g777 casino Walmart says it's testing body cameras on some store employeesNEW YORK (AP) — In a string of visits, dinners, calls, monetary pledges and social media overtures, big tech chiefs — including Apple’s Tim Cook, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos — have joined a parade of business and world leaders in trying to improve their standing with President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office in January. “The first term, everybody was fighting me,” Trump said in remarks at Mar-a-Lago . “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.” Tech companies and leaders have now poured millions into his inauguration fund, a sharp increase — in most cases — from past pledges to incoming presidents. But what does the tech industry expect to gain out of their renewed relationships with Trump? Clearing the way for AI development A clue to what the industry is looking for came just days before the election when Microsoft executives — who’ve largely tried to show a neutral or bipartisan stance — joined with a close Trump ally, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, to publish a blog post outlining their approach to artificial intelligence policy. “Regulation should be implemented only if its benefits outweigh its costs,” said the document signed by Andreessen, his business partner Ben Horowitz, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the company’s president, Brad Smith. They also urged the government to back off on any attempt to strengthen copyright laws that would make it harder for companies to use publicly available data to train their AI systems. And they said, “the government should examine its procurement practices to enable more startups to sell technology to the government.” Trump has pledged to rescind President Joe Biden’s sweeping AI executive order, which sought to protect people’s rights and safety without stifling innovation. He hasn’t specified what he would do in its place, but his campaign said AI development should be “rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.” Easier energy for data centers Trump’s choice to head the Interior Department, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, has spoken openly about the need to boost electricity production to meet increased demand from data centers and artificial intelligence. “The AI battle affects everything from defense to healthcare to education to productivity as a country,′′ Burgum said on Nov. 15, referring to artificial intelligence. “And the AI that’s coming in the next 18 months is going to be revolutionary. So there’s just a sense of urgency and a sense of understanding in the Trump administration′′ to address it. Demand for data centers ballooned in recent years due to the rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and local governments are competing for lucrative deals with big tech companies. But as data centers begin to consume more resources, some residents are pushing back against the world’s most powerful corporations over concerns about the economic, social and environmental health of their communities. Changing the antitrust discussion “Maybe Big Tech should buy a copy of ‘The Art of The Deal’ to figure out how to best negotiate with this administration,” suggested Paul Swanson, an antitrust attorney for the law firm Holland & Hart. “I won’t be surprised if they find ways to reach some accommodations and we end up seeing more negotiated resolutions and consent decrees.” Although federal regulators began cracking down on Google and Facebook during Trump’s first term as president — and flourished under Biden — most experts expect his second administration to ease up on antitrust enforcement and be more receptive to business mergers. Google may benefit from Trump’s return after he made comments on the campaign trail suggesting a breakup of the company isn’t in the U.S. national interest, after a judge declared its search engine an illegal monopoly . But recent nominations put forward by his transition team have favored those who have been critical of Big Tech companies, suggesting Google won’t be entirely off the hook. Fending off the EU Cook’s notoriously rocky relationship with the EU can be traced back to a 2016 ruling from Brussels in a tax case targeting Apple. Cook slammed the bloc’s order for Apple to pay back up to $13.7 billion in Irish back taxes as “total political crap.” Trump, then in his first term as president, piled on, referring to the European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who was spearheading a campaign on special tax deals and a crackdown on Big Tech companies, as the “tax lady” who “really hates the U.S.” Brussels was eventually vindicated after the bloc’s top court rejected Apple’s appeal this year, though it didn’t stop Cook from calling Trump to complain, Trump recounted in a podcast in October. Trump hosted Cook for a Friday evening dinner at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly. Neither Apple nor the Trump transition team has commented on the nature of their discussions. Making amends? Altman , Amazon and Meta all pledged to donate $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund. During his first term, Trump criticized Amazon and railed against the political coverage at The Washington Post, which billionaire Bezos owns. Meanwhile, Bezos had criticized some of Trump’s past rhetoric. In 2019, Amazon also argued in a court case that Trump’s bias against the company harmed its chances of winning a $10 billion Pentagon contract. More recently, Bezos has struck a more conciliatory tone. He recently said at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in New York that he was “optimistic” about Trump’s second term, while also endorsing president-elect’s plans to cut regulations. The donation from Meta came just weeks after Zuckerberg met with Trump privately at Mar-a-Lago. During the 2024 campaign, Zuckerberg did not endorse a candidate for president, but voiced a more positive stance toward Trump. Earlier this year, he praised Trump’s response to his first assassination attempt. Still, Trump in recent months had continued to attack Zuckerberg publicly. And Altman, who is in a legal dispute with AI rival Elon Musk, has said he is “not that worried” about the Tesla CEO’s influence in the incoming administration. Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging that the maker of ChatGPT betrayed its founding aims of benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.

