newsnation

Russ Mitchell / Los Angeles Times : Amazon has invested $75M so far to help Ukraine, including getting 10PB of government data out of the country in suitcase-sized Snowball Edges for AWS uploading   —  Since Februrary, Amazon has been playing Santa Claus to Ukraine, delivering planeloads of goods, including blankets, hygiene kits …

South Dakota's governor has ended a contract with a transgender activist group amid a controversy over an upcoming summit at a state health provider in January.

Jasper Ward / Reuters : Source: Sam Bankman-Fried plans to reverse his decision to contest extradition to the US; legal experts say any trial is likely more than a year away   —  Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday to reverse his decision to contest extradition …

Sean Hollister / The Verge : Anker's security cameras brand Eufy quietly removed 10 commitments from its privacy page, including encryption, after questions about keeping those promises   —  It's been two weeks since we reported that Anker's Eufy lied to us about the security of its security cameras, and we've been pushing the company for answers ever since.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch : A look at Backstage, Spotify's open-source developer platform used at Netflix, LinkedIn, Epic, Roku, Box, and 200+ others, which the company seeks to monetize   —  Backstage is used by developers at Netflix, American Airlines and hundreds of other companies  —  With nearly a third …

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Saturday that the state government will proceed with the construction of a border wall after reaching an agreement with private land owners.

Miss Wisconsin Grace Stanke has been crowned Miss America 2023 .  The 20-year-old won the competition Thursday, making her the pageant's 95th winner.  Stanke is a nuclear engineering student at UW-Madison and is the third woman from Wisconsin to win the title. She was crowned by her predecessor, Emma Broyles , the first Korean-American woman to win the Miss America honor.  MISS AMERICA 2022, EMMA BROYLES, ON BEING PROUD OF OUR NATION: ‘I AM LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM’ Stanke won the title out of 51 contestants representing the 50 states and the District of Columbia at the competition held at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Connecticut. Her career ambition, according to the Miss America website, is to produce efficient, clean, zero-carbon energy for America through nuclear energy in a core design position. Now, she will be able to spread her message during her year-long national tour.  The newly crowned Miss America's prize was a $50,000 scholarship. She ...

House Democratic leadership has pulled a controversial immigration bill that would have scrapped per-country green card caps amid opposition from Democrats and Republicans.

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge : The NHTSA launches a probe into GM's Cruise, citing incidents in which its autonomous vehicles blocked the road or caused collisions by braking suddenly   —  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched an investigation into General Motors' Cruise, citing incidents …

Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts' eye on Ben Sasse's Senate seat is raising concerns that Ricketts, a major donor to Gov.-elect Jim Pillen's campaign, may be buying the seat.

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review : A Q&A with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the lessons he learned from DALL-E 2's success, what DALL-E means for society, and more   —  Three things the groundbreaking generative model taught OpenAI's CEO.  —  Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, has been at the heart of the San Francisco-based firm since cofounding …

Dino Danelli , the drummer for the 1960s band The Rascals, has died. He was 78. His death was announced Dec. 15 by Danelli's spokesman Joe Russo on Danelli's Facebook page. "Our beloved Dino passed away today. I will say more in the near future about his incredible talent and share experiences from his life he relayed to me, as well as ones we spent as friends and collaborators," the statement began.  "I hope you will all continue to appreciate his talent and send him your love. Thank you for supporting his various endeavors throughout his career," it continued. "You all made it possible for him to live his dream, which was to be a musician and artist. Blessings to you all."  Danelli's friend and Rascals guitarist Gene Cornish shared his sadness with fans on social media writing, "It is with a broken heart that I must tell you of the passing of Dino Danelli. He was my brother and the greatest drummer I’ve ever seen. I am devastated at...

The Biden administration announced this week that it would begin financing mining projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where mines often use child laborers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not commit to bringing a newly passed Senate bill that would ban Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok on government devices to the floor before the end of this Congress.

