Automated email segmentation uses dynamic rules and real-time data to group contacts automatically, eliminating manual list updates while boosting campaign relevance.
NMDOT awards nearly $47M for transportation projects across the state
NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – The New Mexico Department of Transportation awarded nearly $47 million to 27 projects across the state during the federal fiscal year 2026 call for projects. Awarded projects range from supporting transit operation and infrastructure upgrades, to design and construction of urban and rural multiuse paths and trails, to supporting Safe Routes to School programs. […]
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Zach Bryan + Gavin Adcock May Meet Tonight at Madden Bowl
Zach Bryan and Gavin Adock will share space on Friday and as far as anyone can tell there will be no fences to separate them.
Both men are part of the Madden Bowl entertainment lineup slated for Feb. 6 at the Chase Center in San Francisco. It’s all part of a busy Super Bowl week for the game and EA Sports.
Zach Bryan, Gavin Adock Feud, Explained
Bryan and Adcock’s feud started — at least, publicly — after Bryan lashed out at a fan on social media who was disappointed not to get a picture or a hug after waiting near the stage after his show.
Adcock said that Bryan was ungrateful for his fans, and pointed out that this particular person was only 14 years old.
Read More: Who Is Gavin Adcock? 10 Songs New Fans Should Hear
He also objected to Bryan using the acronym “GOMD,” which stands for “get off my d–k,” in his response to the fan.
Adcock fired off some more shots at Bryan during a late-August appearance on Rolling Stone‘s Nashville Now podcast.
He clarified that his issue with Bryan wasn’t so much that he didn’t give the fan their picture. Rather, he said that his response was about Bryan’s decision to call the fan out on social media after the fact.
“And I think that Zach Bryan puts on a big mask in his day-to-day life and sometimes he can’t help but rip it off and show his true colors,” he said.
“I don’t know if Zach Bryan’s really that great of a person.”
Bryan took exception to this and did his best to confront Adock at the Born & Raised Festival in Oklahoma last September. They gestured toward one another through a fence before Bryan chose to try to hop it.
After getting stuck on barbed wire he succeeded but security intervened. Adcock would later say he didn’t want to fight because he had a show to play while generally making light of the situation.
In the months since the incident, Bryan quit drinking and got married.
Gavin Adcock, Zach Bryan Feud Update
Unless they’ve made amends privately, there is no love lost between Bryan and Adcock. The “Last One To Know” singer is something of a provocateur (his latest beef is with Benjamin Tod) and the feuds often time with the release of new music (he dropped a new song called “Colorblind” on Friday).
Bryan may have a new point of view and sobriety may calm him. That said, this is the first time they’ve shared a bill since last September.
The promotional poster indicates that both Teddy Swims and Stephen Wilson Jr. will play between them however, although the show’s format isn’t quite clear. An rapper named Larussell will open the show.
A Timeline of Zach Bryan + Brianna Chickenfry’s Breakup (+ Messy Aftermath)
From July 2023 to October 2024, Zach Bryan was dating Barstool Sports personality and podcaster Brianna Chickenfry.
For over a year, they seemed inseparable — until Bryan shocked fans by announcing that he and Chickenfry had split.
What followed was an onslaught of social media back-and-forth, allegations and text message screenshots in a feud that has lasted — as of summer 2025 — almost as long as their relationship.
Keep reading for a breakdown of everything that’s happened since the couple called it quits.
Gallery Credit: Carena Liptak
Justice Department Casts Wide Net on Netflix’s Business Practices in Merger Probe
As it probes bids for Warner, the department is asking if the streamer has engaged in conduct that could make it a monopoly.
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Skiing’s regulatory body slams viral Olympic ski jump rumor
PREDAZZO, Italy — The regulatory body for skiing on Friday dismissed as a “wild rumor” reports that ski jumpers are enhancing their groin area to gain distance as the Winter Olympics begins.
A report by the German tabloid Bild last month suggested some ski jumpers were injecting hyaluronic acid in their genitals or wearing a condomlike sheath before undergoing rigorous checks on ski-suit sizing. The newspaper said the manipulation would justify wearing a larger ski jumping suit that could provide more lift and a longer flight to capture medals.
The report gained international attention this week after World Anti-Doping Agency officials, in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics, suggested they were ready to investigate the matter if it was doping related.
However, the international ski federation, FIS — the governing body for ski jumping — on Friday rejected the claims made in the report.
“This wild rumor started off a few weeks ago from pure hearsay,” FIS spokesperson Bruno Sassi told The Associated Press. “There has never been any indication, let alone evidence, that any competitor has ever made use of a hyaluronic acid injection to attempt to gain a competitive advantage.”
