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WWE's WrestleMania extravaganza draws more sponsors to the ring

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — WWE’s WrestleMania, the Super Bowl for the sports entertainment company, arrives this weekend to a massive audience and vastly larger sponsorship revenue as it seeks to establish itself as a serious contender for major dollars from such partnerships.Craig Stimmel, WWE’s senior vice president and head of global sales and partnerships, told The Associated Press in an interview that sponsorship revenue for this year’s event has doubled to more than $20 million, a record for any WWE event.Those numbers are critical in light of the return in January of Vince McMahon, the founder and majority shareholder of WWE, who said the sports entertainment company could be up for sale. 2 Army Black Hawk helicopters crash on training mission in Kentucky; ‘fatalities are expected’ There are numerous rumors circulating about who might be willing to buy WWE and for how much, and it's unknown if anyone has stepped forward with a bid yet. But the company's broadening presence everyw...

Clouds and spotty rain not hurting the warm up

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Not a whole lot of sunshine expected today but with a stout southerly flow, we won't need it for today's warm up.Today will feature on & off light rain mixed in with mainly cloudy skies. Afternoon highs will warm well into the 70s and low 80s, above average for this time of year. Breezy winds out of the southeast will reach sustained speeds of 15-25 mph with gusts up to 30 mph.Unseasonably warm Thursday afternoonA strong Pacific storm passing to our north will drag a cold front through our area late in the day tomorrow. This front has the potential to trigger isolated storms and showers along and east of I-35 late day, but not severe weather is expected at this time.Unfortunately, the risk of severe weather does look significant for areas to our north.Severe weather outbreak likely on Friday for most of the Mississippi Valley an mid-SouthAfternoon highs will spike ahead of this front, likely to bring record-tying warmth to the Austin-metro Friday afternoon. (An...

Hundreds of Texas crime survivors to rally for safety and justice at Capitol

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Hundreds of crime survivors and the families of crime victims will rally at the Texas Capitol Thursday afternoon to advocate for increased victim support and reforms that are meant to break the cycle of crime. “Communities most harmed by violence need support to heal and feel safe again,” Terra Tucker, the Texas director for the Alliance for Safety and Justice, said. What the group is calling forThe group, called the Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, are demanding lawmakers to fund the state's first trauma recovery center. Some of these centers are operational across the country, and the group said it is a proven model to help victims heal in the wake of a crime. “That's why hundreds of Texas crime survivors will rally at the Capitol today and urge elected officials to invest in solutions that prioritize recovery as well as redemption to improve our collective safety," Tucker said. The group is also calling on lawmakers to tackle the root causes of crime. It i...

Costco to open Kyle warehouse Thursday

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

KYLE, Texas (KXAN) -- Get out the forks and knives out for the famous rotisserie chickens. Costco opens its newest location in Kyle during a community event on Thursday at 7 a.m. The City of Kyle says the 152,000 square-foot warehouse is located at 19806 IH-35. That is in the Dry River District Development between the Interstate 35 Frontage Road and Kyle Crossing. According to the city announcement, the Kyle Costco is the first in Hays County, the 37th in Texas, the 585th in the U.S. and the 850th worldwide. “Watching this project evolve from a long-awaited want in our community, into actual construction and now completion is just another example of how the City of Kyle is changing and growing,” Kyle Mayor Travis Mitchell said the city statement. “We are excited about what the addition of Costco means for Kyle’s economy and we will continue striving to attract quality employers and retailers so that residents can live, work and ...

Austin ISD to hold public meeting on slowing down superintendent search

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Austin Independent School District wants your input in Thursday night's meeting about the search for a new superintendent.As KXAN reported Monday, the president of Board of Trustees, Arati Singh, wrote a letter addressed to the AISD community that said the board is calling a special meeting March 30 to, “discuss the possibility of slowing down our search for our district’s next superintendent.” The letter also said the board would consider a contract extension with Matias Segura, the district’s interim superintendent, through June 30, 2024.“The district is focused on improving the systems to meet students’ most pressing needs and giving those systems time to take root,” Singh said in the letter. “Thursday’s meeting will give us a chance to consider a revised process and timeline, hear from our community, and hold a vote if we choose to do so.”The district says Thursday’s meeting begins at 6 p.m. at the board meeting room at the AISD Central Office, which i...

