President Donald Trump’s consolidation of power across the federal government continues apace. With it, a similar form of conservative capture has been mirrored across the avenues of mass media in the U.S.

From the rolling public turmoil at The Washington Post and CBS to behind-the-scenes machinations at institutions like The New York Times, huge swaths of mainstream American media have begun embracing a decidedly conservative agenda. These are the media players helping fuel America’s rightward media pivot.

Bari Weiss, CBS

Perhaps the single most-watched media executive of the past year, Substack star turned CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss has marked her meteoric rise to the top of a premier television network with moments of controversy, conspicuous high-profile resignations and declining viewership. The network’s evening news under Weiss “is waving the American flag” and “not apologizing" for the network’s “pro-U.S. editorial stance,” Variety said.

Weiss’ claims to be “improving ‘free speech’ in the news” come as she is also “clearly moving CBS in a more conservative direction,” The Nation said. Weiss was “personally recruited by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison” to lead CBS’s news operations, said The Los Angeles Times, after she founded the “conservative-friendly digital news site The Free Press.”

Larry and David Ellison, Paramount Skydance

Billionaire father and son duo Larry — founder of Oracle — and David — CEO of Paramount Skydance — Ellison control “one of the world’s largest audiovisual and news conglomerates.” This pair has the ability to “shape Hollywood’s rules” with its production studios and “influence the news” through both CBS and CNN, said El País.

The duo also controls “numerous entertainment channels that allow them to project their worldview,” said El País. Both Ellisons have been “repeated” visitors at Trump’s White House, CNN said. During the Ellisons’ ultimately successful bid to purchase Warner Brothers this past winter, David “offered assurances” to the White House that “if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump’s ire,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Lachlan Murdoch, News Corp.

Scion of the powerful Rupert Murdoch-founded News Corp dynasty, eldest son Lachlan completed his bid to assume control of his father’s empire in September 2025. The move guaranteed the “empire’s various outlets, including Fox News, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, will remain conservative” after 95-year-old Rupert’s eventual death, The New York Times said.

Lachlan is seen as being the “most likely heir to preserve the conservative identity that defines his father’s portfolio” compared to siblings Prue, Liz and James, NPR News said. Still, Lachlan likely won’t seek the “‘kingmaker’ role in Republican political circles” that his father frequented. He’s “kind of a little bit more hands-off” in that respect, said biographer Paddy Manning to NPR in 2022.

Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post

After ushering in The Washington Post’s era of claiming “Democracy dies in the Darkness” during the first Trump administration, billionaire tech oligarch and Post-owner Jeff Bezos has taken a decidedly less antagonistic stance in the regime’s second turn in office. Over the past year, Bezos has seemed to be “pursuing a policy of appeasement” toward MAGA officials, instructing editorial page writers to focus on the “twin pillars of personal liberties and free markets,” The New Yorker said. Bezos’ shift means that Washington, D.C., a city that Democratic presidential candidates “generally carry with around 90% of the vote,” currently has “three conservative voices and no longer has a single liberal newspaper,” said The New Republic.

Brian Calle, LA Weekly

When the Seminal Media investment group purchased LA Weekly in 2017, it quickly installed Brian Calle, a “conservative-leaning former opinion editor,” to lead its new acquisition, said The Wrap. Calle’s tenure began with a series of deep layoffs, prompting a “furious counterattack” by former staffers who “alleged Calle heads a conservative conspiracy” to transform the “historically progressive” publication into “an alt-right rag,” said Columbia Journalism Review.

Calle, during his prior stint atop the editorial page at the Orange County Register, “pushed the paper’s editorial voice to the right,” while his time as VP at the “notoriously right-wing” Claremont Institute suggested his “conservative aims when it comes to the editorial future of LA Weekly,” said Knock LA. “Downplaying” his rightward inclinations is “exactly the opposite” of what Calle should be doing, said the right-leaning National Review in 2018 after he assumed control of the paper. “Prudent conservatism can save the LA Weekly.”

Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, after nixing a planned 2024 endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, justified his decision as righting an “unacceptable” wrong at the paper he purchased in 2018. “As you can see,” Soon-Shiong said during a podcast interview with arch MAGA personality Tucker Carlson, it was “because it’s a left lean, they wrote terrible stories about President Trump.”

Soon-Shiong’s appearance with Carlson came as the billionaire physician and investor “tries to attract more conservative readers to his newspaper,” which he says “has become too liberal,” said Politico. After “unsuccessfully angling for a place” in the president’s first administration, Soon-Shiong has “moved ever closer to Trump,” said Politico separately, “appearing in conservative media and accusing his own newspaper of editorial bias and becoming an ‘echo chamber’ for progressive politics.”

The Washington Post was, until recently, among the US’s most venerable papers, said Jill Abramson in The Boston Globe. Its reporting on the Watergate scandal under the legendary editor Ben Bradlee made history; the reporters responsible, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, have inspired generations of journalists since; the paper’s writers and photographers were admired the world over.

‘Mortal wound’

Alas, the Post today is a shadow of that former self, and last week it announced that it is laying off more than 300 people – a third of its already pared-back staff. Its ranks of local and international reporters are being decimated, and the sports and books sections are to close. This is not a cut. It is “a mortal wound”. And nor should it be mistaken for a “media story”, said Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. These layoffs will leave “the capital of the most powerful nation on Earth” without a major newspaper – and “during the Trump administration no less”.

“It sucks when your job gets blown up,” said Scott McKay in The American Spectator. But let’s face it: the Post’s glory days are long over. The paper lost $77 million in 2023 and $100 million in 2024. Last year its weekday print circulation fell below 100,000 for the first time in 55 years, said John R. Puri in National Review. The companies that own The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, are making record profits. You can’t blame Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013 for $250 million, for rationalising the business. If all those fulminating about these cuts had actually read the output of the Post’s now-unemployed journalists, they’d still have their jobs.

Accelerated decline

Bezos isn’t bothered about the Post’s operating losses, said Alex Kirshner on Slate. With a net worth of $240 billion, he could sustain them for “hundreds of lifetimes”. When he bought the paper, he made much of the fact that he wasn’t driven purely by a profit motive. But latterly, he seems to have used his ownership of the Post to appease Donald Trump and so boost the fortunes of his other interests, such as Amazon and Blue Origin.

He stepped in to stop the paper endorsing Kamala Harris for president – a decision that cost it 250,000 subscribers. He shifted the paper’s opinion section to be more pro-Trump; he made not a squeak of protest when the FBI recently raided the home of a Post reporter, seizing her devices. Bezos hasn’t just presided over the Post’s decline; he’s deliberately accelerated it, for the sake of “his own bottom line”.

It was the year that Donald Trump caused chaos with tariffs, Elon Musk took a chainsaw to the US government, Angela Rayner was forced to resign, and Gary Lineker left the BBC. Here we take a look at some of the people who made the headlines in 2025.

January

Justin Trudeau bows to pressure to resign as Canadian PM, ending his nine-year stint in power. Tens of thousands of people flee their homes to escape surging wildfires in Pacific Palisades, in Los Angeles. Among the celebrities to lose their houses are Anthony Hopkins, Jeff Bridges and Paris Hilton. Seventeen-year-old Luke Littler becomes the youngest darts world champion in the history of the sport.

In an effort to drum up trade, Chancellor Rachel Reeves visits Beijing for the first high-level economic meeting between Britain and China since 2019: critics dub it “operation kowtow”. Tulip Siddiq resigns as a Treasury Minister over her links to her aunt’s ousted government in Bangladesh. A court in Dhaka later convicts her of corruption, in absentia. Two months after being criticised in an independent report for his handling of abuse allegations, Justin Welby steps down as Archbishop of Canterbury.

“The golden age of America begins right now,” declares Donald Trump as he is sworn in as the 47th US president in a ceremony attended by the Silicon Valley elite. He announces moves to boost fossil fuel production and close the US-Mexico border, and declares an ambition to “take back” the Panama Canal. In a frenetic first week, he signs a mass of executive orders and offers millions of federal employees eight months’ worth of pay to resign, as part of his efforts to shrink the state. Israel’s cabinet approves a ceasefire deal in Gaza, leading to the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

A previously obscure Chinese startup releases DeepSeek-R1, an AI chatbot that seemingly costs a fraction of the price of US rivals and can be downloaded for free. It shoots to the top of Apple’s charts and wipes $1 trillion (£742 billion) off the value of US tech stocks.

February

Keir Starmer launches a charm offensive in Brussels as he seeks to “reset” Britain’s relations with the EU. A panel of international medical experts claims that Lucy Letby, the nurse convicted of murdering seven babies, is a victim of a miscarriage of justice: her case is under assessment by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

As head of America’s new Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), Elon Musk starts purging the federal workforce. He dismantles the country’s main aid agency, USAID, and boasts of having fed it “into the woodchipper”. Days later, he wields a chainsaw on stage at an event in Washington DC. Germany turns to the right in its federal election, delivering victory to the conservative CDU and setting up its leader, Friedrich Merz, to become the nation’s next chancellor.

Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, is forced to deny that his government is planning to ban pet cats: a report had merely advised that cats might be contained in areas that are home to red-listed bird species. The Broccoli family yields creative control over the 007 franchise to Amazon MGM Studios. Beyoncé wins her first album-of-the-year Grammy for her country-inspired album, “Cowboy Carter”.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy heads to Washington to sign a minerals deal, only for his Oval Office meeting to end in an undignified, televised row. Vice president J.D. Vance accuses him of disrespecting America, by seeking to “litigate” disagreements in front of the media, and suggests that he show gratitude to the president. “You don’t have the cards,” yells Trump.

March

Ukraine agrees in principle to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire – if Russia follows suit – prompting Washington to announce that it’s restoring the flow of military aid and intelligence to Kyiv that was cut off after the Oval Office row. But Russia does not agree to US proposal.

The Duchess of Sussex’s lifestyle series, “With Love, Meghan”, debuts on Netflix, to dire reviews. At the age of 69, Donatella Versace steps down as creative director of the Versace fashion empire. Uncollected rubbish starts piling up in Birmingham after the city’s refuse collectors embark on an indefinite strike.

Marine Le Pen (pictured, above) sees her hopes of becoming France’s next president dealt a major blow when she is convicted of embezzlement and banned from running for office for five years. Israel launches air strikes on Gaza, ending the ceasefire. It says that Hamas had breached its terms by failing to release hostages and had rejected proposals to extend the truce. Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, announces plans to splurge on defence spending to help with Europe’s rearmament.

Rupert Lowe, the Reform UK MP for Great Yarmouth, is suspended by the party, amid claims that he’d made threats towards the party’s chairman, Zia Yusuf. Lowe, who had earlier described Nigel Farage as the “messianic” leader of a “protest party”, claims to be the victim of a smear campaign; the Crown Prosecution Service opts not to bring charges against him. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch formally abandons the net zero target set by Theresa May in 2019. A fire at an old substation near Heathrow brings Britain’s busiest airport to a shuddering halt for 24 hours.

April

On what he dubs “Liberation Day”, Donald Trump announces a slew of tariffs on countries and territories around the world, including two uninhabited islands near Antarctica. The price of US government bonds plummets, and he is forced to suspend most of the tariffs for 90 days.

An all-female crew, including the pop star Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez, the fiancée of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, fly to the edge of outer space in one of Bezos’ Blue Origin rockets. After the 11-minute flight, Perry, who had boasted of putting “the ass in astronaut”, kisses the Earth and declares that she’d not realised “how much love there was inside of you … how loved you are”. Tributes pour in from around the globe following the death of Pope Francis, at the age of 88.

Britain’s Supreme Court confers clear legal protection on single-sex services by ruling that the terms “woman” and “man” in the Equality Act 2010 refer only to a “biological woman” and a “biological man”. The government seizes control of the day-to-day running of British Steel following a breakdown in talks with the Chinese owner, Jingye, over the future of its Scunthorpe steelworks.

Former Bank of England boss Mark Carney leads his Liberal Party to a fourth consecutive election victory, less than two months after succeeding Justin Trudeau as Canada’s PM. The family of Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, announces that she has taken her own life, at the age of 41.

May

Nigel Farage declares “the end of two-party politics” after Reform UK makes sweeping gains in local elections in England. The Tories lose control of every local authority they were defending. A sustained cyberattack cripples the digital operations of Marks & Spencer. The retailer later estimates the direct costs of the attack at roughly £136 million.

The Court of Appeal rules that the decision to downgrade Prince Harry’s police protection after he stepped back from royal life in 2020 was legally justified. Harry responds angrily, describing the decision as a “good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up”. (The Home Office is now reviewing the situation.) The Belfast rappers Kneecap have gigs cancelled and are dropped by their US booking agent after videos emerge of them shouting “Up Hamas! Up Hezbollah!” at one gig, and telling fans at another: “Kill your local MP. The only good Tory is a dead Tory.” They say their words were taken out of context.

Unveiling measures to strengthen Britain’s borders, Keir Starmer says the country risks becoming “an island of strangers”. His critics say this phrase echoes words used by Enoch Powell; he later apologises. On the second day of the conclave in Rome, Robert Prevost is elected pope. Pope Leo XIV is the first US-born leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

A jury in Newcastle finds Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, guilty of criminal damage – for cutting down the Sycamore Gap tree by Hadrian’s Wall. Gary Lineker leaves the BBC without a payoff, days after apologising for reposting an anti-Zionist video that included an emoji of a rat. Keir Starmer signs a controversial treaty that officially hands control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. The Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, releases a video of himself confronting fare dodgers at Stratford Tube station in east London.

June

In its most audacious operation of the war so far, Ukraine launches a series of remotely triggered drone attacks on airfields deep inside Russia. Operation Spiderweb is said to have caused $7 billion (£5.2 billion) of damage to Russia’s long-range strike fleet.

The bromance between Trump and Musk ends in bitter recriminations after Musk describes the president’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill as a “disgusting”, “pork-filled” abomination, and urges senators not to vote for it.

Israel mounts a surprise strike on Iran, launching a wave of bombing raids that eviscerate the top ranks of its armed forces and kill some of its leading nuclear experts. Iran responds by firing ballistic missiles at Israel, a few of which penetrate its Iron Dome defences, killing dozens of people. Blaise Metreweli (pictured, above) becomes the first woman to be appointed head of MI6. An Air India flight bound for London Gatwick crashes in Ahmedabad: the sole survivor is named as Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, from Leicester, who’d been sitting in seat 11A, and who escaped with relatively minor injuries.

