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Feb. 27 (UPI) — Amazon, Nvidia and Softbank collectively invested $100 billion dollars in OpenAI, which is double the amount of money the company raised in a 2025 funding round and pushes it to a $730 billion pre-money valuation.

The funding round is one of the largest private funding rounds in history — $50 billion from Amazon, $30 billion from Nvidia and $30 billion from Softbank — and OpenAI said the fundraising round has not closed, with more investors expected, CNBC and TechCrunch reported.

The new investment from Amazon builds on the existing $38 billion multi-year agreement the two companies already have, which OpenAI said in a press release is planned to expand by $100 billion over the next 8 years.

“We’re super excited about this deal,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in an interview with CNBC. “AI is going to happen everywhere. It’s transforming the whole economy, and the world needs a lot of collective computing power to meet the demand.”

At the core of the broadening collaboration between Amazon and OpenAI is the development of a Stateful Runtime Environment that runs on Amazon Web Services.

AWS also will be the exclusive third-party vendor for OpenAI Frontier, an enterprise platform for AI agent deployment.

The power required to run AI systems continues to grow exponentially, and the Amazon deal also will allow OpenAI to start building custom AI applications — most notably, one for Amazon’s customer-facing applications.

In a joint statement with Microsoft, which OpenAI has been working with since 2019, the two companies said that the new investment deals will not affect their relationship and that the partnership “remains strong and central.”

Microsoft Azure remains the exclusive cloud provider of stateless OpenAI APIs and OpenAI Frontier will continue to be hosted on Azure, the companies said.

“LINDA looks so beautiful, so cool,” says Paul McCartney.

He’s just been watching a film about the decade of his life after The Beatles broke up — and it is filled with images of his much-missed first wife.

“The Linda stuff was very emotional,” he admits at the Man On The Run launch event in London.

“Linda, the kids, me and John [Lennon] — all these memories. It’s like my life flashing in front of me.”

Macca is talking to an intimate gathering that includes his daughter Stella, son James, superfan Noel Gallagher and the actor who will play him in a forthcoming biopic, Paul Mescal. Oh, and me.

He continues: “Seeing me and Linda interacting is special because, you know, she’s not here.

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“So is seeing the kids when they were little, because they’re not little any more. They’ve got kids of their own now.”

The film stirs memories of forming his own band, Wings, with Linda in 1971, prompting this from McCartney: “We tried to follow The Beatles — it’s mad!”

It also brings into sharp focus his relationship with Lennon, which broke down in the wake of The Beatles split but, as we see, they reconciled shortly before John’s death.

Directed by Oscar-winning Morgan Neville, Man On The Run is a masterpiece of ­documentary storytelling.

Rich in source material, partly because Linda was a professional photographer who also shot home movies, it is raw, heartfelt, funny, poignant and, crucially, not remotely sugar-coated.

Before the screening starts, Sir Paul, looking fit and well for his 83 years, strolls on to the stage and quips: “I just want to say thank you to Morgan for keeping in all the embarrassing moments that I asked him to take out.”

But let’s get back to the big ­question: How DO you follow The Beatles?

It was a conundrum that weighed heavily on McCartney as the ­Swinging Sixties drew to a close.

As he puts it himself in the movie, the first thing he did was “escape” and then he had to learn how “to grow up”.

He had married American Linda Eastman in March, 1969, at Marylebone Town Hall, London, and soon afterwards adopted her daughter Heather from a previous marriage.

McCartney was still only 27 when, on April 10, 1970, he told the world that he, John Lennon, George ­Harrison and Ringo Starr were going their separate ways.

The announcement came amid acrimony over the band’s crooked business manager Allen Klein, favoured at the time by John and the others but later described by Paul as “a sort of demon”.

It was all over for the band of four likely lads from Liverpool who changed popular culture for ever.

In private, McCartney had known for months that his songwriting partner Lennon was leaving.

“John broke up The Beatles,” Macca affirms in Man On The Run. “But I got the rap. And that’s a bit of a weight to bear.”

Around the same time as ­Lennon’s bombshell, in late 1969, there were rumours across the US and around the world that “Beatle Paul may be dead”.

There’s a hilarious moment in the film when his younger brother Mike is asked whether it’s true.

