• In an interview with the BBC, Billie Eilish said she likes "to feel more masculine than feminine."
• "I feel the most powerful when I feel masculine in my life," Eilish said.
• The artist also spoke about her evolving style.

In a new interview with the BBC, Billie Eilish spoke candidly about her relationship with fashion and feeling more masculine than feminine.

"I feel the most powerful when I feel masculine in my life, and I also can find power in femininity, it's kind of a balance of both," Eilish told the BBC's Megha Mohan in a video interview for the BBC's "100 Women" list, published on Monday.

Eilish said she feels the most herself when she's presenting as masculine overall, and that it goes beyond style.

"Like depending on how I walk and stand and my clothes, and my face and my jewelry and my fingers, just everything that I am day to day. I like to feel more masculine than feminine," she said. "It just makes me feel better, which I struggled with for a long time because I wanted to feel feminine and like it but I just didn't really." 

Eilish also talked about incorporating more femininity in her style in a way that still makes her feel comfortable. The Grammy award-winning singer discussed the outfit she was wearing in the BBC video as something she wouldn't have worn when she was younger; Eilish donned a fitted graphic long sleeve with layered chunky silver necklaces for the occasion.

"Like right now, I'm wearing a tighter shirt and I'm wearing a more low-cut shirt," she said. "The older me would have been like 'oh please don't,' but I like it, and it makes me feel good now, and it's just the balance of the two."

Billie Eilish wore Burberry to the 2019 American Music Awards. Foto: Steve Granitz/Getty Images

Eilish has changed up her style in recent years, going from baggy T-shirts to ball gowns

In May 2021, Eilish appeared on the cover of British Vogue in a rose-gold corset and latex ensemble — a departure from her usual loose-fitted clothing. 

"She is a continuously evolving artist with a new vision and interpretation of herself in terms of femininity," Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele said about the artist in Eilish's British Vogue feature. 

At the time, while promoting her sophomore album, "Happier Than Ever," Eilish had briefly gone blonde and was opting for form-fitting silhouettes and soft colors more conventionally associated with femininity, as Insider's Callie Ahlgrim reported.

In the same month, at the 2021 Met Gala, Eilish channeled Marilyn Monroe in an Oscar de la Renta ball gown with a 15-foot train.

As Ahlgrim reported, the singer also spoke about her style evolution in an interview with Highsnobiety earlier in December.

"People saw me as this 15-year-old, a kid, who wore this kind of stuff, looked this kind of way, acted this kind of way, said this kind of way. I felt like I couldn't change. That's why I went so far to the other side," she told Highsnobiety's Willa Bennett, referencing her style transformation.

"I was trying to prove, 'Hey, fuck you guys, I can do whatever I want.' Now I can look really masculine if I want, and really feminine if I want, and it's not gonna be a fucking headline," she continued to Highsnobiety. "It's not that you wear one thing, and that's your new style — you fucking keep wearing a bunch of shit."

• A judge dismissed a suit against Mohammed bin Salman in connection to Jamal Khashoggi's death.
• The suit was filed by Khashoggi's fiancée, who accused MBS of ordering his death to silence him. 
• Khashoggi was murdered after entering a Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. 

A US federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, for the death of Washington Post journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. 

Khashoggi disappeared after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, to obtain documents related to his upcoming marriage. It was later revealed that a group of Saudi assassins ambushed him inside the consulate, strangling him before dismembering and disposing of his body.

The following month, the CIA concluded that MBS ordered Khashoggi's killing. 

The lawsuit was filed by Khashoggi's fiancée two years after his death, and accused MBS of ordering Khashoggi's death in order to silence him. 

The Justice Department made the controversial argument for Crown Prince Mohammed's immunity in a court filing last month.

The Justice Department contended that since MBS is prime minister of Saudi Arabia he is "the sitting head of government" of the kingdom and "is immune from this suit."

This story is developing.

• California authorities have arrested a man who punched a fast-food employee, taking out her eye.
• Isaac White-Carter faces felony charges of mayhem and aggravated assault causing great bodily injury.
• Bianca Palomera, the Habit Burger employee, said the man had been bullying a boy.

Police in Antioch, California, have arrested a man accused of punching a fast-food employee in the face, causing her to lose her right eye, after she defended a young boy from being bullied.

Isaac White-Carter, 20, was arrested on Monday and faces felony charges of mayhem and aggravated assault causing great bodily injury, the Antioch Police Department said in a statement. It's unclear whether White-Carter has made a plea or retained an attorney.

Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe said in a video statement that 19-year-old Habit Burger employee Bianca Palomera had been "viciously assaulted" on November 12 and that White-Carter landed the blow that eventually caused Palomera to lose her eye.

Palomera said in her Fox affiliate interview that the incident began when she saw a man enter the Habit Burger and immediately begin bullying the boy. She intervened, and surveillance footage obtained from the fast food restaurant showed the assailant punching Palomera at least twice.

"I just remember grabbing my eye — I thought I was crying at first," Palomera told local Fox affiliate KTVU FOX. "But then after, I saw I had blood dripping down my shirt and down my cheek."

