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100 Thieves announced the organization has parted ways with Alexander “Zander” Dituri ahead of the 2026 Valorant Champions Tour.
Zander joined 100 Thieves for the 2025 VCT season following stints with SoaR Gaming, Version1 and M80. However, the team failed to qualify for a single global VCT tournament, was eliminated early at VCT Kickoff and did not advance from the Playoffs in Stages 1 and 2.
That ushered in several roster changes, with the team previously announcing the departures of Drew “Kess” Lee and Daniel “eeiu” Vucenovic along with head coach Anthony “Zikz” Gray.
“My time with @100Thieves has come to an end,” said Zander, who served as the in-game leader during VCT Americas Stage 2. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to represent such a legendary org and for everyone who supported me along the way. Thank you to my teammates, staff, and fans for making this year unforgettable.”
The only remaining players under contract are Peter “Asuna” Mazuryk and Matthew “Cryocells” Panganiban, with the team announcing Wednesday that both will remain on the roster.
Superstar Lionel Messi, the MLS Golden Boot winner and MLS MVP favorite, leads an MLS Best XI list this season that features representatives from nine clubs.
With 29 goals and 19 assists, the Inter Miami forward was one goal contribution shy of the league-record 49 set by Carlos Vela in 2019 and could be the first back-to-back MVP in league history.
Argentina’s Messi is joined on the list, announced by MLS on Wednesday, by players from seven different countries, including six players who are honored on the list for the first time.
The Philadelphia Union, with defenders Jakob Glesnes and Kai Wagner, and the Vancouver Whitecaps, with defender Tristan Blackmon and midfielder Sebastian Berhalter, were the only teams with more than one member.
The Best XI is determined annually by the media, MLS players and MLS club technical staff members.
The 2025 MLS Best XI:
Forwards: Denis Bouanga (LAFC), Anders Dreyer (San Diego FC), Lionel Messi (Inter Miami CF)
Major League Soccer suspended Inter Miami star forward Luis Suarez for Saturday’s key playoff match against Nashville SC.
Suarez received the one-match suspension from the MLS Disciplinary Committee for an off-ball incident in Game 2 of the first-round series. Suarez kicked at Nashville defender Andy Najar in the 71st minute of the match, which Nashville won 2-1. Game 3 of the best-of-three series is Saturday.
There was no foul called or card issued on the play during the match. However, the MLS Disciplinary Committee can step in post-match to levy fines and suspensions under certain circumstances, including in the case of Game 2 when a referee sees an incident and does not issue a card.
Suarez, a 38-year-old Uruguayan who once starred for Liverpool and Barcelona, has a history of bad behavior on the field. Three times he has been suspended for biting opponents, and he once was suspended for racial abuse, though he denied the allegation.
He served a three-match suspension by MLS in September for spitting on a member of the Seattle Sounders staff following the Leagues Cup final on Aug. 31, actions that also garnered him a six-match ban from future Leagues Cup tournaments.
Nashville and Inter Miami face off Saturday night in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with Inter Miami looking to avoid a first-round playoff loss for the second straight season.
Two of the top four seeds at the ATP 250 Vanda Pharmaceuticals Hellenic Championship suffered second-round defeats Wednesday in Athens, Greece.
Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic piled up 14 aces with no double faults to knock out Italy’s Luciano Darderi, the No. 3 seed, by a 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 count. Marcos Giron defeated No. 4 seed Brandon Nakashima 7-6 (7), 6-1 by saving five of six break points.
No. 2 seed Lorenzo Musetti of Italy outfought Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-4 while France’s Alexandre Muller, the No. 5 seed, and Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry battled through three tiebreakers before Muller emerged with the 6-7 (2), 7-6 (4), 7-6 (3) win. Germany’s Yannick Hanfmann defeated Czech Republic’s Vit Kopriva 6-2, 5-7, 7-5.
