All actresses attending the 2018 Golden Globes will be wearing black, according to People.

The publication says that “multiple sources” confirmed that presenters and nominees like Jessica Chastain, Mary J. Blige and Meryl Streep will be wearing “all-black looks as a symbol of protest against harassment in Hollywood.”

There are also murmurings that the black ensembles will continue throughout awards season.

This quiet protest comes amid a national reckoning for men in power, including disgraced film executive Harvey Weinstein. Since dozens of women publicly accused Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault, other survivors have come forward to describe misconduct by stars like Louis C.K., Kevin Spacey,Matt Lauer and more. The movement has garnered such momentum that Time even named “The Silence Breakers” its Person of the Year for 2017.

Hollywood stars also recently took a stand at the Emmys, where many wore blue ribbons to show support for the American Civil Liberties Union and the “Stand With the ACLU” initiative. Some also wore safety pins as a show of solidarity for marginalized groups after Donald Trump was elected president.

The 2018 Golden Globes air on Sunday, Jan. 7 at 8 p.m. Eastern.

In an interview with his Sky News TV on Thursday, media mogul Rupert Murdoch dismissed reports about sexual harassment at Fox News as “largely political because we’re conservative.”

When Sky News’ Ian King asked Murdoch if he thought the accusations have hurt Fox, Murdoch, who is executive co-chairman of 21st Century Fox, responded: “It’s all nonsense.” 

Murdoch did say there was “sort of” a problem with former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes — whom 10 women accused of harassment, costing Murdoch’s company $45 million to settle lawsuits related to the complaints.

“There was a problem with our chief executive, sort of, over the year — isolated incidents,” said Murdoch. “As soon as we investigated it, he was out of the place in hours, well, three or four days. And there has been nothing else since then.”

In fact, according to reports, it was one of Murdoch’s sons, James Murdoch, who wanted to boot Ailes immediately, against the wishes of his father and brother Lachlan. Ailes stepped down in July 2016 with a $40 million exit package.

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s firing in April over sexual harassment accusations provoking a $32 million settlement apparently slipped Murdoch’s mind in the Sky News interview. Host Eric Bolling was also ousted in late September for sending unsolicited, explicit photos to more than a dozen of his current and former colleagues.

CNN has reported that insurers will pay 21st Century Fox almost $90 million to cover the cost of settlements related to sexual harassment and racial discrimination.

In his interview, however, Murdoch was focused on the competition. “All the liberals are going down the drain. NBC is in deep trouble. CBS, their stars,” he said. NBC fired “Today” show host Matt Lauer last month after his history of sexual misconduct was made public, and CBS fired Charlie Rose over allegations of sexual misconduct.

Murdoch is running into problems with sexual harassment in the U.K. as well. In September, Britain put off 21st Century Fox’s $15 billion planned full takeover of Sky TV because of concerns over Fox’s “genuine commitment to broadcasting standards.” That decision followed British legislators’ calls to examine accusations of sexual harassment at Fox.

Murdoch’s interview focused on Disney’s deal to buy Fox News’ parent, 21st Century Fox, for $52.4 billion. But the Fox Broadcasting Company, including Fox News, won’t be part of the deal.

Asked if he was worried about running into trouble with antitrust laws in the U.S., Murdoch said he “shouldn’t have any problem at all ... in Washington.”

U.S. President Donald Trump called Murdoch on Thursday to congratulate him after the Disney deal was announced. The Justice Department, meanwhile, is suing to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner, which owns CNN, one of Trump’s favorite media targets. Bloomberg reported last month that Murdoch called AT&T’s CEO twice over the last few months to inquire if CNN would be up for sale.

A worker in the Chinese city of Nanjing claims a colleague has bested the facial recognition technology on her new iPhone X — twice.

The woman, identified only by her surname Yan, told the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corp. that her co-worker was able to get into both phones — her original as well as the new one Apple gave her as a replacement, reports the South China Morning Post. 

An Apple spokesman told HuffPost that he couldn’t confirm the details of the story, nor did he have enough information to determine what might have gone wrong with the phones. He suspected that both women may have used the phone during its “passcode training” and that the phones may have been essentially “taught” to recognize both faces.

The facial recognition software has run into some glitches. It can sometimes mistake twins or siblings, according to Apple. The phone, too, may not accurately identify children under the age of 13 because their faces are not as definitely formed as adults’, according to an Apple security “white paper” on the technology.