“It’s a hoax, it’s a con,” he exclaims, before being asked when was the last time he saw his brother.

Mike replies: “The last time? It was his funeral, I think!”

It turned out that McCartney had the perfect bolthole, in an archetypal middle of nowhere, to hide away and reset his life.

In 1966, he had bought High Park Farm, a 183-acre sheep farm on the Mull of Kintyre (yes, that explains the song) in Argyllshire, only reached via a “long and winding” track.

With its corrugated iron roof and general state of dilapidation, it was, as someone in the film points out, the sort of place a poor farm labourer might baulk at accepting.

But, as the Sixties ebbed to a close, Paul, Linda, their daughters, Heather and baby Mary, plus their Old English Sheepdog ­Martha decamped to the Scottish wilds.

In the movie, McCartney suggests, “We got up there to escape”, and ponders whether he would write “another note of music” before confessing to drowning himself in one wee dram of Scotch after another.

But, with the responsibility of supporting a young family on his shoulders, he realised that “it was a question of HAVING to grow up”.

At the Man On The Run launch, McCartney reflects: “With The Beatles, we were just lads. Everyone, all our management, used to call us ‘the boys’.

“Then I got married and then there was a baby [Mary] on the way.

“I had to grow up. I thought, ‘We can’t just be these ‘boys’ any more’. It was time to think about stuff.

“Even though the film is kind of madcap and you see all our insane decisions, in the background there were some sensible decisions, too.”

He remembers how Linda was his guiding light through those years.

“If there was an idea that was a little bit crazy, I’d say, ‘Should I do that? Could I do that?’ She’d say, ‘It’s allowed’. It was a brilliant philosophy in life.”

Director Neville picks up on this theme: “I looked into the questions Paul was trying to ask of himself, questions that I felt were universal.

“How do you deal with your own legacy and the expectations people have of you? How do you balance your career with your family?

“In Paul’s case, he made them one and the same. And that, I thought, was completely inspirational.”

Though Kintyre provided a necessary respite from the dazzling glare of publicity, Macca has never been far away from making music. It’s in his blood.

In 1970, he released his debut solo album, simply titled McCartney, with its intimate DIY aesthetic and featuring at least two songs with his beloved partner in mind — The Lovely Linda and Maybe I’m Amazed.

In 1971, he formed Wings with ex-Moody Blues musician Denny Laine and, controversially, Linda, who until that point had little or no experience, as core members.

Rehearsals for their debut album Wild Life took place at Macca’s converted barn in Scotland, dubbed Rude Studio.

It felt to him as if he was starting over, at the bottom of the pile.

“It was so impossible to do something like that,” he says today.

“Just go back to square one, show up at a university, don’t book hotels, take the dogs in a van. For some reason, we thought it was a great idea!”

If Wings took time to take flight, everything changed in 1973 when they released third album Band On The Run, loaded with classic tunes such as the title track, Jet and Let Me Roll It.

Recorded in extraordinary ­circumstances at EMI’s studio in Lagos, Nigeria, not far from where Paul and Linda were mugged at knifepoint, it paved the way for ­stadium-sized shows in America.

Without the McCartneys’ sojourn to Scotland, there would have been no Mull Of Kintyre, which, at the time of its release in 1977, became the biggest selling single of all time.

A “love song” to that remote idyll, it featured Great Highland bagpipes played so passionately by the local Campbeltown Pipe Band.

Yet, interwoven with stories of Wings’ upward trajectory, there are musings on McCartney’s strained relationship with Lennon during the Seventies.

We’re reminded of John’s caustic song How Do You Sleep?, directed at Paul with its line, “The only thing you done was yesterday”.

And there’s his old buddy left thinking, “Aside from Yesterday, what about Eleanor Rigby, Lady Madonna, Hey Jude, Let It Be and the rest?”

Macca says: “As it shows in the film, I knew John from a very early age — we were just a couple of rock and roll fans.

“We enjoyed hanging out together and we started writing little songs round at my place.

“My dad had a pipe in his drawer. So we thought we’d smoke it. We couldn’t find any tobacco so we smoked tea! We had all those ­memories in common.

“Then we went through the whole trajectory of The Beatles. But John was always just that guy to me, even when he was being really mean and I was having to take it.

