Little less than 24 hours after Mark Zuckerberg went viral for looking at Jeff Bezos’ fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, during Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, eagle-eyed social media users have revealed interesting details about Meta CEO’s digital footprint. The tech billionaire has reportedly been caught liking a sultry snap of Ms Sanchez on the Meta-owned social media platform Instagram, prompting droves of internet users to troll him online.

Soon after the inauguration ceremony, Ms Sanchez attended the Starlight Ball — one of the three post-inauguration events, dressed in a peach-coloured Dolce & Gabbana gown. Afterwards, she posted a couple of photographs from the event, highlighting her outfit to over 840,000 followers.

While the post received thousands of likes and comments in no time, it was Mr Zuckerberg’s name in the likes column that caught everyone’s eye.

“Zuck making likes private next,” said one user, while another wrote: “That’s why he never enabled community notes on Facebook and Insta.”

A third commented: “Nah, he’s reminding y’all that he invented the like button as a way to be ‘friendly’ with people, not to ‘flirt’ with them. But some of you insecure folks just can’t seem to get that through your heads.”

ZUUUUCKKK NOOOOO LIKES ARE PUBLIC ON INSTAGRAMMMM pic.twitter.com/X5h4bNKtay

— Daniel (@growing_daniel) January 21, 2025

Nah, he’s reminding y’all that he invented the like button as a way to be ‘friendly’ with people, not to ‘flirt’ with them. But some of you insecure folks just can’t seem to get that through your heads. https://t.co/hdomEb83kh

— DeeClark (@GuessTheMaga) January 21, 2025

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Zuckerberg and Sanchez controversy

Ms Sanchez was the talk of the town after he made an appearance at the 47th president’s inauguration, clad in a revealing, lingerie-inspired bustier under a form-fitting white blazer. While some questioned her dressing choice for a formal and historic event, it was Mr Zuckerberg who grabbed the headlines after an ill-timed photograph and later a video of him looking at Ms Sanchez went viral.

The Meta boss was seated next to Ms Sanchez when he is alleged to peeked a view of her cleavage, which led to a series of memes and humorous posts on social media.

Despite the online trolling, both Mr Zuckerberg and Ms Sanchez have been doing fine in their personal lives. While the former is married to Priscilla Chan, his college sweetheart, the latter got engaged to Mr Bezos in 2023 after starting dating in 2018.

San Francisco:

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, NBC news reported Tuesday, further highlighting the tech moguls’ efforts to develop closer ties with the incoming president.

The network, citing an unnamed official involved in planning the January 20 ceremony, said the three men will be seated together on the platform with prominent guests, including Trump cabinet nominees. 

Musk — the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the majority owner of X — has become one of Trump’s closest allies and his planned presence at the ceremony is not a surprise. 

Musk shares Trump’s hard-right politics and put millions of dollars into supporting his presidential campaign.

Trump has tapped Musk to co-lead an advisory commission aiming to slash federal spending and bureaucracy, which while dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” will not be an official US agency.   

Bezos and Zuckerberg have less close ties with Trump, but both have made moves since the election viewed as seeking to curry favor with the president-elect, including meeting with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Meta CEO Zuckerberg signalled a rightward political swerve last week when he announced Facebook and Instagram would scrap fact-checking in the United States, a response to what he characterized as censorship by governments and so-called legacy media.

The pivot to Trumpian talking points shocked some Meta watchers but was also in line past decisions by Zuckerberg aimed at preserving his dominance of social media.

In the summer, Trump threatened to put Zuckerberg in prison over Facebook’s decision to ban him from the platform in 2021.

Highlighting Zuckerberg’s continued step into politics, he will be co-hosting a post-inauguration reception for Trump with several well-known Republican donors, according to an invitation obtained by the Puck news site Tuesday.

Bezos’s relationship with Trump has also seen moments of significant friction. 

The founder of Amazon also owns The Washington Post, one of the many newspapers Trump has railed against for years.

In a decision that shocked many in US media, The Post declined to endorse a presidential candidate ahead of the November election.

