If some of today's news headlines sound unreal, that may be less about April Fool's Day than about the state of the world — and the incredible advances in technology and AI.

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Here is a selection of stories that feel most likely to be fake, but they are all very real.

Microscopic Mission Shows Promise: Tiny Robots Swim Through Blood, Deliver Drugs — and Then Dissolve (Nature)

A remote-controlled robot the size of a grain of sand can swim through blood vessels to deliver drugs before dissolving into the body. The technology could allow doctors to administer small amounts of drugs to specific sites, avoiding the toxic side effects of body-wide therapies.

The microrobots, guided by magnetic fields, work in blood vessels in pigs and sheep, researchers showed. The system has yet to be trialed in people, but it shows promise because it works in a roughly human-sized body, and because all its components have already been shown to be biocompatible, says Bradley Nelson, a mechanical engineer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, who co-led the work.

This technology isn’t in hospitals yet — it’s still in preclinical testing — but it could become one of the most revolutionary medical tools of the next decade.

Motion to Machine: You Can Now Control a Robotic Hand With a Wristband — Enough to Play Piano or Shoot a Basketball (MIT News)

MIT engineers have designed an ultrasound wristband that “precisely tracks a wearer’s hand movements in real time.”

The device produces ultrasound images of the wrist’s muscles, tendons, and ligaments as the hand moves, then pairs those images with an AI system that translates them into the positions of the five fingers and palm. The wristband can wirelessly control the robotic hand: when the person gestures or points, the robot does the same.

In what the researchers describe as a kind of “wireless marionette interaction,” the wearer could make the robot play a simple tune on the piano and shoot a small basketball into a desktop hoop, MIT News reports. 

The same wristband can also be used to manipulate digital objects on a screen. MIT says wearers could, for example, pinch their fingers together to enlarge or minimize a virtual object, suggesting the technology could eventually have applications far beyond robotics, including virtual and augmented reality.

Maps That Talk: Google Debuts Maps that Offer On-Demand Local Guides (Google - The Keyword)

Google’s new Ask Maps feature lets users ask “complex, real-world questions a map could never answer before” — like where to charge a dying phone without getting stuck in a long coffee line, whether there is a nearby public tennis court with lights on for some nighttime playing, or helping to book a table at a lively restaurant nearby.

Powered by Gemini, it turns Maps from a simple navigation tool into something closer to an on-demand local guide that can interpret context, compare options, and suggest what to do next.

Digital Comeback: An AI-Rendered Val Kilmer Will Posthumously Appear in a New Film (Associated Press)

A year after the actor’s death, a generative AI version of Val Kilmer will co-star in an independent film, in one of the boldest uses yet of artificial intelligence in moviemaking.
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First Line Films announced Wednesday that Kilmer has posthumously joined the cast of a film titled “As Deep as the Grave.” The producers said that, before his death, Kilmer had signed on to perform in the movie but was unable to because of his health. Kilmer’s estate gave permission for his digital replication, and is being compensated for it.

Immersive POV: NBA Previews AI Tool That Lets Fans Watch Games From a Player’s Point of View (NBA)

At the 2026 NBA All-Star Technology Summit, the league previewed a new AI-powered “POV mode” that lets fans watch live basketball games from a player’s vantage point in real time, with immersive angles and personalized customizations.

In the demo, viewers watched the Mavericks-Hornets game from the on-court perspective of players Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel, and the NBA said the technology could eventually give fans control over camera angles, commentary style, language, next-generation statistical overlays, and even customized court designs — so instead of watching the game from afar, viewers could experience it as if they were running the floor themselves.

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Pet Paparazzi: A Robot Can Now Follow Your Pet Around and Edit It Into Highlight Videos (The Verge)

FrontierX — a technology startup focused on AI-powered home robotics and companion devices — introduced Vex, a small AI-powered robot that can follow a cat or dog around the house, recognize specific pets, and film them from their own eye level, at CES 2026, the annual Las Vegas tech showcase where companies unveil futuristic new gadgets.

It then uses AI to turn the footage into “moving narratives and shareable stories,” meaning your pet now has its own robot cameraman and video editor, The Verge writes. 