Riots break out in parts of Northern Ireland after two Romanian-speaking teenagers are charged with raping a teenage girl in Ballymena, County Antrim. The charges are later dropped. Tanks roll through Washington as Donald Trump hosts a military parade on his 79th birthday. He goes on to launch the largest-ever strike by B-2 stealth bombers: seven are sent to drop bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Trump claims the bombs “totally obliterated” the sites.

After an emotional debate in the Commons, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill passes by 314 to 291 votes. Another antisemitism row erupts after the BBC broadcasts footage of the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan leading the crowd in chants of “Death, death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury Festival. Jeff Bezos marries Lauren Sánchez during a three-day multimillion-dollar shindig in Venice. Locals complain about the disruption; Greenpeace unveils a banner in St Mark’s Square reading: “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.”

July

On the first anniversary of his premiership, Keir Starmer is forced to gut his flagship welfare reform bill to stave off a full-scale Labour revolt. Government borrowing costs rise after Rachel Reeves is seen crying during a session of Prime Minister’s Questions, during which Starmer initially fails to guarantee that the Chancellor will keep her job. The PM subsequently insists that he is “in lockstep” with her; she explains that she had had a “tough day” and had been dealing with “a personal issue”. Firebrand Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana announces that she is quitting Labour to co-lead a new left-wing party with Jeremy Corbyn, a project that quickly descends into factional infighting.

Gregg Wallace is sacked as a “MasterChef” presenter over multiple claims of inappropriate behaviour. He is later criticised for seeming to blame his misconduct on his late-diagnosed autism – a condition that, he says, has left him unable to wear underpants owing to his hypersensitivity to labels and tight clothing. The reunion many fans feared would never happen finally comes to pass when, 16 years after last performing together, Noel and Liam Gallagher stride onto the stage at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium – and bring the house down.

An Observer article blows the whistle on Raynor Winn’s popular 2018 memoir, “The Salt Path”, picking holes in its claim to be the true story of a wronged couple’s triumph against the odds. Owing to drought conditions, eight million people in England face restrictions on water use. Britain joins 27 other countries in condemning the “drip-feeding of aid” to Gaza by Israel, amid warnings that “mass starvation” is spreading across the Strip. Six people are arrested during violent protests outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, a hotel housing asylum seekers.

US tech boss Andy Byron and his head of HR, Kristin Cabot, are caught in a romantic embrace by a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert. Their guilty reaction goes viral; Byron, a married father of two, resigns from his job. Cheering fans line the streets of London to salute England’s women’s football team as it parades through the city to celebrate its victory in the Euro 2025 championship. Hollywood star Sydney Sweeney is caught up in a political row over an American Eagle advert that praises her “great jeans”; critics claim the ad has overtones of eugenics. Sacha Baron Cohen unveils his muscular new physique on the cover of Men’s Fitness. “This is not AI,” insists the “Ali G” star. “I really am egotistical enough to do this.”

August

After President Emmanuel Macron declares that France will formally recognise Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly in September, Keir Starmer says that Britain will do the same unless Israel allows more aid into Gaza, commits not to annex the West Bank and agrees to a ceasefire. Channel 4 causes a stir with its documentary about Bonnie Blue, a 26-year-old who has won a huge following by posting clips of her extreme pornographic stunts. The documentary focuses on one such stunt, in which she supposedly had sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours.

In one of the largest mass arrests in modern British history, more than 500 people are arrested in Parliament Square for holding up placards declaring their support for the proscribed group Palestine Action. Parts of the Cotswolds are brought to a near standstill by the arrival of J.D. Vance for his summer holiday – along with his family and a huge security detail. Vance had earlier visited Foreign Secretary David Lammy at Chevening, where the pair went fishing (illegally, it turned out: Lammy had failed to get a rod licence).

Donald Trump hosts Vladimir Putin at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, and offers the Russian leader a lift from the airport in his own presidential limousine. The three hours of talks fail to produce any breakthrough. In the year David Beckham celebrated turning 50 and was finally awarded a knighthood, there is gossip about a major rift in his family. The Beckhams’ eldest son, Brooklyn, and his wife the billionaire heiress Nicola Peltz, appear to confirm this when they post pictures of a “vow renewal” party to which his parents had seemingly not been invited.

Lucy Connolly, the childminder who became a right-wing cause célèbre after being jailed for posting inflammatory comments on social media during last year’s Southport riots, is released from HMP Peterborough. She strikes a defiant tone, promising to “continue to fight” for free speech. The pop star Taylor Swift lights up the internet when she posts a photo of boyfriend Travis Kelce on bended knee, in a garden bursting with roses, along with the caption: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

September

Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un flank China’s Xi Jinping at a huge military parade in Tiananmen Square. “Phase two of my government starts today,” declares Keir Starmer as he unveils another Downing Street mini-reshuffle, appointing Darren Jones to be the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister. In an immediate setback for the reset, Angela Rayner quits as deputy PM, housing secretary and deputy Labour leader after an investigation finds that she breached the ministerial code, by failing to get proper legal advice about the stamp duty due on the purchase of her flat in Hove. As a result, she had underpaid £40,000 in tax. Yvette Cooper is moved from the Home Office to the Foreign Office, and replaced in her old job by Shabana Mahmood, the former justice secretary.

After a summer of flag-waving, more than 100,000 people join Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom demonstration in central London; by video-link, Elon Musk urges the crowd to “fight back or die”. Israeli jets fire missiles into a compound in a residential district of Doha, the capital of Qatar, in a failed bid to eliminate the Hamas negotiating team. Zack Polanski is elected leader of the Green Party, with 85% of member votes. Melvyn Bragg bows out of presenting Radio 4’s “In Our Time”, the show he has hosted since its launch in 1998. Misha Glenny is later named as his successor.

“Folks, it’s happening,” declares a triumphant Nigel Farage at Reform UK’s conference. “We are all ships rising on a turquoise tide headed ever-closer towards winning the next general election.” Danny Kruger subsequently becomes the first sitting Tory MP to join Farage’s party. America reels in response to the assassination of the 31-year-old political influencer and free speech champion Charlie Kirk, shot dead while answering a question about mass shootings at a public event at Utah Valley University. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, hints at his leadership ambitions ahead of the Labour Party conference, sparking a backlash from MPs, closely followed by a backtrack.

The publication of a “birthday book” given to Jeffrey Epstein leads to the resignation of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington: it included a tribute from the Labour peer to his “best pal”, describing how much he looked forward to visiting Epstein at “one of his glorious homes he likes to share with his friends (yum yum)”. Sarah Ferguson is also caught up in the scandal when it emerges that she had described Epstein as her “supreme friend” in an email to him in April 2011, after she had publicly disowned him. Donald Trump is treated to the full array of pomp and pageantry on his second state visit to the UK.

October

An attack on the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur leaves two people dead and three more seriously injured, prompting police to step up patrols in areas with large Jewish populations. President Macron faces growing pressure to step down following the resignation of Sébastien Lecornu, France’s fifth PM in two years, after just 28 days in post; Lecornu is reappointed four days later. Sarah Mullally is appointed as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury – the first woman to take the job in its 1,428-year history.

The world’s first 100% AI actor, Tilly Norwood, causes a stir when she is unveiled at the Zurich Film Festival in a video that shows off her range in a series of clips. “That’s an AI?” exclaims actress Emily Blunt, when shown the video. “Good lord, we’re screwed.” Two weeks after unveiling his 20-point plan for peace in Gaza, Donald Trump declares that “the war is over”, and all the living hostages held in the Strip are released, along with some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. However, Trump is not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It goes to Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado, who then dedicates it to Trump.

Rumours of a romance between pop star Katy Perry and former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau are confirmed when a photo appears of the pair caught in a clinch on Perry’s yacht. In a statement from Buckingham Palace, Prince Andrew (pictured, above) says he will no longer be called the Duke of York, as Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs are published. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, voices his frustration over the collapse of the trial of two British men accused of spying for China between 2021 and 2023. The charges were dropped after the Crown Prosecution Service said it couldn’t get evidence from the government that it had viewed China as a national security threat.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, begins a five-year prison sentence for conspiring to raise campaign funds illegally; he is released three weeks later pending his appeal. In a bold daylight heist, thieves steal eight pieces of the French “crown jewels” from the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery in Paris. The jewellery – worth an estimated £77 million – hasn’t been recovered, but four suspects are in custody.

November

With public anger about the Epstein affair not abating, King Charles initiates moves to strip his younger brother of all his titles and evict him from his 30-room mansion in Windsor. Millions of people tune in to watch Alan Carr win the inaugural UK series of “The Celebrity Traitors”. The self-described “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani wins New York’s mayoral election.

Donald Trump threatens to sue the BBC for up to $10 billion (£7.4 billion) for “deceitfully” editing footage of a speech he gave on 6 January 2021, the day of the Capitol riot. The furore prompts the resignation of two of the BBC’s most senior figures: director-general Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness. David Szalay wins the Booker Prize with his sixth novel, “Flesh”.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood unveils a string of tough measures, which she says amount to the most significant reform of the asylum system since the Second World War. After months of speculation, leaks and apparent U-turns – notably on raising income tax – Rachel Reeves finally delivers her second Budget. It is widely viewed as a failure, leading to renewed speculation about the Labour leadership. In her second report, Covid Inquiry chair Heather Hallett condemns the slow response of Boris Johnson’s government: had it imposed a national lockdown even one week earlier, the report states, 23,000 lives could have been saved.

December

Time names “The Architects of AI” as its “person” of the year. Justice Secretary David Lammy announces plans to curb jury trials in England and Wales. The Trump administration publishes a stark new National Security Strategy, warning that “decaying” European countries face the prospect of “civilizational erasure”. A terrorist attack on Bondi Beach, in Sydney, claims 15 lives. The health secretary, Wes Streeting, hits out at resident doctors for striking during a flu crisis. Film legend Dick Van Dyke celebrates his 100th birthday.

When you think back over 2025 what comes to mind? A new Pope? The first signs of a peace deal in Gaza? The celebrity traitors? All valid contenders. But here are our choices of the most meme-orable, eye-rolling, jaw-dropping and head-scratching moments of the year.

Coldplay kiss cam

The moment of the year unravelled on that fateful mid-July day at a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Andy Byron, then CEO of tech company Astronomer, and the company’s Chief People Officer Kristin Cabot broke away from a cosy embrace and ducked for cover to avoid being caught on kiss cam. A ripple of gasps in the audience ensued. Then Chris Martin delivered the iconic line: “Oh, what…either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” Turns out, the latter was a little generous.

To add to the madness, Astronomer then hired Martin’s ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow to be a “temporary spokesperson” and the face of a new, tongue-in-cheek advertisement released to ride the publicity wave. Byron and Cabot have both since left the company. The latest Coldplay singles?

Labubu craze

These dolls were everywhere. First seen swinging from the bag of South Korean Blackpink band member Lalisa Manobal – known as “Lisa” – they were soon adopted by music icons Rihanna and Dua Lipa, and sporting greats Sir David Beckham and Naomi Osaka. “Après Lalisa, la delulu”, said essayist Mireille Silcoff in The New York Times. The “junky-looking fuzzy toy” spiralled into a “weird totem of adult fashion juvenilia”, as both adults and children queued for hours to get their hands on the newest colour or style.

You couldn’t just buy them in shops, you had to wait until the next “drop”, where crowds would break into a frenzy. The toys took a darker turn as the year wore on. The counterfeit market has caught up, with 236,000 Labubu dolls seized at UK borders alone, raising health and safety concerns. Such was the success of the Labubu boom, there are whispers circulating of a film deal, with Sony reportedly securing the rights, said The Hollywood Reporter. The craze continues.

Blue Origin space mission

The space race took a strange turn this year. The 20th-century rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union is firmly in the rearview mirror. In April, a star-studded crew – including singer Katy Perry and CBS presenter Gayle King – embarked on an 11-minute space mission, rising more than 100km above the Earth. The Blue Origin mission was funded by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, whose wife Lauren Sánchez was also on board. Upon landing, Sánchez told reporters that “I looked out of the window and we got to see the Moon”. Earth-shattering stuff.

Perry, who performed Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” during the flight, said she felt like a “human piñata” for the online abuse she received after the flight. The crew were slammed for these flights which were described as “essentially just joyrides for the super-rich”.

Sydney Sweeney’s jeans

Actor Sydney Sweeney appeared in an advert for jeans company American Eagle over the summer, under the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans”. Wordplay-gone-wrong or a marketing epiphany? The pun on genes sparked online outrage, with many criticising the supposed idealisation of her skin colour and physique, even “flirting with eugenic imagery”, said Vanity Fair. As usual, sadly, any publicity was good publicity.

Even the president weighed in on the controversy, after he found out she was affiliated to the Republican Party. “She’s a registered Republican? Oh, now I love her ad,” said Donald Trump. “If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic.”

In September, shares in American Eagle Outfitters “jumped” more than 25% following Sweeney’s involvement, said the FT. Her signature jeans had sold out within a week of launch, the company’s executives said. Another commercial success, but at what cost? $89.95 (£66.58) per pair.

Louvre robbery

Heists are usually seen only in films, but sometimes, life imitates art. October’s heist at the world’s most famous museum was a plotline straight out of “Ocean’s 11” or “The Thomas Crown Affair”.

Armed with a vehicle-mounted mechanical lift, four suspects arrived at 9:30am, shortly after the Louvre opened to visitors. They raised the lift to the first floor, cut through the glass, and made off with around £76 million of loot. To add insult to injury, in November, it was revealed that a 2018 security audit conducted for the museum identified the balcony that was used as a weak point, warning that it could be accessed by a freight elevator, said Le Monde. Déjà vu?

In late November, the Paris Prosecutor’s office confirmed that the fourth and final suspect for the crime had been arrested. The jewellery haul, however, remains at large – if you needed another reason to visit Paris.

What happened

Blue Origin Thursday launched its massive New Glenn rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission. It was Blue Origin’s first NASA mission and only the second launch of the 321-foot New Glenn. Unlike the orbital rocket’s inaugural launch in January, its booster successfully touched down on Blue Origin’s landing barge, a feat previously accomplished only by Elon Musk’s rival aerospace company SpaceX.

Who said what

New Glenn’s flight “was a complete success,” The Associated Press said, and Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos appeared “ecstatic” as the booster landed upright. That was a “major step forward” in the company’s “bid to rival SpaceX as a reliable provider of reusable rockets,” said Scientific American. Reusing boosters cuts costs and allows for more frequent launches.

Blue Origin, founded in 2000, “has long been seen as sluggish and disappointing when compared with SpaceX,” The New York Times said. But with a few more successes, that perception “could totally flip pretty quickly,” University of Central Florida space commercialization expert Greg Autry told the newspaper. SpaceX has never sent anything to Mars, and if Blue Origin can “land something on the moon successfully in the first half of next year, then they can even claim to be ahead of SpaceX in some ways.”

