A founder of global gaming company Ubisoft, maker of Assassin’s Creed, was killed in a plane crash in western France, authorities said Saturday.
The twin-motor Cessna 421 carrying Claude Guillemot and a flight instructor crashed Friday evening near La Baule airport on the Atlantic coast, Mayor Franck Louvrier said in a statement. Both were licensed and experienced pilots. The instructor also was killed, the mayor said. An investigation is underway.
Guillemot was 69 years old.
Ubisoft confirmed Guillemot’s death but did not comment further.
The plane crashed in a field just before landing at La Baule-Escoublac Airport, an airport official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be publicly named.
Guillemot and four brothers founded Ubisoft in 1986. In addition to the popular Assassin’s Creed franchise, Ubisoft’s games also include Just Dance, and the Rayman and Tom Clancy game franchises.

With growing numbers of borrowers in default, the Trump administration pitched the temporary, 1% reduction in student loan interest rates as a salve for those struggling with repayment.
Education Undersecretary Nicholas Kent said the change is a way of “making student loan repayment easier than ever” and of improving “the overall health of the federal student loan portfolio.”
But the change does not apply to all borrowers, and those pursuing the reduction will need to meet eligibility criteria.
Here are details of the plan and some context behind them:
Which borrowers are eligible for the rate reduction?
WHAT THE DEPARTMENT SAID: The headline on the news release said: “U.S. Department of Education Announces Student Loan Interest Rate Reduction.”
THE BACKSTORY: The change will only affect a subset of borrowers — those with federal Direct Loans issued after July 1, 2012, who are already enrolled in automatic payments or sign up for them.
Many borrowers won’t see any immediate benefit. To qualify, they have to first take a set of actions including signing up for auto pay and, in some cases, consolidating their loans.
Currently, just 40% of borrowers are enrolled in auto pay — a figure the department is hoping to increase with the new incentive of the interest rate reduction.
Nearly 9 million student loan borrowers are in default, meaning they’ve missed nine months of payments. For them to become eligible for the rate reduction, they must get back in good standing, typically by consolidating their loans and then applying for a new repayment plan.
How much of an interest rate reduction will borrowers see?
WHAT THE DEPARTMENT SAID: Officials said those enrolled in auto pay will be eligible for a 1% rate reduction beginning July 1.
THE BACKSTORY: For borrowers already enrolled in auto pay, the savings will be smaller. Borrowers who currently use auto pay already receive an interest-rate discount of 0.25%, so the new reduction takes off just 0.75%.
For all borrowers, the rate reduction will be temporary, lasting through June 30, 2028.
The federal student loan portfolio has ballooned to almost $1.7 trillion, with millions of borrowers struggling to keep up.
The rate reduction aims to help get more Americans back on track with student loans as the Trump administration struggles to rein in rising rates of delinquency and defaults on student loans.
As it phases out Biden-era options for loan repayment, the Education Department is offering its own plans for repayment, including an income-driven option. Officials said enrollment in auto pay also can help borrowers maintain their eligibility for those plans by helping them avoid missed payments.
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WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve has for decades moved steadily from a remote, opaque government agency that shared little about what it did or why to a more transparent institution willing to explain how it makes decisions and what it thinks about the economy.
But in his first press conference Wednesday, new chair Kevin Warsh began to reverse some of those steps. Warsh, like many economists, thinks the financial markets have become too dependent on Fed guidance, and that such direction is more effective in financial crises or economic downturns.
Warsh quickly made changes: The Fed’s statement on its interest-rate decision was slashed to 132 words, from 341 in April. And Warsh pointedly noted that the statement excluded any hints, or “forward guidance,” about what the Fed’s next moves might be.
In short, Warsh rapidly delivered on a promise to slash the Fed’s communications, particularly the guidance it gives to financial markets about its next interest-rate moves. Yet such an approach carries the risk of more violent swings in stock and bond prices, analysts say, and ultimately could lead to higher interest rates for consumers and businesses.
“Forward guidance in general has served to suppress volatility and anchor market expectations,” said George Pearkes, global macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group. “And that has led to lower borrowing rates, relative to alternatives.”
Still, the impact on consumers is likely to be modest, Pearkes added, with mortgage rates perhaps a quarter-point higher than they would be otherwise.
Financial markets see-sawed, then fell Wednesday after the statement and news conference. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which strongly influences mortgage rates, jumped Wednesday to 4.49% from 4.43%, though it fell back in Thursday trading. The yield on the 2-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for Fed action, was 4.16% Thursday, up sharply from 4.05% before the Fed’s meeting. The broad S & P 500 stock index dropped 1.2% Wednesday.
Such swings could be a sign of things to come. Previous chairs have signaled the Fed’s next moves clearly enough that financial markets have largely anticipated the central bank’s actions. But Warsh has frequently cited as a model former chair Alan Greenspan, whose circumspect comments often kept investors guessing.
Greenspan, who served as chair from 1987 to 2005, did usher in the statement the Fed now issues after each meeting announcing its decision. The first statement was issued Feb. 4, 1994, and said the Fed would increase its key rate for the first time in five years. The move caught investors off-guard and the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 2.4% that day.
The paring back of Fed communications is part of a larger package of potential reforms to the central bank’s operations that Warsh signaled Wednesday. He announced that the Fed will set up five task forces to examine the Fed’s communications, its balance sheet, how it analyzes and gathers economic data, the impact of AI on productivity and jobs, and the frameworks it uses to analyze inflation.
Warsh said the communications task force would consider changes to the quarterly economic projections the Fed issues as well as look at other recent innovations, including press conferences. Former chair Ben Bernanke was the first to hold them, though he did so only after every other Fed meeting. Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, shifted to holding them after every meeting.
Such steps are a sharp contrast with the 1990s, when Greenspan never explained a Fed decision, on the record, to reporters. Warsh could ultimately dial back some of the Fed’s increased transparency.
“This is a big change in how the Fed has conducted itself since the (2008-2009) global financial crisis,” Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, said. “Since then there has been a one-way train to greater communication, more transparency, and more forward guidance. Warsh has now put that train in reverse.”
Previous Fed chairs, starting with Bernanke, have seen a clear benefit to more communication: It helps guide the markets in the direction the Fed wants. Fed officials control a short-term interest rate, but the rates that affect the economy — such as the yield on the 10-year Treasury — are heavily influenced by investors’ expectations for inflation and economic growth. By telegraphing their next moves, policymakers can cause those longer-term rates to change even before the Fed adjusts its own benchmark rate.
Yet Warsh’s view is that financial markets have become too dependent on Fed guidance. Instead, he wants investors to gauge where the Fed may move next by examining economic data and making their own judgments, which the Fed can then consider as part of their assessments of where the economy is headed.
“Financial market prices are probably the most important source of information to guide central bankers,” Warsh said at Wednesday’s news conference.
David Andolfatto, an economics professor at the University of Miami and former economist at the St. Louis Fed, said he agreed with Warsh that forward guidance has flaws. It can be easily upended by unexpected events, he said, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the Iran war.
But the chair should set out guidelines for how the Fed will react to unexpected events, Andolfatto said, or to challenges such as the persistent inflation it is grappling with now, yet Warsh so far hasn’t done so.
“I’m with him on dispensing with forward guidance, but you have to replace it with a contingency plan,” Andolfatto said. “It’s not enough to say, trust me, we’ll keep inflation at target.”
Ironically, Warsh’s decision to drop forward guidance may empower the other 18 members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee, Pearkes said. Those officials — six members of the Fed’s governing board, plus the presidents of the 12 regional Fed banks — frequently give public speeches, and their remarks will get even more attention as financial markets seek clues about what the Fed may do next.
A big challenge to Warsh’s approach will come if there is a sharp financial downturn or economic crisis, as occurred during the COVID pandemic. In those circumstances, economists said, forward guidance can play an important role calming markets.
“Whether it will stand the test of time and he will behave this way for five years is a very different question, but one that we’re going to have to wait for events to unfold to get an answer to,” Pearkes said.