What does Big Tech hope to gain from warming up to Trump?FRGT stock plunges to 52-week low, hits $1.35 amid market challenges

CM advocates for 'Yuva Sansad' in universitiesCHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Bryce Thompson scored 17 points, Marchelus Avery had 15 points and eight rebounds, and Oklahoma State beat Miami 80-74 on Friday in the consolation bracket of the Charleston Classic. Oklahoma State (4-1) will play in the fifth-place game on Sunday, while Miami (3-2) will try to avoid going winless in the tournament. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Get any of our free email newsletters — news headlines, obituaries, sports, and more.

American Airlines resumes flights after a tech issue caused a nationwide groundstopAll you have to do to become a South Dakota resident is spend one night. Stay in a campground or hotel and then stop by one of the businesses that specialize in helping people become South Dakotans, and they’ll help you do the paperwork to gain residency in a state with no income tax and relatively cheap vehicle registration. The system brings in extra government revenue through vehicle fees and offers refuge to full-time travelers who wouldn’t otherwise have a permanent address or a place to vote. And that’s the problem. State leaders are at a stalemate between those who say people who don’t really live in South Dakota shouldn’t be allowed to vote in local elections and those who say efforts to impose a longer residency requirement for voting violate the principle that everyone gets to vote. And at least one state has gotten wind that its residents might be avoiding high income taxes with easy South Dakota residency and is investigating. Catering to the nomadic lifestyle Easy South Dakota residency for nomads has become an enterprising opportunity for businesses such as RV parks and mail forwarders. “That’s the primary concept here, is the people that have given up their sticks and bricks and now are on wheel estate, we call it, and they’re full-time traveling,” said Dane Goetz, owner of the Spearfish-based South Dakota Residency Center, which caters to full-time travelers. “They need a place to call home, and we provide that address for them to do that, and they are just perpetually on the move.” Goetz estimated more than 30,000 people are full-time traveler residents of South Dakota, but the actual number is unclear. The state Department of Public Safety, which handles driver licensing, says it doesn’t track the number of full-time traveler applications. Officials of the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to emailed questions or a phone message seeking the state’s tally of full-time travelers registered to vote. The office is not responsible for enforcing residency requirements, Division of Elections Director Rachel Soulek said. Victor Robledo, his wife and their five kids hit the road a decade ago in a 28-foot (8.5-meter) motorhome to seek adventure and ease their high cost of living in Southern California. They found South Dakota to be an opportunity to save money, receive mail and “take a residency in a state that really nurtures us,” he said. They filed for residency in 2020. “It was as simple as coming into the state, staying one night in one of the campgrounds, and once we do that, we bring in a receipt to the office, fill out some paperwork, change our licenses. I mean, really, you can blow through there — gosh, 48 hours,” Robledo said. Residency rules spark election concerns Residency becomes thorny around voting. Some opponents don’t want people who don’t physically live in South Dakota to vote in its elections. “I don’t want to deny somebody their right to vote, but to think that they can vote in a school board election or a legislative election or a county election when they’re not part of the community, I’m troubled by that,” said Democratic Rep. Linda Duba, who cited 10,000 people or roughly 40% of her Sioux Falls constituents being essentially mailbox residents. She likes to knock on doors and meet people but said she is unable to do “relationship politics” with travelers. The law the Republican-controlled Legislature passed in 2023 added requirements for voter registration, including 30 days of residency — which don’t have to be consecutive — and having “an actual fixed permanent dwelling, establishment, or any other abode to which the person returns after a period of absence.” The bill’s prime sponsor, Republican Sen. Randy Deibert, told a Senate panel that citizens expressed concerns about “people coming to the state, being a resident overnight and voting (by) absentee ballot or another way the next day and then leaving the state.” Those registered to vote before the new law took effect remain registered, but some who tried to register since its passage had trouble. Dozens of people recently denied voter registration contacted the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, according to the chapter’s advocacy manager, Samantha Chapman. Durational residency requirements for voting are, in general, unconstitutional because such restrictions interfere with the interstate right to travel, said David Schultz, a Hamline University professor of political science and a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas. “It’s kind of this parochialism, this idea of