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Latest in AI Tools

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Translation Innovation: Transform Your Headphones into a Live Personal Translator on iOS (Google - The Keyword)

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Google Translate’s Live Translate with headphones is officially arriving on iOS. And Google is expanding the capability for both iOS and Android users to even more countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Thailand, and the UK.

The Gemini-powered feature helps you instantly understand and connect with the world right through any pair of headphones in 70+ languages.

You can use the feature to hear translations of a conversation in a foreign language or of dialogue in a TV show or film in another language. While translating, Gemini preserves “the tone, emphasis and cadence of each speaker to create more natural translations and make it easier to follow along,” Google said in a blog post.

To give it a try, launch the Translate app, select the desired languages, connect your headphones, and tap the Live Translate button at the bottom left of the home page.

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Next-Gen Siri: Apple Tests Siri Feature That Handles Multiple Commands at Once (Bloomberg)

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Apple is testing a feature that would let Siri process multiple requests in a single query, breaking new ground for the nearly 15-year-old digital assistant.

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The company is developing the capability as part of the iOS 27, iPadOS 27 and macOS 27 operating systems due later this year. The move would bring Siri closer to the abilities of newer artificial intelligence assistants.

Bloomberg's Amanda Stent: Grounding AI on a Vast, Well-Sourced Database is Crucial to Avoid Hallucinations in the Financial Sector (L’Agefi)

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Amanda Stent, Bloomberg's Head of AI Strategy and Research in its Chief Technology Office, has been a pioneer in natural language processing (NLP) research since 2001. At the Future of Finance Paris 2026 event, Stent discussed AI-specific developments at Bloomberg that can help professionals in their daily work.

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The latest addition to the suite, ASKB, is a next-generation conversational AI interface integrated directly into the Terminal. Optimized to understand financial jargon and market context, it allows users to ask questions in natural language and instantly receive summaries about companies or complex topics, Stent tells L’Agefi.

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The tool is also gradually moving toward specific use cases, with or without coding, as well as more “AI agent” capabilities. For example, users can already generate and update research reports by detailing a single workflow, rather than by asking multiple questions and then compiling the different results manually.

In an “AI assistant” approach, professionals may soon be able to delegate part of their queries to AI, which would handle preprocessing, verification, navigation, and certain questions autonomously, while humans focus on direction, expertise, and oversight, Stent says.

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Read the full story here in French or translated in English.

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Don's Day in Court 

Today at the Supreme Court: Trump Makes Unprecedented Supreme Court Appearance in Birthright Citizenship Case (Politico Playbook)

In a presidency filled with firsts, here’s another: Trump said he plans to head to the Supreme Court in person today to hear arguments in one of the blockbuster cases of his presidency — the White House’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in America. A sitting president has never attended oral arguments before the high court, Politico Playbook writes. 

The justices will hear oral arguments starting at 10 a.m. over the constitutionality of Trump’s Day One executive order declaring that American-born babies will no longer qualify for citizenship if their parents were here temporarily or illegally. There won't be a final ruling until later this year, but the justices’ comments and questions today should give us a fair idea where it’s headed.

Almost nobody expects Trump to win, according to Politico. The president’s order — blocked by court injunctions long before it came into effect — seeks not just to reinterpret the 14th Amendment after 150 years, but also to overturn decades of legal precedent.

Trump’s angry Truth Social post on Monday — in which he raged at the “stupid” US courts — suggests he knows he’s onto a loser, Politico Playbook writes. So why show up at all?

The big thing for Trump is to be seen putting up a fight. This policy — always a Hail Mary from a legal perspective — is as much about signaling to the president’s base as it is a serious attempt to change the law, according to Politico. 

What I'm Reading

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🕯️Happy Passover to all who celebrate, as the holiday begins at sundown tonight.

Oil Crash Out: Trump Tells the World to Buy More US Jet Fuel, But Supply Is Tight (Bloomberg)
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The US is already churning out record amounts of jet fuel and has little capacity to increase exports despite President Donald Trump’s call for nations to buy more from American refiners as the Iran war squeezes supplies.
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The president chided US allies in a social media post Tuesday, saying countries that can’t get enough jet fuel as Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz should learn to defend themselves and buy from the US:

Fleet Expansion: Third US Aircraft Carrier Heads to Mideast as Iran War Continues (Bloomberg)

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A third US aircraft carrier strike group is heading to the Middle East as military operations against Iran continue, according to a US official familiar with the matter, after the Navy’s flagship carrier left the region for repairs.

