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While U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy was on the House floor last week, delivering a more than eight-hour marathon speech against the spending agenda of President Biden and the Democrats, one political opponent spent at least part of that time sequestered inside the House cloakroom.

Andrés Engler / CoinDesk : El Salvador plans to build a “Bitcoin City” initially funded by a $1B “bitcoin bond”, with $500M to build mining infrastructure and $500M to buy more bitcoin   —  El Salvador, the only country in which bitcoin is a legal tender, is going to build an entire city based …

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat : SVT Robotics, which develops software for simplifying robot deployment at warehouses and factories, raises a $25M Series A led by Tiger Global   —  SVT Robotics, a provider of software that orchestrates robots in warehouses and factories, has raised $25 million in series A funding led …

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE : Extended threat detection and response startup Stellar Cyber raises a $38M Series B led by Highland Capital Partners with Samsung and others participating   —  Extended detection and response startup Stellar Cyber announced today that it has raised $38 million in new funding to expand its Open XDR platform.

Niket Nishant / Reuters : Brazil-based global payments network CloudWalk raises a $150M Series C led by Coatue at a $2.15B valuation, bringing its total funding to $365M   —  Brazilian financial technology company CloudWalk said on Wednesday it was valued at $2.15 billion after a funding round led by Coatue …

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch : Ultraleap, which develops ultrasound-based hand tracking tech and touchless interfaces for VR/XR headsets, raises an $82M Series D from Tencent and others   —  It was way back in 2017 that the company that became Ultraleap (Ultrahaptics, as weas) demonstrated at TechCrunch Disrupt a technology …

Ben Lang / Road to VR : Japan-based VR startup Hikky raises a $57M Series A led by NTT Docomo to expand its web-based virtual events platform Vket Cloud   —  Japanese social VR startup HIKKY announced today that it has raised ¥6.5 billion (~$57 million), led by Japanese mobile network operator NTT Docomo.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch : Kettle, a reinsurance startup using ML modeling on weather, satellite imagery, and other data sets to predict climate change risks, raises a $25M Series A   —  One of the most noticeable — and noted — effects of climate change has been its impact on how other events in the environment …

Casey Newton / Platformer : Twitter's AI ethics researchers on getting public feedback about algorithmic bias, why responsible AI is hard, why they think algorithms can be saved, and more   —  While other tech giants hide from their internal researchers, Twitter is doing its failing — and fixing — in public

The Biden administration has begun the process of replacing the names of some of the nation’s federal lands that have been deemed “derogatory.”

Time’s Up announced a “major reset” Friday, claiming the women's rights organization would be “rebuilt from the ground up."

An investment firm that counts Hunter Biden among its founders helped a Chinese company purchase one of the world’s most lucrative cobalt mines from an American company, according to a report by The New York Times.

Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's infamous Super Bowl Halftime Show scandal that took place in 2004 has been reexamined once again in the documentary "Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson."

Conor Hale / FierceBiotech : France-based Owkin, which helps medical researchers build and train AI models, raises $180M from pharmaceuticals company Sanofi   —  Artificial intelligence developer Owkin scored a major collaboration with Sanofi to help bring its digital clinical research platform to bear …

More than 150 migrants, including Albanians and more than a dozen Romanians, illegally crossed the border into America on Saturday morning.

Texas Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson says she will retire before the 2022 midterms ending a career in Congress that lasted almost 30 years.

Issie Lapowsky / Protocol : A voter turnout group says Facebook served 36.8% of their conversion ads to iOS users after Apple's ATT change, down from 63.6%   —  Tatenda Musapatike is as familiar as anyone with the way Facebook's political ad system works.  During the 2016 election and the 2018 midterms …

Alex Sherman / CNBC : Executives at Disney, Qualcomm, Coinbase, and other companies tried to weave their unrelated businesses into the metaverse discussion on their Q3 earnings calls   —  - The concept of the metaverse is still vague.  — That didn't stop dozens of executives from speaking about their metaverse strategies.

Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian have seemingly confirmed their relationship as the two were spotted holding hands while enjoying a walk in Palm Springs, California. Kardashian and Davidson had the PDA moment a day after celebrating Davidson's 28th birthday.

Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review : Investigation shows how Facebook and Google fund misinformation globally by paying millions of dollars in ad revenue to the operators of clickbait pages   —  A month after the fall of the democratic government.  —  In 2015, six of the 10 websites in Myanmar getting the most engagement …

"Friends" episode "The One with the List" is the top most searched Thanksgiving-themed episode of television in the United States.

