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WWE’s ESPN Deal Wows Some Wall Streeters; Shares In TKO Dip

The WWE had long been expected to reap rewards for its lineup of 10 annual “premium live events” like Wrestlemania, but its $1.6 billion rights deal with ESPN unveiled Wednesday is drawing some extra attention on Wall Street.
The agreement, whose financial terms were confirmed to Deadline by a source familiar with the details, succeeds a landmark pact with NBCUniversal’s Peacock.
Despite raves in some corners, the deal has not managed to boost the stock of WWE parent TKO Group Holdings. Its shares declined by nearly 3%, hovering around $159 this afternoon. The company, which is run by longtime former Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel, was set to report second-quarter earnings after the close of the trading day.
Lance Vitanza, an analyst with Cowen & Co. who has a Street-high $220 price target on TKO shares, said in a note to clients that the WWE deal came in “better than expected.” He added that it “bodes well” for TKO’s current negotiations with Disney and ESPN for UFC pay-per-view rights. The wrestling pact alone would boost TKO shares by $6, according to the analyst’s math.
The deal’s $325 million average annual value, however, came in below analysts’ consensus expectation for $340 million. Eric Handler of Roth Capital Partners noted the shortfall, though he reiterated his “buy” rating on TKO shares. Initial reports on the deal gave him pause, as they did not mention whether the “vast (and valuable) content library” of WWE would be part of the deal.
When NBCU struck the Peacock deal for the live WWE events in 2020, it needed programming due to the Covid delay of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The setup also included a trove of other WWE programming, which included titles that previously existed on a stand-alone WWE-run streaming service.
In a press release announcing the deal today, ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro saluted the WWE’s “immense, devoted and passionate fanbase” and said the agreement would help “drive our streaming future.” Mark Shapiro, President and COO of TKO and a former top exec at ESPN, said the deal comes at “an exciting juncture” in ESPN’s streaming rollout.
The addition of WWE programming was revealed, along with new NFL rights and a sweeping equity deal with the league, as ESPN parent Disney reported its quarterly earnings.
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Trump National Guard California Newsom

The National Guard, police and protesters stand off outside of a downtown jail in Los Angeles following two days of clashes with police during a series of immigration raids on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
A federal judge on Tuesday barred President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard and other military troops in California to execute law-enforcement actions there, including making arrests, searching locations, and crowd control.
The ruling came in connection with a lawsuit filed in early June by the state of California challenging Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s deployment of the Guard to deal with protests in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.
Judge Charles Breyer said that Trump’s deployment of thousands of National Guard troops and 700 Marines to L.A. violated the federal Posse Comitatus Act, which bars U.S. Military forces from enforcing the law domestically.
Breyer’s ruling in U.S. District Court in San Francisco is limited to California, and the judge stayed the decision until Sept. 12 to give the Trump administration time to appeal it.
But it comes as Trump has considered deploying National Guard troops to other U.S. cities to deal with crime, including Oakland and San Francisco.
Breyer warned that it would create “a national police force with the President as its chief.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom gloated about the ruling in a social media post.
“DONALD TRUMP LOSES AGAIN,” Newsom wrote on X.
“The courts agree — his militarization of our streets and use of the military against US citizens is ILLEGAL.”
Breyer, in his ruling,g wrote, “Congress spoke clearly in 1878 when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law.”
“Nearly 140 years later, Defendants — President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and the Department of Defense — deployed the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” the judge wrote.
“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” Breyer wrote.
“Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”
Breyer said that evidence introduced during a trial for the lawsuit shows that the defendants had “systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles.”
CNBC has requested comment on the ruling from the Justice Department, which represented the Trump administration in the lawsuit.
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
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University of Kentucky athlete charged after dead infant found hidden in closet | US crime