Apple hasn’t yet confirmed a case of an unrelated adult cracking the phone’s facial recognition software, according to the Apple spokesman. The company insists that the probability of a random person accessing someone else’s iPhone X using the Face ID passcode is 1 in 1 million, versus 1 in 50,000 for Touch ID. Phil Schiller, Apple’s vice president of product marketing, conceded in September: “Of course, the statistics are lowered if that person shares a close genetic relationship with you.”

Unless Apple technicians examine the Chinese phones, it’s unclear what happened. An added complication is that a Chinese company has reportedly begun manufacturing a clone of the iPhone X — with unknown facial recognition capabilities.

Who you choose to spend your life with is an incredibly important decision ― and sometimes, you realize the person you thought was “the one” isn’t the right choice anymore.

But that doesn’t stop people from staying put in dead-end relationships, said Sheryl Ziegler, a counselor and author of the forthcoming book Mommy Burnout: How to Reclaim Your Life and Raise Healthier Children in the Process.

“Sometimes, fear is the only reason a person stays in a relationship even when they know it’s over: They fear being alone or not finding someone else,” she told HuffPost. “If that’s the case for you, and your partner is more of a source of stress rather than comfort, it may be time to end the relationship.”

What are some of the signs that a relationship has run its course? Below, Ziegler and other marriage experts share eight red flags. 

1. You try to work out problems with your partner, but they never make an effort.

“I see couples in my office all the time complaining that they have problems communicating. One partner will say something like ‘I’ve told him hundreds of times not to come home late and he doesn’t listen. I just need help communicating it to him so he’ll understand.’ My response usually goes something like this: ‘Well, you’ve said it loud and clear just now. What do you think isn’t being understood?’ If you’ve said it over and over and if you’ve yelled and cried trying to get them to understand, then it’s time to move on. If they don’t understand it after all of that, they probably never will.” ―  Aaron Anderson, a couples therapist in Denver, Colorado

2. One of you had an affair ― or multiple affairs ― and isn’t remorseful about it. 

“Many couples enter relationships feeling confident that there are a few things they would absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, end a relationship over: affairs, addiction and physical or sexual abuse (the three A’s). I can tell you that infidelity is not and should not be a deal-breaker in relationships. Many couples can absolutely overcome sexual and emotional infidelity and rebuild a relationship that was better than it started at the altar. What is a sign that a relationship is ready to dissolve is when there is no sign of remorse or willingness to change after several attempts.” ― Laura Heck, a marriage and family therapist in Salt Lake City, Utah

3. You realize you don’t really like or respect your partner at their core.

“This is such a common reason to end a relationship. How could you possibly spend the next five years, much less the rest of your life, with someone you don’t admire? This may be a hard reality you need to confront. There could be a number of reasons why you’ve lost respect: Maybe you’ve been with this person for quite some time, but no one in your family or friend group really likes them ― and you’re starting to feel the same way. If you’re with a person who you don’t respect, it’s just not possible for your relationship to last long, much less grow and expand.” ―Gary Brown, a psychotherapist in Los Angeles 

4. You rarely have sex.

“This shift is often gradual: less hand-holding, less kisses goodbye, fewer nights cuddling on the couch or in bed, and before you know it, there is no more foreplay. Sex then becomes something you do in the dark, with little to no romance and you’re counting the minutes until it is over. You initially make excuses for the changes: You’re still on your period or have a migraine. You slowly start breaking your evening rituals like watching your shows together or talking about your day. You go to bed either early or late. Before you know it, you not only don’t have sex, you no longer engage in all the pre-sex buildup: being affectionate, communicating and sharing a sense of playfulness. All of it is gone.” ― Sheryl Ziegler

5. You’ve asked your partner to go to couples therapy but they refuse to go. 

“If you’ve been feeling stuck in a rut for a long time and have been crystal clear about needing a change ― perhaps you’ve suggested counseling ― and your partner does nothing, then your relationship is probably over. You may hope that things might change on their own, but your partner’s lack of interest is a clear sign that they don’t care. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result; if your partner clearly doesn’t want anything different, expecting something to change is often fruitless.” ― Aaron Anderson 