The Bild report went largely unnoticed internationally until WADA director general Olivier Niggli was asked about it in Milan on Thursday.
“If anything was to come to the surface, we would look at anything — and if it is doping related. We don’t do other means of enhancing performance,” Niggli told reporters.
The suggestion of such manipulation quickly became a media sensation, with some reports offering medical experts weighing in on the wisdom of injecting the acid naturally created in the body that lubricates joints and is used in moisturizing creams.
Asked to clarify whether WADA was investigating the matter, agency spokesperson James Fitzgerald told AP on Friday that hyaluronic acid was not on its list of banned substances and referred to FIS for issues related to ski jumping suits.
The subject is particularly sensitive for ski jumping in the wake of a cheating scandal last year in which Norwegian team leaders were caught on camera manipulating ski suits at the World Championship in Trondheim, Norway.
Head coach Magnus Brevik, assistant coach Thomas Lobben and staff member Adrian Livelten were recently banned from the sport for 18 months for tampering with the suits before the men’s large hill event.
Norwegian ski jumpers Marius Lindvik and Johann André Forfang accepted three-month suspensions that allowed them to compete in this season’s events.
In the wake of the scandal, the FIS introduced more rigorous equipment controls that include checks before and after each jump and improved 3-D measurements to evaluate athletes in their uniforms. Microchips embedded in suits are also designed to prevent manipulation.
Suspect killed 32 years after Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar murdered following mistake in game against U.S.
A drug trafficker linked to the 1994 murder of Colombian soccer star Andrés Escobar has been killed in Mexico, President Gustavo Petro said Friday.
Santiago Gallon Henao had been investigated in the death of Escobar, the Colombian national team’s central defender, who was gunned down in Medellin days after scoring an own goal in a match against the United States at the 1994 World Cup.
The own goal contributed to Colombia’s first-round elimination from the tournament.
ROMEO GACAD/AFP via Getty Images 
The 27-year-old’s murder shocked the soccer world and Colombia, which at the time was plagued by violence. Medellin was controlled by drug traffickers, with a murder rate of 380 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Gallon and his brother allegedly confronted Escobar at a nightclub on July 2, 1994, just 10 days after the own goal.
The brothers’ driver, Humberto Munoz Castro, admitted to shooting Escobar several times in the nightclub’s parking lot. According to eyewitnesses, Munoz shouted “goal!” each time he fired. He later confessed to the killing and was sentenced to prison. He got a 43-year sentence and was released after 11 years, according to the Bogota Post.
The men were thought to have lost heavily after betting on Colombia’s performance at the World Cup.
Petro said on X that Gallon was killed Thursday in Mexico, and that he was responsible for Escobar’s killing.
The soccer star’s murder “destroyed the country’s international image,” the leftist president said.
Gallon was shot dead in a restaurant in Huixquilucan, a municipality in the state of Mexico, a source from the Toluca prosecutor’s office told AFP.
Gallon and his brother were investigated for obstruction of justice and spent 15 months in prison without being brought to trial.
They were included in a 2015 U.S. Treasury Department blacklist for drug trafficking, accused of being members of La Oficina de Envigado, a successor to drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel.
The 1991 murder of Escobar was chronicled in the ESPN documentary “The Two Escobars,” which draws parallels between the soccer star and the international drug lord.
Alexander Hassenstein 
What we learned building SalesBot — HubSpot’s AI-powered chatbot selling assistant
When I first joined HubSpot’s Conversational Marketing team, most of our website chat volume was handled by humans. We had a global team of more than a hundred live sales agents — Inbound Success Coaches (ISCs) qualifying leads, booking meetings, and routing conversations to sales reps. It worked, but it didn’t scale.
![Download Now: The State of AI in Sales [2024 Report]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/6f674af4-3116-43b0-8a54-4a64f926afb6.png)
Every day, those ISCs fielded thousands of chat messages from visitors who needed product info, had support questions, or were just exploring. While we loved those interactions, they often pulled focus from high-intent prospects ready to engage with sales.
We knew AI could help us work smarter, but we didn’t want another scripted chatbot. We wanted something that could think like a sales rep: qualify, guide, and sell in real-time.
That’s how SalesBot was born — an AI-powered chat assistant that now handles the majority of HubSpot’s inbound chat volume, answering thousands of chatter questions, qualifying leads, booking meetings, and even directly selling our Starter-tier products.
Here’s what we’ve learned along the way.
How We Built SalesBot and What We Learned
1. Start with deflection. Then, build for demand.
When we first launched SalesBot, our primary goal was to deflect easy-to-answer, low sales intent questions (example: “What’s a CRM” or “How do I add a user to my account”). We wanted to reduce the noise and free up humans to focus on more complex conversations.
