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Warner Bros. Discovery sues Amazon over HBO Max exec hire, seeks order blocking future poaching

Warner Bros. Discovery sued Amazon in Los Angeles County Superior Court over the hiring of HBO Max marketing executive Pia Barlow, alleging Amazon induced her to break a contract that ran through October 2027. The suit asks the court to bar Amazon from hiring any Warner Bros. Discovery employee under contract. Read More

Seattle startup Replify acquired by ABC Fitness to bring agentic AI to more gyms and wellness centers

Replify's software handles phone calls, emails, chats, and texts for health and wellness businesses, including inbound customer messages as well as proactive outbound marketing." Read More

Microsoft escalates the AI security race with ‘Project Perception’ and a new in-house model

Microsoft on Monday unveiled Project Perception, an AI cybersecurity system built to defend against AI-driven attacks, aiming to keep pace… Read More

Another high for student rocketry team: First place in international competition

Ninth-graders from Interlake High in Bellevue, Wash., soared above teams from France, Japan, the UK, and Ukraine at the Farnborough International Airshow in England. Read More

Report: Starbucks scrapped an AI inventory tool and left a Seattle-area startup ‘blindsided’

Known as "Automated Counting," the tool was built in partnership with NomadGo to scan backroom storage shelves using iPad Pros equipped with computer vision, spatial computing, and augmented reality. Read More

Microsoft earnings preview: AI spending, cloud margins, and why the stock keeps falling

Microsoft reports fiscal fourth-quarter and full-year results Wednesday. A look at the key numbers to watch, including capital spending, Azure growth, cloud margins, Copilot adoption and the company's first capital spending forecast for fiscal 2027. Read More

Tech Moves: Remitly names CISO; Joseph Williams leads cybersecurity ed at WWU; Yoodli gets product VP

Seattle's Remitly names a new CISO amid continued leadership shuffling; Seattle tech and public service leader Joseph Williams is director of cybersecurity programs at Western Washington University; and Yoodli hires a VP of product. Read More

Jeff Bezos reportedly joining bid to buy stake in English soccer giant Liverpool FC

Jeff Bezos is reportedly part of an investment group seeking to buy a 30% stake in Liverpool FC, potentially giving the Amazon founder his first ownership interest in a major professional sports franchise. Read More

Science and Technology | AP

Visitors at the booth for Chinese AI Startup Moonshot's Kimi K3 during the World AI Conference in S...
Associated Press

Cheaper, open and intelligent: Chinese AI models gain ground, as they make inroads in the US

HONG KONG (AP) — China has a hot new product in the United States: artificial intelligence. San Francisco-based Raffi Krikorian, the chief technology officer at Mozilla, which runs the Firefox browser, switched to Chinese AI startup Moonshot’s Kimi K3 for many of his day-to-day activities within days of the new, powerful model’s launch more than […]
2 days ago
Hundreds of young people gather near the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in the Hyde Park ne...
Associated Press

How the lighthearted social media trend of ‘teen takeovers’ took a serious turn

When Damarion Spann, 18, saw an Instagram flier calling for a massive gathering on a beach near downtown Chicago, he immediately wanted to go. Thousands of others joined him that night on the sand, blasting music and dancing. The cultural trend of so-called teen takeovers has popped up across the U.S. in recent years, influencing […]
3 days ago
FILE - Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivers the Democratic response to President Donald Trump'...
Associated Press

Virginia study on groundwater, data centers calls for tighter water regulations

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia, the world’s largest data center hub, has released a long-delayed study that examined the state’s eastern region groundwater supply and the resource-hungry industry’s possible impact on it, finding declines are likely in a critical aquifer due to population growth and industrial use, and urging stricter regulations. Produced by environmental scientists, […]
3 days ago
President Donald Trump holds a championship ring during an event to honor the 2025 World Series cha...
Associated Press

Trump says US will investigate EU trade practices, claiming the bloc unfairly fined US tech giants

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says Friday that the United States will open a formal investigation into the European Union’s trade practices, claiming the bloc has unfairly levied billions of dollars of fines against Google, Apple and other U.S. tech giants. The Republican president made the announcement a day after the EU hit Google […]
3 days ago
The site of a future data center being built near Abernathy, Texas, Saturday, July 18, 2026, in Hal...
Associated Press