6. You’re fantasizing about another person.

“At some point, you may have become numb to the relationship. You no longer care to talk, you don’t even bother to fight and usually, sarcasm replaces the nasty words that used to come out of your mouth. Now, you’re condescending and find opportunities to point out when your partner is wrong or clueless. Then, you replace the anger with fantasies about another person in your life. One that is likely more attractive, smarter, more successful and probably better in bed. You find comfort in creating situations where you imagine this real or imagined other person in your life. It allows you to hold on to hope that you won’t be lonely if this relationship ends.” ― Sheryl Ziegler 

7. You’re in a high-conflict relationship. 

“If you can’t stop arguing and you have exhausted all other options to learn conflict management skills, it’s likely that your health, happiness and overall life satisfaction has taken a nose dive. It may be time to dissolve your relationship, especially if you have children. The good news? Research indicates that those in high-conflict marriages tend to increase their well-being post-divorce, especially women.” ― Laura Heck

8. Your big life goals no longer align.

“If you find yourself in a relationship where your basic wants, wishes, needs and life desires don’t really align, it’s time to move on. Let’s say you’ve always wanted children but now your partner is not so sure. If starting a family is a ‘must’ for you, this is not really something to compromise on ― it’s an obvious deal-breaker. Or it may be that he just wants to live together and you really want to get married. You could wait for years on end, and maybe it will work out, but if your partner is crystal clear that they are absolutely not into marriage, then you have your answer. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that they are going to change.” ― Gary Brown

Eight-year-old Christopher Bowen of Dallas has reportedly been hospitalized more than 300 times and undergone 13 major surgeries ― and he may not have needed any of it.

The arrest of Christopher’s mother last week has caused some of the strange details of his story to come to light. In 2014, when Christopher was 5, his mother, Kaylene Bowen-Wright, told CW33 TV that he had a rare life-threatening condition that affected his oxygen supply. She said he’d been diagnosed at age 2.

“Christopher has trouble breathing so basically, his lungs ― and body ― doesn’t get the oxygen it needs, so he gets tired,” she told CW33 TV. “He can’t play as long as the normal kids.”

The interview was conducted during a bike rally intended to raise $30,000 for Christopher’s care.

“We don’t know how long Christopher will live,” Bowen-Wright said.

The following year, a friend of Bowen-Wright’s used GoFundMe to raise $610 so Christopher could go to the beach. According to the fundraiser page, Christopher had been diagnosed with cancer and had just six months to live.

“I want him to build sand castles, walk on the beach and let the waves hit him as he plays with his family,” the organizer wrote.

Later, when Christopher was a kindergartner at White Rock Elementary School in Lake Highlands, a YouCaring campaign was organized by a group of friends and supporters. By the time it ended, the campaign had raised roughly $8,000 “to help young Christopher and his family as they struggle against a disease that is slowly ending his life.”

Bowen-Wright was quoted on the campaign page as saying, “Sometimes in the midst of a dark time, you receive unexpected blessings when your community and church rally around you and lift you up.”

While Bowen-Wright was allegedly carting her son, his oxygen tank and his wheelchair from doctor to doctor, Ryan Crawford, the boy’s father, was busy trying to convince Dallas County family court judges that Christopher was not actually sick, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Crawford claims that until recently, he had not been permitted to see his son since 2012.

“It was always the same story: ‘Christopher is dying. The father doesn’t need to be around because he doesn’t know to take care of him,’” Bowen-Wright would tell the judges, according to Crawford. “Every time I went to court, they made me feel like I was the worst human ever.”

Crawford claims Child Protective Services also ignored his suspicions. The agency reportedly claims to have no record of him contacting them.

Little did anyone know how fooled they all had been, according to CPS records obtained by the Star-Telegram.

The court documents indicate that CPS received a report from a doctor in November 2015, saying that testing had failed to find anything wrong with Christopher. The doctor, according to the report, suspected possible medical child abuse.

When CPS interviewed Bowen-Wright, she denied any wrongdoing. The case was closed.

In November of this year, CPS received another report from a different care provider. The report said Bowen-Wright told them she’d brought her son in for treatment because he’d had a seizure. However, an ECG machine did not indicate any unusual activity. The care provider further alleged that Bowen-Wright refused advice to wean her son off medications he was taking.

“I am very concerned that mother has moved from exaggerating symptoms to inducing symptoms,” the report read, according to the Star-Telegram. “If mother has given Chris something to induce a seizure, this is potentially fatal. At this point, I am very concerned for his welfare.”