The alleged assault on Palomera is just the latest in a series of recent attacks against fast-food workers nationwide. A number of news stories in recent months have documented incidents in which employees — often young people — have been verbally and physically abused, and even threatened with weapons. Often, the attacks stemmed from disputes over fast-food orders.

In Antioch, the same city Palomera was attacked in, a 16-year-old Jack in the Box employee was recently slammed to the ground and stomped on by a couple who complained about a hair in their food. Over the summer, three customers trashed a Manhattan restaurant, threw glass bottles and a metal stool at employees, and even threatened one worker with a stun gun.

In June, two women complaining about a problem with their order began repeatedly punching a Steak n' Shake worker in Tampa, Florida. And a 17-year-old Burger King employee in Wyoming, Michigan, was punched, kicked, and body-slammed by a customer who was furious over his soda cup being overfilled.

In Palomera's case, Thorpe said the Antioch Police Department's Special Operations Unit and the US Marshals had been searching for White-Carter for weeks before finally arresting arresting him on December 5.

"Bianca was doing nothing more than standing up for a kid who had special needs," Thorpe said. "And today, she only has one eye. In my book, Bianca is a hero."

Thorpe said he will be bestowing a key to the city to Palomera in a ceremony on December 13. 

• Elon Musk confirmed the firing of another high-ranking Twitter official: deputy general counsel James Baker. 
• Musk accused Baker of possibly playing a role in suppressing "information important to the public dialogue." 
• Matt Taibbi, who tweeted Friday's "Twitter Files" thread, accused Baker of secretly vetting the files.

Elon Musk confirmed that he fired another high-ranking Twitter official on Tuesday. 

In a tweet, Musk said Twitter's deputy general counsel, James Baker, was dismissed from the company "in light of concerns about Baker's possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue." 

The revelation about Baker's firing comes as journalist Matt Taibbi, who writes the substack newsletter TK News, tweeted a supplemental note to his original "Twitter Files" thread, accusing Baker of allegedly vetting the information before it was passed along without informing Twitter's new management. 

Musk said that when he asked Baker to explain why he had reviewed the Twitter File materials before they were published, "his explanation was… unconvincing." 

James Baker did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The "Twitter Files," which were tweeted by Taibbi on Friday with the approval of Musk, revealed some of the inner workings of Twitter's content moderation practices, including the supposed suppression of a 2020 story about President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden's laptop.

Taibbi's "Twitter Files" thread showed the 2020 Biden presidential campaign asking Twitter to remove posts depicting nude photos and videos of the president's son, which are already in violation of Twitter's revenge porn policy, and Twitter officials agreeing to their removal.

Taibbi has promised to reveal additional "Twitter Files" material in conjunction with journalist Bari Weiss, a former op-ed writer for The New York Times. 

Baker's firing comes a little more than one month since Musk took over as the new owner of Twitter. Upon taking control, Musk immediately fired Twitter's upper management, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.  

• Amid tensions with China, the US military is working on new concepts to fight a war in the Pacific.
• The Navy and Marines worked on one of them, the "lightning carrier," for several months this year.
• While not a full-size carrier, a "lightning carrier" is better than China's flattops, a US admiral says.

US officials have warned that China might try to capture Taiwan by force before the end of the decade.

The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but views the island as a breakaway province, and tensions between Beijing and Washington as well as the ongoing focus on the war in Ukraine have raised concerns about how the US and its allies would respond to a conflict in the Pacific.

If there is a clash with China over Taiwan, the navies and air forces of the countries involved would shoulder most of the operational burden.

The US Navy understands that and is working on contingencies and new concepts that would allow it to get the most out of its ships and aircraft to counter China's rapidly expanding naval and air forces.

The Lighting Carrier concept

At an event hosted by the US Naval Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in October, Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commanding officer of the US Navy's 7th Fleet, talked about one of the ways the Navy is working to expand its firepower in the region.

Over the summer, the Navy and the Marine Corps continued experimenting with the "Lighting Carrier" concept, which envisions US Navy amphibious assault ships stocked with US Marine Corps F-35B fighter jets to project power as part of a more distributed force.

USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship designed to carry Marines, helicopters, and vertical-takeoff aircraft, spent several months this year sailing with more than dozen F-35Bs, operating like a light aircraft carrier than a standard amphibious ship.

A light aircraft carrier embarks with fewer jets than a fleet aircraft carrier — as many as 20, compared to more than 50 on a fleet carrier — but it costs much less and is more versatile.

Because of that, Tripoli's commanding officer refers to the configuration as an "assault carrier" rather than "lighting carrier," according to Thomas, whose command is responsible for US Navy operations in the western Pacific.

"One day you can have F-35Bs on the flight deck. The next day you can have MV-22s and you can be putting Marines at the shore, and so it just is a very versatile instrument," Thomas said of the lightning carrier.

The Navy is still experimenting with how to integrate the lighting carrier with "a full-size carrier" and its carrier strike group, which is composed of a carrier, escort ships for defense and resupply, and at least one submarine. Thomas said the Navy had two of its nuclear-powered carriers operating with Tripoli during the Valiant Shield exercise in June.