According to a report by the paper, Bezos intervened to block the board from publishing its editorial in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The paper’s leadership denied that report. 

Bezos’s aerospace company Blue Origin also competes for lucrative government contracts.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is set to marry his fiancée Lauren Sanchez next Saturday in Aspen, Colorado. The couple, who have been together since 2019, will host a lavish $600-million wedding with a winter wonderland theme, as reported by The New York Post. Before the big day, they will celebrate at Matsuhisa, a luxury sushi restaurant in Aspen, which they have rented out for Thursday and Friday. The couple got engaged in May 2023 and are now preparing for what is expected to be one of the most extravagant weddings of the year.

Here are some facts about Lauren Sanchez:

Lauren Sanchez was born on December 19, 1969, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a second-generation Mexican-American family.

She began her career as a broadcast journalist, working as an entertainment reporter and news anchor. She worked for Fox Sports Net, where she earned an Emmy nomination as anchor for Going Deep and later became an entertainment reporter for Best Damn Sports Show Period. In 1999, she returned to KCOP-TV to anchor UPN News 13, and her team won an Emmy Award.

She gained significant recognition for her role as the co-host of Good Day LA, a morning show she worked on from 2011 to 2017. Ms Sanchez also made appearances in several films, including The Longest Yard, Flight Club, and Ted 2.

In 2016, Lauren Sanchez launched her own company, Black Ops Aviation, which made history as the first female-owned aerial film and production company of its kind. Her passion for aviation was inspired by her childhood dream of becoming a flight attendant, a dream she was initially denied due to her weight. She later earned her helicopter pilot’s license. As a skilled helicopter pilot, Ms Sanchez consulted on major film projects, including the 2017 Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk.

Lauren Sanchez was previously married to Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, with whom she shares two children, Ella and Evan. She also has a 23-year-old son, Nikko, from her relationship with former NFL player Tony Gonzalez.

Ms Sanchez began dating Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2018, and the couple went public with their relationship in July 2019, shortly after Mr Bezos finalised his divorce from his first wife, MacKenzie Scott.

She serves as the vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, an organisation founded by her partner Jeff Bezos, which focuses on combating climate change and preserving the environment. 

In September 2024, she authored a bilingual children’s book, The Fly Who Flew to Space.

File picture of Amazon CEO and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos
| Photo Credit: AP

Billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on Monday (October 28, 2024) defended the newspaper’s decision not to endorse a U.S. presidential candidate as “right” and “principled” and pushed back against any notion that he ordered it up to protect his business interests.

That decision, announced Friday (October 25, 2024), has reportedly led to tens of thousands of people cancelling their subscriptions and protests from journalists with a deep history at the newspaper. The Post‘s editorial staff was prepared to endorse Democrat Kamala Harris before publisher Will Lewis wrote instead that it would be better for readers to make up their own minds.

Mr. Bezos, in “a note from our owner” published Monday evening, said that editorial endorsements create a perception of bias at a time many Americans don’t believe the media, and do nothing to tip the scales of an election.

“Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” Mr. Bezos said.

‘Inadequate planning’

Mr. Bezos wrote that he wished the decision to end presidential endorsements had been done earlier, “in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”

Mr. Bezos’ decision caused an unprecedented spasm of anger both within journalism and outside it.

NPR reported on Monday that more than 2,00,000 people have cancelled their subscriptions to the newspaper, citing “two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters.” A Post spokeswoman, Olivia Petersen, would not comment on the NPR report.

Subscriptions fall

A loss of subscriptions of that magnitude would be a blow to a storied news outlet that is already facing financial headwinds. The Post had more than 2.5 million subscribers last year, the bulk of them digital, making it third behind The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in circulation.

In the decision’s wake, two of the newspaper’s columnists quit, and three of the nine members of the editorial board resigned their posts. The Post’s retired former editor, Martin Baron, who was editor when Mr. Bezos bought the paper, had denounced the decision on social media as “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”

The Post’s decision came only days after the Los Angeles Times also said it would not endorse a presidential candidate, which the newspaper has acknowledged has cost them thousands of subscribers.

