations but still unaccountable almost two years later. Those are the people and the facts that the United Nations wants to protect and hide,” Bayefsky told Fox News Digital.

“It is an outrage that I am silenced and singled out for criticism on the basis of naming names.”

Bayefsky’s statement was cut off as she accused Albanese and Navi Pillay, the former chair of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory; and Chris Sidoti, a commissioner of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She also slammed Khan, who has faced rape allegations. Khan has denied the sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Had her video message been played in full, Bayefsky would have gone on to criticize Türk’s recent report for not demanding accountability for the atrocities committed by Hamas Oct. 7, 2023.

When the video was cut short, Human Rights Council President Ambassador Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro characterized Bayefsky’s remarks as “derogatory, insulting and inflammatory” and said that they were “not acceptable.”

“The language used by the speaker cannot be allowed as it has exceeded the limits of tolerance and respect within the framework of the council which we all in this room hold to,” Suryodipuro said.

In response to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, Human Rights Council Media Officer Pascal Sim said the council has had long-established rules on what it considers to be acceptable language.

“Rulings regarding the form and language of interventions in the Human Rights Council are established practices that have been in place throughout the existence of the council and used by all council presidents when it comes to ensuring respect, tolerance and dignity inherent to the discussion of human rights issues,” Sim told Fox News Digital.

When asked if the video had been reviewed ahead of time, Sim said it was assessed for length and audio quality to allow for interpretation, but that the speakers are ultimately “responsible for the content of their statement.”

“The video statement by the NGO ‘Touro Law Center, The Institute on Human Rights and The Holocaust’ was interrupted when it was deemed that the language exceeded the limits of tolerance and respect within the framework of the council and could not be tolerated,” Sim said.

“As the presiding officer explained at the time, all speakers are to remain within the appropriate framework and terminology used in the council’s work, which is well known by speakers who routinely participate in council proceedings. Following that ruling, none of the member states of the council have objected to it.”

While Bayefsky’s statement was cut off, other statements accusing Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing were allowed to be played and read in full.

This is not the first time that Bayefsky was interrupted. Exactly one year ago, on Feb. 27, 2025, her video was cut off when she mentioned the fate of Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Jürg Lauber, president of the U.N. Human Rights Council at the time, stopped the video and declared that Bayefsky had used inappropriate language.

Bayefsky began the speech by saying, “The world now knows Palestinian savages murdered 9-month-old baby Kfir,” and she ws almost immediately cut off by Lauber.

“Sorry, I have to interrupt,” Lauber abruptly said as the video of Bayefsky was paused. Lauber briefly objected to the “language” used in the video, but then allowed it to continue. After a few more seconds, the video was shut off entirely.

Lauber reiterated that “the language that’s used by the speaker cannot be tolerated,” adding that it “exceeds clearly the limits of tolerance and respect.”

Last year, when the previous incident occurred, Bayefsky said she believed the whole thing was “stage-managed,” as the council had advanced access to her video and a transcript and knew what she would say.

Rachel Wolf is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital and FOX Business.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6390067575112

Judge blocks Virginia law restricting social media for children

February 27, 2026 11:03 PM UTC / Reuters

By Jonathan Stempel

节点运行失败

Item 1 of 2 Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and Reddit applications are displayed on a mobile phone in this picture illustration taken on December 9, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams/Illustration/File Photo

[1/2]Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and Reddit applications are displayed on a mobile phone in this picture illustration taken on December 9, 2025. REUTERS/Hollie Adams/Illustration/File Photo

• Summary
• Companies

• Judge cites First Amendment in issuing injunction
• Judge found law both overinclusive and underinclusive
• Virginia pledges to help parents protect children

Feb 27 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday blocked Virginia from enforcing a new law that aimed to protect children from being addicted to social media by requiring age verification and limiting use by those under 16 to one hour per day.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles in Alexandria, Virginia, said the technology trade group NetChoice was likely to establish that the law unconstitutionally infringed the free speech rights of adults, children and its dozens of members, including Google, Meta Platforms, Netflix, Reddit and Elon Musk’s X.

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The judge issued a preliminary injunction against the law known as Senate Bill 854, which had been signed last May by then-Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, and took effect on January 1, 2026.

NetChoice has also challenged similar laws in states, including California.

Virginia argued that the law was reasonably tailored to protect children from the “addictive features” of social media, and address a mental health crisis among youth.

But the judge said that notwithstanding Virginia’s interest in protecting children, the law was both overinclusive by requiring everyone, including adults, to verify their age, and underinclusive by exempting potentially addictive interactive gaming from coverage.

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She also said the law treats “functionally equivalent” speech differently by preventing children from watching, for example, science, history and church programming lasting more than an hour that they could watch elsewhere, including streaming platforms.