An investigation was launched, and on Dec. 6 Dallas police arrested Bowen-Wright on charges of injury to a child with serious bodily injury, alleging that she caused Christopher’s mysterious maladies.

According to Bowen-Wright’s arrest warrant affidavit, investigators suspect she began abusing her son when he was just 11 days old. The documents allege that Christopher ― who was hooked up to an IV and oxygen at the time of his mother’s arrest ― does not have cancer and was put through repeated unnecessary medical visits, hospitalizations and procedures.

“Christopher’s history provided verbally by Ms. Kaylene Bowen-Wright paints a picture of a very sick child,” the affidavit reads. “The doctors do not find Christopher to be sick. Ms. Bowen-Wright has Christopher on oxygen, yet Christopher is fine without oxygen. Christopher is able to eat normally and does not need a feeding tube.”

Christopher has since been placed in foster care. His father is still fighting to gain custody of him.

“Out of everything that has happened, the worst thing you can do is put my children in foster care with strangers,” Crawford told the Star-Telegram. “I need my son in my life and my son needs me in [his] life.”

Friends and co-workers have set up a GoFundMe to help Crawford hire a new attorney.

Bowen-Wright, 34, is being held at the Dallas County Jail in lieu of a $150,000 bond. A court date has not yet been set.

Send David Lohr an email or follow him on Facebook and Twitter. 

A Salvadoran court upheld a 30-year jail sentence this week for a woman who was convicted of aggravated homicide after suffering what she said was a stillbirth.

Teodora Vasquez, 34, has already spent 10 years in prison over the death of her child. Her case is a painful reminder of the injustices women face under El Salvador’s draconian abortion laws, Amnesty International said Thursday, one day after Vasquez’s appeal was rejected. 

“Teodora’s tragic story is a sad illustration of everything that is wrong with the justice system in El Salvador, where human rights seem to be a foreign concept,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s Americas director. “Instead of punishing Teodora for being a woman, authorities in El Salvador must urgently take a hard look at their outrageous anti-abortion law and take immediate steps to repeal it.”

Vasquez reportedly experienced intense pain while at work in 2007, and called for an ambulance before fainting. She awoke in a pool of blood, surrounded by police officers, who were arresting her for aborting her baby. She was convicted the following year.

“The room was in tears when we heard the verdict,” said Amnesty’s El Salvador representative, Ina Strøm, who was in the courtroom. “The family is devastated. This is such a tragedy and the injustice is beyond words.”

Enacted in 1998, El Salvador’s total ban on abortion is among the strictest in the world. It does not exclude victims of rape or incest, or women whose lives are endangered by their pregnancies. Girls as young as 10 have been forced to become mothers. Those like Vasquez, who have miscarriages or stillbirths, are regularly prosecuted and sentenced to spend decades behind bars.

El Salvador is one of six countries worldwide where abortion is outlawed without exception.

Abortion carries a sentence of up to eight years in prison, but authorities can change the charge to aggravated homicide in cases where a fetus or newborn dies, according to the BBC. That charge carries a minimum of sentence of 30 years.

Vazquez is among 27 women who are currently imprisoned for abortion-related crimes after suffering miscarriages, stillbirths or pregnancy complications, Reuters reported, citing the Citizen Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion, a Salvadoran rights group.

In July, Salvadoran prosecutors sentenced Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz to 30 years in jail for committing aggravated homicide. The teenage rape survivor didn’t even know she was pregnant at the time of her miscarriage in April 2016.

The country’s criminalization of abortion has led many desperate women to seek out dangerous alternatives, a 2014 Amnesty investigation noted, including clandestine operations. Others have committed suicide.

The ban has also caused Salvadoran women to decline proper medical care when issues arise with their pregnancies, out of fear that their doctors will report them to authorities, as they are legally required to do.

“I was [bleeding] for just over two weeks. And I started to feel a little panicky because it was increasing. I was really afraid, because of all that going to see a doctor implied. The doctors have the power. The power to say: ‘I support you or I report you,’” one woman told Amnesty in 2013. “I was really, really afraid.”

As the Guardian reported, U.S.-based anti-abortion group Human Life International has been quietly providing funds to Sí a la Vida, a major Salvadoran advocate of the abortion ban, since 2000. Referring to the country’s anti-abortion stance in 2006, HLI’s then-president Rev. Thomas Euteneuer told the New York Times Magazine: “El Salvador is an inspiration.”