What next?

The Escapade mission’s satellites, named Blue and Gold, are scheduled to start orbiting Mars in 2027 to “study the Martian atmosphere and magnetic fields and take other readings” that “could help researchers understand why the planet lost its atmosphere and inform future crewed missions,” The Wall Street Journal said. Blue Origin’s ambitious launch schedule for next year includes sending a prototype lunar lander to the moon.

It was billed as the "wedding of the century", said Camilla Tominey in The Daily Telegraph, but in the event, the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials in Venice last week did not exactly ooze "sophistication". The three-day, multimillion-pound shindig was a "triumph of tackiness over taste" – from the foam party on Bezos's $500 million yacht to the flood of Kardashians, Trumps and the like arriving in a fleet of private jets, to the bride's 27 outfits and the millions of dollars spent on flowers.

Many Venetians, it's fair to say, weren't impressed, said Victoria Derbyshire in The i Paper. The Amazon founder was met with angry protests by locals, who felt that he was treating "their beloved city" as a "private amusement park for the very wealthy". Activists of many stripes joined in: in St Mark's Square, Greenpeace unveiled a huge banner reading: "If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax."

You can see why Venetians were furious, said Rachel Spence in the Financial Times. The wedding treated the city as a mere "backdrop", just as tourism has reduced it "to a hollow, Disneyfied shell" with few non-tourism jobs and sky-high house prices. True, said Angelina Villa-Clarke in The Independent, but Bezos is hardly to blame for decades of overtourism, and what's an extra 200 wedding guests "in a city that welcomes around 30 million tourists each year"? The couple's rich pals are probably preferable to the throngs of visitors who come to Venice on day trips, clogging up the streets as they take in the sights while barely contributing to the local economy. Bezos, by contrast, donated €3 million to Venetian causes, and many local traders were delighted by the vast amount of cash the billionaire splashed across the city.

As for turning Venice into a billionaires' playground, said Stephen Bleach in The Times, do Bezos's critics know the first thing about Venetian history? The Doges built its palazzos "for the express purpose of displaying their prodigious wealth"; rich merchants flocked there to outdo each other in vulgar shows of decadence. "The world's most beautiful city is a monument to more than 1,000 years of bling." Bezos, the fourth-richest man on the planet, was simply continuing that grand tradition.

"It begins, as all good fairytales do, with a $10 million budget", a star-studded guest list, and a "megayacht the size of a football pitch", said Zoë Beaty in The Independent.

Jeff Bezos is set to wed Lauren Sánchez during an opulent three-day celebration in Venice later this month. "But the Adriatic city isn't swooning – far from it. In fact, the locals are absolutely seething."

'A playground for the wealthy'

According to local activists, the Amazon boss is set to turn their hometown into a "playground for the wealthy". From 24 to 26 June, the "so-called wedding of the year" will see a slew of celebrities descend on Venice in their private jets and yachts, adding to the historic city's hefty carbon emissions and sparking "logistical chaos" in a destination already struggling with "unchecked tourism", said Beaty.

Soaring rents and a city bursting with holiday homes have already led to a "mass exodus of Venetians". Locals have been campaigning for years against the mammoth cruise ships damaging the city's fragile lagoon ecosystem. "And, of course, famously, Venice is literally sinking." Rising sea levels combined with subsidence means it faces extensive threats from flooding. For protestors, Bezos' "tone-deaf" wedding is the last thing the city needs.

The billionaire and his bride-to-be will be met with "noisy protests" when they cruise into Venice later this month aboard their $500 million superyacht, said Nick Squires in The Telegraph. Along with the environmental damage, activists claim the "mega-wedding" will "disrupt daily life for ordinary Venetians" due to the "cordoning-off of public areas" and "blanket booking" of gondolas and water taxis.

But the Venetian mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, says he is "grateful" Bezos has chosen the floating city to host his wedding, stressing the economic benefits of the celebrations and insisting, "Anyone who loves Venice is always welcome".

'Relatively humble'

Everyone is expecting a "staggering display of wealth" from the world's third richest man, said Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail. However, it appears the nuptials will be lower key than expected. "Modest, even." With fewer than 200 guests and a final bill rumoured to be under $10 million ("loose change" for Bezos), an "impeccably placed source" told the publication that the wedding had undergone a "make-under", with the bride and groom set on "dialling down on the bling".

Why the "relatively humble" celebration? The answer could, in part, lie in the "PR disaster" of the all-female Blue Origin space flight earlier this year. With Sánchez's journey to the edge of Earth's atmosphere largely dismissed as an out-of-touch and "meaningless stunt", her response is to be "less 'Marie Antoinette'".

Still, it's the biggest event the city has seen since George and Amal Clooney tied the knot at the Aman Venice – a 24-room palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal – back in 2014. The island of San Giorgio Maggiore is "widely tipped" to play a central role in the festivities this time, said Tom Kington in The Times, with the nuptials reported to be taking place at the Fondazione Cini – a former Benedictine monastery.

If the rumours are true, "monks will soon rub shoulders with Trumps" as the US president's family jets in for the celebration. Set away from the "tourist hordes", but just a short water taxi ride from St Mark's Square, the island is a "perfect spot" for the wedding. Nestled amid the cypress trees lies an open-air amphitheatre, ideal for the wedding concert by Sir Elton John and Lady Gaga that Bezos is said to be planning.

For the mega-rich guests, the nuptials will be regarded as a "symbol of success and exclusivity", said Beaty in The Independent. But as the world's elite "raise glasses of champagne behind velvet ropes, the locals will be raising something else entirely: placards, voices and a warning from the heart of their ancient, beloved home – that cities like Venice don't belong to the richest man in the world, no matter how sparkly the ring."

Jeff Bezos is a truck guy now. The Amazon founder is one of the financial forces behind the Slate truck, a cheap bare-bones electric vehicle that some experts say could shake up America's growing EV industry.

The new vehicle is the "bare minimum of what a modern car can be," said The Verge. It seats just two people, has no touchscreens and can go only 150 miles in a single charge. It doesn't even have a radio. But it will cost only around $20,000, at least as long as existing tax credits for EVs stay in place.

Slate Auto is pitching the new truck as "minimalist design with DIY purpose," an attempt to "create a new category of vehicle with a huge focus on personalization." The ideas behind the truck are a "rolling rejection of the current, bloated state of American motoring."

'Potential Tesla killer'

Many EV buyers "feel sour about Tesla and want more affordable options," said The Street. The current cheapest model, the Nissan Leaf, comes in with a base price near $30,000. Elon Musk has "made big promises" about a $25,000 budget EV from Tesla but has repeatedly pushed back a production date. Now, Slate's low price point makes it a "potential Tesla killer."

Some caution is needed. New EV truck companies that promise to "revolutionize or disrupt the industry" have "come and gone," said CarBuzz. But Slate seems to be offering something different: If you "just need a runaround little electric truck" for chores and getting around town, "that's all you get and all you pay for."

If you want something different — to add that radio, say, or transform the two-seater into a five-seater — the vehicle is designed to be "infinitely upgradable and customizable." If it works, Slate could serve as a "wrecking ball" in the EV industry.

The Slate is "something we need," but it "won't fix the cause of our problems," said Motor1. A cheap EV is a "good thing" during a nationwide "affordability crisis." But it's backed by Bezos, reportedly the second-richest person in the world. His companies have a history of union-busting and have been accused of anti-competitive practices. Bezos already profits from the "very sort of customers looking for more affordable vehicles." That makes Slate's success discomfiting: It would further "enrich one of the wealthiest people on earth."

Truck arrives at 'volatile time'

Slate announced on April 29 that it will build the vehicle at a former printing plant in Indiana, said Business Insider. The first deliveries are expected near the end of 2026.

The EV industry has "driven prices to a place that most Americans simply can't afford," Slate CCO Jeremy Snyder said during a recent event. But the "Bezos-backed" truck is about "as anti-Tesla as it gets," said TechCrunch.

The truck arrives at a "volatile time" during America's trade wars and President Donald Trump's antipathy to the industry. But its plans to build in Indiana may insulate it from the "turmoil facing other startups and established automakers."

An all-female crew has journeyed to the edge of space for the first time in 60 years. But, while Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was showered with praise for her solo mission in 1963, the women on this week's Blue Origin flight have attracted almost universal criticism.

The 11-minute trip was a "morally vacuous" stunt for Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company owned by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, said Jessica Grose in The New York Times.

The six women aboard included pop star Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos' fiancée Lauren Sánchez. Perry said the flight would encourage young girls to go into space "without limitations" but it was "anything but a boost for feminism", said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator.

'Self-indulgent and pointless'

The flight was "touted" as a "win for science" and a "triumph of feminism" but was instead a "perverse funeral for the America that once enabled both scientific advancement and feminist progress", said Moira Donegan in The Guardian.

The crew's pre-flight promotion "leaned heavily" on women’s empowerment but was "light on substance" and "heavy on a childlike, girlish silliness", with Perry saying they were putting "the 'ass' into astronaut", and other crew members only interested in "talking about their makeup and hair".

The crew did include aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe and bioastronautics researcher and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, alongside Perry, Sánchez, film producer Kerianne Flynne and TV presenter Gayle King. But it is clear that these women "in their Monse-designed suits and fresh blow-waves" were "handpicked" purely to "show off what Blue Origin can do for its customers", said Rebecca Mitchell at Marie Claire.

And as for women going into space "without limitations"? Yes, but only as long as they are "rich, famous or happen to be on close terms with a billionaire", said The Spectator's Iqbal. This will "surely go down in history" as the "most self-indulgent and pointless trip into space. Ever."

'Profoundly antifeminist'

For these women, "nothing is at stake and nothing ever has to change", so "concepts like empowerment" have "no material reality", said Vrinda Jagota in Pitchfork. The "issues women face on Earth are an afterthought" to all those involved.

Any hope that "celebrity feminism could rub off in some way on the larger culture" has now gone, said Grose in The New York Times. "Trickle-down feminism" has been "snuffed out by the reality of celebrity behaviour".

In fact, the Blue Origin crew have "presented a profoundly antifeminist vision" of womankind's future, said The Guardian's Donegan – one that is "dependent on men, confined to triviality, and deeply, deeply silly".

What happened

Blue Origin, the spaceflight company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, sent six well-known women into lower orbit Monday, billing the 11-minute journey as the "first all-woman spaceflight" since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova's 1963 three-day solo mission in space. The six passengers included pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King and Bezos' fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, who handpicked the roster.

Who said what

On NBC's "Today With Jenna and Friends," actress Olivia Munn called the fully automated celebrity space tourism flight "gluttonous" and extravagant, especially when a lot of people "can't even afford eggs." Blue Origin "declined to say how much the flight cost or who paid what," The Associated Press said.

"The cynical part of me wants to call it a marketing stunt," Dr. Tanya Harrison of the Outer Space Institute told the BBC. But a high-profile all-women team might "change the demographics a little bit of who might want to do something like this." Taking female celebrities and activists to space "applied a feminist sheen" on the endeavor, Amanda Hess said at The New York Times, but "if the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalism's most decadent spoils alongside the world's wealthiest men."

What next?

"In this exciting new era of commercial spaceflight, the dream of becoming an astronaut is no longer limited to a select few," bitcoin investor Chun Wang, who bankrolled an entire SpaceX flight over the north and south poles, said on X last week. Bezos and Sanchez are scheduled to get married in Venice in two months.

Jeff Bezos seemed the "perfect white knight" when he bought the struggling Washington Post in 2013, said Jill Abramson in The Boston Globe. The billionaire didn't even bother to negotiate over the $250 million price tag and promised to be a "hands-off" owner. For years he honoured that pledge, but shortly before the last presidential election, he badly "tarnished" the paper's reputation by spiking a Washington Post editorial endorsing Kamala Harris – a move that led to some 250,000 cancelled subscriptions. And last week Bezos went further.

In a memo to Post staff, he explained that the paper's opinion pages would henceforth consistently champion "personal liberties and free markets". "We'll cover other topics too of course," he wrote, "but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others." The Post's opinion editor, David Shipley, promptly resigned over the edict.

Honestly, the fuss people have made of this, said Rich Lowry in the New York Post. There's nothing new about owners determining the editorial line of newspapers. The Washington Post has been "synonymous with crusading liberalism" since it exposed the Watergate scandal, but its politics were different in the 1930s, when it was owned by the Republican banker Eugene Meyer. Besides, what's so bad about emphasising liberty and free markets? They're hardly "the hallmarks of authoritarian rule".

Bezos is entitled to put his mark on the Post, agreed Roger Simon on Substack. It could be a smart commercial move, too, given the uncertain future of the Murdoch media empire. If the more liberal family members get their way and push the politics of papers such as The Wall Street Journal to the left, it could present an opening for the Post.

It's a "rotten business decision", said Michael Schaffer on Politico. The Post has always sought to reflect a wide range of views on its op-ed pages, to grow its readership. If Bezos seems to be controlling the paper to "curry favour with his new pal Donald Trump", then readers won't trust it. Bezos says papers don't need to cover all views because "the internet does that job"; he just cares about freedom. Does that "include, say, the freedom to start a union at an Amazon warehouse? Or run a business without worrying that some monopolistic e-commerce behemoth is going to drive you under?" These sound like good subjects for debate "on a pluralistic op-ed page somewhere".

For years, the biggest threat to 007 "was the apocryphal 'woke police'", said Adam White in The Independent: a "mob of rainbow-haired bisexuals" determined to turn James Bond into a woman and replace his vodka martini with "vegan wine".

But now, we know how Bond will really be killed off: through "a slow, sad corporate takeover". Last week, the Broccoli family yielded creative control over the franchise to Amazon MGM Studios.

'Hallmark of Britishness'

For Brits, 007 "is not just A.N. Other action hero", said Janice Turner in The Times: "he's our soft power, our collective national id" – an alluring mix of "tradition and modernity" and "understated cool", "salted" with a dash of humour. Now, it's only a matter of time before Jeff Bezos and his algorithm-led streaming platform turn Bond into a bland, "Americanised" figure.

Still, the buyout is "grimly appropriate", said Madeline Grant in The Telegraph. "Bond films always mirror geopolitical reality": how fitting, then, that a tech giant from the US – so "vastly wealthy" and "culturally self-confident in a way we no longer are" – should be gobbling up "this hallmark of Britishness".