“At the same time, it was like, ‘Yeah, it’s just John, he does that’. He’d always done that — so that made it a little bit easier.

“But I loved him, you know. I loved all the guys in The Beatles.

“I try and think of how else it could have been, but with just me, John, George and Ringo, it was a magic grouping. And we did OK!”

Near the end of Man On The Run, you see McCartney being confronted by camera crews about the shocking death of Lennon, who had been shot the day before outside the Dakota Building apartment he shared with partner Yoko Ono in New York.

Macca was criticised at the time for a rather cool, unemotional response — but one look in his eyes reveals his utter devastation.

As for the aforementioned “embarrassing moments” on display in the film, they are what make it so refreshing and endearing.

Hence you see McCartney singing Mary Had A Little Lamb wearing a red clown’s nose with Wings guitarist Henry McCullough looking as if he wants the earth to swallow him.

There’s a moustachioed Paul in a baggy pink suit performing the cabaret-style Gotta Sing Gotta Dance, complete with dancing girls, for his 1973 variety show.

And what about him getting ­busted by Japanese cops in 1980 for having 219g of cannabis in his luggage, spending nine days in custody before being booted out of the country?

McCartney was supposed to be embarking on a Wings tour of Japan but, as it turned out, they never played together again.

He says: “So many bits are embarrassing. The look on Henry McCullough’s face! He’s not happy.

“I was thinking, ‘Maybe we could cut those bits, the dance routine, cool out my image’.

“But Morgan said, ‘No, let me keep them in. You’ll see all that stuff but because you overcame it all and found yourself, you won in the end’.”

Finally, McCartney takes a long hard look at himself — at the ­person “growing up” in Man On The Run and the man he is today.

He says: “You start to see yourself, not just in the mirror, but to realise what your character is like.

“It’s natural for me to be enthusiastic so I don’t always see pitfalls, With me, it’s, “Nah, nah, just do it’.”

Feb. 17 (UPI) — Peru’s Congress convened Tuesday in an extraordinary session to debate seven censure motions against interim President Jose Jeri — a move that could remove him from office less than two months before general elections and deepen the country’s ongoing political instability.

Jeri, who also serves as head of Congress, would automatically lose the presidency if lawmakers vote to oust him from that parliamentary post. He has denounced what he calls a plot against him and an intention by enemies to destabilize the country.

Jeri assumed the presidency in October after the removal of Dina Boluarte. However, investigations into Jeri’s conduct and declining public support have weakened his political standing, according to local newspaper La Republica.

According to local media reports, the current crisis escalated after reports that the president held unregistered meetings, not listed on his official agenda, with two controversial Chinese businessmen.

One reportedly holds multimillion-dollar state contracts and has been linked to construction firms accused of securing public works through bribes. The other has faced legal proceedings for trafficking illegal timber from the Amazon region.

Prosecutors have also opened a preliminary investigation into alleged influence peddling involving the hiring of nine young women in public institutions after meetings with Jeri at the presidential palace.

Those allegations enabled opposition lawmakers to gather 78 signatures to present a censure motion against him as congressional president — a step that would automatically remove him from the presidency.

Under congressional rules, a simple majority is required to approve the censure motion, RPP Noticias reported.

Peru has experienced marked political volatility over the past decade. Six recent presidents have faced removal proceedings or imprisonment, reflecting a pattern of institutional instability.

Analysts often cite the repeated use of constitutional mechanisms such as presidential vacancy on grounds of “moral incapacity” and censure votes against congressional leadership, factors that have made the presidency unusually fragile.

Political calculations ahead of Tuesday’s vote suggest limited support for the 39-year-old president. Most political blocs have expressed opposition to him continuing in office, with the exception of Fuerza Popular, the party associated with right-wing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori.

Peru’s fragmented Congress includes about a dozen political blocs whose members frequently split during votes, leading analysts to caution that the outcome remains uncertain.

Jeri’s party, Somos Peru, is expected to attempt a procedural delay by requesting a constitutional review on whether a censure motion applies to an interim president. According to El Comercio newspaper, the Constitutional Commission could take about two weeks to issue an opinion, which might give Jeri time to secure additional political backing.

