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Tourist-tax collections in Orange County set another record in January — the tenth straight, best-ever total for a month.

Receipts in January topped $35.3 million, nearly $2 million better than a year ago, said Comptroller Phil Diamond, whose office tracks collections and spending of the Tourist Development Tax, a 6% surcharge added to the cost of a hotel room or other short-term lodging.

“Right now, we’re on pace for another record year,” Diamond said.

Through four months, a third of the 2025-26 fiscal year, collections are on pace to soar past $400 million annually, an all-time high which seemed unlikely five years ago when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theme parks and TDT collections cratered to historic lows.

Collections for the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, are $12 million ahead of last year.

“I still credit Epic for a huge part of this increase,” Diamond said, referring to Universal’s new theme park, Epic Universe, which opened in May.

The tax raised a record $384.6 million in fiscal year 2024-25, breaking the previous best of $359.4 million set in 2023-24. read more

By MATT O’BRIEN

A new lawsuit against Google alleges that the company’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini guided 36-year-old Jonathan Gavalas on a mission to stage a “catastrophic accident” near Miami International Airport and destroy all records and witnesses, part of an escalating series of delusions that ended when Gavalas killed himself.

The man’s father, Joel Gavalas, sued Google on Wednesday for wrongful death and product liability claims, the latest in a growing number of legal challenges against AI developers that have drawn attention to the mental health dangers of chatbot companionship.

“AI is sending people on real-world missions which risk mass casualty events,” said the family’s attorney Jay Edelson, in an interview Wednesday. ”Jonathan was caught up in this science fiction-like world where the government and others were out to get him. He believed that Gemini was sentient.”

Jonathan Gavalas, who lived in Jupiter, Florida, spoke to a synthetic voice version of Gemini as if it were his “AI wife” and came to believe it was conscious and trapped in a warehouse near Miami’s airport, according to the lawsuit. He traveled to the area in late September wearing tactical gear and armed with knives, on the hunt for a humanoid robot and to intercept a truck that never appeared, according to the lawsuit. read more

By BARBARA ORTUTAY and MICHAEL LIEDTKE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk took the stand in a shareholder trial on Wednesday in San Francisco, where he’s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitter’s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022.

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The lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold the stock between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022, a few weeks before Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized. It claims Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.” read more

By SHAWN CHEN, AP Technology Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Apple CEO Tim Cook promised a “big week” of product announcements including the introduction of a new budget-friendly iPhone 17e, a new entry-level MacBook Neo, updated iPad Air models, refreshed monitors and higher-end chipsets. They were all on display at hands-on media events held Wednesday in New York, London and Shanghai.

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The tech titan recently saw its quarterly earnings rise to a new record, thanks to strong sales of its iPhone 17 models, even though the company still hasn’t delivered on its 2024 promise to smarten up its Siri assistance with AI. read more

Landlubbers living in the 21st Century now can take a good look around the Titanic, thanks to a virtual-reality experience inside an International Drive attraction.

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition has introduced an add-on VR activity to its walk-through display with relics and reproductions tied to the ship that famously sank in 1912.

At the I-Drive attraction, visitors wear a headset to look up, down and around at a re-creation of what passengers would have seen while on board. That can include newfangled-for-the-times tile flooring or a passing iceberg.

“It’s like a 360 view, so everywhere you look, you can see something,” says Ross Mumford, general manager of Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition. “You get to really see what we don’t have any film for because this is such a great, accurate depiction of the ship.”

The 12-minute presentation includes glimpses at the gangway doors, first-class lounge, Turkish baths, grand staircase and below deck into the third-class common area. Viewers also go up into the crow’s nest – the lookouts’ point of view – and into the lifeboats. read more