'Supervillain's bounty'

It's a "worrying" time for us fans, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. But this should at least end the Bond drought. New films used to come along every three years or so, but it has been four since Daniel Craig's swansong, "No Time to Die", and no new installment is in sight. This is largely due to infighting between Amazon (which bought MGM and the rights to Bond in 2017) and Barbara Broccoli, whose father launched the films in 1962. After one fractious meeting, she reportedly labelled Amazon executives "f**king idiots" for describing Bond films as "content". Now that the family has ceded their control – reportedly for a cool £1 billion – someone might "finally be motivated" to make a film.

There is a reason Bezos paid this "supervillain's bounty", said Alexander Larman in The Spectator: the deal has given Amazon what all studios covet – control over the series' intellectual property. Just as Disney has "so inexpertly done with 'Star Wars'", Bezos will now milk the franchise for all it's worth: get ready for spinoffs galore, from Teen Bond to Blofeld's "origin story".

It's a shame. Bond has endured "not because of the terrible quips" and martinis, but because Broccoli fiercely guarded the brand, making sure each film was an event. Now the floodgates are open for a vulgar free-for-all. That sound you hear is "1,000 Amazon executives rubbing their hands together with glee".

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is one of the most recognizable members of an uber-wealthy global elite. As the owner of the Washington Post since 2013, he is also a frequent target of critics on both sides of the American political divide.

Like many of the world's most fabulously wealthy, Bezos' path to riches was greased with family wealth — but it was Bezos' vision that turned an online hub for used books in the early internet era into a world-best market hegemony powerful enough to muscle out competition in virtually any field over the course of 30 years. In large part because Amazon delivery trucks are a ubiquitous presence on America's streets, Bezos has since accumulated enough wealth to be richer than many of the world's countries.

How did he amass his fortune?

Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in computer science and electrical engineering. After college, Bezos went to work for a financial technology startup, Fitel, before moving to banking and then to the hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1990, where he was "tasked with researching potential business opportunities involving the then brand-new internet landscape," said CNBC. There, he would show "many of the idiosyncratic qualities his employees would later observe at Amazon," including "constantly recording ideas in a notebook he carried with him," said Brad Stone in an excerpt from his 2013 book "The Everything Store."

Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, left the hedge fund to start the organization that would become Amazon in 1994, initially operating it out of a Seattle garage. Originally called "Cadabra," the name "later changed because it sounded too much like "cadaver," or a dead human body used for research," said Yahoo. Amazon.com was launched in 1995 as an online bookseller and a year later it was considered one of the "well-established internet shops" pressuring brick-and-mortar retailers like Barnes and Noble as well as smaller, independent bookstores, said The New York Times in 1996. Amazon "survived early prophecies of doom" and eventually "branched out into selling music, movies, electronics and toys during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s." The company struggled through, but ultimately survived, the e-commerce crash of the early 2000s.

Bezos took the firm public in 1997, and due to a rapid increase in the company's value, he "appeared on Forbes list of America's 400 wealthiest people for the first time in 1998," said Yahoo Finance, with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion at the time. He would never again fall out of the exclusive billionaire club. Yet Amazon itself would not develop into the market-dominating behemoth it is today until much later. As late as 2004, it was "still mostly selling just books and DVDs," even as it was "under siege from multiple sides" including retailers like Best Buy, said Vox. That is when Bezos' firm launched the company's Prime subscription service, a "$79-a-year loyalty program that includes free two-day shipping on any order," said CNN. The yearly subscription fee kept shoppers in the Amazon universe, and eventually made making purchases on the site so easy as to be near-seamless. Today, "75% of Americans now use Amazon Prime, a record level of penetration," said Business Insider.

Over the years, Amazon continued to add innovative new products that disrupted existing industries, including the Kindle, a digital reader that "dominated every corner of the ebook industry" and today "might as well be synonymous with ebook, with its massive reach that accounts for 68% of overall" market for electronic book sales, said Book Riot. But it is Amazon's dominance of the global package shipping market, driven by Prime subscribers, that has made Bezos one of the richest people in history. Bezos "built the sprawling logistics and delivery empire" necessary "for many of us to buy almost anything we want with a click," said Vox. The company's labor practices and market dominance have been the target of regulatory investigations. Conditions in the company's warehouses have also drawn "scrutiny from government officials, labor groups and workers over high injury rates for the past several years," said The Guardian. Perhaps not coincidentally, in 2024 Amazon argued in a legal filing "that the "National Labor Relations Board was unconstitutional," said The New York Times.

Amazon's global network of warehouses, fulfillment centers and delivery services "is the envy of, and inspiration for, Amazon's business partners and competitors," said Vox. Amazon is also one of the largest private employers in the country and in February 2025 "dethroned Walmart in quarterly revenue for the first time ever," said CNBC. Amazon's market cap is an astonishing $2.36 trillion, according to Forbes.

Branching out to space, finance and journalism

As his Amazon empire grew larger and larger, Bezos became involved with a variety of other ventures. In 2005, he created Bezos Expeditions, a venture capital and investment fund "through which he owns stakes in many companies including space-transportation startup Blue Origin," said The Wall Street Journal. In 2013, he bought the Washington Post for $250 million in cash, a maneuver which "stunned the media industry and sent shockwaves around Washington D.C.," said Politico. Bezos promised staff "that his ownership would bring no radical change to the paper's core values." In 2017, after Donald Trump's first presidential victory, Bezos added "Democracy Dies in Darkness," a "dramatic and alliterative phrase," beneath the paper's digital masthead, said the Post. The paper "lost $77 million" in 2023 and has "seen a dramatic 50% drop in audience since the highs of 2020," said CNN. In 2024, Bezos pulled the paper's endorsement of Kamala Harris, triggering an exodus of tens of thousands of subscribers as well as a number of staff.

Bezos' net worth took a hit from one of the world's most expensive divorces. In 2019, he and MacKenzie Scott announced that they were splitting. As part of the settlement, "Bezos handed Scott a 4% stake in Amazon, transferring a total of $38 billion in shares into her name," said the Independent. Bezos was, at the time, the world's richest man, and even shaving $38 billion off of his fortune left him with $119 billion. It would not be long before the external shock of a global pandemic helped his fortune recover.

The Covid-19 pandemic "disproportionately padded the wealth of the richest," including Bezos, said The Guardian. As the demand for delivery services skyrocketed during the acute phase of the pandemic, Amazon's value soared, as did Bezos' net worth. Amazon's stock price went from just under $91 a share on February 28, 2020 to more than $173 a share in mid-October of 2020. Bezos' net worth jumped to more than $200 billion in 2021 but marginally declined to $196 billion by March 2024, said Yahoo Finance. That still made him the second-richest person in the world. Forbes, on the other hand, pegs his net worth at $233.1 billion as of February 21, 2025, which ranks him third on the list of the world's wealthiest people, with Meta's Mark Zuckerberg taking second place.

This is one transaction that is shaken, not stirred. It was announced on Feb. 20 that a deal had been reached to give control of the "James Bond" film series to Amazon-MGM, likely opening the doors to a whole new future for Hollywood's most legendary spy. The agreement relinquishes control of the "Bond" IP from the longtime stewards of the franchise.

Ever since the most recent "Bond" actor, Daniel Craig, was killed off in 2021's "No Time to Die," the search has been on for a new actor to take up the role of 007. But giving control of "Bond" to one of the biggest companies in the world could have ripple effects throughout the film industry.

What are the deal's terms?

The deal was made between Amazon MGM and the Broccoli family, whose patriarch Albert Broccoli started the "Bond" film franchise 60 years ago. The two parties "formed a new joint venture to house the 'James Bond' intellectual property rights," under which "Amazon MGM Studios will gain creative control of the 'James Bond' franchise," Amazon MGM said in a press release.

This marks the end of a longstanding wrestling match between the parties. "Bond" was originally owned by MGM, which was "acquired by Amazon in 2022," said NPR. At that time, Albert Broccoli's daughter Barbara Broccoli and her stepson Michael Wilson said they "would retain creative control of the films through their own production company, Eon." But with this deal, they are "stepping down from their creative roles and allowing the new home of the 'Bond' franchise to take the lead."

What does this deal mean for 'Bond'?

This marks the biggest change in the history of the "Bond" franchise. Broccoli and her stepson had "extraordinary control over the 'Bond' franchise, personally steering the films" in certain directions, said IndieWire. More than anything, they were the "arbiters of 'what is a James Bond film,' navigating Bond's post-Cold War reinvention with Pierce Brosnan in the '90s and selecting Daniel Craig as his replacement in 2005."

But now Amazon and its owner, Jeff Bezos, are at the helm, and "fan reaction — including this one — is mixed," said IndieWire. There is the "possibility of more 'Bond' projects than ever. But at what cost?" It is "hard not to think that Bond has sold out," given that for the Broccolis, each "'Bond' film was a bespoke product of a family business." Of course, this may have also "limited the potential for new takes on 'Bond,'" the outlet added.

Such limits on "Bond" may no longer exist; the deal is part of the "transition from movies to content, from curated popcorn to popcorn sold by the yard," said Variety. The "seismic nature of the 'Bond' news today marks that transition as a cultural done deal." There is now potential, too, for the franchise to be spun off into a larger saga — with films that are released much more often.

Amazon and Bezos apparently wanted the "Bond" IP so badly that they paid a lofty sum; Amazon purchased MGM for $8.5 billion in 2022, but it "took another $1 billion to ensure that they could fully steer and exploit" the "Bond" franchise, said Deadline. Amazon probably has a "desire to expand the 'James Bond' franchise into its own universe akin to Marvel or Star Wars," creating a new era of spy thrillers.

As Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president, it was the "row of tech executives" sitting behind him in the Capitol rotunda that caught the eyes of many observers. The tableau made for a "landmark moment", showing just how much Silicon Valley has "seized power" in the Trump White House, said The Times.

Who is in the inner circle?

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sundar Pichai of Google, Tim Cook of Apple, and Elon Musk were all given "prime seats" at the inauguration, said The Hill, but "not every billionaire tech mega-donor" got a "prime spot". Despite Trump's promise to invest $500 billion into enhancing US artificial intelligence infrastructure, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alexandr Wang of Scale AI had to make do with a seat in the overflow room.

The ceremony "reveals where power truly lies", said Matthew D'Ancona in London's The Standard. The presence of these "craven sycophants" has ushered in the "era of the Tech Baron".

What do they want?

The 'tech bros' arrived with a variety of agendas. Musk wants "more power", said The Times, and a new space race, which would benefit his SpaceX company – the "de facto" outsourced rocket provider for Nasa missions. Bezos, who hopes his Blue Origin program will join SpaceX on the "Nasa contracts list," also wants to make "representations" on behalf of The Washington Post. The Bezos-owned newspaper has been plunged into turmoil since it declined to endorse a candidate in the November election, defying expectations that it would back Kamala Harris.

For Sam Altman, it is about lobbying the president to continue America's "all-in support" of AI to "maintain supremacy over China, which is competing strongly" in the sector. As for Zuckerberg, he wants Trump "not to throw him in prison", something he "threatened to do last year".

There's an ideological element at play, too, said Vox. Zuckerberg has signalled a cultural shift at Meta to clamp down on supposed left-wing bias and during a recent appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, he claimed that the "corporate world is too 'culturally neutered'" and needed to "become a culture that has more 'masculine energy'".

Their agendas are very different, but what the "broligarchs" share is a "passionate love for science fiction and fantasy that has shaped their vision for the future of humanity", said Vox, "and their own roles as its would-be saviours".

So what does Trump want from them?

America's "fast-paced" tech sector is "one of the key engines" of growth Trump is depending on for America's economic growth and "keep the promises" he made during the campaign, wrote Chris Stokel-Walker The i Paper.

Freedom of speech was a key tenet of the Trump campaign and his stance on social media is a chance for him to brand himself a free-speech champion. But the passages about free speech in his executive order were "performative", Steven Buckley, a lecturer in social media and US politics at City St George’s University, told the paper. They're really "signals to his cabinet picks" that they "have the green-light" to "bully and intimidate" those who speak out against Trump.

What does this mean for us?

Deregulation of artificial intelligence in the US risks the loss of "common sense safeguards" that have protected Americans against fraud, discrimination and unsafe practices, said Stokel-Walker.

Trump's influence on social media bosses is an uncomfortable prospect for minority groups, too. In addition to Meta's ideological pivot, Bezos has deleted the words "LGBTQ+ rights" and "equity for Black people" from Amazon's corporate policies.

More broadly, said The Standard, the impression is that Trump has "surrounded himself with a crew of high-tech robber barons" who are "already too powerful and will soon become even more so". They see Trump as the "perfect prospective enabler" of their project to bring about a "gilded age for the digital few".

The Washington Post is one of the most storied organizations in American journalism. But it is in crisis, losing reporting talent, suffering a loss of readers and facing a staff rebellion against publisher Will Lewis.

The Post has been swamped by "one debacle after another," since Lewis took charge of the newspaper a year ago, said NPR. The decision by the owner (and billionaire Amazon founder) Jeff Bezos to cancel the Post's traditional presidential endorsement in an apparent effort to placate newly-inaugurated President Donald Trump was a huge blow, causing "hundreds of thousands of subscribers" to cancel their subscriptions. Layoffs have led to fewer journalists on the job, contributing to plummeting morale that led some of the survivors to flee for jobs elsewhere. A "clear vision" to put the Post back on track to journalistic and financial success remains "elusive," said NPR.

More than 400 Post staffers last week sent a letter to Bezos asking him to "get personally involved to turn the paper back in the right direction," said Poynter. The staffers said in the letter they were "deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions" that caused readers to bolt. They asked for a face-to-face meeting with Bezos in the service of "restoring trust that has been lost." Bezos did not immediately reply.

What did the commentators say?

Bezos has "plunged my beloved Washington Post into darkness," said Eleanor Clift at The Daily Beast. Post reporters have done a "first-rate job covering Trump," but Bezos' decision to pacify the incoming president (with the non-endorsement, as well Amazon's $40 million expense on a documentary about Melania Trump) has raised the specter their journalism could be "compromised by anything that could damage Bezos' financial interests." Bezos' decision to get on Trump's good side "has ramifications far beyond the Post newsroom."

If the Post is to remain viable, it must "retain, not lose, its talent," Margaret Sullivan said at The Guardian. It's not "unreasonable to question" whether the Post can maintain its independence in the Trump era, and "Bezos may not care." But if he does care, he should "show up — soon" in the newsroom to talk to reporters, and recommit to the "importance of editorial freedom." He should also dump Lewis, who has overseen a rapid decline in the Post's standing. For the sake of both journalism and "democracy itself, I sure hope he finds a way to do it."

What next?

