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In hindsight, NATO was an unnecessarily confusing acronym for a trade organization representing movie theater owners. For 60 years, the National Association of Theatre Owners has promoted interests of movie theaters, from the biggest chains to the one-screen mom and pop shops. They’ve also regularly gotten mail and phone calls intended for the other NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But the theater owner’s organization is looking to the future, with a new name and a refocused mission. The group will now be known as Cinema United, president and CEO Michael O’Leary told The Associated Press Tuesday. “It can be a little complicated having the same name as…

Calling the groups in charge of professional tennis “a cartel,” the players’ association co-founded by Novak Djokovic filed an antitrust lawsuit against the women’s and men’s tours, the International Tennis Federation and the sport’s integrity agency on Tuesday in federal court in New York. The suit by the Professional Tennis Players’ Association says the organizations that run the sport hold “complete control over the players’ pay and working conditions” and their setup constitutes “textbook violations of state and federal law” that “immunize professional tennis from ordinary market forces and deny professional tennis players and other industry participants their rig…

The European Union’s law enforcement agency cautioned Tuesday that artificial intelligence is turbocharging organized crime that is eroding the foundations of societies across the 27-nation bloc as it becomes intertwined with state-sponsored destabilization campaigns. The grim warning came at the launch of the latest edition of a report on organized crime published every four years by Europol that is compiled using data from police across the EU and will help shape law enforcement policy in the bloc in coming years. “Cybercrime is evolving into a digital arms race targeting governments, businesses and individuals. AI-driven attacks are becoming more precise and de…

It’s never been a more complicated time to be a marketer, but connecting with consumers in a meaningful way is as important as ever. For brands like Liquid Death, GoDaddy, and Taco Bell, that sometimes means embracing another product or experience entirely—think: an adult diaper for concerts, celebrity-created goggle glasses, or a live experience for taco fans. Of course, not every risk pays off. But when a weird idea works, it can really work, as marketers from the three brands shared during a panel discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “The power of an idea that can transcend channels and reach and connect with consumers is really important,” said T…

Nvidia indulged all your artificial intelligence fantasies on Tuesday at what was being called the “Super Bowl of AI.” The chip giant’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) was held at the SAP Center in San Jose on Tuesday, and it was—you guessed it—all about AI. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang made several large announcements during a two-hour keynote, with plenty of meat to keep AI-hungry consumers and businesses happy. That includes partnerships with large automakers to build autonomous vehicles and even personal AI supercomputers that sit right on your desktop. Here are some of the key announcements from Huang’s keynote: GM partnership: General Motors…

Struggling to get enough spinach in your diet? Rather than rustling up a salad or green smoothie, one TikToker has a rather unusual hack to ensure she hits her daily greens goal. “I call it dinosaur time,” TikTok user @sahmthingsup said in a video posted last month, wherein she stands over the sink and stuffs handfuls of raw spinach into her mouth. While it may not be the most appetizing way to consume the leafy greens, the food “hack” has already racked up more than one million views. “For added enrichment, put on a dinosaur documentary,” one user commented. Another added: “My life changed when I realized I could do this with any food I should be getting…

Marcia Dunn, AP reporter: Almost all roads to space begin here in Cape Canaveral. Haya Panjwani, AP correspondent: That’s Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press’ space writer. She’s following Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’s return home from the International Space Station. PANJWANI: I’m Haya Panjwani. On this episode of “The Story Behind the AP Story,” we’re unpacking how the two astronauts got stuck up there in the first place and what they’ve done in the last few months at the station. DUNN: So Butch and Suni became the first people, the first astronauts, to strap into a Boeing Starliner capsule and be launched into space. This was last June, June 5, 2024. They…

Air France on Tuesday unveiled a new first-class suite as it expands efforts to lure wealthy travelers from business jets and lend a ‘French touch’ to the tussle for premium revenue. The CEO of parent Air France-KLM, Ben Smith, told Reuters the unspecified investment aimed to place Air France at the top of the European league in airline luxury, signalling a battle with British Airways and Lufthansa. “A large percentage of the customers are flying for business reasons … Many of them have the choice of a private jet or flying in first class,” Smith said in an interview. “What is new for us over the last few years is a marked increase in the number of luxury cust…

Tuesday’s news that Google would acquire the Israeli cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion was remarkable on several fronts. The deal, assuming it closes, will be the largest acquisition in Google’s history. And it’s the biggest exit in Israeli history. “Becoming part of Google Cloud is effectively strapping a rocket to our backs,” Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport wrote in a blog post. “[I]t will accelerate our rate of innovation faster than what we could achieve as a stand-alone company.” It also marks the close of a fast-paced, five-year chapter for the company. Founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik, and Ami Luttwak, Wiz grew quickly, as …