Some critics suggested Mr. Bezos, also owner of Amazon, ordered the non-endorsement to protect his business interests, acting out of fear of retaliation if Donald Trump were elected. The Post endorsed Mr. Trump’s Democratic rivals in 2016 and 2020, and Mr. Trump has often denounced critical coverage by the paper.

Principled views

In his column, Mr. Bezos said people can see his wealth and business interests as one of two things — a bulwark against intimidation or a web of conflicting interests. He insisted that his views are principled and that his track record as Post owner since 2013 backs that up.

“I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at the Post in favor of my own interests,” he wrote. “It hasn’t happened.”

He acknowledged that the chief executive of one of his companies, the space-exploration outfit Blue Origin, met with Mr. Trump last week on the same day the non-endorsement was announced.

“I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision,” Mr. Bezos wrote. “But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand.”

He said that while he doesn’t and won’t push his own personal interests, he wouldn’t allow the Post to “stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance.”

“Many of the finest journalists you’ll find anywhere work at The Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth,” he said. “They deserve to be believed.”

Mark Zuckerberg became the world’s second-richest person for the first time Thursday, jumping ahead of Jeff Bezos as shares of Meta Platforms Inc. continue to climb. 

Zuckerberg’s bet on the metaverse – which initially looked like a huge bust – has paid off in recent months, pushing his net worth to a high-water mark of $206.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That puts him $1.1 billion ahead of Amazon.com Inc.’s Bezos and almost $50 billion behind Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk.

Meta shares have risen 23% since reporting better-than-expected sales in the second quarter and touting its push into the type of large language models that power AI chatbots. The stock closed Thursday at an all-time high of $582.77.

Meta has spent heavily on data centres and computing power as Zuckerberg works to build a leading position in the industry-wide AI race. The company has also moved ahead with other long-term projects, including its Orion augmented reality glasses, which the company introduced last month.

Zuckerberg, who owns a 13% stake in the Menlo Park, California-based company, has seen his fortune grow $78 billion so far this year, the most of any of the world’s 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg index.

The 40-year-old co-founder and chief executive officer has gained four spots this year on the wealth index.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A Brazilian businessman alleges a realtor deceived him into selling his Miami Beach mansion for $6 million lower than its true worth to Amazon Boss Jeff Bezos and is now suing him, according to a lawsuit reported reported by The Wall Street Journal. Leo Kryss, one of the founders of the Brazilian toy and electronics company Tectoy, claims the real estate company Douglas Elliman told him that a prospective buyer for his house in exclusive Indian Creek Village won’t pay more than $79 million. Mr Kryss had listed the seven-bedroom, 11 1/2-bathroom mansion, covering 19,000 square feet, for $85 million. 

Now Kryss is suing Elliman for the $6 million he believes he forfeited by not realizing Bezos was the buyer, according to people familiar with the matter, according to The WSJ.

The lawsuit filed in July by Kryss said that he asked Douglas Elliman CEO Jay Parker if the interested buyer was the world’s second richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Parker allegedly let him know that Bezos had nothing to do with it. Later on, in fact, Kryss would agree to sell the mansion for $79 million, unconscious of the fact that Bezos was indeed the buyer, according to the complaint.

The legal dispute highlights the significance of transparency in high-profile real estate deals. At the moment, Kryss is suing them over fraud allegations by the real estate firm.

“Wealthy individuals often shield their identities throughout the process of purchasing a home, from the initial showing through the closing,” Miami real estate agent Danny Hertzberg told WSJ. “Many billionaires, when they’re purchasing a property, are concerned that when the seller knows their identity, they’re going to want a larger number,” he said.

In February of last year, Bezos announced his move to Miami from Seattle. He now owns more than four bayfront acres on Indian Creek Island, a gated community sometimes referred to as the Billionaire Bunker. The island has drawn well-known residents, including Tom Brady, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump.

Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos is planning to sell almost $5 billion worth of shares in the e-commerce giant, a regulatory filing showed, after its stock hit a record high.