David McCabe / New York Times : Google questions whether DOJ's new top antitrust official Jonathan Kanter can be impartial, citing his work with Yelp and the News Media Alliance   —  Google asked the Justice Department on Friday to investigate whether its new top antitrust official, who has represented Google rivals …

The Chairman Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee responded to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict with a statement that included significant factual errors while a senior adviser from the committee tweeted what some viewed as a call for violence.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers took a somber tone Friday following the outcome of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, acknowledging the verdict has "reopened wounds," but pleading with the community to remain peaceful.

Matt Burgess / Wired UK : DuckDuckGo launches App Tracking Protection for Android, a beta feature that blocks third-party trackers from Google and Facebook   —  The privacy-focused tech company's latest update promises to block invasive data collection across your whole phone.  —  At the end of April …

Over $10 million in jewelry was stolen from her rented Paris apartment during fashion week in 2016.

President Biden called on Americans to protest “peacefully” and follow the law following the jury's verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

New York Democratic Rep. Adriano Espaillat condemned Friday’s verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, alleging the acquittal was race-based.

President Biden avoided calling Kyle Rittenhouse a white supremacist while discussing the aftermath of the trial on Friday.

Kelly Crow / Wall Street Journal : ConstitutionDAO, which crowdfunded over $40M, loses Sotheby's US Constitution auction to a $43.2M bid from Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin   —  The 53-year-old billionaire paid $43.2 million for the historic document; he plans to lend it to a museum in Arkansas  —  Chicago hedge-fund billionaire …

Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day : Thinkarete Lifestyle, cited by Facebook as Q3's most widely viewed Page in the US, seems to be a barely active drop-shipping scheme with stolen content   —  Read to the end for a fascinating thread about why music sucks now  —  Unmasking The Most Viral Page On Facebook

Hollywood stars have reacted to the not guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. On Friday, he was acquitted of all charges after pleading self-defense in the deadly Kenosha, Wisconsin, shootings in the summer of 2020.

Joe Exotic, aka Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was unexpectedly transferred to a federal medical center this week for treatment in his ongoing battle with cancer.

Texas attorney Thomas J. Henry filed a massive lawsuit on Thursday on behalf of 280 victims of the Astroworld Festival, which left 10 people dead and injured hundreds more.

A top nonpartisan political handicapper moved three key Senate races in the 2022 midterm elections towards Republicans, due to a difficult political environment for Democrats

Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden compared Kyle Rittenhouse to “white supremacists and militia groups” during a video posted on his Twitter account in 2020.

The one hour and 25 minutes that Kamala Harris served as acting president is a moment in history “that will be noted for many women and young girls across the country,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.

A research program promoted by the University of Texas at Austin instructs white children as young as four on how to deal with “anti-Black racism.”

Rittenhouse was acquitted on Friday of all charges in a high media profile case stemming from the deadly altercation between him and three rioters during the Kenosha, Wisconsin, riots last summer.

Reuters : Internal documents describe how Amazon's lobbying helped it kill or undermine privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 US states   —  The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, speaking in 2018 after Amazon picked the state as the site of its new headquarters.

In the upcoming film "My Son Hunter," British actor Laurence Fox is playing Hunter and "Dynasty" star John James is portraying President Joe Biden.

The Biden administration on Friday said it will consider new measures to protect greater sage grouse, a bird species once found across much of the U.S. West that has suffered drastic declines in recent decades due to oil and gas drilling, grazing, wildfires and other pressures.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., is reintroducing conscience protection legislation, taking aim at the Biden administration's allegedly lax enforcement.

Henry Powderly / Search Engine Land : Twitter quietly updates its developer guidelines to say AMP support will be phased out by Q4; some publishers have reported months of lower Twitter referrals   —  With social media referrals to AMP pages cut down by the change, the reasons for supporting AMP are getting fewer.

Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal : In a letter to Sen. Wyden, data broker Mobilewalla says it was the source of some data used by the DHS, IRS, and US military for warrantless tracking of devices   —  Mobilewalla CEO writes to U.S. senator investigating location brokers: ‘Selling mobile device data for use by law enforcement agencies is not our business model’

FIRST ON FOX: Attorneys General from Arizona, Ohio, and Montana are suing the Department of Homeland Security over their immigration policy that they argue violates federal law by improperly halting most deportations.

House Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer. R-Ky., told Fox News in an exclusive statement said it's “no surprise” that HHS is planning to roll back religious liberty protections.

Top Republicans on the Hill will introduce legislation Thursday that seeks to advance protections for families dealing with the loss of an infant through miscarriage or stillbirth by utilizing the federal child tax credit.

President Biden said that he is considering a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing next year

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg : In a staff email, Phil Spencer says he's evaluating Xbox's relationship with Activision Blizzard and will make adjustments; PlayStation head sent a similar note   —  Microsoft Corp.'s head of Xbox said he's “evaluating all aspects of our relationship with Activision Blizzard …

Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal : US judge dismisses a lawsuit accusing Robinhood of colluding with Citadel Securities to stop investors from buying GameStop and other meme stocks in January   —  Ruling says evidence found by investors' lawyers wasn't strong enough to support accusations of illegal collusion

While performing his hosting duties on a recept episode, Jennings cracked a "dad joke" on stage.