Letters: Don’t tax Social Security until benefits surpass what we paid in

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

Don’t tax some of itWorkers contribute a portion of their gross income to Social Security throughout their working lives. If the worker lives long enough, the worker will begin receiving portions of that contribution back as a Social Security benefit.  A person should not be taxed on the benefit until the total of the benefits equals the total of the contributions. Once that threshold is reached, any further benefits would be taxable income.The Social Security Administration already knows what each person’s lifetime contributions are and it knows what each person’s benefits are. The taxable portion of the annual benefit and the non-taxable portion of the remaining lifetime contribution could be reported on the SSA-1099 statement that social security recipients already receive.It should be noted that only the worker’s contribution would be a non-taxable benefit. It should also be noted that when a worker dies, the worker’s undistributed lifetime contribution, if any, would rema...

Parmy Olson: There’s no such thing as artificial intelligence

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

No one sells the future more masterfully than the tech industry. According to its proponents, we will all live in the “metaverse,” build our financial infrastructure on “web3” and power our lives with “artificial intelligence.” All three of these terms are mirages that have raked in billions of dollars, despite bite-back by reality.Artificial intelligence in particular conjures the notion of thinking machines. But no machine can think, and no software is truly intelligent. The phrase alone may be one of the most successful marketing terms of all time.This month OpenAI announced GPT-4, a major upgrade to the technology underpinning ChatGPT. The system sounds even more humanlike than its predecessor, naturally reinforcing notions of its intelligence. But GPT-4 and other large language models like it are simply mirroring databases of text — close to a trillion words for the previous model — whose scale is difficult to contemplate. Helped ...

George Skelton: High-income earners have joined the exodus from California

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It turns out high-income people are also fleeing the Golden State — a new twist in the California exit.That should worry ruling liberal Democrats who love to tax wealthy people and spend their money, especially on social programs.Some golden geese are taking flight.For years, once-burgeoning California has been hemorrhaging population. This has been happening on several fronts.More people are leaving for other states than are moving here.The inward flow of foreign immigrants has slowed substantially.Fewer babies are being born. More people are dying.It’s the flow of Californians to other states that’s so unusual. Throughout the 20th century, people from the Midwest and South — from all over America — flocked here for jobs, opportunities, sunshine and a better life.My dad left his family’s depressed Tennessee farm in the 1920s to work in the Southern California oil fields. My quarter-Cherokee mom vacated Oklahoma at the s...

A Twin Cities pizza crawl: Six friends, five stops, many delicious pies

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

I have long said I would not do a story about pizza.There are too many different styles, too many versions of each style and pizza is so … personal. You like what you like. I like what I like. And I don’t really feel like arguing about it.But a few weeks ago, my husband and I were watching the New York episode of “Somebody Feed Phil” on Netflix, and host Phil Rosenthal took friends to a few different pizza places in one day. It looked fun, and my husband said, “I know you don’t want to write a big pizza story, but what if we did that, and you wrote about it? Do you think you could find four or five standout pizza places to visit?”Could I? Does he know me at all? Narrowing it down would be the problem.Still, he was right about one thing — it sounded fun! I texted friends who were immediately on board and started making my list. In the end, we visited five places* that I think fairly represent the breadth and depth of delicious pizza in the Twin Cities. I know there are many mor...

98.3 TRY Social Dilemma: Is It Okay to Wear the Same Dress to 3 Different Weddings?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:05:34 GMT

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- Today's TRY Social Dilemma is about what to wear to a wedding...or several weddings. Here's the email: Get the latest, news, weather, sports and community events delivered right to your inbox! Hi Jaime. I have a clothing dilemma. In the next month, I have three different weddings that I’m attending. I found the perfect dress to wear, but I don’t know if I should wear it to all three of them. It took me forever to find this dress and it wasn't cheap.  There are probably only a couple of other people who are likely to be at more than one of these weddings. Can I wear this dress to all three weddings or do I need to spend more money to find another dress (or two) to wear? Do you think anyone would notice if I wore it to all three? Thanks for your help!CassieWell Cassie, I'm probably the last person to ask about fashion, so if it was me, I say definitely wear the same dress to all three weddings. Why spend more money? But like I said, this is coming from a jea...