Sebastian Moss / DCD : Sources: Meta reviews some of its 11 in-development data center projects globally and lays off a Danish contractor, as part of a design change for AI workloads   —  As it plans radical shift to AI data centers  —  Meta is reviewing a number of under-construction data center projects around …

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took a previously undisclosed vacation at the end of August, during intense negotiations between unions and rail companies.

Sarah McBride / Bloomberg : Brain-computer interface developer Synchron raised $75M from ARCH Venture, Bezos Expeditions, Gates Frontier, and others, bringing its total funding to $145M   —  Last March, brain-computing interface expert Tom Oxley sat down to dinner with Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos to talk …

President Biden's clean energy czar John Podesta has made a number of new hires, staffing his office with individuals who have an extensive record of pushing green energy policies.

Scarlett Johansson believes the "bombshell-type" actor label she has acquired over the course of her career is actually a product of being "groomed" by the industry. "I was kind of being groomed in a way to be this, what you call a bombshell-type of actor," she told Bruce Bozzi on his podcast "Table for Two." "I was playing the ‘other woman’ and the object of desire," she said of her stereotyped roles in films such as "Lost in Translation" and "Girl With the Pearl Earring." "And you know I suddenly found myself cornered in this place, like I couldn't get out of it." SCARLETT JOHANSSON TALKS BEING 'HYPER-SEXUALIZED': 'I KIND OF BECAME OBJECTIFIED AND PIGEONHOLED' "I kind of became, like, an ingénue," she said, before adding, "Young girls like that are really objectified, and that’s just a fact, you know? And so I think whatever box they’re put into, it sort of sets you...

Rep. Cori Bush accused her Republican colleagues of spreading "White supremacy" in a congressional hearing on Wednesday. Republican James Comer swiped back at the Democrat.

Dan Taylor / Tech.eu : Cambridge, UK-based semiconductor company Pragmatic raised a $35M Series C extension, bringing the round's total to $125M   —  Cambridge-based semiconductor firm Pragmatic is making flexible integrated circuits, all sans silicon.  And has caught the investment eye of the CIA.  In part.

Mary McCartney spent her childhood at Abbey Road Studios, one of the most legendary recording facilities in the world, where her parents made music together. McCartney, daughter of Beatle Paul McCartney and photographer Linda McCartney, has fond memories of being raised in a "normal" household - one filled with love and music. Now, she’s looking back at the London locale’s history in a new documentary titled "If These Walls Could Sing." "What inspired me to make this film was my love for Abbey Road," the 53-year-old told Fox News Digital. "I’ve grown up going to Abbey Road over the years, but I didn’t realize it was 90 years old until I was invited to direct the documentary. So that really inspired me. And I wanted to know more. And I learned so much through the process. But it started with my love for the building and the people that worked there over the years." According to the filmmaker, she was even more compelled to bring the story of A...

Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez / Fortune : PayPal launches an integration with MetaMask that allows users to purchase and transfer ETH, rolling out to all US customers in the coming weeks   —  Users of the popular MetaMask Web3 wallet will soon be able to buy the second-most-popular cryptocurrency, Ether, via PayPal.

Former Garden State Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, predicted President Biden would run for re-election and that his candidacy would be "the best thing" for the GOP.

It's been nearly 20 years since Kate Hudson's character Andie Anderson sang her own rendition of "You're So Vain" with Matthew McConaughey's character in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," but the actress recently revealed she is planning on releasing some music of her own. Hudson was on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" where she talked about "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," a movie she stars in with Daniel Craig and Madison Cline. During the interview, the actress also talked about the project she has been working on for the last year.  KATE HUDSON ON HAVING MORE CHILDREN, EXPANDING HER FAMILY: ‘I DON’T KNOW IF I'M DONE YET' "I’ve been making a record for like a year," Hudson said on the show. "Every time you're doing interviews, people are like ‘Do you have any regrets?’ And I'm like, ‘I’m early 40s, not yet.'" The actress went on to explain that she has actually been writi...

