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LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — An explosion inside a maintenance hole on the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock set off fires and power outages, leading school officials to issue evacuation orders for several buildings and cancel classes for the rest of the week, university police said.The explosion happened Wednesday evening at the Engineering Key section of campus, which was evacuated.“I heard an explosion and then saw a smoke ring, almost like a cartoon or something,” doctoral degree student Robert Gauthreaux III told KCBD-TV. “It traveled about 200 feet in the air.” Gauthreaux said he went inside the architecture building, which…

Release of prisoners comes amid push by Trump administration to bring home US citizens jailed overseas.Kuwait has released a group of American prisoners, including veterans and military contractors jailed for years on drug-related charges, in a move seen as a gesture of goodwill between two allies, a representative for the detainees told The Associated Press news agency on Wednesday. The release follows a recent visit to the region by Adam Boehler, the Trump administration’s top hostage envoy, and comes amid a continued US government push to bring home American citizens jailed in foreign countries. Six of the newly freed prisoners were…

ISLAMABAD: Germany hockey great Christian “Büdi” Blunck gestures during an event hosted by the German Embassy on Wednesday.—Tanveer Shehzad/White Star ISLAMABAD: Impressed with present hockey talent in Pakistan, German legend Christian “Büdi” Blunck on Wednesday said that by increasing the pool of players and developing required facilities the country could regain its glory in the game. The 56-year-old Blunck, who was part of the gold medal-winning team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and is currently on a short tour of Pakistan, insisted that the country’s current hockey players had talent while adding that “lot of work is required to be…

DUBAI: The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Wednesday thanked the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for “successfully hosting” the recently concluded ICC Champions Trophy. In a press release, the global governing body of the sport also thanked the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) for the staging of India’s matches of the tournament. India played their matches in Dubai after the country’s government refused to send its team to Pakistan, the original hosts of the tournament. Playing all their five matches — including a semi-final and the final — at the venue, Rohit Sharma’s men claimed the Champions Trophy title for the third…

The prime minister of Ireland, Michael Martin, is the latest European leader to visit United States President Donald Trump during his second term in the White House. But the occasion was a markedly light-hearted one: to hold receptions and events in advance of St Patrick’s Day, a popular Irish holiday held each year on March 17. Still, Wednesday’s visit was clouded by many of the same looming issues that accompanied other European leaders to the White House, among them Russia’s war in Ukraine and the fate of the delicate ceasefire in Gaza. Trump took up much of the spotlight, holding…

LONDON (AP) — It may be winter and there may be a biting chill in the air, but the dozen men and women who have packed this small sauna room in east London are happily sweating away in their swimwear. It’s more than 90 degrees Celcius (194 Fahrenheit) in here — and it’s about to get even hotter.As ice blocks infused with lavender oil melt over sizzling hot stones, releasing fragrant steam, “sauna master” Oliver Beryl turns on some ambient music and starts to vigorously wave a towel in a circular motion above his head to spread overpowering waves of…

Immigrants kept the largest urban counties in the U.S. growing last year.Core counties in the Houston, Miami and Phoenix metropolitan areas grew more than any others in the country primarily because of people moving in from outside the United States, according to population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.Without the international migration, Harris County, Texas, Miami-Dade County, Florida, and Maricopa County, Arizona, would have had nobody moving there last year. That’s because more people already living in the country moved out of than into those counties. Miami-Dade County would have lost population without the immigrants, since the number…

Semiconductor giant Intel hired semiconductor veteran Lip-Bu Tan to be its new CEO. This news comes three months after Pat Gelsinger retired and stepped down from the company’s board, with Intel CFO David Zinsner and executive vice president of client relations Michelle Johnston Holthaus stepping in as co-CEOs. Tan, who was most recently the CEO of Cadence Design Systems, is joining Intel — and rejoining the board — at an interesting time in the Silicon Valley company’s history. Intel has seen its fair share of ups and downs in the past few years — to put it mildly. When Gelsinger…

Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei is worried that spies, likely from China, are getting their hands on costly “algorithmic secrets” from the U.S.’s top AI companies — and he wants the U.S. government to step in. Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Monday, Amodei said that China is known for its “large-scale industrial espionage” and that AI companies like Anthropic are almost certainly being targeted. “Many of these algorithmic secrets, there are $100 million secrets that are a few lines of code,” he said. “And, you know, I’m sure that there are folks trying to steal them, and…

GTC, Nvidia’s biggest conference of the year, begins Monday and runs till Friday in San Jose. TechCrunch will be on the ground covering the news as it happens — and we’re expecting a healthy dose of announcements. CEO Jensen Huang will give a keynote address at the SAP Center on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific, focusing on — what else? — AI and accelerating computing technologies, according to Nvidia. The company is also teasing reveals related to robotics, sovereign AI, AI agents, and automotive — plus 1,000 sessions with 2,000 speakers and close to 400 exhibitors. Here’s how to watch…