saying that only people who are really in our neighborhood, who really live in our city have a sufficient stake in it, and the courts have generally been unsympathetic to those types of arguments because, more often than not, they’re used for discriminatory purposes,” he said. State lawmakers at odds over residency law Earlier this year, the Legislature considered a bill to roll back the 2023 law. It passed the Senate but stalled in the House. During a House hearing on that bill, Republican Rep. Jon Hansen asked one full-time traveler when he was last in South Dakota and when he intends to return. The man said he was in the state a year earlier but planned to return in coming months. Another man who moved from Iowa to work overseas said he had not lived “for any period of time, physically” in South Dakota. “I don’t think we should allow people who have never lived in this state to vote in our state,” Hansen said. Republican Sen. David Wheeler, an attorney in Huron, said he expects litigation would be what forces a change. It’s unlikely a change to the 30-day requirement would pass the Legislature now, he said. “It is a complicated topic that involves federal and state law and federal and state voting rights, and it is difficult to bring everybody together on how to appropriately address that,” Wheeler said. Out-of-state residents may see tax benefits More than 1,600 miles (2,500 kilometers) east, Connecticut State Comptroller Sean Scanlon has asked prosecutors to look into whether some state employees who live in Connecticut may have skirted their tax obligations by claiming to be residents of South Dakota. Connecticut has a graduated income tax rate of 3.0% to 6.99%. Connecticut cities and towns also impose a property tax on vehicles. South Dakota has none. Scanlon and his office, which administers state employee retiree benefits, learned from a Hartford Courant columnist in September that some state retirees might be using South Dakota’s mail-forwarding services for nefarious reasons. Asked if there are concerns about other Connecticut taxpayers who are not state retirees possibly misusing South Dakota’s lenient residency laws, the Department of Revenue Services would only say the agency is “aware of the situation and we’re working with our partners to resolve it.” A South Dakota legislative panel broached the residency issue as recently as August, a meeting in which one lawmaker called the topic “the Gordian knot of politics.” “It seems like it’s almost impossible to come to some clear and definitive statement as to what constitutes a residency with such a mobile population with people with multiple homes and addresses and political boundaries that are easy to see on a map but there’s so much cross-transportation across them,” Republican Sen. Jim Bolin said. ___ Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota. Associated Press Writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

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Dell Technologies Q3 revenue falls short of estimates as weak PC demand weighsWhat does Big Tech hope to gain from warming up to Trump?The last time the two teams met with a provincial gold medal up for grabs, the game came down to the final rock. That didn't happen this time on Monday, Dec. 23, in Kimberley, though the outcome was the same. The Vernon/Kamloops team of skip Ava Arndt and second Ivy Jensen of Vernon, and Kamloops sisters Bethany Evans (third) and Alicia Evans (lead) won the Safetek Profire B.C. U18 Girls Curling Championship at the Kimberley Curling Club, scoring an 8-3 win over the Kelowna/Penticton squad skipped by Megan Remple of Kelowna. Because B.C. gets two spots, both teams advance to the Canadian U18 championships Feb. 16-22 at the Nutana Curling Club in Saskatoon. Arndt defeated Rempel 6-5 in the gold-medal game at the 2023 B.C. Winter Games at the Vernon Curling Club. "We’re just super excited," said Arndt after Monday's win. "It took us a couple years to get here, but the hard work paid off and we can’t believe it. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. It’s been a lot of hard work from us and the coaches and the parents. It’s been amazing." The team is coached by David Arndt. After taking a single point with the hammer in the opening end, Arndt took control of Monday's B.C. final in the second end with her first of a pair of three-point stolen ends. Arndt repeated the thievery in the sixth end to take an 8-2 lead. It was 4-2 Arndt at the fourth-end break. Both teams were the toast of the seven-team girls event, going 5-1 in the round-robin to earn a berth in Monday's final. Arndt's only blemish came in the fifth draw Saturday evening, when she fell 6-4 to Juli Andrews, whose rink had players from Maple Ridge, Abbotsford, and Chilliwack. Rempel started and finished the tournament with losses to Arndt, including a 7-3 defeat in the tournament's opening draw, then rattled off five straight wins. Salmon Arm's Danielle Monteith finished with a 2-4 record. Curling with Monteith was Armstrong's Kyara O'Shea, who threw second rocks. The 12-team boys event was won by Kelowna's Owen Jaeger, whose rink gets the only B.C. berth in Saskatoon in February after defeating Harrison Hrynew of New Westminster 7-4. Trailing 4-3, Jaeger turned the game in his favour in the seventh end, scoring three