The proposed sale of 25 million shares was disclosed in a notice filed after market hours on Tuesday. The stock had hit an all-time high of $200.43 during the session. It has jumped more than 30% so far this year, outpacing the 4% gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average index.

After the sale plan, Bezos would own about 912 million Amazon shares, or 8.8% of the outstanding stock.

He sold shares worth roughly $8.5 billion in February, after the stock rallied 80% in 2023.

Bezos is ranked the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $214.4 billion, according to Forbes. He is also the founder of space company Blue Origin, which launched a six-person crew to the edge of space in May.

Amazon posted upbeat first-quarter results in April, as the Seattle-based technology giant rode the artificial intelligence wave. The company recently replaced Adam Selipsky as the head of its cloud computing unit with insider Matt Garman.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New York:

The prestigious Washington Post is in crisis, with pressure on from owner Jeff Bezos to change its money-losing ways.

The Post’s managing editor abruptly resigned; a chosen successor withdrew under fire, and a boss has been targeted in the newspaper’s columns.

At the heart of the storm is “WaPo”‘s new CEO, Briton William Lewis, who was given a mission by Amazon founder Bezos when he appointed him last autumn.

Lewis was asked to turn around a newspaper that continues to pile up Pulitzer Prizes half a century after the Watergate scandal it instigated, but which has lost $77 million in 2023 despite job cuts and the disappearance of its Sunday supplement.

However, the former journalist, who made history in the late 2000s with a scoop on the expenses of British MPs when he was editor of the Daily Telegraph, is finding his position increasingly vulnerable.

For weeks now, revelations have multiplied about his role, when he was working for the Murdoch family’s conservative media group about 12 years ago, in a scandal of illegal phone tapping by the tabloid The News of the World.

On Friday, Lewis was at the center of an investigation by his own journalists.

According to the Washington Post, he gave the go-ahead in 2011 for the destruction of thousands of emails, fueling suspicions that he was destroying evidence, which he denies.

“Trump Bump”

As the US presidential election approaches, the affair is poisoning the atmosphere at a long-vaunted newspaper that is “not doing well economically,” Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy tells AFP.

The Post was among trusted news outlets that benefited from the upheaval that marked Trump’s four years in the White House which ended with his loss to President Joe Biden.

The Post “was seen as a place that offered really tough, truth-telling coverage” of Trump, according to the professor.

Trump’s departure from the White House meant fewer attention-grabbing stories to keep readers engaged.

“When Donald Trump left the White House, the Trump bump that helped a lot of newspapers disappeared,” Kennedy said.

“And the Post was hit especially hard.”

By the end of 2022, the Post would have 2.5 million subscribers compared with 3 million subscribers when Biden took office in early 2021, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, rival New York Times has grown to more than 10 million subscribers, the fruit of a strategy to diversify into fun topics such as games, food, and lifestyle while still serving up hard news.

US media quoted Lewis as telling editorial staff in early June that he “can’t sugarcoat it anymore” — the paper has lost a lot of money and people’s interest in its articles.

Third News Team

The day before that editorial meeting, Post journalists learned of the resignation of editor-in-chief Sally Buzbee.

Buzbee is said to have disagreed with Lewis’s strategy to split the editorial department into three divisions: news, opinion, and a new third unit devoted to social media and service journalism.

The contours of this “third newsroom” remain unclear, but it seems aimed at reviving readership in a leap into the unknown for the newspaper.

Within the Murdoch family group, Lewis was the boss of the Wall Street Journal (2014-2020), another flagship of the US press.

However, articles in the New York Times and the Post pointed to questionable methods employed under his watch and that of former colleague Robert Winnett, whom Lewis chose to replace Buzbee.

Published allegations include paying informants, using data from hacked phones, or intermediaries using phony identification to get information.

Winnett withdrew from consideration for the post following those revelations.

Professor Kennedy believes Lewis has no choice but to leave the Post because he has lost the confidence of the team there.

“The body is rejecting the transfusion,” Post veteran David Maraniss wrote on his Facebook page, adding he didn’t know anyone who thinks the situation can stand as it is.