On the eve of Trump's inauguration, the Post unveiled a new mission statement: "Riveting Storytelling for All of America." The slogan is intended as an "internal rallying point for employees," said The New York Times. And the paper's chief strategy officer has announced a goal of reaching 200 million paying users. That's an audacious target: The Post currently has fewer than 3 million digital subscribers.

What happened

Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, conducted the first test flight of its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket Thursday morning. The uncrewed flight, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, was mostly a success, though the reusable first-stage rocket booster failed to land on a barge, as planned.

Who said what

New Glenn, named after astronaut John Glenn, is Blue Origin's first rocket to reach space. Founded 25 years ago, the company has previously sent space tourists to near orbit in its one-engine New Shepard rockets. New Glenn is a "far more powerful vehicle," designed to "compete against SpaceX" and other commercial rocket companies, The Washington Post said. Blue Origin has contracts lined up to launch satellites into space and, if it can meet safety and reliability benchmarks, carry NASA astronauts to the Moon.

SpaceX, which got its first rocket into orbit in 2008, dominates the commercial launch market. CEO Elon Musk congratulated Bezos on social media for "reaching orbit on the first attempt." Reaching orbit safely was the "key objective" of today's New Glenn launch, Blue Origin VP Ariane Cornell said. "Anything beyond that is a bonus."

What next?

Blue Origin "envisions six to eight New Glenn flights this year," with the next this spring, The Associated Press said. SpaceX plans to conduct the seventh test of its 400-foot-tall Starship rocket later today.

Two of the world's richest and most powerful men have launched two of the world's largest rockets this week in an escalation of their corporate space race.

Tesla and X boss Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, are gunning for top dog status in the commercial space business with their respective companies SpaceX and Blue Origin.

This week SpaceX launched Falcon 9, the world's most active rocket, carrying more of its Starlink internet satellites as well as Moon landers for Nasa. Musk's company is also conducting its seventh test flight of its new Starship megarocket, scheduled to lift off from Texas tonight.

Today Blue Origin also launched its New Glenn rocket from Florida on an inaugural mission into space, the first step into Earth's orbit for Bezos's company as it aims to take on the – until now – dominant SpaceX.

What is SpaceX?

Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation – known as SpaceX – in 2002, in the hope of "making affordable spaceflight a reality", said Britannica. SpaceX was the first private company to launch a rocket into Earth's orbit, doing so in 2008. It then won a Nasa contract worth more than $1 billion to develop a successor to the space shuttle.

SpaceX also runs Starlink, a satellite internet service that provides broadband access to remote areas. It is now developing Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket. It hopes to send humans and cargo to the Moon, and launch settlers to Mars.

What is Blue Origin?

Bezos founded Blue Origin 25 years ago, saying he wanted "millions of people working and living in space". For years, the company has been launching a small reusable rocket called New Shepard to take passengers to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere, including Bezos himself – famously wearing a cowboy hat. But the company has never sent anything into orbit, until now.

In the future, New Glenn will launch Blue Origin's Moon lander for Nasa.

So who's winning?

SpaceX, by a light year. It has until now "dramatically outperformed" Blue Origin, said the BBC, launching rockets 134 times last year. But today's launch will be seen as a "major step forward" for Blue Origin.

New Glenn is about "twice as powerful" as SpaceX's Falcon 9, said Sky News. It's also far larger and can accommodate "bigger batches of satellites". That said, SpaceX's Starship "would be more powerful still".

Musk could leverage his enormous influence over the incoming Trump administration to "undercut" Blue Origin, said Reuters. He has the president-elect's "ear on space matters". But Bezos has some leverage. Amazon has donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund and will stream the event. New Glenn is expected to "chip away at SpaceX's market dominance" and "kickstart" Blue Origin's emergence in the satellite launch business.

What about the future of space exploration?

Experts believe a successful New Glenn launch will "create real competition between the two companies", said the BBC, and could "drive down the costs" of space exploration. Nasa is "increasingly moving away" from relying on public money and government funding, and has issued "huge contracts" worth billions to private companies, most notably SpaceX.

The growing power of both companies could therefore affect Nasa's plans to send crewed missions back to the Moon. Last month Musk said the US should head for Mars before returning to the Moon – "fuelling concerns of a major shakeup" to Nasa's programme, said Metro. Trump has also repeatedly fixated on Mars during rallies. But Bezos is clear that he believes the US should do both.

They also aren't the only "massively rich billionaires" in the space race: don't forget Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. The skies "could be getting crowded".

In 2017, just weeks into Donald Trump's first term in office, The Washington Post officially announced a new slogan for the storied and celebrated journalistic institution: "Democracy Dies in Darkness," allegedly a favorite phrase of iconic reporter Bob Woodward. While the paper's executives insisted they had "come up with a slogan nearly a year ago, long before Trump was the Republican presidential nominee," the mantra was quickly — and understandably — taken by many as a rallying cry, not just for the Post, but for the media at large during the already-evident tumult of the Trump administration.

Seven years later, as Trump approaches Election Day with promises of retribution and violence, the Post's slogan is once again in the spotlight — this time in light of the paper's sudden and unexpected decision to nix a planned presidential endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, allegedly "made by owner, Jeff Bezos," the Post's union said on X.

Although the impact of the Post's decision not to endorse a candidate may, at this stage of the 2024 campaign, be electorally minimal (the same as if it had endorsed someone), the implications of such a move may be more concerning.

"This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty," former Post editor Marty Baron said to NPR. "Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post's owner" and other media owners.

What did the commentators say?

The Post's decision to cancel its planned endorsement of Harris — coupled with a similar decision by the Los Angeles Times not to endorse a candidate this year after having endorsed Democrats for the previous four elections — is an example of "anticipatory obedience," the Columbia Journalism Review said. Owners like Bezos and the Times' publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong are preemptively acting out of fear that "if Trump wins he could take vengeance on companies that cross him." What's the use of having a net worth of over $200 billion if Bezos can't buy "fearlessness in the face of a carnival-barking, would-be authoritarian who is basically a coin toss away from being, yet again, president of the United States?" asked Brian McGrory at The Boston Globe.

In the wake of the nonendorsement announcement, the "#BoycottWaPo hashtag spawned dozens of anti-Post comments, as well as remarks from notable public figures and influencers about canceled subscriptions," the Post itself said in an article on reactions to the decision. The nonendorsement "already seemed to be impacting subscriptions," said Semafor, with some 2,000 people canceling within the first 24 hours after the announcement — "an unusually high number," according to one Post employee. By midday Monday, 200,000 people had canceled their subscriptions, said NPR.

Not everyone agrees with how best to respond, however. Cancellations "do Donald Trump's work for him," Baron said to The New Yorker. "He would like to actually weaken these institutions and eliminate them."

"Canceling a newspaper subscription helps politicians who don't want oversight," said CNN's Jake Tapper on X. Doing so "does nothing to hurt the billionaires who own the newspapers," and ultimately "will result in fewer journalists trying to hold the powerful to account."

Although newspaper cancellations are a "reasonable impulse" for average people with "few ways of combatting forces bigger than them, forces such as the threat of authoritarianism," The Atlantic said, doing so only hurts journalism as a whole. Subscribers should instead be "canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions," which are ultimately the engine of Bezos' fortune.

What next?

Under Bezos, the Post "surely did more at the margins to help Harris by spiking the editorial — by outraging her supporters — than if it had been published on Sunday," said Politico's John Harris. Still, by dint of his own role in the power structure the paper is meant to hold to task, Bezos should either sell the paper outright or "somehow put it in the hands of a truly independent nonprofit entity."

More broadly, the episode is an "argument against billionaires buying newspapers," said MSNBC's Jarvis DeBerry. While there may have been hell to pay if the Post and the Times had endorsed Harris, and then Trump won, that hell "will be visited on more vulnerable people to a much greater degree." It is "unforgivable," then, that these owners are "more concerned with their own interests than the interests of the readers they serve."

What if we told you it was possible to live forever? Or, if not forever, much longer than you can now? While a mythological anti-aging elixir has yet to materialize, millionaires and billionaires have, for years, been pouring not-insignificant amounts of their massive fortunes into immortality research, a science that hopes to, in simple terms, find a cure for aging. 

Who is doing this?

Big names include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Oracle’s Larry Ellison. Bryan Johnson, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist worth millions, has also made waves for his rather shocking anti-aging efforts, which include temporary blood-plasma donations from his teenage son and penis shockwave therapy.

What do these projects look like?

Bezos semi-recently invested in Altos Labs, an anti-aging start-up focused on cell revitalization technology. And back in 2013, Google’s Page announced Calico Labs, another longevity project dedicated to exploring the causes of aging and how to fight them. Both Thiel and Ellison have each donated millions of their fortunes to immortality research, and Johnson has meanwhile launched Blueprint, a flashy wellness experiment intended to explore “the future of being human,” according to its website. For that venture, “Johnson takes more than 100 supplements a day, submits himself to constant medical assessments, keeps to a strict diet that prohibits any food after 11 a.m.,” and “goes to bed at 8:30 p.m.,” Rolling Stone reported. He has even “built an algorithm that takes better care of me [than] I can myself, it has exceeded my abilities,” he said, “My mind observes — my mind no longer decides.”

Indeed, artificial intelligence could factor into immortality research in a number of ways. “The chief argument is that we will be able to undertake simulations of biological functions that today we cannot sufficiently perform with contemporary computing and AI,” artificial intelligence expert Lance Eliot wrote in Forbes. Researchers can then use those simulations to investigate ways to prolong human life without needing to involve real people in the process. “Ultimately, we won’t need to test [medicine] on humans,” AI pioneer Ray Kurzweil said in an interview in 2022, per Eliot. “We will be able to test on a million simulated humans which will be much better than testing on a few hundred real humans.”

Why are the wealthy so interested in this research?

Death “is the next problem waiting to be solved,” BBC reporter Aleks Krotoski told The Guardian. “Rather than finding something that is going to give us eternal life, [these billionaires] believe” that unlocking this gift for humanity will “provide glory to those who deliver it.” 

Also, on a more functional level, private funding (rather than that provided by the government) can actually benefit researchers in the long term, seeing as they aren’t beholden to a certain timeline or the pressure of immediate results. Even if the billionaires behind these projects have something to gain (i.e. eternal life), they can “afford to make a lot of mistakes” in the research process, Christopher Wareham, a scientist who studies the ethics of aging, told the Financial Times. Governments, on the other hand, cannot.

Will the masses be able to partake?

That seems to be the goal (although we’ll see what actually happens). “If this is going to be a gazillion-dollars’ worth of treatment for a handful of people, it is of no interest,” Mehmood Khan, CEO of Hevolution Foundation, a Saudi-backed longevity research project, told Financial Times. He said the org is only interested in work that can be “democratized,” and hopes to “extend healthy lifespan for the benefit of all humanity,” not just the rich.

How long will this take?

We could still be a long ways off, so don’t hold your breath. That said, there are some promising projects in the works. Consider “senolytics,” or the study of treatments that target the senescent cells that “accumulate in our bodies as we age,” Wired wrote in early 2023. “These cells seem to drive the aging process — from causing cancers to neurodegeneration — and, conversely, removing them seems to slow it down, and perhaps even reverse it.” Companies like Unity Biotechnology (which boasts Bezos as an investor) are currently investigating how to target these pesky entities and use senolytic drugs against a host of diseases. Other methods “currently in human trials include Proclara Biosciences’ protein GAIM, which clears up sticky ‘amyloid’ proteins, or Verve Therapeutics’ gene therapy to reduce cholesterol by modifying a gene called PCSK9,” Wired went on.

“Extending max lifespan significantly in the near-term seems unlikely to me,” Cambridge University’s Sean Ó hÉigeartaigh told CNBC in 2021. “[B]ut identifying and arresting aging-related factors that increase preponderance and severity of age-related conditions is more plausible.” 

Are there ethics concerns here?

Certainly. If the rich and powerful live forever, or even longer than they can now, their wealth and influence would only continue to amass. "Suppose, for example, we had a kind of vaccine for the pandemic of age," Wareham, the bioethicist, told Financial Times. "This is going to potentially exacerbate all the kinds of existing inequalities that we have … The longer you're around, the more your wealth compounds, and the wealthier you are, the more political influence you have."

Not to mention that, in many cases, the only thing that topples an autocratic regime or brings about genuine social change is … well, death. "It is important for us to die because most of the time people don't change their mind, they just die," billionaire Elon Musk, who has been openly wary of immortality technology, said in 2021, per Futurism. "If you live forever, we might become a very ossified society where new ideas cannot succeed." 

And of course, there is the ever-present threat of climate change, which could only grow worse if we resource-hungry humans stick around longer and longer. “The challenges of our unsustainable resource footprints will need to be addressed long before science solves aging,” Ó hÉigeartaigh added. “We have many more pressing things to worry about than the risks of life extension, such as climate change in the coming century.”

Dolly Parton has plenty of silver and gold to give away to charity thanks to Jeff Bezos.

The Amazon founder has honored the country singer with his Courage and Civility Award and awarded her with $100 million to be distributed to charities as she sees fit.

"What she's done for kids and literacy and so many other things is just incredible," Bezos said.

Parton founded the ​​Imagination Library, which supplies free books to kids under five; since 1995, it has gifted over 190 million books, according to its website. She also helped fund research that led to Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine and in 2022 donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for studying pediatric infectious diseases, among other charitable efforts. Parton was named one of the 2021 People of the Year by People and was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"When people are in a position to help, you should help, and I know that I've always said I try to put my money where my heart is," Parton said, adding, "I will do my best to do good things with this money."

Speaking with CNN, Bezos praised Parton as "unifying," explaining he chose her for the award because, "Look at what she's done and how she's led her life. And the way she's done it, these bold things, always with civility and kindness." Bezos also told CNN he intends to give away the majority of his wealth to charity during his lifetime.

One does not simply ignore Jeff Bezos' notes when making a $1 billion Lord of the Rings show. Well, actually, maybe you do.

Amazon on Tuesday held the U.K. premiere for its highly anticipated new show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which debuts on Prime Video this week. Bezos spoke before the episodes screened — and he thanked the showrunners for knowing when to ignore his advice.

"Every showrunner's dream — and I mean every showrunner — their dream is to get notes on scripts and early cuts from the founder and executive chairman," Bezos joked, Variety reports. "They loved that. I need to thank you both for listening whenever it helped but mostly I need to thank you for ignoring me at exactly the right times."

Bezos also revealed that when Amazon got involved in The Rings of Power, his son, a massive Tolkien fan, told him, "Dad, please don't eff this up,'" per Variety.