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The USS George H.W. Bush departed Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday for a deployment to the region along with an escort of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and is likely to take three weeks to get there, the person said, declining to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Tonight at the White House: Trump to Give Speech Wednesday on Iran War (Bloomberg)

President Donald Trump will deliver a speech tonight at 9 p.m. Washington time to give an update about the war in Iran, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Italian Denial: Italy Blocks US Use of Sicily Air Base for Middle East War (Politico)

Market Advance: MSCI Upgrades Greece to Developed Market in Recovery Boost (Bloomberg)

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Royal Rift: King Charles to Visit US as Tensions Rise Between Trump and Britain (New York Times)
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King Charles III will travel to the United States for an official state visit in April, Buckingham Palace confirmed on Tuesday. The trip — which the king will carry out on behalf of the British government — had been expected, but it was cast in doubt as tensions between the longtime allies rose over the war in Iran in recent weeks.

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The strained relations, characterized by disparaging remarks President Trump has made about Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his government over Britain’s reluctance to join the offensive, will be a backdrop to the event. 

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Trump has previously expressed fondness for King Charles and the British royal family, and he seems to relish the pomp and ceremony afforded by a state visit.

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Win for Free Speech: Judge Rules Trump Order Eliminating NPR, PBS Funding is Unconstitutional (Washington Post)

A federal judge in Washington struck down part of President Trump’s executive order targeting funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Tuesday, ruling that it was unconstitutional retaliation that violated their press freedom rights under the First Amendment.

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“The message is clear,” US District Judge Randolph Moss, a Barack Obama appointee to the federal bench, wrote in an opinion. “NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news,” he wrote, adding that the action amounted to “viewpoint discrimination.”

Retribution Clash: Former FBI Agents Seek Class-Action Suit Against the Bureau, DOJ for Politically Driven Firings (Bloomberg)

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Former FBI agents are seeking class-action status for a lawsuit on behalf of all of the bureau’s employees fired since January 2025 “on the basis of perceived political affiliation, without being afforded due process.”

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Three named plaintiffs filed the complaint in US District Court in Washington on Tuesday against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the Justice Department. The complaint accuses the agency heads of using their power to root out perceived political enemies through mass firings.

Elvis Lookalike? MAGA Tries to Convince America That Trump Looks Like the Music Legend (Daily Beast)
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Today's Liftoff: NASA Begins the Countdown for Humanity’s First Launch to the Moon in 53 Years (Associated Press)

Chocolate on the Loose: How a Massive KitKat Heist Turned Into Crisis PR Gold (Wall Street Journal)
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Just how much are 12 metric tons of stolen KitKat bars worth? A lot of promotional gold, it turns out, the Wall Street Journal writes. 

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It was the brazen chocolate heist heard around the social-media world: Over the weekend, Nestlé confirmed that thieves had swiped 413,793 units of KitKats somewhere along their way from a factory in central Italy to Poland. Both the chocolate bars and the truck carrying them remain missing, though no one was hurt in the theft, it said. 

What the Swiss company lost in chocolate, though, it gained back in a public-relations coup—as did multiple other companies quick to hop on the meme bandwagon. 

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“We’ve always encouraged people to have a break with KitKat—but it seems thieves have taken the message too literally and made a break with more than 12 metric tons of our chocolate,” the company said in a statement. A spokesman confirmed the heist wasn’t an early April 1 joke.    

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Best of Late Night

On this past weekend's No Kings Protests taking place around the world while TSA lines at US airports stretched for hours amid the partial government shutdown:

“Just look at the crowd we got here in New York. Oops! That’s actually the T.S.A. line at J.F.K.”
-- Stephen Colbert

“It’s easier to get through the Strait of Hormuz than the airport these days.”
-- Bill Maher 

“Trump is so unpopular, there were even ‘No Kings’ rallies across Europe, including a large ‘No Kings' march in London. A ‘No Kings’ march in London must have been awkward.”
-- Stephen Colbert

And from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Over eight million people marched in the third "No Kings" protest, President Trump appears to be making up his Iran war strategy on-the-fly, and the war is causing global economic pain and shortages of resources like helium. Click the photo below to watch. 
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