After quietly addressing her departure from the long-running medical drama " Grey's Anatomy " earlier this fall, Ellen Pompeo is finally revealing why she left her hit TV show 19 seasons after she started. "I gotta mix it up a little bit," she explained on the Drew Barrymore Show. "I’m 53, my brain is like scrambled eggs…I gotta do something new or I’m gonna literally turn into like - you can’t do the New York Times crossword puzzle every single day. I mean nineteen years, that’s longer than people keep their kids in their house, like people keep their kids in their house until they’re eighteen and then they send them off to college, so this is like me like going away to college kind of." Last month, Pompeo penned a love-letter to her supportive fans after appearing in one of her final episodes of the current 19th season. "This isn’t your first time on the rollercoaster… you know the show must go on and I’ll definitely be back to visit," ...

Fox News footage shows the continued release of migrants at the southern border as authorities face a looming end to the Title 42 expulsion authority just days away.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif, says she will serve out the remainder of her term to 2024, rebuking those who have raised concerns about her mental fitness.

Melissa Heikkilä / MIT Technology Review : A reporter tries Lensa, but unlike her male peers whose avatars were astronauts, warriors, and the like, many of hers were “pornified”, with 16 of 100 topless   —  My avatars were cartoonishly pornified, while my male colleagues got to be astronauts, explorers, and inventors.

A House committee on Tuesday rejected a GOP request for information about Defense Department policies dealing with gender, after Democrats rejected the effort.

Jacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch : Switzerland-based Nillion, which aims to offer a decentralized network for securing storage and data computation, raised a $20M+ seed led by Distributed Global   —  Nillion, a web3 startup aiming to build a non-blockchain decentralized network, closed an oversubscribed round of more than $20 million …

Singer and actress Selena Gomez gave a cryptic response to a video on TikTok that claimed she was "always skinny" during her romantic celebrity fling with Justin Bieber.  The viral Nov. 29 clip showcased a montage of photos dating back to the 2010s when she dated Bieber, written with the caption, "The reason why Selena is always skinny when she dates Justin." At the end of the video, a screenshot of an Instagram comment made by Gomez in 2014 is shown in which she says she is "too normal" for the celebrity icon, adding he would rather go out with models.  The 30-year-old "Same Old Love" singer reacted on Sunday in the comments section of the TikTok Video with a sad-face emoji. This led some fans to speculate that Bieber body-shamed Gomez during their romance.  SELENA GOMEZ SAYS SHE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO CARRY CHILDREN DUE TO BIPOLAR DISORDER MEDICATIONS Gomez and Bieber had a high-profile off-and-on relationship between 2010 and 2018. Currentl...

U.S. House Committee on Financial Services : FTX CEO's testimony to the US House: FTX.com and Alameda assets were commingled, insiders were paid $1B+, FTX US was not run independently of FTX.com, and more   —  Chairwoman Waters, Ranking Member McHenry, distinguished members of the Committee: thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.

Gary Gensler, the head of the powerful Securities and Exchange Commission, has repeatedly hidden key meetings from public view, raising questions about his agency's transparency.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch : Atlanta-based MessageGears, a customer engagement service rivaling MoEngage, raised $62M led by Long Ridge Equity Partners, bringing its total funding to $80M+   —  Dan Roy, a former software engineer at Delta, says he witnessed firsthand the challenges companies face when making the shift …

Bob Barker is in "very good health for his age" as the longtime "The Price is Right" host turns 99 Monday. Ahead of Barker's milestone birthday, Nancy Burnet, the TV icon's companion of almost 40 years, shared an update on his current life and reflected on some of their favorite memories in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. "He's going to be 99, and he takes one prescription medication and that's for his thyroid," Burnet, 79, revealed. She continued, "And his health care or anyone who comes in to see him, they'll say, 'Well, we'd like a list of his medications.'" FORMER ‘PRICE IS RIGHT’ HOST BOB BARKER HAS ‘NO REGRETS’ ABOUT HIS CAREER, IS A ‘FAN’ OF DREW CAREY: PAL "I'll say, you know, let me just show you the bottle," Burnet added with a laugh. "That's it," she said. "So, he does not take anything for blood pressure, cholesterol, the umpteen other things that mo...

