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Waymo is currently the robotaxi leader in the United States, and that status has put the company’s vehicles in the crosshairs of vandals multiple times over the last year — most recently this past weekend in Los Angeles. On the sidelines of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said vandalism against Waymo’s robotaxis is “not okay.” “Obviously, vandalism is a crime, so we’re very focused on working with law enforcement to make sure that we pursue the people who are committing these crimes against our fleet,” Mawakana told TechCrunch. “It doesn’t matter whose fleet it is. It’s not acceptable, it’s…

The American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) has unveiled plans for its popular Caribbean Showcase in 2026.The marquee event connecting leading U.S. travel advisors with the top Caribbean destinations will take place from August 22-25, 2026, at Marriott’s St. Kitts Beach Club. Attendees can look forward to more dynamic business sessions, marketplace meetings and destination experiences, in addition to educational seminars, supplier meetings and curated excursions across not only St. Kitts but its sister island of Nevis.Pre-registration for next summer’s 2026 Caribbean Showcase opens this Thursday, October 30, for members of ASTA’s Ambassadors Circle and attendees of the 2025 Caribbean…

Waymo’s co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, had a clear message during her interview on the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 stage Monday: “It is imperative that we scale.” Mawakana was speaking in the context of how Waymo balances fundraising (and burning through that money) with eventually achieving profitability. But she was also clear in the interview that she believes Waymo can increase road safety by reaching that scale. All this helps explain why the company has been on an expansion tear this year and expects to launch in many more U.S. cities — D.C., Miami, Denver, Dallas, Seattle, and Nashville — as well as…

CHICAGO (AP) — The 2-year-old boy was so frightened, he stuttered.“Mommy, mommy, mommy,” he repeated, clinging to her.His mother, Molly Kucich, had been grocery shopping when her husband called, panicking. She heard “immigration raid.” Then: “tear gas.”She abandoned her grocery cart and drove as fast as she could to her toddler and his 14-month-old brother, who, on that warm October Friday, were among the hundreds of Chicago children caught suddenly in the turmoil of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.Parents, teachers and caregivers have been grappling ever since with how to explain to children what they’d seen: how much to tell…

NEW YORK (AP) — Sherry Jenkins is a Halloween person by default. She lives in Blairstown, New Jersey, a rural town where much of the original “Friday the 13th” horror movie was filmed. That date is, of course, a huge draw for tourists, but the town and its residents are all in on promoting Halloween as well with a parade and other activities. Jenkins, 69, goes along with the vibe, hosting friends and handing out candy to 1,000 or more trick-or-treaters every year. She’s not alone. About two-thirds of U.S. adults will celebrate Halloween in some way this year, with…

Alex Chriss, CEO of PayPal Inc.Courtesy: PayPalPayPal has signed a deal with OpenAI to have its digital wallet embedded into ChatGPT so users can pay for items found through the leading consumer AI tool, the company told CNBC exclusively.Shares of the company jumped 13% in premarket trading on the news.The agreement, sealed over the weekend, means that starting next year, both sides of PayPal’s ecosystem can plug into ChatGPT: PayPal users can purchase items through the AI platform, and its merchants can sell on it, with their inventory listed there, according to PayPal CEO Alex Chriss.”We’ve got hundreds of millions…

Kevin Damoa came face-to-face with the challenges and dangers of moving freight from road to rail as a 17-year-old U.S. Army enlistee tasked with loading tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles onto the railroad. It was — as the mechanical engineer and founder of Glīd Technologies puts it — the beginning of his love story with logistics. It’s a love story that persisted through a 13-year stint with the U.S. Air Force National Guard as a firefighter to his roles in the private sector at SpaceX, Northrup Grumman, Romeo Power Tech, and Xos Trucks — to name a few. But it…

CHICAGO (AP) — Just before noon on a sunny Friday earlier this month, federal immigration agents threw tear gas canisters onto a busy Chicago street, just outside of an elementary school and a children’s play cafe.Parents, teachers and caretakers rushed to shield children from the chaos, and have been grappling ever since with how to explain to them what they’d seen: how much to tell them so they know enough to stay safe, but not too much to rob them of their innocence.Weeks later, families — even those not likely in danger of being rounded up in immigration raids —…

Robots can be programmed to do a variety of tasks, like packing boxes and even performing surgery. But each individual movement or task requires its own specific training process, which makes it hard for robots to adapt in real-world scenarios. Mbodi wants to make training robots easier and quicker with the help of AI agents. The company will be showcasing this tech as one of the Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. New York-based Mbodi built a cloud-to-edge system, a hybrid computing system using both cloud and local compute, that is designed to integrate into existing robotic…

Plastic recycling has fallen short. Only about 9% of all plastic is recycled globally, which sounds pretty bad until you compare it with textiles. Only 0.5% of those are recycled. One of the biggest challenges is that textiles are seldom one material. Buttons and zippers complicate matters, but spandex is even worse. Novel synthetic blends have made for clothing that’s a dream to wear but a nightmare to recycle.  “The challenge to recycling is that you can never predict your waste,” Stwart Peña Feliz, co-founder and CEO of MacroCycle, told TechCrunch. “Your waste has infinite number of contaminants.” MacroCycle has…