For reality TV fans, the Kardashians just released the equivalent to the “Avengers: Infinity War” trailer.

Months have gone by with nary a peep about Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner’s reported pregnancies from a family famous for over-sharing. But it looks like all that is about to change when “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” returns in January with a new batch of episodes. 

In a goosebumps-worthy promo clip released on Thursday, friends and family are gathering at what appears to be a party to announce that Khloe is expecting. In September, multiple outlets confirmed that she was pregnant with her first child with NBA star boyfriend, Tristan Thompson. 

″Did you not know,” Kim Kardashian asks a tearful Kris Jenner in the clip, before Khloe pulls in friend Malika Haaq and sister Kourtney for a hug. 

Someone else at the party exclaims, “What?! Oh my God!”

The trailer also touches on Rob Kardashian’s ongoing custody drama with ex-fiancée Blac Chyna, a tense meeting with Khloe and Kris’ boyfriend, Corey Gamble, and last, but not least, Kim pledging to “sue the shit” out of TMZ. 

Watch it all go down in the video above. 

Christine Jo Miller’s eyes were watering on her wedding day, but the tears weren’t because of joy.

No, the 23-year-old had a reaction to flowers she picked a day earlier for floral arrangements.

As a result, Miller’s white wedding dress contrasted with a red and bumpy rash on her face. Not that she saw it: Her eyes were swelled shut and she feared she might go blind.

“I was in so much pain,” Miller told Inside Edition. “Nobody knew what to do.”

When Miller married her college sweetheart, Jonathan, in September, she thought creating floral arrangements using flowers from her 29-acre plot of land near Lincoln, Nebraska, would be a nice touch.

One type of flower that caught Miller’s eye was snow-on-the-mountain, which is known for its lovely white blooms.

It’s also known for being poisonous, but Miller didn’t realize that until she went to wash her face the morning of her wedding, not realizing the sap residue was still on her hands from doing the floral arrangements from the night before.

She started breaking out, so much so that by 11:30 a.m., her eyes were so swollen that her mom took her to a nearby emergency clinic, according to the Omaha World-Herald.

Sadly, it was closed.

Ever the trooper, Miller put on her gown and went to the ceremony. She walked down the aisle to get hitched feeling absolutely terrible.

“I literally couldn’t see my husband when I was saying my vows because my vision went blurry,” she told HuffPost by email. “So blurry I passed out twice at my reception.”

The eye problems set off a chain reaction of other snafus.

“Due to all of this going on, and since I put my wedding dress on 20 minutes before walking down the aisle, I forgot to wear shoes at the forest wedding,” Miller said. “My veil fell out twice walking down the aisle, we forgot our rings, and our wedding song didn’t get played.”

The couple also skipped the unity portion of the ceremony because they forgot those items.

“Our pastor cut it short and married us in a hurry because of the pain I was in,” Miller said. “Literally my entire day was a mess hahaha.”

After the vows were exchanged, the Millers didn’t go to the reception. Instead, they went to the hospital to get medication for the bride.

Of course, there were troubles with that as well, thanks to insurance foul-ups because she was newly married with a new name, according to the Omaha World-Herald. 

Eventually, Miller received eye drops, pain medication and a steroid shot, and arrived at the reception three-and-a-half hours late.

“Everyone had already been done eating a while and were still awkwardly sitting at the tables,” she told HuffPost. “Nobody knew if it would be good or bad to update them. We thought they deserved to know why they were sitting in the same spot for so long and I wanted my wedding to keep going even though I wasn’t there.”

When the couple did arrive, Miller was no longer in her white wedding dress, instead wearing pajama pants and a shirt Jonathan found at Target that read “Bride.”

“I didn’t wear my dress into the reception mainly because I went fully blind and had been tripping over it since I couldn’t see where I was walking,” Miller explained.

The Millers did dance at the reception, but the bride said she wasn’t able to eat, drink or be merry.

“I laid underneath my grandparents table for a large portion of the night icing my eyeballs and crying,” Miller said.

“I was the scariest-looking person at my wedding,” she told Inside Edition.

Although there is video of the actual wedding, the photographer graciously allowed the couple to retake their pictures a week later when the bride was back to normal.

This time, the bouquet was hypoallergenic, according to Inside Edition. 

A Brooklyn teenager who had declined a man’s advances used her dying moments to identify him as her shooter, according to police.