We trained the bot on HubSpot’s knowledge base, product catalog, Academy courses, and more. We are now deflecting over 80% of chats across our website using AI and self-service options.
That success in deflection gave us confidence, but it also revealed our next challenge. Deflection alone doesn’t grow the business. To truly scale value, we needed a tool that does more than resolve — it has to sell.
2. Score conversations to close the gap on demand.
Once we introduced deflection, we noticed a drop-off in medium-intent leads — the ones that weren’t ready to book a meeting but still showed buying signals. Humans are great at spotting those moments. Bots aren’t … yet.
To close that gap, we built a real-time propensity model that scores chats on a scale of 0–100 based on a blend of CRM data, conversation content, and AI-predicted intent. When a chat crosses a certain threshold, it’s raised as a qualified lead.
That model now helps SalesBot identify high-potential opportunities — even when a customer doesn’t explicitly ask for a demo. It’s a perfect example of how AI can surface nuance at scale.
3. Build to sell, not just support.
Once we’d nailed the foundations of deflection and scoring, we turned our attention to something bolder: turning SalesBot into a true selling assistant.
We trained it on our qualification framework (GPCT — Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline), enabling the bot to guide prospects toward the right next step: whether that’s getting started with free tools, booking a meeting with sales, or purchasing a Starter plan directly in chat.
Now, we have a tool that doesn’t just respond — it qualifies, builds intent, and pitches like a rep. That shift fundamentally changed how we think about conversational demand generation.
4. Choose quality over CSAT.
We quickly realized that traditional chatbot metrics like CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) weren’t enough.
CSAT measures how a customer feels about their experience, typically by asking whether they were a detractor, passive, or promoter after an interaction. But only a small portion (less than 1% of chatters) complete the survey. And even if a customer rates a chat positively, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Salesbot was providing a quality chat experience.
So we built a custom quality rubric with our top-performing ISCs to define what “good” actually looks like. The rubric measures factors like discovery depth, next steps, tone, and accuracy.
This year alone, a team of 13 evaluators manually reviewed more than 3,000 sales conversations. That human QA loop is critical. It keeps our AI grounded in real-world selling behavior and helps us continuously improve performance.
5. Scale globally to boost efficiencies.
Before AI, staffing live chat in seven languages was one of our biggest operational challenges. It was costly, inconsistent, and hard to scale.
Now, we can handle multilingual conversations around the world, providing a consistent experience no matter where someone’s chatting from. That’s not just an efficiency win — it’s a customer experience upgrade.
AI has given us true global coverage without overextending our team, unlocking growth in regions where headcount simply couldn’t keep up.
6. Build the right team structure.
Success didn’t happen because of one person or team — it happened because a group of smart, customer-driven builders came together across Conversational Marketing and Marketing Technology AI Engineering.
Conversational Marketing owned the strategy, user experience, and quality assurance, always grounding decisions in what would deliver the best experience for our customers. Our AI Engineering partners in Marketing Technology built the models, prompts, and infrastructure that made those ideas real — fast.
Together, we formed a unified working group with shared goals, a common backlog, and a rhythm of weekly experimentation. That mix of deep customer empathy and technical excellence let us move like a product team — testing, learning, and improving SalesBot with every release.
7. Approach automation with a product mindset.
The biggest unlock in our journey was embracing a product mindset. SalesBot wasn’t a one-off automation project. It’s a living product that evolves with every iteration.
Over the past two years, we’ve moved from rule-based bots to a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system, upgraded our models to GPT-4.1, and added smarter qualification and product-pitching capabilities.
Those upgrades doubled response speed, improved accuracy, and lifted our qualified lead conversion rate from 3% to 5%.
We didn’t get there overnight. It took hundreds of iterations and a culture that treats AI experimentation as a core part of the go-to-market motion.
8. Humans still matter.
Even with all this progress, some things still require a human touch. Today, SalesBot can’t build custom quotes, handle complex objections, or replicate empathy in nuanced conversations — and that’s okay. We’ll always be working toward expanding its capabilities, but human oversight will always be essential to maintaining quality.
Our agents and subject matter experts play a core role in our success. They evaluate outputs, provide feedback, and ensure the system continues to learn and improve. Their judgment defines what “good” looks like and keeps our standard of quality high as the technology evolves.
AI’s role is to scale reach and speed — not to replace human connection. Our ISCs now focus on higher-value programs and edge cases where their expertise truly shines. The goal isn’t fewer humans — it’s smarter, more impactful use of their time.