Moselle Open
Lucky loser Vitaliy Sachko of Ukraine continued his unlikely run in Metz, France, with a 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 second-round triumph over No. 3 seed Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan. Bublik started the Moselle Open ranked 13th in the world while Sachko sat at No. 222.
France’s Clement Tabur and Belgium’s Alexander Blockx needed 2:51 to power through three tiebreakers before Tabur claimed the 6-7 (4), 7-6 (6), 7-6 (6) victory.
The other four singles matches needed just two sets. Learner Tien, Italy’s Matteo Berrettini, Germany’s Daniel Altmaier and France’s Kyrian Jacquet advanced to Thursday’s quarterfinals.
Racing legend and San Diego native Jimmie Johnson will make one of his rare appearances back on the NASCAR circuit when it visits his hometown for a historic race next season.
Johnson confirmed via press release that he intends to race in NASCAR’s new road-course event at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego — the first race at an active military base in NASCAR history — on the weekend of June 19-21, 2026.
The seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, who retired from full-time competition in 2020, will race in the No. 84 Toyota Camry XSE with a Carvana sponsorship on the 3.4-mile road course.
“Growing up just miles from San Diego, I dreamed about racing here in a NASCAR vehicle someday, but I never thought it would be possible,” Johnson said in a statement. “I just came to the realization that there would be no way NASCAR could race in that city — as there would be nowhere to put a track. So, it’s just mind-blowing to me that NASCAR made this a reality. To come back home, compete in front of my community, the military, my family, and friends, and do it with Carvana and Legacy Motor Club, this is one of those full-circle experiences I will never forget. It’s a lifelong dream.
“When I think about everything this sport has given me and where it all started, being able to race in San Diego at this level feels like my career has come full circle. Starting out on two wheels racing motorcycles throughout the west coast and now being able to race on four in the same region is something I never thought I would see. Additionally, my grandparents were military and are buried in Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery nearby the base, so it’s an honor to race there — this is going to be very special.”
Johnson has participated in 14 NASCAR races over the last three years since becoming a co-owner of Legacy Motor Club at the end of the 2022 season. He was named majority owner of Legacy in January 2025 and followed that up with a third-place finish at the Daytona 500 the following month — his first top-five finish since his full-time retirement.
A few months after making her return to the boxing ring, Holly Holm is getting her championship shot, as the 44-year-old will square off with Stephanie Han for the WBA lightweight title, her team announced on Wednesday.
Their Jan. 3 bout is part of a co-main event at the San Juan, Puerto Rico, collection of fights, with Amanda Serrano-Erika Cruz co-headlining.
A former UFC women’s bantamweight champion, Holm stepped away from mixed martial arts following a noteworthy run that included an upset of Ronda Rousey in 2015. Earlier this year, she signed with Most Valuable Promotions, the Jake Paul-helmed promotions company, and won her return bout in June in a lopsided decision over Yolanda Vega.
Boxing certainly isn’t new to Holm, who prior to her 16-fight UFC run posted a 34-2-3 record on the professional circuit, with nine knockouts. She won titles at the light welterweight and welterweight divisions, defending her titles 16 times.
A native of Albuquerque, N.M., Holm is a member of the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame and the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
She will challenge Han of El Paso, Texas, who has remained flawless (11-0, three knockouts) to date. She took the WBA title from Hannah Terlep with an opening-round knockout in February, then successfully defended her title against Paulina Angel in August.
“Holly Holm is back challenging for a boxing world title, 12 years after leaving the sport and doing it with MVP,” Paul said in a joint statement with MVP co-founder Nakisa Badarian. “She is facing a multi-faceted athlete in Stephanie Han who is a champion, a mother and a police officer.”
DreamHack announced that it is returning to Atlanta in 2026 with a festival that will include major tournaments for CS2, Call of Duty League and Halo.
The festival will take place at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center from May 15-17, 2026. Atlanta will play host to its first Call of Duty League Major, with the festival also featuring the first Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Atlanta.
