Author: News Room

Following the political windsMeta’s bombshell announcement on Tuesday that it would end its fact-checking program was widely read as a major shift in policy meant to please President-elect Donald Trump and other conservatives.In reality, the move was probably less radical than it initially seemed. But the turn still serves as a reminder that many corporate leaders see their highest priority as reading the room — one that Trump now dominates.Mark Zuckerberg has been moving in this direction for some time. In relation to the 2016 election, the Meta chief, who has a history of tacking where political winds blow, followed…

Republicans are preparing to cut taxes, slash spending and slow immigration in a broad agenda that will require unifying an unruly party behind dozens of complicated policy choices.For now, though, they are struggling with a more prosaic decision: whether to cram their policy goals into one bill or split them into two.It is a seemingly technical question that reveals a fundamental divide among Republicans about whether to prioritize a wide-ranging crackdown on immigration or cutting taxes, previewing what could be months of intramural policy debate.Some Republicans have argued that they should pass two bills in order to quickly push through…

The U.S. surgeon general’s new push to warn consumers about the link between drinking and cancer comes at a precarious time for restaurant owners trying to pencil out a profit that hinges on alcohol sales.Costs of food and labor have risen, and some inflation-weary Americans continue to cut back on eating out. Sales dipped 1.7 percent between November 2023 and November 2024, according to the National Restaurant Association.When people do go out to eat, some aren’t drinking as much. Members of Generation Z in particular are moderating how much they consume and have helped popularize terms like “sober curious” and…

The political party on the verge of leading Austria would take an already conservative country into a growing group of nations shifting to the far-right of European politics. It has flirted with Nazi slogans, cozied up to Russia and drawn warnings from Holocaust survivors’ groups. It campaigned on promises to deport immigrants and ban political forms of Islam.The Freedom Party, known as the FPÖ, and its firebrand leader, Herbert Kickl, were given the chance to form a governing coalition this week, after efforts to bar them from power collapsed. If they succeed in forming a government, it would be a…

In recent years, Mr. White and Mr. Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive, have bonded over their passion for professional fighting, including mixed martial arts, which Mr. Zuckerberg took up in 2022.“Dana is the President and CEO of UFC, and he has built it into one of the most valuable, fastest growing, and most popular sports enterprises in the world,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in his post. “I’ve admired him as an entrepreneur and his ability to build such a beloved brand.”In 2023, Mr. White attempted to broker a cage match between Mr. Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X,…

Theodore Farnsworth, the former chief executive of the parent company of MoviePass, pleaded guilty to securities fraud on Tuesday after federal prosecutors said he had misled investors about the company’s “unlimited” subscription plan.Mr. Farnsworth, 62, of Miami, also pleaded guilty in the Southern District of Florida to conspiracy to commit securities fraud as the leader of another publicly traded company, Vinco Ventures, Inc. He tried to inflate its stock price and took millions of dollars from the company for himself, according to prosecutors and court records.He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for the securities fraud count relating…

The Golden Globe Awards drew an average of 9.3 million viewers for CBS on Sunday night, a modest decline from last year, according to Nielsen.The good news for the Globes is that the award show, on life support not long ago, has managed to stop the bleeding. Last year’s ceremony drew 9.4 million viewers, the first year it had broadcast on CBS.However, the ratings are far from the Globes’ audience of 20 million or so viewers it drew in the 2010s. Ratings for the Globes plummeted after the pandemic and a number of self-inflicted scandals that had nearly killed off…

While Republicans largely cheered Meta’s announcement on Tuesday that it would effectively end its fact-checking program, several tech watchdog groups condemned the decision, warning of the potential for a surge in disinformation.Nicole Gill, executive director of Accountable Tech, said in a statement that the decision was “a gift to Donald Trump and extremists around the world.” Meta, she cautioned, was inviting “the exact same surge of hate, disinformation and conspiracy theories” that fueled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the advocacy group Free Press, said in a statement that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, was…

President-elect Donald J. Trump was at the lectern talking through the approaching inauguration of his second term. But across the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., was a display of the extraordinary way that his family business interests are now fully mixed with his plans for governance of the United States.Mr. Trump opened the unusual news conference on Tuesday by introducing Hussain Sajwani, the founder and chairman of DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based real estate firm that partnered with the Trump family a decade ago to build the first Trump-branded golf course in the Middle East.Now, Mr. Trump…

In November 2016, as Facebook was being blamed for a torrent of fake news and conspiracy theories swirling around the first election of Donald J. Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of the social network, wrote an apologetic post.In his message, Mr. Zuckerberg announced a series of steps he planned to take to grapple with false and misleading information on Facebook, such as working with fact checkers.“The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously,” he wrote in a personal Facebook post. “There are many respected fact checking organizations,” he added, “and, while we have reached out to some, we plan…