Director and writer Todd Phillips shared the first look of Joaquin Phoenix as the crown prince of crime for the upcoming "Joker" sequel "Folie à Deux." Philips revealed the image of Phoenix as the movie's anti-hero Arthur Fleck in an Instagram post over the weekend. The 48-year-old previously won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2020 for his leading performance in the "Joker." The "Joker" was a commercial success with a box-office revenue that exceeded over $1 billion, making it the highest-grossing rated R film.  "Day 1. Our boy. #joker," said Phillips in a caption of the post that shows an emaciated shirtless Fleck receiving a shave with his head tilted back towards a sink.  LADY GAGA CONFIRMS SHE WILL STAR IN 'JOKER' SEQUEL WITH JOAQUIN PHOENIX Details surrounding the plot of the upcoming DC flick have not been revealed, but it has been confirmed that Lady Gaga will join the cast for the sequel.  Gaga, 36, annou...

Tom Cruise played more than an action hero while on set with Emily Blunt for their 2014 suspense film, "Edge of Tomorrow." Blunt, 39, recalled some of her personal difficulties working with Cruise on the movie while chatting on the "Smartless" podcast with Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes.  Known for more roles in the rom-com genre, Blunt was branching out into a different realm of filmmaking with the sci-fi flick about an alien invasion and time-hopping. "It was my first foray into action and as Tom said, rather unreassuringly when we started it, he goes, ‘This is the deep end of action for me.’ And I was like, if you're saying that, then we are in trouble," she remembered of being on set with Cruise. SIGOURNEY WEAVER TRAINED LIKE A NAVY SEAL TO HOLD BREATH UNDER WATER FOR 6.5 MINUTES IN NEW ‘AVATAR’ FILM "We had to wear these really enormous robotic suits, which I think it would have been great if they could have CGI'ed them,...

Kit Rees / Bloomberg : The subpar performance of FAANG stocks, which account for more than 10% of the S&P 500 weighting, will be a big drag on the market in the coming years   —  For some investors, this year's rout in high-flying technology stocks is more than a bear market: It's the end of an era for a handful …

June Blair, a Playboy playmate and actress who portrayed the wife of her real-life husband, David Nelson, on "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," has died. She was 90. The star and "beloved mom" passed away on Dec. 5 at her home in Sherman Oaks, California, from natural causes, her daughter-in-law Susan Nelson told Fox News Digital on Sunday. "She was an incredible mom, grandmother, friend and devoted animal advocate, caring for all of God’s creatures with her whole heart," said Susan. "The family thanks her wonderful, devoted fans. She treasured them." Blair was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in January 1957 before she was offered the starring role of the film noir "Hell Bound" opposite John Russell. Blair played Paula, a woman who finds herself in the middle of a Los Angeles crime ring after World War II. VENETIA STEVENSON, ‘THE MOST PHOTOGENIC GIRL IN THE WORLD’ WHO DATED ELVIS, QUIT ACTING FOR THIS REASON In 1959, Blair ap...

Former Secretary of State and Fox News contributor Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the controversial prisoner swap with Russia sends the wrong message to America’s enemies.

Adam Rawnsley / Rolling Stone : Ex-staffers say Twitter's mass firing of security staff and growing reliance on automation will help China and other authoritarian regimes in silencing critics   —  Elon's mass firing of security staff and increased reliance on automation is going to make it easier for tyrants to shout …

Sen. Bernie Sanders said he may support a Democrat in 2024 if any challenge newly registered Independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema after she left the Democratic Party.

John Kirby said Sunday that "there was never a choice" between WNBA star Brittney Griner and U.S. former Marine Paul Whelan in the recent prisoner swap with Russia.