9. Give your model structure, not just more data.
When we first built SalesBot, it ran on a simple rules-based system — X action triggers Y response. It worked for basic logic, but it didn’t sound like a salesperson. We wanted something that felt closer to an ISC: conversational, confident, and helpful.
To get there, we experimented with fine-tuning. We exported thousands of chat transcripts and had ISCs annotate them for tone, accuracy, and phrasing. Training the model on these examples made it sound more natural, but accuracy dropped. We learned the hard way that too much unstructured human data can actually degrade model performance. The model starts remembering the “edges” of what it sees and blurring everything in between.
So, we pivoted. Instead of giving the model more data, we gave it a better structure. We moved to a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) setup, grounding the tool in real-time context and teaching it when to pull from knowledge sources, tools, and CRM data.
The result is a bot that’s significantly more reliable in complex sales conversations and far better at identifying intent.
How to Get Started Building an AI Chat Program
If you’re just getting started, the biggest misconception is that you can jump straight into AI. In reality, AI only succeeds when the foundation beneath it is strong. Looking back at our journey, these three principles mattered the most.
1. Build the foundation before you automate.
AI is only as good as the human program it learns from. Before we automated anything, we had years of real conversations handled by skilled chat agents. That live chat foundation gave us:
- High-quality training data
- A clear definition of what “good” looks like
- Patterns to identify what could be automated first
If you skip this step, your AI won’t know what “good” is — and it won’t know when it’s wrong.
2. Understand what your humans do great. Then, teach the AI.
AI can’t replicate the nuances that come with human interaction.
Study your top-performing reps deeply, and ask yourself the following questions:
- How do they qualify?
- What signals do they pick up on?
- What language builds trust?
- How do they recover when something goes off-script?
Your human team is your blueprint. Everything great humans do — from tone to timing to discovery — becomes the foundation for an AI that can actually sell, not just answer questions.
3. Create an experiment-driven, data-driven team.
AI is not a set-it-and-forget-it project. Tt’s a product, and the only way to scale an AI chat program is to build a team that:
- Experiments constantly
- Moves quickly through iterations
- Measures what works (and what doesn’t)
- Treats failures as inputs, not setbacks
An experiment-driven team turns AI from a one-time launch into a continuously improving engine for growth.
The Bottom Line
The biggest takeaway for me is this: AI doesn’t replace great go-to-market strategy — it accelerates it. Your tools should be a reflection of how you operate. For us, that’s a blend of technology, creativity, and customer empathy to keep evolving how we sell.
Why Mariah Carey was chosen to perform at the Olympic Opening Ceremony
One of the most beautiful cities in the world showed off as the flame came through the famed Galleria and into the piazza for thousands to see. We caught up with one Italian Olympian overcome with pride. magic. As for the athletes, they know the world is watching. This is the most eyes I’m going to have on me ever, and Team USA members realize pressure is *** privilege simply because it’s *** once in *** lifetime opportunity. In 16 days, the Americans will hopefully be heading home with buckets full of gold medals and say, Arriva drci to Italy, or maybe they’ll just say goodbye. I don’t want to insult the Italian language by trying to speak it without any practice.
Why Mariah Carey was chosen to perform at the Olympic Opening Ceremony
Mariah Carey, the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer, performed at Milan’s San Siro stadium on Friday during the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.The “Someday” singer, dressed in a sequined white dress, performed the iconic 1958 Italian song “Nel blu, dipinto di blu,” which most non-Italian speakers will recognize for its popular chorus, “Volare.”She followed it with her 2025 song “Nothing Is Impossible,” whose lyrics include, “‘Cause I dream a greater dream/ I fight a greater fight/ I overcome it all,” a fitting piece for the peak of many athletes’ careers.Carey has headlined multiple sporting events. In 2002, she sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and she performed her own song at the 2020 U.S. Open women’s tennis final.It’s not the first time an American has taken to the Olympic Opening Ceremony stage. At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Celine Dion and Lady Gaga performed at the Opening Ceremony.“Mariah Carey fully represents the emotional atmosphere that accompanies the run-up to the Games,” the local organizing committee for the Games said. “Music is a universal language that attracts different stories and sensibilities, and intertwines with the opening ceremony’s theme of harmony.”Is Mariah Carey Italian?Mariah Carey’s ethnicity is not Italian. Her mother is of Irish descent, while her father is of African American and Afro-Venezuelan descent.”My father’s father’s mother was Venezuelan,” Carey told Meghan Markle on her “Archetypes” podcast. “But my father’s family is Black, so everybody was like, ‘Her father is Venezuelan and Black’ because they didn’t know how to put me in that box. They want you to put you in a box and categorize you.”Does Mariah Carey speak Italian?When she announced her Olympic performance in December, Carey appeared in an Instagram post, saying, “We’ll see each other in Milan,” in Italian. She has hinted at knowing the basics of Italian, thanks to her mother’s influence growing up.”My mom was an opera singer, so she was always practicing singing in German, Italian, all kinds of languages,” Carey said on “Live! With Kelly and Mark.” “One time, she was rehearsing and made a mistake. She stopped, and I just continued the line she was singing. I was about 4 years old. That’s when she said, ‘OK, I guess she’s got an ear!'”
