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Golden Globes host Nikki Glaser's best jokes

BBC News

Host Nikki Glaser returned to host the Golden Globes on Sunday, delivering a scorching opening monologue that roasted many of the celebrities in the room. Just like Wicked, I'm back for a sequel, she told the A-list crowd. Just like Frankenstein, I've been pieced together by an unlicensed European surgeon. And just like the podcasters nominated tonight, I should not be allowed to be this close to Julia Roberts. The stars took her cutting comments in good humour as Glaser reflected on the last year in film and TV.


Parents of under-fives to be offered screen time guidance

BBC News

Parents of under-fives in England are to be offered official advice on how long their children should spend watching TV or looking at computer screens. The government says it will publish its first guidance on screen time for the age group in April. It comes as government research was published showing that about 98% of children under two were watching screens on a daily basis - with parents, teachers and nursery staff saying youngsters were finding it harder to hold conversations or concentrate on learning. Children with the highest screen time - around five hours a day - reportedly could say significantly fewer words than those at the other end of the scale who watched for around 44 minutes. A national working group led by Children's Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza and Department for Education scientific adviser Professor Russell Viner will formulate the guidance after speaking to parents, children and early years practitioners.


Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher?

BBC News

Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher? The idea of having a friendly robot butler that can do all the dull duties of running a home has existed for decades. But now, thanks to AI, it's genuinely happening and this year the first truly multi-purpose domestic bots will start to enter homes. In Silicon Valley, they're being trained at speed to fold laundry, load the dishwasher, and clean up after us.


Winners and Sinners: What to expect from the Golden Globes

BBC News

Sinners, Marty Supreme and One Battle After Another are among the films set to compete at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night. Frankenstein, Sentimental Value, Hamnet and Wicked: For Good are some of the other films going for gold at the ceremony in Los Angeles. A new category, best podcast, has been introduced this year, while Adolescence, The Pitt and The Studio are nominated in the TV categories. The Golden Globes are a major milestone of the film awards season, and take place with less than a fortnight to go until the announcement of the Oscar nominations (22 January). The Globes hand out more trophies than many other ceremonies, as they split their film categories by drama and musical or comedy.


Google employee made redundant after reporting sexual harassment, court hears

BBC News

A senior Google employee has claimed she was made redundant after reporting a manager who told clients stories about his swinger lifestyle and showed a nude of his wife. Victoria Woodall told an employment tribunal she was subjected to a campaign of retaliation by the company after whistleblowing on the man who was later sacked. Google UK's internal investigation found the manager had touched two female colleagues without their consent, and his behaviour amounted to sexual harassment, documents seen by the BBC in court show. The tech giant denies retaliating against Woodall and argues she became paranoid after whistleblowing and began to view normal business activities as sinister. In her claim, Woodall says her own boss subjected her to a relentless campaign of retaliation after her complaint also implicated his close friends who were later disciplined for witnessing the manager's behaviour and failing to challenge it.


Musk says X outcry is 'excuse for censorship'

BBC News

Musk says X outcry is'excuse for censorship' Elon Musk has said that critics of his social media site X are looking for any excuse for censorship, amid reports that X's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Grok was creating non-consensual sexualised images of people, including children. Ofcom says it is conducting an urgent assessment of X in response, which has been backed by Technology Secretary Liz Kendall. She described the sexual manipulation of images of women and children as despicable and abhorrent, adding that she would expect to see an update from Ofcom in days. X has now limited the use of AI image function to those who pay a monthly fee, a change dubbed by Downing Street as insulting to victims of sexual violence. The BBC has seen several examples of the free AI tool undressing women and putting them in sexual situations without their consent.


Romance and parenthood feel remote in Ukraine: 'I haven't had a date since before the war'

BBC News

Romance and parenthood feel remote in Ukraine: 'I haven't had a date since before the war' Sitting in a wine bar in Kyiv on a Saturday night, Daria, 34, opens a dating app, scrolls, then puts her phone away. After spending more than a decade in committed relationships she's been single for a long time. I haven't had a proper date since before the war, she says. Four years of war have forced Ukrainians to rethink nearly every aspect of daily life. Increasingly that includes decisions about relationships and parenthood - and these choices are, in turn, shaping the future of a country in which both marriage and birth rates are falling.


Day of mourning for bar fire victims in Switzerland

BBC News

A day of national mourning is being held in Switzerland on Friday, following a fire which killed 40 young people, mostly teenagers, in a bar in the Crans-Montana ski resort on New Year's Eve. Church bells rang across the country for five minutes, and people stood for a minute's silence in their memory. Firefighters in the resort were applauded as they joined an audience watching the tribute ceremony, which was live-streamed to Crans-Montana from the Swiss city of Martigny. The ceremony saw the leaders of neighbouring countries, including France's Emmanuel Macron, join an audience while speakers, including the Valais canton's president, paid tribute to those who died. The annual food fight festival ''Els Enfarinats'' has left the Spanish town of Ibi covered in flour and egg shells.


Trump's grand plan to reshape the world order leaves Europe with a difficult choice to make

BBC News

Trump's grand plan to reshape the world order leaves Europe with a difficult choice to make For 80 years, what bound the United States to Europe was a shared commitment to defence and a common set of values: a commitment to defend democracy, human rights and the rule of law. That era was inaugurated in March 1947 in an 18-minute speech by President Harry Truman, in which he pledged US support to defend Europe against further expansion by the Soviet Union. America led the creation of Nato, the World Bank, the IMF and the United Nations. And it bound itself into what became known as the rules-based international order, in which nation states committed to a series of mutual obligations and shared burdens, designed to defend the democratic world against hostile authoritarian powers. Now, the new US National Security Strategy (NSS), published in December, signals that, for the White House, that shared endeavour has ended; that much of what the world has taken for granted about America's role is over.


Elon Musk's X limits Grok AI image editing after outcry over sexualised deepfakes

BBC News

Elon Musk's Grok AI image editing limited to paid X users after deepfakes Elon Musk's platform X has limited image editing with its AI tool Grok to paying users, after it came under fire for allowing people to make sexualised deepfakes. There has been a significant backlash after the chatbot honoured requests from users to digitally alter images of other people by undressing them without their consent. But Grok is now telling people asking it to make such material that only paid subscribers would be able to do so - meaning their name and payment information must be on file. The BBC has approached X for comment. Those who do not subscribe can still use Grok to edit images on its separate app and website.