Shemel Mercurius, 16, was watching over her 3-year-old cousin in a Brooklyn apartment on May 31, 2016, when Taariq Stephens, now 25, allegedly barged in and shot her with a submachine gun after a brief argument, according to authorities.

Former New York Police Officer Kyle Thomas Daly, who was among those responding to the shooting, gave an account of what Mercurius told police in testimony at Stephens’ murder trial on Monday.

“I put on gloves, laid her down and began rendering aid,” Daly said, according to The New York Daily News. “She regained consciousness and gave me her name and date of birth.”

Daly, who now works for a Long Island police department, said that the teen told a detective that Stephens wanted to date her but she wasn’t interested. She said she had met and exchanged numbers with Stephens at a child care center a week earlier, according to Daly.

He told the court that Mercurius, bloodied next to her crying cousin, drifted in and out of consciousness while an ambulance took 20 minutes to arrive. She later died at a local hospital.

Video footage presented at the trial shows Stephens forcing his way inside of the apartment, according to People. 

Lona Junien, Mercurius’ friend who was at the scene, testified about what she observed between the two.

“The person pushed her. The person said ‘Don’t ever lie to me.’ She was screaming, he took out the gun and shot her,” Junien testified, according to the Daily News.

Stephens has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces spend 25 years to life in prison for second-degree murder and weapons charges.

The brains behind the viral hit “Harlem Shake” are threatening legal action against Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for his use of the song in an advertisement for the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality rules.

After famed DJ Diplo tweeted at the song’s producer Harry Rodrigues ― a DJ better known as Baauer ― about Pai’s use of the song, Rodrigues tweeted on Thursday afternoon that he’d be “taking action.” 

In collaboration with conservative news outlet The Daily Caller, Pai released a video entitled “7 Things You Can Still Do On The Internet After Net Neutrality” that, at one point, features him dancing to the 2013 song. The video went out just one day before the FCC voted to repeal the Obama-era regulations currently in effect. 

Baauer gave a statement to Billboard Dance about the use of his song without his permission, saying that it “obviously comes as a surprise to me as it was just brought to my attention.”

“I want to be clear that it was used completely without my consent or council [sic]. My team and I are currently exploring every single avenue available to get it taken down. I support Net Neutrality like the vast majority of this country and am appalled to be associated with its repeal in anyway.” 

In addition to Baauer, the record label responsible for “Harlem Shake,” Mad Decent, also tweeted that they do not “approve of the message contained therein” and would be pursuing “further legal action if it is not removed.”

As of publication, the video has been removed from Youtube. It is still live on The Daily Caller’s Facebook page.

Donald Trump Jr. managed to spread some fake news Thursday on Twitter. 

The president’s son used the platform to criticize supporters of net neutrality after the Federal Communications Commission repealed the Title II protections that kept the internet a public utility. Unfortunately, Trump Jr. doesn’t seem to have all the facts in order. 

“I would pay good money to see all those people complaining about Obama’s FCC chairman voting to repeal #NetNeutality actually explain it in detail,” Trump Jr. wrote. “I’d also bet most hadn’t heard of it before this week. #outrage.” 

In fact, President Donald Trump designated Ajit Pai the FCC chairman in January. Former President Barack Obama appointed Pai to a five-year term on the commission in 2012, but Democrats fought against his term’s renewal last year. The commission voted to repeal the net neutrality protections in a 3-2 vote, with Pai voting in the majority. 

Net neutrality rules were initially put in place to ensure that internet service providers, ISPs, treated all information and content across the web equally. Repealing the Title II protections would allow internet service providers, such as Verizon or Comcast, to decide what content would be blocked or offered at slower speeds in favor of the company’s own content. 

Critics of Pai’s repeal effort fear that ISPs will discriminate against internet traffic and charge companies such as Netflix or Amazon exorbitant fees to give consumers efficient access to those services.

(HuffPost’s parent company, Oath, is owned by Verizon. HuffPost is also represented by the Writers Guild of America, East, which supports net neutrality and opposed its repeal). 

Millions of Americans had protested Pai’s plan to repeal net neutrality regulations. Citizens have protested to keep the rules in place, in addition to calling offices of public officials to protect the internet. Congress could nullify the FCC decision with a Congressional Review Act resolution, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said Thursday that he would introduced one, but it’s considered a long shot.