If Jeri is removed, Congress would elect a successor from among its members. That person would become Peru’s eighth president in a decade and oversee the transition toward general elections scheduled for April.

Feb. 13 (UPI) — Amazon-owned Ring announced it is ending its partnership with Flock Safety, a company whose artificial intelligence-powered technology came into question after a Ring Super Bowl ad touting new surveillance features.

In a blog post published Thursday, Ring said the two companies “made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration” they initially announced in October.

“Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,” the Ring post read.

Ring’s surveillance camera capabilities came under fire Sunday after the company aired a 30-second commercial highlighting its new Search Party feature.

The feature allows users to upload images of their missing pets to the Ring Neighbors app, which would then use AI to trawl footage in the cloud to find the missing pet. If a missing pet is spotted in the footage, the information would be sent to the owner of the camera that picked up the footage and give them the option to notify the missing pet’s owners.

Ring said the Search Party feature is automatically enabled on all outdoor cameras enrolled in a Ring subscription. But critics questioned whether the AI technology could be combined with Ring’s new facial recognition technology, Familiar Faces, and provide law enforcement surveillance on humans.

Of additional concern, Flock Safety’s technology allows customers to grant local and federal government agencies access to the data picked up by the cameras. Among the organizations that could have access to this data are Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service and the Navy.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., in November called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Security for allowing government access to the data without “meaningful privacy protections.”

“At the urging of concerned constituents, I conducted further oversight and have determined that Flock cannot live up to its commitment to protect the privacy and security of Oregonians,” Wyden wrote in a letter to the FTC. “Abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable, and Flock has made it clear it takes no responsibility to prevent or detect that.”

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Ma., who has previously criticized Ring’s connections to law enforcement, posted his thoughts on the Super Bowl ad on X.

“This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance,” he wrote.

Emma Daniels, a spokeswoman for Ring, told The Verge, that the Search Party feature works only with dogs and is “not capable of processing human biometrics.”

“These are not tools for mass surveillance,” she added. “We build the right guardrails, and we’re super transparent about them.”

In a January blog post, Flock Safety maintained that it doesn’t work directly with ICE or other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. The company said every piece of data collected by its technology is owned by the customers.

“Decisions about whether, when, and how data is shared are made by the customer that owns the data, not by Flock,” the post read. “There is no hidden back-door access in Flock technology.

“If a local agency chooses not to collaborate with any federal entity, including ICE, Flock has no ability to override that decision.”

Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix, which is out on Amazon Prime, follows Jesy’s life after she left Little Mix back in 2020, including her reflections on fame, pressure, and her own personal truth about that period

Jesy Nelson’s Amazon Prime Video documentary, which is out today (Friday February 13) is a major new six-part series.

Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix follows Jesy’s life after she left Little Mix back in 2020, including her reflections on fame, pressure, and her own personal truth about that period. It’s her most candid account yet of why she departed the group and how she’s processed everything that happened. Another central focus of the documentary is Jesy’s pregnancy with her twin girls, Ocean Jade and Story. The cameras follow the 34-year-old Romford star through what became a high-risk pregnancy including complications like twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome and emergency medical moments.

After the birth is also covered, when Jesy’s daughters were diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 1 — a severe, progressive genetic condition that causes muscle weakness.

Jesy uses the documentary to share her family’s real-time experience with this diagnosis and to raise awareness about it, including campaigning for expanded newborn screening in the NHS.

Besides the physical journey, the Amazon Prime series also revisits her personal and emotional challenges, including struggles with the pressure of fame, mental health battles, and what it’s been like stepping back from one of the UK’s biggest pop acts.

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Many fans have been excited to watch the documentary, however some have confessed online they ‘don’t think they can watch it’ for one reason – that it will leave them too emotional.

One person wrote: “I’m not gonna handle this well I’m already emotional about it.”

While another added: “My heart. I don’t even think I can watch this. I’m already crying.”

A third chimed in: “I’m gonna weep aren’t I,” while a fourth added: “She deserves to tell her side of the story after years of being silent.”

Jesy recently confessed that she considered leaving Little Mix after just two years as she struggled to cope with the pressure and the spotlight after winning The X Factor.

However, she went on to spend a decade in the band before quitting.

Jesy said: “That [leaving] presented itself far before I made that decision.