About one-third of 16- to 19-year-olds in the US were employed last summer, federal data show, down from a peak of about 60% in the late 1970s. Experts’ pessimistic forecasts are combining with reports from frustrated jobless young people around the country to form a seasonal outlook far from bathed in sunshine. “The opportunities for workers at the start of the career ladder started to dry up,” says ZipRecruiter economist Nicole Bachaud, adding that teens are among the labor market’s “most marginalized groups.”
Analyzing data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found the number of jobs secured by teens fell 25% last summer from the year prior. The firm says inflation, oil prices, and cautious hiring are likely to lead to even fewer jobs this year, resulting in the lowest summer hiring total for teens since the federal government began tracking it in 1948. Teens most commonly work in food preparation and serving jobs and sales, according to BLS data.

A decades-old candy variant and a storied piece of rock ‘n’ roll lore will reportedly disappear in one fell swoop later this summer.
M&M’s maker Mars will commemorate the product’s 85th anniversary by relaunching the candy in August without artificial dyes, The Wall Street Journal reports. But the switch to natural coloring will come at a price, as brown and blue M&M’s will reportedly be removed from the lineup.
While Mars was able to recreate red and yellow dye with natural sources such as beets and turmeric, blue and brown proved much more difficult and costly to replicate. It can be done with spirulina extract, a blue-green algae and “superfood” that can cost anywhere from $20 per pound in its raw form to $100 per pound in its concentrated form (which is most often used for food dyes), according to Fox Business.
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Compare that to the roughly $10 per pound cost of turmeric, and it’s easy to see how brown and blue M&M’s quickly become cost-prohibitive. Spirulina has also caused clogging in the M&M’s factory spray nozzles, further complicating Mars’ attempts to comply with the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
How Van Halen Turned Brown M&M’s Into Rock ‘n’ Roll Legend
While some candy enthusiasts may balk at the reduced M&M’s color lineup, the change would have come as a great relief for one legendary rock band at the heights of its powers (or at least the promoters who worked with them): Van Halen.
The rockers’ tour rider famously called for bowls of M&M’s to be provided backstage, but with all the brown pieces removed. This was not a case of simple rock star megalomania or superstition, but a test to confirm promoters had read their contract closely and could assure a safe stage setup.
READ MORE: All 75 David Lee Roth-Era Van Halen Songs Ranked Worst to Best
“Many years ago, it was part of the Van Halen contract as we toured through the arenas in the ’80s that there would be no brown M&M’s found in the backstage area or the promoter would forfeit the entire show at full pay,” Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth explained in 2012. “This was touted wildly and widely as simple rock star misdemeanor excess and being abusive of others simply because we could — and who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?”
But there was a method to the band’s madness. “Van Halen was the first to take 850 par lamp lights, huge lights, around the country,” Roth explained. Their high-tech stage production led to structural issues at some of the older, more primitive venues they played. So in the middle of Van Halen’s rider, Roth added a clause banning brown M&M’s just to make sure the promoters had actually read their contract.
“If I came backstage, having been one of the architects of this lighting and staging design, and I saw brown M&M’s on the catering table, then guaranteed the promoter had not read the contract rider and we had to do a serious line check,” Roth explained. If the promoters failed the test, Van Halen would go about “ceremoniously and very theatrically destroying the dressing room to try to get the message across, lest we have a disaster.”
David Lee Roth Explains Van Halen’s ‘No Brown M&M’s’ Legend