“The court recognizes the Commonwealth’s compelling interest in protecting its youth from the harms associated with the addictive aspects of social media,” wrote Giles, an appointee of former Democratic President Joe Biden. “However, it cannot infringe on First Amendment rights, including those of the same youth it aims to protect.”

Rae Pickett, a spokesperson for Virginia’s Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones, said after the decision: “We look forward to continuing to enforce laws that empower parents to protect their children from the proven harms that can come through social media.”

Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, welcomed the decision.

“This ruling reaffirms that the government cannot ration access to lawful speech – even if it has noble intentions,” he said in a statement. “Fundamentally, parents must stay in the driver’s seat when it comes to decisions about their families.”

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Ethan Smith

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

• Suggested Topics:
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• Human Rights
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• Public Policy

崔剑任中国国家体育总局副局长

发布时间 / 来源：2026-02-27T23:50:00.000Z | 联合早报

广东省体育局局长崔剑获任中国国家体育总局副局长。

据中国人社部网站星期五（2月27日）发布的消息，国务院任免国家工作人员。其中，崔剑获任命为国家体育总局副局长。

公开资料显示，崔剑生于1971年10月，曾任广东省外经贸厅办公室主任、广东省商务厅办公室主任、广东茂名市副市长等职，2020年10月作为中组部选派干部挂职担任海南省商务厅副厅长，挂职时间为两年。后于2021年12月当选中共茂名市委常委。

2022年12月，崔剑已任广东省体育局党组书记，2023年1月任广东省体育局局长，后于2023年8月当选中国羽协副主席。

立即订阅《联合早报》，了解中国时政动态，把握大中华区经济发展脉搏，解锁地区热点评析。

Trump administration designates Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detention

2026-02-27T23:31:45.007Z / CNN

[Jennifer Hansler]

32 min ago

PUBLISHED Feb 27, 2026, 6:31 PM ET

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters before boarding his plane, on February 12, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, en route to the Munich Security Conference.

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The Trump administration on Friday formally designated Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detention, the latest move to ratchet up pressure and penalize Iran for its history of imprisoning US citizens.

It is the first such designation under an executive order signed last September meant to deter countries from illegally detaining US citizens and encourage them to release wrongful detainees they have in custody. The announcement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio comes as the Trump administration is pressing for a new nuclear deal with Iran and has threatened to launch military action against the country.

“For decades, Iran has continued to cruelly detain innocent Americans, as well as citizens of other nations, to use as political leverage against other states. This abhorrent practice must end,” Rubio said in a statement.

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Rubio warned that if Iran does not stop detaining Americans, “we will be forced to consider additional measures, including a potential geographic travel restriction on the use of U.S. passports to, through, or from Iran.”

[Related article WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 24: U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the Capitol on February 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump delivered his address days after the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s tariff strategy, and amid a U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf threatening Iran. (Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images) Kenny Holston/Pool/Getty Images Trump claimed Iran is building missiles that could soon hit the US. Sources say that’s not backed up by US intelligence. 4 min read]

There is such a travel restriction in place for North Korea. The US does not allow its citizens to travel to North Korea on US passports without an approved exception, and in those cases, the State Department issues a “special validation passport.”

“The Iranian regime must stop taking hostages and release all Americans unjustly detained in Iran, steps that could end this designation and associated actions. We encourage it to do so. No American should travel to Iran for any reason. We reiterate our call for Americans who are currently in Iran to leave immediately,” Rubio said Friday.

Iran has a history of wrongfully detaining Americans. In September 2023, the Biden administration secured the release of five Americans – all of whom had been imprisoned for years – as part of a wider deal with Iran.

There is one American who has been designated as wrongfully detained currently imprisoned in Iran: Reza Valizadeh. Valizadeh, an Iranian-American journalist, had worked in exile for Persian language outlets, including the US-funded Radio Farda. He returned to Iran in March 2024 to visit his elderly parents and was arrested in September of that year.

Concerns have mounted about his well-being in the years since his imprisonment. His brother said in September 2025 that Valizadeh has asthma that has “deteriorated dramatically.”

Ryan Fayhee, a US-based attorney working on Valizadeh’s case, said he is hopeful that the state sponsor of wrongful detention designation will have an impact, “particularly given the travel restrictions and the like that come with this.”

“Do I think this will free Reza? No, I don’t think it will, unfortunately. But do I believe it’s helpful? Yes,” he told CNN.

Another American imprisoned in Iran is Kamran Hekmati, who was arrested last year and sentenced to prison time by Iranian authorities for visiting Israel more than a decade ago for his son’s bar mitzvah, according to family members who spoke to CNN.

The 70-year-old Hekmati is suffering from bladder cancer and is currently detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Although an appeal has been filed, his family has serious concerns about his health.

The administration could apply the designation to other countries in the future, such as Afghanistan or Russia, where US citizens remain detained.

The Middle East

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