A University of Kentucky athlete allegedly placed her dead infant inside a trash bag later found in a closet while trying to hide the baby’s birth, leading to her being jailed, according to local authorities and media reporting.
Laken Ashlee Snelling, 21, faces charges of corpse abuse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant after her arrest on Sunday in the markedly grisly case, police in Lexington, Kentucky, said in a statement.
Snelling had been a member of the University of Kentucky’s competitive cheer stunt squad for the past three seasons, the school told the local news station WLEX in a statement. Her arrest citation, which was obtained and reviewed by WLEX, says police were called out to Snelling’s home on 27 August to investigate a report of “a deceased infant being located inside … a closet”.
The baby was “wrapped in a towel inside … a black trash trash bag”, prompting police to read Snelling her Miranda rights as well as interrogate her, the citation said. The citation added that Snelling admitted to investigators that she had given birth to the child and then tried to conceal that by “cleaning any evidence, placing all cleaning items used inside of a black trash bag, including the infant”.
Lexington police said that the local coroner’s office would conduct an autopsy on the infant and later release information about the baby’s cause of death.
Snelling was scheduled to make a preliminary court appearance on Tuesday, two days after her arrest, according to public records.
Details about whether a bond was set for her – or its amount – were not immediately available. Snelling no longer appeared to be in the custody of Lexington’s jail by Tuesday morning.
The more serious charges against Snelling are corpse abuse and tampering with physical evidence. Under Kentucky state law, both are considered class D felonies, meaning people convicted of those crimes in particular could receive between one and five years in prison as well as a fine of up to $10,000.
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Wake Up Babe, Dolby Vision 2 Just Dropped After 10 Years—Yes, It’s Powered by AI

After more than 10 years, Dolby is ready to bring its game-changing Dolby Vision tech into the future with (drum roll) Dolby Vision 2. As a part of IFA 2025, Dolby took the wraps off its sequel to Vision, which brings an array of new capabilities to the company’s proprietary HDR format.
Powering Dolby Vision 2 is an all-new engine that enables tools like “Content Intelligence.” Content Intelligence, as you may have guessed, uses AI to better adapt your TV’s picture to content that you’re watching, fine-tuning aspects based on not only what you’re watching but also where you’re watching it. Within content intelligence, there are several more specific tools, including precision blacks that adjust dark scenes on the fly, which, if it works, is great for anyone who loves OLED panels but has gripes with their performance on darker content.
There’s also—and this one is pretty cool—a light-sensing technology that, according to Dolby, monitors ambient lighting in your room and can automatically optimize your TV based on the lighting in your specific environment. As someone with an unusually dark apartment, I’m all for that, though I’m curious whether tech like this would drastically turn the brightness on my TV way down. I wouldn’t be mad about that, but maybe other people will? Lastly, there are tweaks to Dolby Vision’s handling of fast-paced content like gaming and live sports that are meant to better adjust motion control and white point, which controls the color temperature of whites on your screen.
Dolby is splitting Vision 2 into two tiers—Dolby Vision 2 and Dolby Vision 2 Max—and it says the latter will be available on the “highest performance TVs” and come with “additional premium features.” Gizmodo reached out to Dolby to clarify exactly what the difference is between those two tiers. Here’s what it said:
“Dolby Vision 2 Max includes capabilities designed to unlock the full capabilities and best picture quality on the highest-performing TVs. This includes capabilities such as bi-directional tone mapping, Authentic Motion, and more advanced tools tailored for enthusiasts.”
That tells us a little more, I guess, but from the sounds of it, Dolby Vision 2 Max will be designed to take advantage of the higher fidelity of expensive TVs, while Dolby Vision 2 is geared more toward “mainstream” TVs, in the company’s words. To start, Dolby says it will focus on the “mainstream” side of things, since it will begin rolling out Vision 2 on Hisense panels, though there’s no word on timing and availability quite yet. It says those Hisense TVs will be powered by the MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, though.
It’s been 10 years since the release of Dolby Vision back in the day, which allowed TVs to adjust and optimize content on your screen from scene to scene or even frame to frame and bridge the gap between cinema and at-home viewing. It’s been a long time in the works, but it’s no surprise to me that Dolby Vision 2 would be released now, given advancements in AI and their ability to understand context. More than that, though, Dolby Vision 2 should help better optimize current and future generations of TVs, which have obviously changed quite a bit since 2014. As always, though, seeing is believing, so we’ll be the judge of that when we can lay eyes on Dolby Vision 2-assisted content for ourselves.
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