Mariah Carey, the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer, performed at Milan’s San Siro stadium on Friday during the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.
The “Someday” singer, dressed in a sequined white dress, performed the iconic 1958 Italian song “Nel blu, dipinto di blu,” which most non-Italian speakers will recognize for its popular chorus, “Volare.”
She followed it with her 2025 song “Nothing Is Impossible,” whose lyrics include, “‘Cause I dream a greater dream/ I fight a greater fight/ I overcome it all,” a fitting piece for the peak of many athletes’ careers.
Carey has headlined multiple sporting events. In 2002, she sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and she performed her own song at the 2020 U.S. Open women’s tennis final.
It’s not the first time an American has taken to the Olympic Opening Ceremony stage. At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Celine Dion and Lady Gaga performed at the Opening Ceremony.
“Mariah Carey fully represents the emotional atmosphere that accompanies the run-up to the Games,” the local organizing committee for the Games said. “Music is a universal language that attracts different stories and sensibilities, and intertwines with the opening ceremony’s theme of harmony.”
Is Mariah Carey Italian?
Mariah Carey’s ethnicity is not Italian. Her mother is of Irish descent, while her father is of African American and Afro-Venezuelan descent.
“My father’s father’s mother was Venezuelan,” Carey told Meghan Markle on her “Archetypes” podcast. “But my father’s family is Black, so everybody was like, ‘Her father is Venezuelan and Black’ because they didn’t know how to put me in that box. They want you to put you in a box and categorize you.”
Does Mariah Carey speak Italian?
When she announced her Olympic performance in December, Carey appeared in an Instagram post, saying, “We’ll see each other in Milan,” in Italian. She has hinted at knowing the basics of Italian, thanks to her mother’s influence growing up.
“My mom was an opera singer, so she was always practicing singing in German, Italian, all kinds of languages,” Carey said on “Live! With Kelly and Mark.” “One time, she was rehearsing and made a mistake. She stopped, and I just continued the line she was singing. I was about 4 years old. That’s when she said, ‘OK, I guess she’s got an ear!'”
CROWN LANDS Streams Perfect Prog Epic “Apocalypse”
Canadian progressive rock duo Crown Lands are set to release their most ambitious and fully realized work yet, Apocalypse, on May 15, 2026. Following their Juno Award-winning self-titled debut and Fearless, the duo expanded their conceptual universe in 2025 with the instrumental releases Ritual I and Ritual II (also recently Juno-nominated), marking their first projects with InsideOutMusic.
Musically, Apocalypse represents a turning point for the band. After crafting the Rituals entirely in their home studio, the duo gained confidence to take near-total control of the production process. Guitarist/bassist/keyboardist Kevin Comeau explained: “That record gave us the confidence to realize we could make a Crown Lands album in our own space, without a major-label budget or a big, fancy studio.”
Much of Apocalypse was written and recorded in the same room the band has used since 2020, with selective production collaboration from Nick Raskulinecz and David Bottrill to enhance key moments.
Conceptually, Apocalypse is designed as a full album-sides narrative experience, harkening back to the classic long-form album format. Central to the record is the 19-minute title track, which drummer/vocalist Cody Bowles describes as the structural anchor: “With long-form songs, it always starts with the music.
“We built Apocalypse from instrumental sections, some older riffs, a lot of newly inspired ones, and mapped them out on a whiteboard, figuring out how one section could melt into the next.”
Bowles also situates the album within the Crown Lands conceptual timeline: “Fearless and Ritual exist in the same story. But Ritual takes place much earlier in the timeline—it shows the planet during times of peace. Apocalypse moves the story forward and sets up the events that lead directly into Fearless.”
The album artwork, designed by Quinn Henderson, complements the ambitious scope of the music, completing the duo’s immersive progressive rock vision. Pre-orders are available here.
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AutoNation Revenue Declines on Weaker New, Used Vehicle Sales
AutoNation reported lower fourth-quarter revenue, weighed down by fewer comparable sales of both new and used vehicles.
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