The announcement came on the heels of nearly 40,000 fan attending DreamHack Atlanta 2025, which was the seventh time the city had played host to the event.
“DreamHack Atlanta 2026 will be our biggest festival in history — a flagship celebration of competition, creation, and community that represents everything gaming stands for, all under one roof,” said Shahin Zarrabi, VP, Festivals, ESL FACEIT Group. “Atlanta has truly become home for DreamHack in America — a city with unstoppable momentum in esports, culture, and live events. With IEM, CDL Major III, and our largest festival weekend yet, Atlanta is going to experience the most unforgettable event in gaming and esports.”
DreamHack Atlanta 2026 is slated to be the organizer’s biggest festival to date with the CS2 and Call of Duty League majors being joined by several tournaments across other titles.
“Bringing a world-class Counter-Strike tournament like Intel Extreme Masters to Atlanta is a significant moment for esports in the Southeast U.S,” said Marc Winther, Director Esports – Counter-Strike, ESL FACEIT Group. “We know how passionate Atlanta’s gaming community is, and we’re excited to bring back the top tier competition to a city with such a rich history. Hosting IEM at DreamHack will make for an unforgettable weekend of elite competition and festival energy.”
In a significant move that could reshape the global fast-food landscape, Yum Brands Inc. has announced the initiation of a comprehensive strategic review for its Pizza Hut division. This formal assessment opens the door to a potential sale or other major structural changes for the iconic pizza chain, which has faced persistent headwinds in its critical U.S. market.
The announcement signals a pivotal moment for the parent company as it evaluates the future of a brand that, while a household name, has struggled to maintain its competitive edge.
Yum Brands CEO Chris Turner acknowledged the brand’s inherent strengths, pointing to its massive international presence of nearly 20,000 restaurants across more than 100 countries. He highlighted a 2% growth in international sales for the first three quarters of the year, with China standing as its largest market outside the United States. Despite this global footprint, the chain’s domestic performance tells a different story.
Pizza Hut derives close to half of its total revenue from the U.S., where a 7% sales decline in the same period has exposed deep-seated challenges. The brand has been hampered by a legacy infrastructure of large, dine-in locations, a model that has become increasingly outdated in an era dominated by digital ordering, delivery, and quick pick up.
The financial strain became undeniable in 2020 when one of Pizza Hut’s largest franchisees was forced to file for bankruptcy, shuttering hundreds of locations. This week’s review news was met with investor optimism, however, as Yum Brands’ stock climbed nearly 7%.
The positive market reaction is likely buoyed by the stellar performance of Yum’s other holdings, including KFC and Taco Bell, which powered an 8% rise in third-quarter revenue. Notably, Pizza Hut now contributes a mere 11% to the corporation’s operating profit, a stark contrast to the 38% generated by Taco Bell’s U.S. operations alone.
The broader pizza sector is navigating a complex economic environment where consumers, pressured by inflation, are becoming more selective with their spending. While pizza is often considered a value-oriented meal choice, Pizza Hut has faced criticism for an unclear value proposition.
Company leadership admitted earlier this year that “transaction softness” was a direct result of an insufficient value message in a highly competitive field. While rivals like Domino’s have successfully leveraged promotions and third-party delivery partnerships to sustain customer traffic, Pizza Hut’s efforts, including its $5 personal pizza deal, have failed to reverse the negative trend, prompting this high-stakes strategic review.
In a strategic shift that redefines the cloud AI landscape, OpenAI has entered a monumental multi-year partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), committing to an estimated $38 billion in cloud computing capacity. This landmark agreement marks OpenAI’s first major foray beyond its primary investor, Microsoft, signaling a deliberate diversification of its infrastructure and a significant escalation in the race for artificial intelligence supremacy. The deal positions AWS as a critical partner in fueling the next phase of OpenAI’s growth, providing the immense computational firepower required to advance its frontier AI models and scale its services like ChatGPT to millions more users.