The Rings of Power takes place thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings, and it's based primarily on Tolkien's appendices. In 2018, Amazon secured the rights from the Tolkien estate for a reported $250 million after Bezos directed Prime Video to bring him the next Game of Thrones, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Of course, Amazon is now competing against Game of Thrones itself, which recently debuted the prequel series House of the Dragon to huge numbers. After already jumping back into Westeros, we'll soon see whether viewers find The Rings of Power as precious as Bezos does.

As of Monday, Amazon employees no longer have pandemic-era paid time off. The online retail giant announced it would trim its COVID-19 sick leave, allowing staffers five unpaid excused sick days if they are diagnosed with the coronavirus, instead of its previous 2-week paid leave policy, Reuters reports.

"We can continue to safely adjust to our pre-COVID policies," the company said in a statement to its employees, citing "sustained easing of the pandemic, ongoing availability of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, and updated guidance from [the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] public health authorities," CNN Business writes.

In addition to the new sick leave changes, the e-commerce giant will no longer send alerts to employees of other positive COVID-19 cases at its facilities, unless legally required.

This all comes as the company has been in the spotlight over a "recent effort to unionize some warehouses," Reuters writes. One facility last month became the first Amazon warehouse to vote in favor of unionization.

However, The Verge reports that later on Monday, Amazon workers at a different facility in Staten Island, New York, voted against organizing with the Amazon Labor Union. "The facility has around 1,600 workers in total and began its election last week," says The Verge. The ALU tweeted that "the fight has just begun."

Twitter users have plenty of questions about how Elon Musk's pending takeover of the social media company will affect their quality of life online, especially the tenor of the national discourse. But Amazon's Jeff Bezos — the world's second-richest man, after Musk — pondered if, given the various ways Musk's Tesla relies on China, "Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?"

Musk fans, among others on Twitter, noted that Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, also has deep ties with China, including some history of playing ball with China's authoritarian government. For whatever reason, about an hour after his first tweet, Bezos decided to take a crack at answering his own question.

Musk, of course, isn't shy about needling his fellow world's-wealthiest-men on Twitter. Last week, he slammed Bill Gates for holding a short position on Tesla while asking him to contribute to a philanthropic project on climate change, then mocked Gates' weight.

Musk then tweeted that he's "moving on" from "making fun of Gates," so the real lesson here is probably that even unfathomable wealth, multi-billion-dollar companies, and space rocket enterprises aren't sufficient to keep some people busy enough to stay off social media.

The wealth of the world's 10 richest people, as measured by Forbes, more than doubled between March 2020 and November 2021, advocacy group Oxfam reported Monday, rising to $1.5 trillion from about $700 billion. Meanwhile, the incomes of 99 percent of people in the world fell during the pandemic, Oxfam said, citing World Bank data. The group suggested a one-time global tax on billionaires.

"Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic," Oxfam International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher said Monday in a statement accompanying the charity's annual report. "Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom."

If the world's 10 richest men — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault and family, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, and Warren Buffett — lost 99 percent of their wealth, Bucher said, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all people on this planet. Musk's wealth grew by more than 1,000 percent during the pandemic, while Gates saw a more modest 30 percent rise in his fortune.

"Even during a global crisis our unfair economic systems manage to deliver eye-watering windfalls for the wealthiest but fail to protect the poorest," Oxfam Great Britain CEO Danny Sriskandarajah told BBC News. "There's been a new billionaire created almost every day during this pandemic, meanwhile 99 percent of the world's population are worse off because of lockdowns, lower international trade, less international tourism, and as a result of that, 160 million more people have been pushed into poverty."

Stocks plummeted in March 2020, setting a low base to measure the spike in wealth, but even "if you take the wealth of billionaires in mid-February 2020 instead, we estimate that the increase in the top ten richest men is more like 70 percent," Max Lawson, one of the report's authors, told BBC News. That "would still represent a record breaking increase, and something the like of which we have never seen before."

Elon Musk’s status as the world’s wealthiest man remains unchallenged as he continues to sit atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In the first half of 2025, Musk was able to capitalise on his close relationship with the newly reelected Donald Trump, a friendship that earned him the nickname “the First Buddy”. One of a host of billionaires or centi-millionaires Trump tapped for top positions, he was appointed to oversee the non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency.

Relations between the two men quickly soured, culminating in Musk’s departure from Doge amid a social media war of words, but the Tesla owner has held on to the status of the world’s wealthiest person. With an estimated net worth of $462 billion, he is more than $100 billion ahead of his closest rival.

Last year, the US Institute for Policy Studies think tank warned of the emergence of an “oligarchic” elite, “endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities”. Its analysis estimated that the 12 richest men in the US are now worth more than a collective $2 trillion.

1. Elon Musk: $462 billion

Elon Musk is known as the eccentric and outspoken chief executive of electric car giant Tesla, founder and CEO of SpaceX, owner of social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and prominent backer of Donald Trump during the president’s re-election campaign. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory, Tesla’s market cap rose to an estimated $1.29 trillion. Musk’s visible role in the administration sparked a backlash among Trump’s opponents, with a knock-on effect on Tesla sales in the US and beyond. Since Musk’s departure from politics, Tesla’s value has soared again and, on 1 October, Musk briefly became the world’s first half-trillionaire. The Tesla board has said that if the CEO meets a series of targets over the next decade, he stands to take home a pay package worth more than $1 trillion.

2. Larry Ellison: $340 billion

American business magnate Larry Ellison is co-founder, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle, which he started in 1977. The 81-year-old stepped down as CEO in 2017 but remains the software giant’s chief technology officer and executive chair, as well as owning around 35% of the company. Oracle’s central role in developing AI infrastructure has catapulted Ellison into second place in the 2025 rich list. For one day in September, he surpassed Musk, briefly, to hold the title of world’s richest person.

A longtime Republican donor, Ellison has made the most of his ties to Trump, who has called him “an amazing man and amazing business person”. Oracle is part of a consortium tapped to take over a minority stake in TikTok’s US operations. Asked about the future of TikTok, Trump did not hesitate to answer: “I’d like Larry to buy it.”

3. Mark Zuckerberg: $258 billion

Mark Zuckerberg famously dropped out of Harvard to pursue his dream of starting social media site Facebook, which now boasts nearly three billion users worldwide. He remains CEO of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, with a 13% stake. This year, Meta has ramped up its efforts to develop and monetise AI operations within its platforms. Despite heavy investment in its AI capabilities, Meta’s revenue, said IG, “exceeded analyst expectations in the second quarter” – figures that “reinforced confidence in the company's AI-driven strategy” among investors.

4. Jeff Bezos: $244 billion

Former hedge fund manager Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage in 1994, growing it into one of the most profitable companies in the world. He has invested heavily in space technology too, having founded Blue Origin as a “pet project” back in 2000. After stepping down as Amazon CEO he took on the new role of executive chair.

In May, Amazon notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Bezos planned to sell up to 25 million shares in the company, with a value estimated at $5 billion. A similar filing was made in August for another 25 million in potential sell-offs. In October, it was revealed that Bezos’ ownership stake in Amazon has fallen below 10% for the first time in the company’s history.

5. Larry Page: $221 billion

Internet entrepreneur Larry Page is one of the co-founders of Google, which he started while a PhD student at Stanford in 1998. He stepped down as CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc in December 2019 but remains a board member and retains a stake of around 6% in the company. However, Page and co-founder Sergey Brin collectively own 51% of Alphabet’s class B shares, which are not publicly traded and come with enhanced voting power, making them controlling shareholders.

In March 2025, it was reported that Page had founded a start-up called Dynatomics, which “explores ways to use AI and additive manufacturing to build aircraft”, said Business Insider.

6. Sergey Brin: $207 billion

Google co-founder, with Stanford classmate Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and his family, left the Soviet Union for the US when he was six to escape antisemitism. He served as head of technology from 2001 to 2011 before transitioning to the role of “director of special projects". He was president of Alphabet Inc until December 2019 and, like Page, remains a board member and a controlling shareholder through his ownership of powerful class B shares in Alphabet.

At the All-In tech summit in Miami in May, Brin said that he had come out of retirement to work on Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, calling the experience “some of the most fun I’ve had in my life”.

7. Bernard Arnault: $197 billion

When it comes to “the world of luxury goods”, perhaps no one is “more successful” than Bernard Arnault, said Business Insider. The Frenchman oversees the LVMH empire of more than 70 brands, including Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon, TAG Heuer, Christian Dior and Dom Pérignon. LVMH had been feeling the pinch in 2025 as the rising cost of living and tariff anxieties led to a fall in demand for luxury goods, but things turned around in October when the business reported its “first period of growth since the start of its fiscal year”, said Fortune.

Overnight, Arnault’s personal net worth soared by $19 billion.

8. Steve Ballmer: $179 billion

Former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer led the tech giant from 2000 to 2014, having joined as one of its first employees in 1980. By the time he stepped down a decade ago he was believed to have around a 4% stake in the company, which in 2024 would net him an estimated dividend “just shy of $1 billion”, said CNN. Ballmer is better known to sports fans as the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

9. Jensen Huang: $158 billion

In 1993, Taiwanese-American entrepreneur Huang co-founded semiconductor firm Nvidia, which went public in 1999. Initially serving the video game industry, in recent years the company’s powerful chips have become central to the global AI boom. In July, Nvidia became the first US company to reach a market value of more than $4 trillion. This success has propelled Huang, who retains around a 3.5% stake in Nvidia and draws a pay package of around $50 million as its CEO, into the list of the world’s 10 wealthiest people.

10. Michael Dell: $156 billion

The tycoon made his name in the 1980s as the founder and CEO of Dell Inc., pioneering the manufacture of affordable mass-market PCs. In 2016, the firm merged with EMC Corporation to become Dell Technologies, with Dell himself said to still have around a stake of around 40%. Stock in the firm “has skyrocketed 32% in the past year alone thanks to the increasing importance of the infrastructure services it provides to customers like OpenAI”, said Fortune.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has lost its lawsuit against NASA.

The Amazon founder's company took legal action against NASA over a contract that was awarded to Elon Musk's SpaceX. But on Thursday, the ​​U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled against Blue Origin, siding with the defense, CNBC reports.

NASA earlier this year announced it picked SpaceX to "continue development of the first commercial human lander that will safely carry the next two American astronauts to the lunar surface" in a $2.9 billion contract. Blue Origin was also vying for this, and it was originally expected that two contracts would be awarded. Blue Origin sued in August, challenging NASA's "unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals." According to CNBC, Blue Origin also accused NASA of having "disregarded key flight safety requirements."

The Government Accountability Office previously said NASA "did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award" and that the agency did so after determining it "it only had sufficient funding" for one.

A spokesperson for Blue Origin told CNBC on Thursday its lawsuit "highlighted the important safety issues with the Human Landing System procurement process that must still be addressed." Musk replied to an article about the decision with an image from the movie Judge Dredd with a caption that read, "You have been judged!"

As Amazon grew into a goods delivery juggernaut and the No. 2 U.S. private employer, "a lot of times, because we've optimized for the customer experience, we've been focused on that," Bethany Reyes, recently put in charge of the company's leave program, tells The New York Times. Amazon offers its workers a wide variety of leave options — paid, unpaid, medical, personal — but as its leave administration outgrew the contractors Amazon had been using, it brought the leave management program in-house. It hasn't been a smooth transition.

In internal correspondence, the Times reports, Amazon administrators warned of "inadequate service levels," "deficient processes" and leave systems that are "prone to delay and error." Amazon employees caught up in those mistakes are less euphemistic.

"Workers across the country facing medical problems and other life crises have been fired when the attendance software mistakenly marked them as no-shows," the Times reports, citing former and current human resources staff. "Doctors' notes vanished into black holes in Amazon's databases. ... Some workers who were ready to return found that the system was too backed up to process them, resulting in weeks or months of lost income."

One problem was uncovered a year ago by Tara Jones, an Amazon warehouse worker in Oklahoma who had taken accounting in community college and noticed that Amazon was underpaying her a significant amount during her parental leave, the Times reports. The error continued even after she reported it, so she wrote founder Jeff Bezos. The email sparked an investigation that discovered widespread underpayments to workers, including up to 179 at Jones' warehouse. Amazon is still identifying and paying workers, a company spokeswoman told the Times.

After the Times in June reported muliple issues in Amazon's employment systems during the pandemic-fueled surge in company profits, new CEO Andy Jassy highlighted fixing the leave system as one way the company can become "Earth's best employer." Reyes told the Times that Amazon has made headway in addressing the problems and said the disparate software the company uses will start working together by March. You can read some of the stories of workers severely affected in the meantime at The New York Times.

1. Sally Rooney has discovered that novelists are cursed

James Marriott in The Times

on literary criticism

“There’s a weird media alchemy that transforms a novelist into a ‘public intellectual’,” writes James Marriott in The Times. While some novelists “yearningly pursue cultural relevance” others “stumble into the role” and find their works “are doomed to be interpreted not as works of the imagination but as public statements, their every action scrutinised for its socio-political significance and evidence of moral rectitude”. Novelist Sally Rooney “embarked on this melancholy trajectory this week” after criticism of her decision to boycott an Israeli publishing house. It seems that “controversy is now unavoidable for a publicly celebrated novelist”, writes Marriott. “The danger now is that our novelists get no freedom at all and we cage them in with our bad-faith readings, hatred of context, excessive literalism and obsession with politics over art. After all, I want to read another Rooney novel,” he concludes.

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2. Anti-British, anti-Brexit Macron has turned France into a hostile state

Allister Heath in The Telegraph

on fraught relations

“Tragic doesn’t even begin to describe it,” writes Allister Heath in The Telegraph. “Relations between France and Britain, Europe’s two greatest nations, the country of my birth and the country of my home, are at a multi-generational low.” And the “real stumbling block to renewed post-EU friendship” is Emmanuel Macron himself, says Heath. He is “an arrogant, uninspiring president desperate not to end up a one termer like Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande”. With an election looming Macron hopes to “shore up his nationalistic credentials in a country that is shifting Right-wards culturally.” Our two nations are “desperately” in need of “reconciliation”, says Heath. “But only a fool would be optimistic.”

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3. The Guardian view on austerity: get ready for its return

The Guardian editorial

on the Budget

“In British politics, unquestionably the best salesman of his generation is Boris Johnson, who has made the electorate some unbelievable promises: get Brexit done, ‘level up’ the country, race to net zero,” writes The Guardian. “The result won him a landslide at the last general election and still-healthy poll ratings today.” But in two weeks, “his government will have to disclose its cash position”, continues the paper. “When Rishi Sunak reads out those figures in the budget and the three-year spending review” the “strange jubilation” that has hung over the party this autumn will “dissipate”. “Reality will bite and, the early forecasts indicate, it has sharp teeth.”

