Paige Bueckers says relationship with Azzi Fudd ‘nobody’s business but our own’
Paige Bueckers has said her relationship with her new Dallas Wings teammate Azzi Fudd “is nobody’s business but our own”,Bueckers and Fudd were college teammates at UConn and were reunited when the Wings chose Fudd with the No 1 overall pick in this year’s WNBA draft,The pair confirmed they were dating last year, but have offered few details of their relationship since and it is uncertain if they are still even together,At a press conference on Monday, Bueckers made an opening statement during which she addressed speculation about her relationship with Fudd,“Quite frankly, I believe me and Azzi’s personal relationship is nobody’s business but our own, and what we choose to share is completely up to us,” she said.
Bueckers and Fudd have been friends since they were teenagers and played together for four years at UConn, where they won a national title together.Bueckers said the pair are used to media attention.“Me and Azzi have always been the utmost professional,” said Bueckers, who the Wings selected with the No 1 pick in the 2025 draft.“We’ve always conducted ourselves as such, and we’ve never let anything that happens off the court carry on to the court.That’s what we continue to do.
“Me and Azzi are not new to this,We’ve been doing this for a long time,We have countless reps at it,We have a lot of experience with it, so we will continue to use that experience to show up and be professionals, great teammates, great leaders, the hardest workers, and continue to show up and do our job and help the Dallas Wings win basketball games,”Bueckers said she would not talk about her relationship with Fudd again.
She also played down talk that she had influenced the Wings’ decision to draft Fudd,“Azzi Fudd was a No 1 draft pick because she earned it, and it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with who she is as a human being, who she is a basketball player, her resilience, her strength and her career-best year at UConn,” Bueckers said,“So, Azzi is her own great individual person, and she should be celebrated as such,”After she was drafted, Fudd told Dallas’ ABC affiliate, WFAA that she was happy to be on the same team as Bueckers, who was named WNBA’s rookie of the year last season,“Here I am, no control in where I get drafted, and I get to play with my best friend again.
So it really is special,” she said.Wings general manager Curt Miller has said Fudd was selected on merit alone.“Words that we heard over and over again in the investigation of her was, a winner, competitor, a hard worker,” Miller said about the decision to draft Fudd.“Obviously the skill set speaks for itself, an incredible shooter – probably one of the quickest releases in the game today, a defender with a lot of competitiveness and toughness, and, ultimately, all the intangibles that goes along with Azzi in the locker room – being unselfish, being an incredible teammate, being a high-basketball-IQ player.[It] all pointed us through a very deliberate and thorough process back to Azzi Fudd.
”The WNBA season starts on 8 May, and the Wings play their first game on 9 May, against Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever,
Musk and Altman’s bitter feud over OpenAI to be laid bare in court
The bitter rivalry between two of the tech world’s most powerful men arrives in court this week, as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI heads to trial in Oakland, California. The case is set to feature some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, and its outcome could affect the course of the AI boom.Musk’s suit, filed in 2024, focuses on the formative years of OpenAI when he, Altman and others co-founded the artificial intelligence company as a nonprofit with a grand purpose.“OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” reads the company’s mission statement, published in late 2015
UK departments at odds over energy demands of AI datacentres
One vision of the UK’s future involves a decarbonised economy powered by clean, renewable energy. Another involves making the UK an AI superpower.The government departments responsible for these two visions do not appear to have agreed on their numbers.The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) thinks AI datacentres will consume 6GW of electricity by 2030. The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) appears to think they will use less than a tenth of that
Cannes AI film festival raises eyebrows – and questions about future
In Cannes’ darkened screening rooms, the supposed future of cinema flickered into life this week and it was strange. The first edition of the World AI film festival (WAIFF) showcased visions of men with fish scales erupting from their necks and seaweed from their mouths, a heroine with a heart beating outside her body and so many massed armies of AI-generated tanned men sweeping across battlefields that David Lean would have blushed.Last week the Cannes film festival, entering its 76th year, banned the emerging technology from its Palme d’Or competition, insisting “AI imitates very well but it will never feel deep emotions”. But this week the Croisette was taken over by the upstart AI film movement and their big-tech backers amid increasing investment and attention from the Hollywood studios. A “nouvelle vague”, they said, is coming
Facing AI and a tough job market, gen Z turns to entrepreneurship: ‘I have to prove myself’
When Ashley Terrell graduated from the University of Hawaii in 2024, she planned to find a job in marketing, maybe for a tech company. She had a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a college résumé that included a student marketing job for Red Bull. But after months of applying, her only offer was to work in the power tools section at Home Depot. “It was quite a shock,” she told the Guardian. “I searched for jobs every single day in that Home Depot bathroom
TikTok and Visa launch debit card to speed payouts to UK creators
TikTok and Visa have launched a debit card for content creators in the UK which they say will allow people to quickly access their earnings from the platform.The creator card is designed for the growing numbers of people making money through TikTok Live, a livestreaming feature where creators receive virtual gifts from viewers that are later converted into cash.The two companies said the card, which links to a user’s creator account on TikTok, was designed to address cashflow issues faced by users who often wait days or weeks for payments to clear.Launched in 2020, TikTok Live is a section of the app where users can broadcast to viewers in real time. According to TikTok, more than 15 million people broadcasted via its platform in Europe in 2025
Officials hugely underestimated impact of AI datacentres on UK carbon emissions
The UK government vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials raised their estimate of carbon emissions from AI by a factor of more than 100.According to new data quietly published this week, energy use by AI datacentres in the UK could cause the emission of up to 123m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) – about as much as generated by 2.7 million people – over the next 10 years.That latest figure replaces a previous estimate – since deleted – that claimed emissions would reach a maximum of 0.142m tonnes of CO₂ in a single year
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