Adele says her weight loss journey has improved her mobility after years of suffering back pain.

A non-profit organization is being slammed on social media for a video it posted promoting President Biden’s Build Back Better spending agenda in a cartoon using the Schoolhouse Rock! I’m Just a Bill theme.

Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and James Comer, R-K.Y., joined Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., on Thursday in demanding information from the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding the recent raids of Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe's residence and those of his associates.

Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz suggested on Wednesday that 18-year-old alleged Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse would be a good fit as a congressional intern, possibly in Gaetz’s office.

While serving as vice president in the Obama administration, Biden said in an interview that the nonpartisan legislative budget scoring body is the “gold standard” when it comes to their work.

FIRST ON FOX: Christian florist Barronelle Stutzman has agreed to settle with the same-sex couple that sued her for refusing to serve their wedding – capping off nearly a decade of litigation in one of the most iconic First Amendment cases this century.

Wall Street Journal : A coalition of eight state AGs, including those from Massachusetts, Florida, and California, is investigating how Instagram attracts and affects young people   —  Move raises pressure on parent company Meta Platforms, formerly called Facebook, over the potential harms to its users

"My Son Hunter" will explore Hunter’s "dodgy business dealings, party/strip club lifestyle and addiction struggles," noted a press release sent to Fox News.

The former "Girls Next Door" star is appearing in a six-part docuseries for Discovery+ titled “Kendra Sells Hollywood.”

A crowd supportive of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chanted "Let’s Go, Brandon," in Brandon, Florida, as the governor prepared to sign four bills limiting COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Sen. Cory Booker is headed to New Hampshire next month to headline a major state Democratic Party fundraising dinner.

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat : Nexar, which is developing an analytics service for car dash cam footage, raises a $53M Series D led by Qumra Capital, bringing its total funding to $150M   —  Nexar, a startup developing an analytics service on top of car dash cam footage, today announced that it raised $53 million …

Josh Duggar appeared in court on Thursday in Arkansas for a pre-trial hearing ahead of his upcoming trial for child pornography charges.

Maitland Ward embarked on her porn career in 2019 nearly two decades after “Boy Meets World” ended.

Lana Wood alleged that Kirk Douglas sexually assaulted her sister Natalie Wood in 1955.

Britney Spears took to Instagram to "hint" that she will work in advocacy for the ill and disabled in the future now that her conservatorship is over.

Joan Collins said she doesn’t engage in social media for fear of cancel culture.

"Dancing With the Stars" judge Derek Hough has tested positive for coronavirus.

Don Johnson reveals his feelings about Dakota Johnson's romance with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not mention President Biden by name in a document they passed Wednesday regarding Communion.

Economists Steven Rattner and Larry Summers, who both served under President Obama, are voicing frustrations that President Biden hasn’t heeded their concerns about inflation.

Steve Bannon, the former adviser to former President Donald Trump, has pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor counts of criminal contempt of Congress, his attorney David Schoen told Fox News.

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland takes aim at former President Trump for targeting some pro-infrastructure House Republicans

Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., was among the majority of Republicans who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but now he appears to be celebrating the benefits that the newly signed legislation is bestowing on his home state.

Abbott’s campaign posted a video on Wednesday that talked about “what Beto didn’t say in his announcement” for governor, torching O’Rourke for his far-left positions on guns, the Green New Deal, and his support of defunding the police.

House Democrats are hoping that the Justice Department's indictment of Steve Bannon results in a conviction for contempt of Congress, but if it does it would be the first in decades.

Katie Roof / Bloomberg : Marketing management software startup Braze jumps 44% in its Nasdaq debut, after raising $520M in its IPO, at an $8.4B valuation   —  - CEO credits first-day gain of 44% to roadshow going well  — Braze reaches diluted value of more than $9.6 billion  —  Customer engagement software …

Daniel Howley / Yahoo Finance : Nvidia beats with record Q3 revenue of $7.1B vs. $6.82B estimated, up 50% YoY, Gaming revenue of $3.22B, up 42%, and Data Center revenue of $2.94B, up 55%   —  Nvidia (NVDA) reported its Q3 earnings after the bell on Wednesday beating analysts' predictions on the top and bottom line as revenue jumped 50% year-over-year.

Jordan Novet / CNBC : Cisco reports Q1 revenue of $12.9B, up 8% YoY, total annualized recurring revenue of $21.6B, up 10% YoY, and total product order growth up 33% YoY   —  - Cisco fell short of analysts' estimates on revenue in the quarter.  — The company also issued guidance that missed analyst' predictions.