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4. Prince William is wrong: let Bezos go to space!

Tom Chivers on UnHerd

on indulgences

Jeff Bezos’ $7 billion space mission certainly feels “indulgent”, says Tom Chivers on UnHerd, “especially when you’re taking William Shatner to space for four minutes”. But Prince William’s assertion that we should concentrate on saving this planet first, is “wrong and silly”, according to Chivers. It is not an “either-or” situation. “You could say to Jeff Bezos that all the money he’s spent on Blue Origin could have been spent on developing green energy,” he writes. But “if he’d done that, the $7 billion he’s spent might have covered … a bit more than 20% of the cost of the Hinckley Point C nuclear power plant”. He continues: “Seven billion is a rounding error – less than a rounding error – in the effort to prevent climate change. Complaining that we’re wasting money on it is like worrying you’ll empty the sea with a teaspoon.”

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5. Nicola Sturgeon is right – democracy must prevail

Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times

on the union stalemate

“[Nicola] Sturgeon made two forceful points on tactics” in her recent interview with the Financial Times, writes Robert Shrimsley in the same paper. The first – and most important – was that “democracy must ultimately prevail: a nation consistently voting for parties demanding a new referendum cannot indefinitely be ignored”, he writes. While it “cannot be a given that her patience will be rewarded” we should be mindful that “the Union exists by consent and it cannot be maintained indefinitely by denying expression”. If the government insists on denying Scotland another referendum it would “undermine both democracy and the nature of the Union”. “While Sturgeon admitted she did not know how the stalemate would play out, she maintains ‘it will resolve itself on the side of democracy, because actually, the alternative is pretty unthinkable’.” Shrimsley concludes: “Ultimately she has to be right. If the nationalist tide does not soon ebb it will have to be confronted. Democracy can be delayed. It must not be denied.”

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Prince William has suggested that tech billionaires should focus on saving Earth from the impact of climate change rather than directing their resources into space tourism.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newscast podcast, the Duke of Cambridge told presenter Adam Fleming that “we need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live”.

He added that it is “crucial” to be focusing on this planet “rather than giving up and heading out into space to try and think of solutions for the future”.

Space tourism certainly comes at an eye-watering cost. Jeff Bezos – the world’s richest man – has funded his space company, Blue Origin, with at least $5.5bn of his own money, according to Fortune magazine. This is significantly more than the GDP of several countries including the Maldives, an archipelago that could disappear by the end of the century if the world does not take quick action on climate change.

It is also an extremely carbon-intensive activity. The carbon dioxide emissions of roughly four tourists on a space flight could be “up to 100 times more than the emissions per passenger of a long-haul flight”, according to an estimate by Dr Eloise Marais of University College London.

Another study by researchers at UNSW (University of New South Wales), Australia, found that space travel releases “alumina particles, black carbon and even water vapour” into the stratosphere, which could have dangerous repercussions for the environment, reported Science Focus.

And hybrid rocket engines, which were used on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and “run on both solid and liquid fuel”, are particularly destructive for the planet as they release “far more black carbon than kerosene fuel”.

“If hybrid rockets, which are assumed to be relatively cheap to operate, become popular, a climate disaster is looming,” Paul Peeters, sustainable transport and tourism professor at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, told Science Focus.

When space tourism inevitably becomes more common, these emissions will become a far greater problem; Virgin Galactic alone eventually aims to launch 400 space flights annually, according to Vox.

But there is an argument that putting resources into space tourism could lead to discoveries that would benefit us all. Thanks to the arrival of inhabitable space stations that “act as orbital laboratories”, we’ve been able to understand so much more about human physiology, wrote space experts Nick Caplan, Andrew Winnard and Kirsty Lindsay for The Conversation.

Research studies completed on the International Space Station since the year 2000 have led to discoveries from “enhanced protein crystal growth for drug development” to understanding the effects of “long duration exposure to microgravity on the human body”. “Space travel-related research has probably already had a more substantial positive impact on your life than you realise,” the authors added.

Seeing Earth from suborbital space may also help remind space tourists of the fragility of our planet and the need to protect it – which is what happened to Bezos after he completed his flight in July. “When you look at the planet, there are no borders,” he said in an NBC News interview. “It’s one planet, and we share it and it’s fragile.”

The entrepreneur then stressed the need for reusable rockets and even suggested that “all heavy industry, all polluting industry” could be moved to space in order to preserve what he described as “this beautiful gem of a planet”. Three weeks ago, he committed to spending $1bn in conservation in places like the Congo Basin, the Andes and tropical parts of the Pacific Ocean, as part of his $10bn Bezos Earth Fund.

"This morning in Texas, Blue Origin — the company founded by Jeff Bezos — Prime-delivered their second group of civilian passengers into space and back," Jimmy Kimmel said on Wednesday's Kimmel Live. "And guess who was in the rocket? T.J. Hooker himself, William Shatner." He argued you shouldn't "launch a 90-year-old man into space," because of gravity on saggy body parts, "but he made it back alive, Bill did. Thank God. Can you imagine if Jeff Bezos killed Capt. Kirk — then turned to camera and started speaking Klingon to everyone? I wouldn't be the least bit shocked."

After they landed, "Shatner was taking a moment to put his experience into words," and Bezos had no time for it, Kimmel said. "Poor William Shatner: First, no green women in bikinis trying to have sex with him in space, then he gets iced, he gets blown off by Jeff Bezos."

Blue Origin's over-the-top commentary "felt less like a rocket launch and more like a North Korean news broadcast," Kimmel said. Then he jumped to an actual North Korean broadcast of soldiers performing "cartoon-style feats of strength" for Kim Jong Un.

"If the plan to defeat North Korea was to make them lie down, cover them with concrete blocks, and hit them with sledge hammers, America is screwed," Trevor Noah said on The Daily Show. And yes, Shatner "went into space — and not TV show space, where you travel to new worlds and have sex with green women. No, this was real space, where you go a few meters over the technical boundaries of the atmosphere for 11 minutes." He argued that "90 is actually the best age to go to space," because "at 90, dying in a rocket is basically best-case scenario." And he had a creepy theory about Bezos and clones.

The Tonight Show's Jimmy Fallon was a little more sympathetic about how Bezos reacted to Shatner's long, emotive musings on space travel and the nature of life and death. "Bezos was like, 'So, did you like the trip?'" he joked. "Even in the middle of an empty desert, Bezos felt like he was cornered at a party." Fallon played some local news anchors busting out "their best Shatner impressions," and he was underwhelmed — and sympathetic: "All those weathermen were like, 'You guys get your weather from your phones anyway, just let us have a good time, please.'"

Beam him up, Bezos.

Today's the day actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk on the original hit sci-fi TV show Star Trek, heads to the edge of space via Jeff Bezos' aerospace company, Blue Origin, and if he's feeling anything like he did last week, he's probably "a little frightened."

Luckily, Shatner's voyage will last just 11 minutes, during which time he plans "to be looking out the window with my nose pressed against the window."

Liftoff aboard the New Shepard rocket just moments ago was a success, after the departure was pushed back a day due to heavy winds.

Watch Shatner's historic journey live below:

Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos, has been accused of fostering a toxic work environment by former and current employees.

Alexandra Abrams, the former head of employee communications for Blue Origin, released a letter Thursday alleging that the company's workplace culture "sits on a foundation that ignores the plight of our planet, turns a blind eye to sexism, is not sufficiently attuned to safety concerns, and silences those who seek to correct wrongs," The Washington Post reports. Abrams said she was representing 21 former and current employees.

The letter alleges that "numerous senior leaders" have been "consistently inappropriate with women," including a senior executive who allegedly was reported to human resources for sexual harassment multiple times but was still named a member of a hiring committee to fill a key HR role; in another case, a former executive was allegedly so well known for inappropriate behavior that new female hires were warned to stay away from him. The former employees also accuse "many" company leaders of "showing clear bias against women," alleging the company is "rife with sexism."

Additionally, the letter says that Blue Origin's culture has "taken a toll on the mental health" of employees and has led some to experience suicidal thoughts "after having their passion for space manipulated in such a toxic environment." Finally, many of the employees say their primary reason for coming forward was safety concerns. "Competing with other billionaires," they claim, has taken "precedence over safety concerns that would have slowed down the schedule."

Blue Origin told the Post it has "no tolerance for discrimination or harassment of any kind," adding that it provides "numerous avenues" for employees to report misconduct and would "promptly investigate any new claims." It also told the Post that Abrams was fired for "repeated warnings for issues involving federal export control regulations." She denied receiving any such warnings.

If you're not quite sure how to feel about the new Amazon Astro — the company's Jetsons-esque robot for your home — try asking some of the developers who worked on it.

"Astro is terrible and will almost certainly throw itself down a flight of stairs if presented the opportunity," one developer told Vice News. "The person detection is unreliable at best, making the in-home security proposition laughable." The developer added that the device feels "fragile" for something so expensive, and that, at its best, it's "absurdist nonsense and marketing and, at worst, potentially dangerous for anyone who'd actually rely on it for accessibility purposes."

Another developer said privacy and navigation were among their primary Astro concerns. "As for my personal opinions on the device, it's a disaster that's not ready for release," they said. After also corroborating fears that Astro would fall down stairs in real users' homes, the source condemned the robot as an "indictment of our society and how we trade privacy for convenience with devices," per Vice.

Referencing the Vice report, Gizmodo also called Astro a "privacy nightmare and a dysfunctional mess." And James Vincent of The Verge wrote that although Amazon is offering customers quite a lot with Astro, it's basically just "a camera on wheels."

"Personally, I think Astro is a half-baked concept and part of a dangerous trend of ubiquitous and unthinking surveillance," said Vincent. "Although I accept the fact that many people want this sort of technology in their home, Amazon in particular has repeatedly shown a lack of care and honesty in how it develops this sort of tech."

Amazon, for its part, made sure to deny such characterizations as "simply inaccurate," and noted that Astro does, in fact, know how to avoid stairs, reports Vice.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will see NASA in court.

The Amazon founder's space company filed a complaint against NASA in federal court on Monday, taking issue with the agency for awarding a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX earlier this year, CNBC reports.

"This bid protest challenges NASA's unlawful and improper evaluation of proposals," Blue Origin lawyers reportedly said in the court filing.

NASA previously announced that Elon Musk's SpaceX had been selected for "development of the first commercial human lander that will safely carry the next two American astronauts to the lunar surface" in a nearly $3 billion contract. Originally, NASA pledged to offer more than one contract, CNN notes. In response to complaints from Blue Origin over the decision, the Government Accountability Office said in July that NASA "did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award," noting that the agency concluded "it only had sufficient funding" for one.

But Blue Origin said it filed its lawsuit to "remedy" alleged "flaws in the acquisition process," per Axios, adding, "We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition, and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America." This lawsuit, The Verge wrote, could potentially result in a "new lengthy delay to NASA's race to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024."

“One very small step for mankind, one giant ego trip for Jeff Bezos.” Last week, the Amazon founder became the second billionaire in a matter of days to launch himself into the heavens, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Virgin tycoon Richard Branson had made the first suborbital tourist flight, on 11 July; but Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket flew higher, and crossed the Kármán line, the widely recognised boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.

“Best. Day. Ever,” the 57-year-old proclaimed, as he touched down. “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer,” he said mistily. “Because you guys paid for this.” It’s true, in a very real sense we did; and quite a few of us reckon our cash could have been better spent on Earth. As one critic pointed out, Bezos’s ten-minute trip cost $5.5bn – enough to stop 37.5 million people starving this year.

A tech tycoon who dons a cowboy hat before flying into space in a phallus-shaped rocket, is inviting trouble, said the FT. And there was certainly something jarring about the timing of these flights, as Earth was lashed by heatwaves and floods. But the critics dismissing the billionaire space race as an environmentally costly vanity project are missing the point. Space tourism is only the start for Bezos: sending the super rich on thrill rides will help fund his grander plans, which include moving heavy industries into space, to help preserve this planet.

As for Tesla-founder Elon Musk, his ultimate plan is to colonise Mars. In the meantime his firm SpaceX, with its cost-slashing re-usable rockets, is already “indispensable for delivering cargo and crew to the International Space Station”. The competition between these titans will only spur greater innovation.

People grumble that if Bezos cared about the planet, he’d focus his efforts closer to its surface, but he and Musk are right to gaze at the stars, said Andy Daga on USA Today. Resources are limited on Earth; in space, they are not. The idea that we could mine asteroids for minerals, or tap into solar energy, may seem fantastical, but so did cat scans and camera phones once. Both of those are by-products of space exploration. Who knows what benefits this new era will bring.

5 scathingly funny cartoons about Jeff Bezos' space odyssey

After Jeff Bezos successfully launched into space in a rocket described as “phallic” by some observers, an adult entertainment company has introduced a range of dildos inspired by the “Billionaire Space Race” between the Amazon founder, Richard Branson and Elon Musk. The range includes the Blue Orgasm, Space Sex and Galadick. “Go boldly into where no one’s gone before,” said CamSoda Vice President Daryn Parker. “Explore Uranus and maybe even have a close encounter of the pantless kind.”

Bezos ‘replaced by aliens during flight’

If that wasn’t strange enough, a conspiracy theory claims Jeff Bezos was replaced by aliens during the launch. The Amazon boss took off from a desert site in West Texas on board the New Shepard and later landed in the desert. However, one Twitter user wasn’t having any of it. “I’ll probably disappear after tweeting this but Bezos’ rocket trip was designed to replace him while in orbit with the lizard-alien doppelganger,” they wrote.

Dubai makes fake rain

Dubai is making its own fake rain amid scorching conditions. The project is being led by researchers at the University of Reading, one of whom told the BBC earlier this year that researchers are attempting to get the water drops to merge and stick when they receive an electrical pulse. When the drops merge and are big enough, they fall as rain.

"It was an exciting day because just after 9:00 this morning, Jeff Bezos flew to space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket," Jimmy Fallon said on Tuesday's Tonight Show. "Before his trip to space, Bezos said 'I'm just really excited to figure out how it's going to change me,'" and "I guess space turns you into Kenny Chesney." Seriously, he said, Bezos "looks like a mashup of Buzz Lightyear and Woody — two for one. You got the space suit and cowboy hat together by searching for the 'midlife crisis bundle.'" Fallon and Tariq Trotter also dedicated 30 seconds to swapping jokes about the rocket's distinctively phallic shape.

"I'm not sure what they used to fuel the rocket, but based on the design, I'm gonna say two D batteries," Seth Meyers deadpanned at Late Night.