“There was a time where I was like ‘Oh, I want to leave’ and I remember sitting down with my family… and it was actually because of my brother that in the end I stayed.”

She added: “The first time I wanted to leave I remember I went home and we were kinda weighing up the [pros and cons]… and at that point we weren’t even like at our biggest.

“We were, it had only been like two years, but we were still big. Everyone still knew who Little Mix were so it was like ‘if you leave now, what are you going to do?’”

Speak on the Great Company with Jamie Laing podcast, Jesy also praised her brother for his advice that ultimately kept her in the band and for encouraging her to make as much money as she could off of Little Mix‘s fame.

“My brother was like ‘you are so much stronger than you give yourself credit for and I think you can stick this out for another few years,” she explained.

A reality TV series dubbed the ‘best show ever’ is returning for a second series and fans are predicting a ‘wild ride’.

A reality TV series that has been branded the “funniest show” is returning three years after its first season.

Social experiment Jury Duty first aired on Amazon Freevee in 2023, with a second instalment hitting Amazon Prime Video in March this year.

The hoax sitcom follows a fake jury trial, with construction worker Ronald Gladden serving as a juror, unaware that the proceedings around him aren’t real.

Starring James Marsden as a fake juror, portraying an over-exaggerated, parodied version of himself, and a series of actors as the other jurors, including one who keeps falling asleep, Jury Duty shows the inner workings of a trial in the US.

Everything that goes on is entirely planned, unbeknownst to Ronald, who thinks the people around him are actually as chaotic as they seem.

The documentary-style comedy sees Ronald share his baffled thoughts to the camera before realising what actually happened.

He later won $100,000 as part of the experience, saying his life “completely changed overnight” once it aired.

He added, “I had a feeling in my gut the whole time that something wasn’t right. They got me on camera multiple times saying, ‘I feel like I’m on reality TV. Like, this can’t be real. What’s going on?”

“The day of the reveal, everyone was so quick to let me know that, like, ‘Hey, we understand that none of this was real. But the one thing—that the relationships we formed were real.”

“They were so quick to just let me know that that wasn’t fake. And that honestly is what made the whole thing worth it for me.”

The series received a roaring response from critics and audiences alike, with three Emmy nominations, two Golden Globe nominations and a Peabody Award.

It is now set to return, Amazon Prime confirmed, but this time, Ronald will be free from the chaos.

A teaser trailer was posted on social media, captioned: “Welcome to the retreat. Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat premieres March 20 on @primevideo.”

The video took a look back at the original series, before teasing: “Now, we’re following a business on their annual company retreat. Except this is not a real company. It’s fake. Everyone involved is an actor. Except Anthony.”

One person is then heard saying: “If I go home and tell my parents about this stuff, they’re gonna be like, ‘You’re lying’.”

As per Deadline, Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat will follow a corporate offsite event at a family-owned hot sauce company, with Anthony featuring as a recently hired temporary worker.

The entire experience will be staged, with every “colleague” assigned a role around him, and scenes in conference rooms and during downtime, all orchestrated.

When the founder announces he’s preparing to step down, the retreat transforms into a clash between corporate ambitions and small-business values, with the future of the company and whose hands it will fall into all up in the air.

Fans have been left over the moon at the glimpse of a new season, with one writing: “I’m so excited to see this.”

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“Season 1 was too good, we are ready!” another wrote, as a third said: “Best. Show. EVER. Can’t wait for S2!”

“I don’t know how you can top the original, but I’m dying to see!!!!” someone else said.

Another commented, “If this is even half as chaotic as Jury Duty, we are in for a wild ride. But honestly, am I the only one wondering if they can actually pull off the ‘fake person’ trope again without everyone being suspicious? The bar is set so high. I just hope it’s actual comedy and not just another over-produced ‘reality’ mess. March 20th can’t come soon enough. I need to see if this lives up to the hype or if it’s just a one-hit wonder.”

When previously discussing possible future seasons of Jury Duty, showrunner Cody Heller told Variety: “Obviously, it would have to be a whole different universe. You couldn’t just do jury duty again, because then people would be like, “Wait a second”.

“But I do think that it’s possible. I do think there’s a million different worlds that this kind of thing could exist in.”

Jury Duty is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.