Under the terms of the agreement, OpenAI will immediately begin running its core AI workloads on AWS’s globally renowned infrastructure. The arrangement grants OpenAI access to clusters featuring hundreds of thousands of next-generation NVIDIA GPUs, with a clear pathway to scale this capacity into the tens of millions of CPUs in the coming years. This immediate and expanding access is designed to support everything from daily inference for ChatGPT to the intensive training cycles for future, more powerful generative AI models, ensuring OpenAI can rapidly innovate without being constrained by compute limitations.
The infrastructure at the heart of this collaboration is AWS’s cutting-edge Amazon EC2 UltraClusters, engineered for maximum AI processing efficiency. By interconnecting vast numbers of high-performance NVIDIA chips on a low-latency network, AWS provides the optimal environment for running complex, agentic AI workloads with unparalleled speed and reliability. This architectural design is a proven solution for hyperscale AI, with AWS already operating some of the world’s largest AI clusters, ensuring OpenAI’s operations are secure, resilient, and capable of meeting soaring global demand.
The announcement had an immediate impact on financial markets, with Amazon’s stock climbing approximately 5% following the news, reflecting investor confidence in AWS’s ability to capture a dominant share of the burgeoning AI compute market. This partnership is more than a simple procurement deal; it is a strategic alliance that combines AWS’s unparalleled cloud scalability with OpenAI’s pioneering AI research. The collaboration ensures that the development of powerful AI will continue at a breakneck pace, fundamentally reshaping industries and setting the stage for the next wave of technological transformation.
CWEB Business News – All eyes are on Groupon, Inc. (GRPN) as the pioneering local experiences and goods marketplace prepares to release its third-quarter 2025 earnings. Following a period of strategic restructuring and a focused shift towards its core strengths, the company stands at a potential inflection point, generating significant analyst interest and bullish sentiment from investors.
After navigating a transformative period, Groupon has emerged with a leaner operational structure and a clarified vision. The company’s relentless focus on improving its financial health, including a concerted effort to reduce debt and streamline costs, has laid a new foundation for growth. This upcoming earnings report is widely anticipated to provide a critical update on the progress of this strategic turnaround.
A Refined Strategy Bearing Fruit
Under the leadership of its revitalized management team, Groupon has sharpened its value proposition. The strategy is clear: deepen its roots in the high-demand local experiences market while optimizing its goods marketplace. By moving away from lower-margin categories and doubling down on what made it a household name—discoverable and memorable local activities—Groupon is effectively reclaiming its unique position in the e-commerce ecosystem.
Analysts point to several key indicators they will be watching in the Q3 report:
Revenue Stability and Growth: Evidence that the strategic shift is stabilizing the top line and beginning to catalyze growth in key segments.
Profitability Metrics: Continued improvements in Adjusted EBITDA, signaling that cost-saving initiatives are taking hold.
User Engagement: Data showing active customer trends and engagement levels, particularly in the high-value Experiences sector.
Market Optimism and the Road Ahead
The preview from financial outlets like Seeking Alpha highlights a palpable sense of optimism surrounding Groupon’s stock. This sentiment is fueled by the belief that the most challenging phases of the company’s restructuring are in the past. The current narrative suggests that Groupon is not just surviving but is methodically positioning itself to thrive in a post-pandemic economy where demand for local travel, dining, and unique activities remains robust.
“We are witnessing a classic turnaround story in the making,” noted a market analyst covering the e-commerce sector. “Groupon has the brand recognition and the market footprint. The focus now is on execution, and the upcoming earnings will be a key litmus test for their operational strategy. The early indicators suggest they are on the right path.”
For investors and market watchers, the Q3 2025 earnings release is more than a quarterly snapshot; it’s a validation of a long-term strategy. A strong report could solidify the growing confidence that Groupon has successfully reignited its engine for sustainable, profitable growth.
CWEB Business News will continue to monitor and provide updates on Groupon’s (GRPN) performance and market movement.