Trump expands a voluntary pledge to protect consumers from high utility bills from AI data centers

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday will have governors and electricity companies join a voluntary pledge to shield U.S. consumers from higher utility bills from data centers — a sign of how the artificial intelligence build- out has become a lightning rod of controversy before the midterm elections. The president first announced the […]
4 days ago
Democratic candidate for Texas governor Gina Hinojosa, third from the left, listens to Stephen Sand...
Associated Press

Democrats try to harness data center backlash that’s dividing rural Republicans in places like Texas

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — When Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, began her campaign last year, candidates weren’t talking about — or hearing about — data centers. But with barely three months until November’s contest, the perceived threat to rural life, ranchland and dwindling water supplies could become a defining issue for her […]
5 days ago
FILE - The Gordie Howe Bridge is shown under construction between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, May...
Associated Press

US-Canada bridge has been years in the making. But tension between countries is sapping the joy

DETROIT (AP) — The strained relationship between the U.S. and Canada is spoiling the celebration of an extraordinary project between the two countries: a new six-lane bridge named for a famous Canadian who played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings. After years of planning and billions of dollars in construction, the Gordie Howe International Bridge […]
5 days ago
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, May 19, ...
Associated Press

Google’s Q2 earnings of $112.11B beat Wall Street’s expectations on AI boom

Google parent company Alphabet Inc. posted stronger-than-expected results for its second quarter, a sign that it’s massive artificial intelligence spending spree is paying off so far and advertising revenue is coming in strong. The Mountain View, California-based company said Wednesday it earned $112.11 billion, or $9.11 per share, in the April-June period. That’s up from […]
5 days ago
Associated Press

OpenAI blamed a hacking event on its AI models going rogue. Here are some things to know

ChatGPT maker OpenAI says it is still investigating the “unprecedented cyber incident” that led its artificial intelligence systems to break out of a testing environment and hack into another AI company. OpenAI said Tuesday two of its most capable AI models were responsible for the cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face. The incident is stirring […]
5 days ago
Associated Press

FBI chief hold talks in Cambodia over closer security cooperation to combat online scam crimes

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel held talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet on Wednesday on joint efforts to combat international online scam operations that cheat victims out of billions of dollars each year. A report issued Tuesday by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimated that scams caused […]
6 days ago
FILE - CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman talks to CEO of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis, not seen, on the si...
Associated Press

OpenAI says its AI technology acted on its own in an ‘unprecedented’ hack of another company

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Tuesday that its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own in what the company called an “unprecedented cyber incident.” “We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media. AI startup Hugging Face said […]
6 days ago
This undated photo provided by the Discovery Channel Tuesday, July 21, 2026, shows, from left, Air/...
Associated Press

Wreckage found of Pan Am plane crash that helped lead to today’s safety briefings on every flight

The wreckage from a Pan Am plane crash in the ocean 74 years ago that helped lead to requirements for the passenger safety briefings on every flight today has been found off the coast of Puerto Rico. The talks flight attendants deliver about how to inflate a life vest or find the exits on a […]
6 days ago
This image from video provided by SpaceX shows a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Northrop Grumman’s miss...
Associated Press

Private mission launches to extend life of out-of-gas communication satellites

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A two-armed space robot blasted off on a private salvage operation Tuesday afternoon to slap life-extending jetpacks on old satellites running low on fuel thousands of miles up. It’s the second satellite-saving mission to launch this month, all part of a growing, money-saving effort to keep old spacecraft running as […]
6 days ago
FILE - Thriller novelist Andrea Bartz is photographed in her home, in the Brooklyn borough of New Y...
Associated Press

Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides […]
6 days ago
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz speaks before President Donald Trump arrives at th...
Associated Press

US pledges to crack down on Haitian gangs making money off social media

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Mike Waltz, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, said Monday that the U.S. government would soon move to stop violent gangs in Haiti from making money off social media posts. Gang leaders in the troubled Caribbean country are prolific users of social media and have celebrated killings, issued […]
7 days ago