Yes, "Bald Lightyear went to space and back this morning," and "millions of people all over the world looked up and said, 'Wow, that that thing sure looks like a penis,'" Anthony Anderson spelled it out on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The whole flight took 10 minutes, and after Bezos landed, "he exited the rocket wearing a cowboy hat. Boy, nothing says 'midlife crisis' like putting on a cowboy hat and blasting off to space in a giant metal d--k."

President Biden "hosted the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the White House today," and Tom Brady used the occasion to "workshop some new material," Anderson said. "Well, I guess he's not golfing at Mar-a-Lago anytime soon."

Stephen Colbert said Bezos' space cowboy hat made him somehow look "extra-divorced," and laughed at Bezos thanking workers and Amazon customers for funding his space flight. "It's funny because he doesn't pay taxes or his employees," he explained.

"The only way to stop the virus is to get people vaccinated, but that's quite a challenge" because the remaining holdouts "are diehard pro-dying," Colbert said. "You can have their cold, dead hands when you pry them from their cold, dead wrists." Now, "all the anti-vax propaganda on Fox News is not helping," he said. "It's right there in Fox News' slogan: 'We report. You just died.' But Fox tries to pass off their anti-vax segments as being about freedom."

The Daily Show's Desi Lydic had a PSA for those vaccine-hesitant Americans who believe the government wants to jab you full of microchips, and you can watch it below.

Americans have always had a thing for Prometheus — the Titan god in Greek mythology credited with (or blamed for) stealing fire and giving it to humanity, an act that supposedly jump-started civilization. To be a Promethean is to strive for world-historic greatness and glory, embrace economic dynamism, and contribute to the technological progress of the human race.

There was something Promethean about the American revolution and the willingness to attempt to found a self-governing republic in the New World. Promethean striving definitely fueled the settlement of the western territories and American imperialism abroad. And of course the government set (and achieved) promethean aims during the Cold War in putting men on the moon and returning them safely to Earth.

Today, those ambitions have moved to the private sector, with Promethean billionaire entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos working to make space travel far more commonplace. On Tuesday, Bezos' Blue Origin company lifted himself and three other passengers 66 miles above the surface of the Earth, four miles beyond the threshold of space. Bolder space shots are sure to follow from Blue Origin and Musk's SpaceX.

Is Promethean dynamism a good thing for human beings? Many think so. Author Brink Lindsey sketched their case in a recent tweet that spoke of humanity's destiny being "upward, outward, onward" instead of static and inward. But which end is more compatible with happiness understood as human flourishing? I don't think the answer is obvious. Striving is next of kin to restlessness and anxiety, as we know from observing the most ambitious among us from afar. Somehow their quest for achievement never gets satisfied. Each triumph brings another goal, and then another, endlessly pursued. (What could be more American than viewing the goal of life not as the attainment of happiness but as a never-fulfilled pursuit of it?)

One way to understand the growing popularity of Yoga and other Eastern forms of spirituality in our time is as a reaction to the unhappiness of living in a constant state of agitation, always moving forward, seeking a state of solace or sense of accomplishment that never seems to arrive. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk reach for the stars for that reason as much as any other. The question for the rest of us is whether it makes more sense to cheer on their Promethean striving or to lament and seek to release ourselves from the spiritual discontents that drive it.

For as long as there have been missiles and rockets, there have been men being weird about missiles and rockets. Neil Armstrong boasted that the Saturn V gave the fellas "a magnificent ride" in 1969, while women's studies scholar Carol Cohn, attending a nuclear weapons workshop in the summer of 1984, wryly observed that the "lectures were filled with discussion of vertical erector launchers, thrust-to-weight ratios, soft lay downs, [and] deep penetration." The president of the United States, in 2018, would defensively bluster to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that "I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!"

Then on Tuesday, billionaire Jeff Bezos triumphantly launched himself into space in a rocketship that looked like … this.

But while the Blue Origin capsule's dubious shape got all the attention on Tuesday (was that design really aerodynamically necessary???), it was Bezos' choice of headgear that in fact tells you all you need to know about modern space machismo.

Bezos' rocket had a pressurized cabin, meaning there was technically no need for the crew to wear spacesuits — though Bezos, evidently intent on cosplaying an astronaut, made the passengers wear space "pajamas" anyway. But since helmets would've been similarly ornamental, the Amazon founder opted to wear the cowboy hat he occasionally breaks out for promoting cordless power drills and the like.

As William Shatner famously put it, space occupies our imagination as "the final frontier." It is a virgin, conquerable territory that lustily obsesses the space billionaires the same way the Wild West once did railroad magnates. Bezos' hat, whether consciously or not, seems intended to pass off the billionaire most famous for killing Borders Books & Music and dorkily sexting "I love you, alive girl" to his extramarital partner as some sort of edgy outlaw character. But for all the obvious posturing and compensation — Bezos was, rather bruisingly, beat to space by Richard Branson — not even the cowboy hat can hide the fact that Bezos' less-than-11-minute flight only took him to "space" by the most technical of definitions.

If there were ever proof of the immoral vanity of the current billionaire space race, then, it would be Bezos' cowboy hat — that desperately insistent symbol of his virility in the ongoing "glorified pissing contest" (or another NSFW competition) with his fellow space bros. Notably, none of the planet's female billionaires are currently trying to launch themselves into space in overtly phallic vessels.

Jeff Bezos is offering his thanks to Amazon employees and customers for paying for him to launch himself into space.

The Amazon founder on Tuesday took part in a successful first human flight of his company Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, which reached an altitude of 66 miles on a trip that lasted around 10 minutes. In a press conference after returning to Earth, Bezos said he wanted to thank a few people, including employees and customers of Amazon, where he served as CEO until earlier this month.

"I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this," Bezos said, prompting laughter from the audience.

He continued, "Seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much, it's very appreciated."

Bezos also declared that his expectations for the flight were "dramatically exceeded," concluding that being in zero gravity was "actually much nicer than being in full gravity" and was a "very pleasurable experience."

Jeff Bezos is almost ready for liftoff.

The Amazon founder will head to space Tuesday morning on his company Blue Origin's first human flight. He'll be boarding the New Shepard rocket alongside his brother, Mark Bezos, as well as 18-year-old Oliver Daemen and 82-year-old Wally Funk. Blue Origin says Daemen and Funk will become "the youngest and oldest astronauts to travel to space." An anonymous person who bid $28 million at an auction was originally set to join Bezos but was replaced by Daemen due to "scheduling conflicts."

Bezos' flight will last about 11 minutes, and the passengers will have around three minutes of weightlessness, according to Space.com. The rocket will launch from Texas and will reach an altitude of more than 62 miles above Earth, CBS News reports. If the flight is successful, NBC News notes that Bezos will "make history for taking part in the first unpiloted suborbital flight with a civilian crew."

This comes just over a week after British billionaire Richard Branson's recent successful flight to space, which he described as the "experience of a lifetime." Ahead of the Tuesday flight, Bezos told CNN he hopes to build a "road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there." The flight is set for 9:00 a.m. ET and can be watched live below via Blue Origin.

With Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gearing up to become the second billionaire to cross briefly into space in as many weeks, there's been a lot of discussion about the privatization of space travel. Former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, for one, thinks there will be significant benefits.

First, he noted, NASA has long wanted to "turn over" some of its work to private companies "so that it could help our economy." Scientifically speaking, though, he believes the ultimate goal is to increase access to space for people who may not have otherwise considered going beyond Earth to be a possibility. That could lead to innovation and new discoveries, Massimino suggested. "People can envision themselves going or what research they might do or what products they might develop or what they want to accomplish in space," Massimino told ABC News' Martha Raddatz on Sunday's edition of This Week. "Because now it's possible. It's going to let people be creative to come up with things we can't even imagine that can be done in space travel."

Jeff Bezos steps down as Amazon's CEO on Monday, 27 years after the company's founding. Moving into his role is Andy Jassy, who joined the company in 1997 as a bookseller but has since risen through the ranks to head the company's successful cloud services division, Amazon Web Services (AWS). He inherits the e-commerce behemoth at a "critical time" as the company faces "a growing threat of regulatory action to control its dominance of markets across the world," explain Rupert Neate Wealth and Sarah Butler at The Guardian. Is Jassy up for the challenge?

He certainly has a good track record, having conceived of and overseen AWS, which is now Amazon's most reliable source of profit, bringing in $13.5 billion in revenue in the first 3 months of 2021. He also apparently was the mastermind behind Amazon's move into the world of CDs and DVDs in the late '90s. He is "more of a continuity candidate than a revolutionary," The Economist says, adding that Jassy is "detail-oriented and more than a little nerdy — much like Mr. Bezos in his first couple of decades in charge."

But he'll face a number of tests. Does the company invest further in expanding abroad despite the risk of increased competition? Will Jassy's cloud-computing chops translate in the world of retail? Can he help the company keep growing in America, where customers "are beginning to grumble that Amazon is becoming a flea market, with ever shoddier products juiced with faked reviews"? And how will he handle the growing backlash against the company's treatment of warehouse workers, its tax sidestepping, and its questionable business practices, which have drawn the ire of antitrust hawks?

"Mr Jassy may ... be somewhat humbler than Mr Bezos in confronting Amazon's problems," writes Brad Stone in his book Amazon Unbound. But if he needs some guidance, Bezos won't be far. He'll stay on as executive chairman and could easily do some "back-seat driving" as Jassy, who has been known within Amazon as Bezos' "shadow," gets his footing.

A 70-year-old biology professor and conservationist in Australia has mastered imitating and understanding the shrills, croaks and whistles of frogs. Dubbed “the frog whisperer”, Michael Mahony told Reuters: “Sometimes you forget to work because, you know, you just want to talk to the frogs for a while and it’s sort of good fun.” His students, however, have mixed feelings about the croaking chatter. “I’ve never been into yelling at them to find out where they are,” said one.

‘New planet’ discovered

Astronomers have discovered a vast, previously unknown comet or minor planet entering the solar system. The “mega-comet”, which is expected to reach the orbit of Saturn in around 2030, has been given the snappy title of 2014 UN271. It is estimated to measure between 60 and 230 miles across. “This is the coolest thing we’ve found”, said Pedro Bernardinelli, leader of the team at the University of Pennsylvania that made the discovery.

Bezos petition gathers pace

A petition with over 114,000 signatures is demanding that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos be denied re-entry to Earth after he launches into space next month. The petition compares Bezos to the Superman villain Lex Luthor, adding: “Billionaires should not exist... on earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter, they should stay there.” Bezos is set to fly with his brother and two others on the first crewed flight of the autonomous New Shepherd rocket.

Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for barring Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos from returning to Earth after his planned flight into space on July 20, NPR reports. Bezos announced earlier this month that he and his brother, Mark Bezos, would be on board when the New Shepard suborbital rocket system built by his space exploration company, Blue Origin, makes its first flight carrying people.

There are several petitions targeting Bezos. The leading one, "Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth," had 42,000 signatures as of early Monday. "Billionaires should not exist," the petition says. "On Earth, or in space, but should they decide the latter they should stay there." Bezos said in an Instagram post that seeing Earth from space "changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity."

Cristiano Ronaldo’s removal of two Coca-Cola bottles during a press conference has coincided with a $4bn fall in the share price of the soft drinks behemoth. The Portugal captain snubbed the drink ahead of his country’s Euros tie against Hungary. He then held up bottle of water, declaring: “Agua!” Coca-Cola’s share price dropped from $56.10 to $55.22 - a 1.6% dip. Its market value fell from $242bn to $238bn.

Bezos urged to eat Mona Lisa

A petition urging Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to buy the Mona Lisa and eat it has attracted hundreds of signatures. “Nobody has eaten the Mona Lisa and we feel Jeff Bezos needs to take a stand and make this happen,” says the petition on Change.org. One signer remarked: “I feel like this is something society needs… Jeff, we need you to make this sacrifice for society.”

Rare vulture spotted in UK

An Egyptian vulture has been seen in the UK for the first time in more than 150 years. The rare bird, which has featured in Egyptian hieroglyphs, was first seen at Peninnis Head on the Scilly Isles before moving on to Tresco. It is believed it came from Northern France. Birdwatchers are expected to flock to the isles hoping to see it before it moves on.

An Amazon fulfillment center in New York City promoted 220 people among its more than 5,000 employees last year, The New York Times reports. The rate — which is less than half of Walmart's in-house promotion rate, the Times notes — appears to be part of a larger trend at the company.

David Niekerk, Amazon's former vice president of human resources who retired in 2016, told the Times the company intentionally limited upward mobility for hourly workers, adding that his request to create more leadership roles for those employees was shot down in favor of hiring managers straight out of college. In contrast, more than 75 percent of Walmart's store manageers began as hourly employees.

The philosphy stems, in part at least, from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Niekerk suggested. Per the Times, Niekerk said Bezos didn't want hourly workers sticking around too long because a "large, disgruntled" work force could be a threat to productivity. So, applicant pools are reportedly steep by design, and the company offers incentives to leave, including payment for resignation and free courses to train associates in other fields, an employee at the New York fulfillment center said. Read more at The New York Times.

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, two of the richest men on Earth, can't wait to use their wealth to leave it. What does that tell us? Bezos has announced he's jumping aboard the first passenger flight his space company, Blue Origin, makes on July 20. Viewing our planet from space "is the thing I wanted to do all my life," Bezos said. Musk's SpaceX company is several steps ahead and is already ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station. He plans a manned mission this decade to Mars, where Musk has said he hopes to die someday in a colony he built. The private space race between these two swashbuckling, eccentric geniuses isn't particularly friendly: Musk recently mocked Bezos' Blue Origin rocket with a tweet reading "Can't get it up (to orbit) lol." Boys will be boys, even if — especially if — they're worth upward of $150 billion.

But their fascination with space isn't just an idle hobby. Bezos was an avid science fiction and Star Trek fan growing up — "there's a utopian element to it I find very attractive," he has said of the genre. As Franklin Foer reported in a superb profile of Bezos in The Atlantic in 2019, his high school valedictorian address in 1982 was about moving much of humanity to giant, man-made habitats beyond our atmosphere. Bezos' high school girlfriend has said that "the reason he's earning so much money is to get to outer space." Does that mean Amazon, the most dominant company in this planet's history, is merely a launch pad for one man's science-fiction fantasies of creating a utopia in space? Essentially, yes. Bezos calls Blue Origin "my most important work," his legacy. His dream of moving a trillion or two people to floating, rotating Bezosvilles decades from now may seem absurdly ambitious, even for him. But the next time you order from Amazon, consider this: You may have just helped fund the creation of a space colony for your great-grandchildren.