More than 20 U.S. senators attempted to delay Thursday’s vote after suspecting that the FCC was flooded with fraudulent comments, especially those in favor of the repeal. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opened an investigation, which showed that up to 2 million comments were submitted under false names.

Schneiderman announced that he would sue to prevent the rollbacks on Thursday. In a YouTube video, Schneiderman criticized the FCC’s lack of assistance in his office’s investigation and called the vote a travesty.

“Today’s vote also follows a public comment process that was deeply corrupted, including 2 million comments that stole the identities of real people,” Schneiderman said in his video. “This is a crime under New York law ― and the FCC’s decision to go ahead with the vote makes a mockery of government integrity and rewards the very perpetrators who scammed the system to advance their own agenda.” 

Language in this story and its headline has been amended to clarify that while former President Barack Obama appointed Ajit Pai to the FCC, it was President Donald Trump who designated Pai the agency chairman.

By now, you might have seen Netflix’s made-for-streaming Christmas romantic comedy, “A Christmas Prince.” It’s a holiday rom-com in the tradition of countless Hallmark Christmas movies, crossed with “The Princess Diaries” and “The Prince and Me.” It’s short, it’s cheaply made, it’s deeply satisfying without being terribly deep.

The heroine, Amber, is a hardworking young editor who’s desperate to be taken seriously as a real journalist. She’s assigned to cover what looks to be a looming abdication by Prince Edward, the heir to the throne of the fictional European nation of Aldovia (which presumably shares a border with Genovia and enjoys warm diplomatic relations with Zamunda). She’s out of her depth on her first big story, but Amber is plucky and has not been taught the basic tenets of journalistic ethics, so she poses as a tutor to Prince Edward’s precocious younger sister, Emily, to get her big scoop. Along the way, a nefarious royal cousin tries to steal the throne from Edward, Amber teaches Emily how to be a down-to-earth cut-loose little princess and Edward, of course, falls for Amber. The movie ends with him ascending to the throne, proposing to her, and promising that even though she’ll be a princess she can still keep her journalism career. Sure.

There may be no job more common among romantic comedy heroines than journalist. In the last few decades, some of the best romantic comedies — “When Harry Met Sally…”, “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Morning Glory” among them — have had heroines who work in the fourth estate. Some of the worst ones — “The Ugly Truth,” “Rumor Has It,” “Sex and the City” and its sequel — have as well. Then there’s “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” (women’s magazine columnist), “Never Been Kissed” (metro reporter), “Knocked Up” (E! Entertainment reporter), “13 Going on 30” (women’s magazine editor). And “The Devil Wears Prada.” And “Going The Distance.” And “Trainwreck.” And “Top 5.” To say nothing of rightly beloved classics like “Sleepless in Seattle,” in which the heroine works for the Baltimore Sun, and “Broadcast News,” in which the heroine works in broadcast news.

Journalism has been a standard profession for romantic comedy heroines for decades, and one of the genre’s best heroines, Hildy Johnson in 1940′s “His Girl Friday,” is a wisecracking, hard-charging, natural-born reporter. This isn’t so surprising: Moviegoers understand the profession; they have regular contact with its product, and for all the long hours and layoffs and other assorted indignities, it still carries a whiff of cosmopolitan excitement. Besides, writers tend to write what they know, and one thing screenwriters know is lots of people who work in media.

This year has been marked by good-faith scrutiny and bad-faith attacks on the credibility of the press. It has also been marked by the still-only-partial revelation of the extent to which women in the workplace are seen as ornamental, not essential ― a belief of which rampant sexual harassment is only one symptom. As we curl up on the couch and turn on a favorite rom-com after a long day of learning — often from female journalists! — about the predations of powerful men, we should ask ourselves a question: What are these movies teaching us about women, journalism, work and love?

With few exceptions, rom-com journalist heroines are good at their jobs. They love their jobs, even those who don’t spend a lot of screen time actually doing them. And with few exceptions, rom-com journalist heroines use their work for two purposes: to get a man, or to get a man back.

In “Trainwreck,” Amy Schumer’s character dates and falls for the man she’s assigned to profile for her men’s magazine. In “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” women’s magazine columnist Andie is assigned to date a man, drive him away and then write about how she did it. In “13 Going on 30,” Jennifer Garner’s Jenna usesa big redesign of her women’s magazine to get close to a photographer she has a crush on. In “The Ugly Truth,” Katherine Heigl’s character declares her love for her co-host on live television. And in “Sleepless in Seattle,” Meg Ryan’s Annie uses her newspaper’s database to look up the personal information of a man whose voice she heard on the radio late at night one time, and then flies across the country to visit him at his home.