“If he can’t inspire the staff (…) the Post will sail without direction and its best people will leave,” Kennedy said of Lewis.

For many observers, the outcome of the crisis lies in the hands of billionaire Bezos, who bought the Post for $250 million in 2013.

So far, Bezos has backed his CEO.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin resumed its space flight today, after a two-year hiatus. A group of six adventurers completed an 11-minute journey to space after liftoff from Texas.

Mission NS-25 is the seventh crewed mission for Blue Origin, the space company founded and owned by Jeff Bezos.

30-year-old Gopi Thotakura, a pilot from Andhra Pradesh, was also part of the six-man crew. Preserve Life Corp, a medical institution close to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport that focuses mostly on holistic health methods, was co-founded by Gopi Thotakura.

He has become the first Indian to travel into space as a tourist on Blue Origin’s return flight.

“It was amazing… you have to see it with your eyes”, said Gopi Thotakura after his space trip.

“I can’t describe how it is to look into space… everybody should go to the space. It was good to see Earth from the other side,” he added.

“Gopi Thotakura is a lifelong pilot and aviator who learned how to fly before he could drive. He flies jets commercially, in addition to piloting bush, aerobatic, and seaplanes. He’s also the co-founder of Preserve Life Corp, a global center for holistic wellness and applied health”, said Blue Origin about the Indian crew member on social media platform X.

Gopi Thotakura is a lifelong pilot and aviator who learned how to fly before he could drive. He flies jets commercially, in addition to piloting bush, aerobatic, and seaplanes. He’s also the co-founder of Preserve Life Corp, a global center for holistic wellness and applied… pic.twitter.com/of2nzsPvEd

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) May 19, 2024

The other crew members included Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schallera, and Ed Dwight.

90-year-old Dwight surpassed Star Trek star William Shatner, who was nearly two months younger, to become the oldest person to travel into space.

Ed Dwight is the first American Black man to be trained as an astronaut. Dwight was unable to achieve his goal of being the first black astronaut in space in 1961.

“We just completed our seventh human spaceflight and the 25th flight for the New Shepard program. Our #NS25 astronaut crew included: Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Ed Dwight, Ken Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura. Thank you, astronauts”, said Blue Origin on X after the space flight.

We just completed our seventh human spaceflight and the 25th flight for the New Shepard program. Our #NS25 astronaut crew included: Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Ed Dwight, Ken Hess, Carol Schaller, and Gopi Thotakura. Thank you, astronauts! Learn more: https://t.co/4a0UXRy6p6pic.twitter.com/kzL5GIQSql

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) May 19, 2024

“I was the first guy in the world to be famous for not doing something. Needless to say, I’m overwhelmed”, said Dwight before the liftoff.

Dwight was a skilled test pilot when President John F. Kennedy reassigned him to a highly competitive Air Force program, which was considered a path to the astronaut corps. But in the end, he was not chosen.

“This is a life-changing experience, everybody needs to do this,” said Dwight after the 11-minute space flight.

“I thought I didn’t really need this in my life,” reflecting on his omission from the astronaut corps, which was his first experience with failure as a young man. “But I lied”, he added.

With inputs from IANS, AFP

Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin will resume flights to space on Sunday, ending a near two-year pause of crewed operations following a 2022 mission failure.

The NS-25 mission will lift off from Launch Site One in West Texas, with the launch window for the flight starting at 0830 CT (1330 GMT), the company said on Tuesday.

The New Shepard rocket, which flies cargo and humans on short trips to the edge of space, has been grounded since a September 2022 uncrewed mission failed roughly a minute after liftoff from Texas, forcing the rocket’s capsule full of NASA experiments to safely eject mid-flight.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration closed its review of Blue Origin’s New Shepard investigation last year, agreeing with the company’s findings. It required Blue Origin to make 21 corrective actions, including an engine redesign and “organizational changes”.

The upcoming NS-25 mission will have six crew members, including former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight, the first Black astronaut candidate in the United States.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)