for a 6-4 lead. "We really worked hard this year, this year we really wanted to win," said Jaeger. "We put in a lot of work and it just feels really, really good to win and for all that hard work to pay off. We’re really, really excited. It’s our first national event, first U18 provincial win, so we’re really excited." Team Jaeger was made up of coaches Tyler Jaeger and Travis Wielgosz, lead Brendan Hruschak, second Noel Wielgosz, third Spencer Rempel and skip Owen Jaeger. The Kelowna squad was undefeated, going 5-0 in their six-team round-robin pool to earn a semifinal berth where they dispatched Matthew Reynolds of the host club 9-0. Hrynew advanced to the gold-medal game with a 7-2 semifinal romp over Pool B winner Nicholas White of Nanaimo. Matthew Miller of the Armstrong Curling Club went 1-4, winning his final game, 8-7, over Reynolds. Supporting Miller were third Arel Ciccone, second Zach Boudreau and lead Casey O'Shea. Coaches were Ian Boudreau and Kyle Gee. Owen Jaeger has been picked up by the Salmon Arm/Vernon skipped by Kaiden Beck of Salmon Arm for the B.C. U20 Curling Championships next week in Cloverdale. Jaeger replaced Nolan Beck at second. Beck is out with a knee injury. Third Nolan Blaeser, lead Koen Hampshire, and coach Dale Hofer, all from Vernon, round out the team. Team Arndt will be among the women's teams competing in Cloverdale. The Kimberley Curling Club (KCC) hosted the 2025 Safetek Profire BC U18 Curling Championships from Dec. 19 to 23. "We were thrilled with how everything went," said KCC general manager Blair Jarvis. "We knew that most teams were travelling a long way to get here and unfortunately they had to deal with some adventures with the snow we had last Wednesday. "We wanted to make sure that we gave them an experience that they would remember, so we spent a lot of time on the ice, we wanted to give them a great social experience off the ice as well and we heard from a number of curlers that it was the most U18 event that they’ve attended and so we’re really proud of that fact."

No. 1 Kansas holds off No. 11 Duke 75-72 after Dickinson ejected in the Vegas ShowdownWhat if the Golden State Warriors were able to land two huge additions before February's trade deadline, including a former No. 1 overall pick? Before you rule out that Golden State could acquire both Zion Williamson of the New Orleans Pelicans and Cam Thomas of the Brooklyn Nets in a single trade, take some time to review the details of what such a deal would look like: Golden State receives: Thomas, Williamson, and a 2026 second-round pick from Brooklyn. New Orleans receives: Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kuminga, and Lindy Waters III. Brooklyn receives: Moses Moody, a 2026 first-round pick from Golden State, and a 2027 second-round pick from New Orleans (via Chicago). What does this trade give the Warriors? A championship roster around Curry. If Zion is healthy (big "if"), this is what Golden State's playoff rotation would look like: Starters: Stephen Curry, Buddy Hield, Zion Williamson, Draymond Green, Trayce Jackson-Davis Bench: Brandin Podziemski, Cam Thomas, Kyle Anderson, Kevon Looney Getting Zion would enable Golden State to put more small-ball lineups on the floor featuring Williamson at center, much like the Warriors have done in the past with Draymond. For example, a lineup with Curry, Podziemski, Hield, Anderson, and Zion would be difficult to defend. What does this trade give the Pelicans? An exit from the Zion era. Williamson has never appeared in a playoff game for the Pelicans since being drafted by the team at No. 1 overall in 2019. New Orleans would gain financial flexibility by turning Zion's $163 million owed over the next four seasons into Wiggins's $54.5 million owed over the next three seasons, the difference of which the Pelicans could use to pay Jonathan Kuminga this summer if they see him as a viable Zion replacement. Kuminga doesn't provide what a healthy Zion does (no one can), but given Kuminga's extreme athleticism and size, he'd be a great guy to add to a team moving on from Williamson. What does this trade give the Nets? A way to avoid overpaying Cam Thomas this summer. Thomas is going to demand a lucrative deal, and someone is going to give it to him, but the Nets want to keep cap space open for guys like Giannis Antetokounmpo should they become available. Rather than let Thomas walk, however, the Nets could get a lot of value by trading him this winter. In this case, turning Thomas into a first-round pick from Golden State and turning their own future second-rounder into Chicago's is a really solid package to go along with Moody, who at $43.3 million over the next four seasons is a perfect contract for a team looking to stack valuable role players at a bargain price. Why might this trade fall through? The Pelicans would probably ask for a first-rounder from Golden State in addition to Kuminga and Wiggins. That might be difficult for the Warriors to pull off if they are already giving a first-rounder to the Nets, but it's not impossible. Negotiating which two of Golden State's future first-rounders to include in the trade -- and deciding which of them go to which team -- would represent the most complicated aspect of the deal. More NBA: Warriors could surprisingly acquire $163 million Kings superstar via trade