Consumers in the United States are scouring the internet for online deals as they look to take advantage of the post-Thanksgiving shopping marathon with Cyber Monday. Even though e-commerce is now part and parcel of many people’s regular routines and the holiday shopping season, Cyber Monday — a term coined in 2005 by the National…
Tired of thinking about what gifts to get everyone this year? Artificial intelligence chatbots might help, but don’t expect them to do all the work or always give you the right answers. Anyone scouring the internet for Cyber Monday deals is likely going to encounter more conversational iterations of the chatbots that some retailers and…
LONDON (AP) — Many of us have felt it, and now it’s official: “brain rot” is the Oxford dictionaries’ word of the year. Oxford University Press said Monday that the evocative phrase “gained new prominence in 2024,” with its frequency of use increasing 230% from the year before. Oxford defines brain rot as “the supposed…
TOKYO (AP) — A frog holding a taro-leaf umbrella. A parade of frolicking animals. An Ukiyo-e style Mount Fuji. Giant waves. A Japanese artist who goes by the name Lito carves these delicate designs on fallen leaves, giving life back to them. The world of Lito’s delicate art, which he began in 2020 and posts…
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The first big snowfall of the season blanketed parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan during the hectic U.S. holiday travel and shopping weekend, with numbing cold and heavy snow forecast to persist through the early part of the week and cause hazards in the Great Lakes, Plains and Midwest regions….
LONDON (AP) — Pooches in pullovers paraded past Buckingham Palace on Saturday for a gathering of dogs in Christmas sweaters to raise funds for rescue charities. About 130 pets, and their owners, walked Saturday from St. James’s Park and along the Mall, the wide boulevard that leads to the royal palace as part of the…
Southwest Airlines says it is ending its cabin service earlier on its flights starting next month. Beginning on Dec. 4, a company spokesperson said, flight attendants will begin preparing the cabin for landing at an altitude of 18,000 feet (5,486 meters) instead of 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). The change in procedure is designed to “reduce…
ANAHEIM, California (AP) — For over two years, Ebonie Vazquez searched to find a mentor of color for her son, Giovanni, now 11 and passionate about playing the violin. She has now found that space at a local church. New Hope Presbyterian Church, a multiethnic congregation led by a Black female pastor in Anaheim, California,…
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Honey, they shrunk the catalogs. While retailers hope to go big this holiday season, customers may notice that the printed gift guides arriving in their mailboxes are smaller. Many of the millions of catalogs getting sent to U.S. homes were indeed scaled down to save on postage and paper, resulting in…
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Black Friday was giving way to a white weekend in parts of New York state, with the first big snow of the season threatening to bury towns along lakes Erie and Ontario during a hectic holiday travel and shopping weekend. As flakes began flying Friday, forecasters warned 4 to 6 feet…
