Goodbye to the MetroCard that transformed how New Yorkers traveledNew York City’s MetroCard transformed one of the world’s busiest transit systems and is set to be phased out by December 31, 2025. CNN’s Meena Duerson talks about how the MetroCard’s introduction 30 years ago expanded access for New Yorkers, and how the little yellow card has become as symbolic as the city’s famous landmarks.

Advertisement AdvertisementAdvertisement AdvertisementPerhaps audiences have Hollywood to blame for establishing a genre that feels like it relies so heavily on stereotypes. “It’s funny rewatching a couple of Christmas films and reminding myself about them,” says Isibeal Ballance, the TV producer who worked with writer-director Mark Gatiss on subversive Christmas drama The Dead Room. “The problems start if you also finish in a familiar place.”Not all Christmas shows follow this cookie-cutter approach. Advertisement AdvertisementAdvertisement AdvertisementIn the psychological horror Better Watch Out, stereotypes about Christmas are manipulated to trick the viewer into thinking they are in familiar territory. And then to drive the knife in, we continued with the holiday stereotypes ― characters wearing ugly Christmas sweaters, serving hot cocoa to the carollers ― to create a disturbing juxtaposition with the unfolding events.

Paramount makes new hostile offer for Warner Bros. DiscoveryParamount has upped the ante in its hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, announcing Monday that Oracle founder Larry Ellison will personally guarantee over $40 billion. The announcement comes after the Warner Bros. board of directors has rejected Paramount’s bid multiple times, opting instead to go with an offer from Netflix, which WBD, the parent company of CNN, says is more valuable. CNN's David Goldman reports.

Greg Tomhave will officiate and burial will be at Benton County Cemetery in Sauk Rapids. Arrangements have been entrusted to Williams Dingmann Family Funeral Home in Sauk Rapids. Ethel married Raymond Forbes on August 26, 1955. Ethel enjoyed working in her garden and watching wildlife. Ethel loved children and enjoyed teaching and caring for them.

Extreme weather concerns for the Christmas holiday California state fire and rescue chief Brian Marshall joins ABC News Live to discuss the biggest weather dangers right now, from flash flooding to mudslides, and how to stay safe if you're traveling.

Great last-minute Christmas gift ideas for 2025 ABC News' Becky Worley has you covered for Christmas crunch-time gift shopping, from in-store finds at REI to subscription services and digital gift cards for loved ones.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter whose work helped bring down Theranos is now taking on Silicon Valley’s biggest AI players — accusing them of looting his books to build billion-dollar chatbots. The complaint accuses the companies of pirating books and feeding them into large language models that power popular chatbots — without permission or compensation. 5 Carreyrou filed the lawsuit alongside five other writers against Google, Elon Musk’s xAI, OpenAI, Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Perplexity. According to the new complaint, class members in the Anthropic settlement will receive “a tiny fraction (just 2%) of the Copyright Act’s statutory ceiling of $150,000” per infringed work. The writers say that outcome illustrates why class actions fail to hold AI companies accountable.

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U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington granted Zaid’s request for a preliminary injunction, after he sued the Trump administration in May over the revocation of his security clearance. Zaid’s request called it an act of “improper political retribution” that jeopardized his ability to continue representing clients in sensitive national security cases. In August, the Trump administration said it was revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials. AdvertisementZaid said in his lawsuit that he has represented clients across the political spectrum over nearly 35 years, including government officials, law enforcement and military officials and whistleblowers. “This court joins the several others in this district that have enjoined the government from using the summary revocation of security clearances to penalize lawyers for representing people adverse to it,” Ali wrote in his order.

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So I’m glad Mandy Roscoe from the Greater Manchester printing firm, Carrick Signs, has explained where the word came from. AdvertisementWhy are they called “Christmas crackers”? “The snap strip was first introduced by cracker-maker Tom Smith in the 19th century,” Roscoe shared. “His reasoning was that the crackling sound emulated the sound of a Christmas fire, and the idea stuck,” Roscoe said. How do Christmas crackers work, anyway?

Xiaozhi A.I. is powered by artificial intelligence and it can have long conversations with six-year-old Shisan Hu. The gadget and similar chatbot toys are part of a multi-billion dollar A.I. However, in China, many parents like Zelei Hu are embracing chatbot toys. For Shisan, Xiaozhi A.I.

Suhauna HussainLos Angeles Times(TNS)LOS ANGELES — Atop the aerial ladder of a bright red fire engine, a firefighter wrangles a hose. “Pancake Breakfast” is one of the dozens of floats expected to roll through Pasadena on New Year’s Day in the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. It was built by volunteers from Sierra Madre, a small foothill town that narrowly escaped the worst of the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena in January. In a post on Sunday, he applauded the float association for removing the dialogue. “Bravo to Sierra Madre for listening.”___©2025 Los Angeles Times.

The obvious sign of the rising hate in the Baltic States was the growth of the far right. So the Baltic States downplay the genocide of the Jews by claiming that there was in fact a “double genocide” in the Baltic region. The Baltic States are not denying the Holocaust, but they are obfuscating it in order to defend themselves against history. The EU and NATO Absorb Baltic RevisionismThis neo-Nazism would not be so alarming if it were confined to the tiny Baltic States. Nazi guilt is therefore halved and, in the view of the Baltic States, Europe’s history books must now reflect this.

Texas supermarket offers shoppers free groceries after computer glitch Christmas came early for some shoppers at an H-E-B supermarket in Texas. The store offered everyone in line free groceries after a computer glitch shut down the registers.