A gust of wind sweeps over bare soil, kicking up enough dirt and dust to cut visibility to nearly zero, and for drivers, the dust storm seems to come out of nowhere. Such conditions resulted in a pileup on Interstate 70 last week in western Kansas involving dozens of cars and trucks that left eight people dead. Blinding dust also prompted New Mexico’s transportation department to close Interstate 25 from the Colorado border southwest to Las Vegas, New Mexico. Hazy or dust-darkened skies have recalled the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s, when millions of tons of blowing soil buried farms and coated towns across the Great Plains. Lesser storms occur every year, particularl…

Lidar has long been considered the gold standard of self-driving technology. Most car companies use the technology, alongside cameras, radar, and AI, to fully assess a vehicles’ environment. Except for one notable exception: Tesla. Elon Musk has always had it out for Lidar, calling it a “a crutch,” “a loser’s technology” and “too expensive.” After experimenting with Lidar in early autonomous driving prototypes, Musk went a different direction. He ditched radar from Tesla’s production models in 2021, against the criteria of his own engineers, opting instead for his camera-based AI “Tesla Vision” system, which relies on cameras and AI alone. This has proven to be one o…

Despite a weekslong multinational crackdown, scam centers along the Thai-Myanmar border are still operating with up to 100,000 people working there, the top police general leading Thailand’s operations against the fraud compounds told Reuters. Thailand is fronting a regional effort to dismantle scam centers along its borders, which are part of a Southeast Asian network of illegal facilities that generate billions of dollars every year, often using people trafficked there by criminal gangs, according to the United Nations. Based on early assessments of some of the 5,000 people pulled out of sprawling scam hubs in Myanmar’s Myawaddy area, hundreds went there volunta…

It’s been another bad week for Tesla shares so far. After closing down again yesterday, as of the time of this writing, TSLA shares are down over 5% in early morning trading on Tuesday. The stock’s decline this week comes after the company shed nearly 15% of its value in a single day last week. Much of Tesla’s recent stock declines have been attributed to the public souring of the company as its CEO, Elon Musk, has become increasingly involved in politics in both America and Europe. Since Musk’s political engagements, including his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the United States and his support of the far-right party Alternative for German…

Arizona’s highest court has created a pair of AI-generated avatars to deliver news of every ruling issued by the justices, marking what is believed to be the first example in the U.S. of a state court system tapping artificial intelligence to build more humanlike characters to connect with the public. A court in Florida uses an animated chatbot to help visitors navigate its website, but the Arizona Supreme Court is charting new territory with the creation of Victoria and Daniel. Made of pixels, the two avatars have a different job in that they serve as the face of news coming from the court just as a spokesperson made of flesh and blood would do—but faster. The use of A…

China’s energy and auto giant BYD has announced an ultra fast EV charging system that it says is nearly as quick as a fill up at the pumps. BYD, China’s largest EV maker, said Monday that its flash-chargers can provide a full charge for its latest EVs within five to eight minutes, similar to the amount of time needed to fill a fuel tank. It plans to build more than 4,000 of the new charging stations across China. Charging times and limited ranges have been a major factor constraining the switch from gas and diesel vehicles to EVs, though Chinese drivers have embraced that change, with sales of battery powered and hybrid vehicles jumping 40% last year. BYD’s news appear…

Greenpeace used malicious and deceptive tactics to disrupt the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and keep it from going forward, an attorney for the company behind the project said Monday. But attorneys for the environmental advocacy group said during their closing arguments that Greenpeace had little involvement with the 2016-17 protests that are central to the case. A North Dakota jury began deliberating Monday after a weekslong trial over Dallas-based Energy Transfer’s argument that Greenpeace defamed the company and disrupted the project. What is the case about? The energy company and its subsidiary Dakota Access accused Greenpeace International, Greenpeac…

In the past week, law enforcement agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a warning about the ongoing threat of Medusa ransomware. Here’s what you need to know about the threat and how you can protect yourself. What is Medusa ransomware? Ransomware is a type of software that is designed to compromise your information, allowing hackers to steal it. Once these bad actors have your data, they then contact you (or the software contacts you on their behalf), and they inform you that unless you pay a ransom, your data will either be deleted, sold to the highest bidder, or rel…

Kim Atchison was hunkered down in her grandmother’s storm shelter with her 5-year-old grandson Saturday night in their tiny Alabama hometown of Plantersville when her husband and son raced in. “Get down; get all the way down to the bottom of the cellar,” they told her, saying they could see a twister coming. Atchison said she remembers first the “dead silence” and then hearing the wind that felt like a funnel and things outside hitting against each other. “All was quiet after that because it was that fast,” she said. “Like a snap of a finger and it was gone.” Atchison and her family were among the fortunate ones to avoid being killed in the three-day outbreak of sever…

Now that the last pint of green beer has been poured, it’s time to move on to the next reason to celebrate March: college basketball. The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) annual single-elimination tournament, more commonly known as March Madness, kicked things off over the weekend with Selection Sunday. Here’s what you need to know heading into the First Four games and how to tune in. A very brief history of March Madness On the men’s side, the tournament dates back to 1939. Eight teams competed for the Division 1 Championship title, with Oregon taking home the inaugural trophy. The women got in on the action in 1982. Since then, the Tennessee…