Good journalism occasionally happens along the way: Bridget Jones lands an exclusive interview with a human rights activist (because the man she’s interested in sets it up for her). But that’s not the journalism we’re asked to cheer for. The professional accomplishments the audience is asked to applaud are the ones that fuse the personal with the professional in sometimes disturbing ways.

In “Never Been Kissed,” Drew Barrymore’s Josie, a copy editor, gets her big chance to be an investigative reporter when she goes undercover at a high school, posing as a student. In her time undercover, she falls for her teacher, and the teacher, who thinks she is 17, falls for her. Her editor presses her to expose him in print, but she refuses. The story she writes, in the end, is not about a public school teacher crossing boundaries with one of his students. Instead, she uses her big shot at a front-page story to engineer a reconciliation with that man.

“A certain teacher was hurt on my path to self-discovery,” Josie writes in her final copy, neglecting to mention that while she was discovering herself, she was also discovering that a grown man had been getting way too close to someone he believed to be a minor and a student in his charge. “Although this article may serve as a step, it in no way makes up for what I did to him.” As a reminder, what she did “to him” was her job, but she did it badly, because she fell in love with a source who might be a criminal, and then didn’t run the story she’d found. “To this man: you know who you are. I am so sorry. And I would like to add one more thing. I think I am in love with you.”

To get him back, she asks him in her article to meet her on the pitcher’s mound at the school baseball team’s big game, and kiss her. Her editor and the paper’s editor-in-chief show up, and the EIC is delighted to see so many readers in attendance, invested in the personal life of one of his reporters. The giant exposé the paper didn’t publish is never mentioned again, another explosive story about a predatory male quietly dropped by the men in charge.

It’s not only rom-com journalists who are depicted as easily distracted from their work: In this genre, it happens to heroines who are doctors and lawyers, too. And as rom-com heroines are often relegated to distinctly gendered jobs — teacher, baker, wedding planner, children’s book shop owner — there is something heartening about watching movies in which women work in an often male-dominated field like journalism. But not all representation is good representation — particularly not when the professional ambitions of women are depicted as an embarrassingly earnest youthful phase, to be discarded as soon as the right man comes along.

At the beginning of these movies, women journalists are hungry to report “real” news and to be taken seriously as journalists. By the end, they’re confessing their love on live TV or running their heartbroken apologies in print. In “A Christmas Prince,” Amber’s blog post about “the real story” of her time in Aldovia is so powerful that it brings the prince to her door on New Year’s Eve to propose. He then swears that he’d never ask her to give up her career, but in the magic moment of the proposal in the snow, it’s never explained to us how Amber will keep her career while also being a full-time princess. The lesson is plain: A big professional break isn’t enough of a happy ending. For that, you need a man. And once you get him, the career is kind of optional.

The blurring of boundaries for these heroines is telling. Their work becomes a route to romantic happiness, a means to an end rather than the end itself. Sometimes it happens by the heroine’s design, and sometimes it happens by accident; regardless of why or how, it happens. In a moment when a public debate is raging about what is and isn’t appropriate behavior in a professional environment — what’s romance and what’s harassment? — the only genre made for and about women hasn’t helped matters. Rom-coms assure us that no amount of inappropriate workplace behavior is truly inappropriate if you’re in love by the time the credits roll. Katherine Heigl’s employee watches as a stranger switches on Heigl’s vibrating panties with a remote control, triggering an orgasm during a business dinner? That’s fine; the audience knows they’re meant for each other, and the happy ending proves them right.

Much fun has been poked at Amber’s empty story notes in “A Christmas Prince.” A shot of her computer screen reveals that many of her notes ― “I have to find out!!”; “I still don’t know the real story”; “I have to dig deeper” ― essentially amount to “I should probably do my job, huh.” So she should. But she uses unethical means to do it, and once it’s done, she implicitly removes herself from journalism in the name of love.

If the last two months have taught us anything, it’s that real women’s careers are too often made collateral damage, belittled or eliminated by a culture that considers men’s work to be far more valuable. And, these last two months have shown us that women journalists, when they do their jobs well, can reshape the world for the better. It would be nice if romantic comedies showed us the same thing.