Interestingly, Thomas also said that an amphibious assault ship, designated an LHA, in the lighting-carrier configuration is much more capable than the two aircraft carriers that China has in service.

"I will note that LHA with 14 F-35Bs is much more capable than either of the PRC's current carriers, both from a sortie-creation perspective as well as just a sheer capability," Thomas said.

The F-35B Lighting II is the short-takeoff and vertical-landing variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a fifth-generation fighter with advanced capabilities. In addition to being a STOVL jet, the F-35B's array of sensors allow it to act as a battlefield hub, relaying information to friendly forces across a wide area.

"There is no comparison between a J-15 and an F-35B," Thomas said, referring to China's main carrier aircraft.

A lightning carrier also allows allies and partners "to see the capability you can bring with the F-35Bs on the flattop," Thomas said, pointing to the UK, which sent a carrier embarked with F-35Bs to the Pacific last year, and to Japan, which is converting two helicopter carriers to operate F-35Bs.

China has built and launched three aircraft carriers over the past decade, reflecting the Chinese Communist Party's heavy investment in modernizing its military, relying in part on espionage to close its technological gaps with the US.

China's People's Liberation Army remains much less capable than the US military, but it is reaching parity in numbers. It now has the world's largest navy and the third-largest aviation force.

Beijing has signaled that it wants to reshape the existing international order to advance its regional and global ambitions and that it's willing to confront the US to do it. A move to absorb Taiwan, a top priority for Beijing, could very well escalate into a clash with the US and its allies across the Indo-Pacific.

In such a conflict, the lighting carrier would help the US Navy and Marine Corps spread out their forces, increasing their likelihood of survival and improving their ability take on multiple Chinese threats at once.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. He is working toward a master's degree in strategy and cybersecurity at the Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies.

• Elon Musk reportedly arranged bedrooms at Twitter's headquarters, sources told Forbes.
• The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection is launching an investigation into the reports.
• "We need to make sure the building is being used as intended," a department representative told KQED.

On Tuesday morning, Twitter employees arrived at their San Francisco headquarters to see a startling new development at the office: beds, nightstands, and comfortable armchairs.

Overnight, Musk had converted sections of Twitter's headquarters into bedrooms for "hardcore" staffers, according to Forbes. Musk was showing his support for employees who were so committed to their work they were ready to sleep at the office. 

Sources familiar with the matter told Forbes there were anywhere between 4 to 8 bedrooms per floor that looked "comfortable." 

Now, the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection is launching an investigation into the reports of Twitter's redesign, according to a tweet from Ted Goldberg, a senior editor at KQED, San Francisco's public radio station. 

"We need to make sure the building is being used as intended," a representative for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection told KQED, according to Golberg. 

Representatives for both Twitter and the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection were both not immediately available for comment.

• Trump Organization was found criminally liable for tax fraud committed by two company executives.
• Donald Trump denounced the jury outcome and claimed the trial was a "political witch hunt."
• The former president said he plans to appeal the results.

Donald Trump lamented that it's hard to be a "Trump" in New York City after a Manhattan jury found the former president's real-estate empire criminally liable of tax fraud on Tuesday.

"New York City is a hard place to be 'Trump,' as businesses and people flee our once Great City," the former President said in a statement.

The Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud on Tuesday after a Manhattan jury deliberated for a total of 10 hours, putting a close to a six-week trial. The company now faces up to $1.6 million in penalties at its sentencing on January 13.

In the statement, Trump said he was disappointed with the verdict and plans to appeal the decision.

Two top executives at the organization are at the center of the conviction: ex-CFO Allen Weisselberg and payroll executive Jeffrey McConney.

In August, Weisselberg pled guilty to 15 counts of tax fraud and other financial crimes and admitted to conspiring with his colleague McConney.

Both men however have denied that the organization stood to benefit

This story is developing. Check back for more information. 

• An Atlanta NLRB director found merit to allegations that Apple violated labor law.
• The allegations included that Apple held captive audience meetings, interrogated workers, and made coercive statements.
• The NLRB said a formal complaint will be issued against Apple if it doesn't settle the charges.

The National Labor Relations Board said Apple violated federal law at an Atlanta retail location in relation to union efforts at the store.

The board's regional director for Atlanta found merit to allegations of captive audience meetings, coercive statements, and interrogation, Kayla Blado, an NLRB spokesperson, told Insider.

Blado said the regional director will issue a formal complaint if Apple doesn't settle the charges, which would lead to a hearing in front of NLRB's Administrative Law Judge. Apple would be able to appeal any ruling from an NLRB judge, and such complaints can eventually make their way to federal court.

Apple, which did not respond to Insider's request for comment, has previously denied wrongdoing in a complaint with similar allegations concerning a New York Apple Store.

The Communications Workers of America, the union that filed an unfair labor practice report against Apple in May, accused the company of holding mandatory meetings at its location in the Atlanta Cumberland Mall that discouraged union membership, a press release from the group said.

"Apple executives think the rules don't apply to them," Tom Smith, organizing director of the CWA said in the press release. "Holding an illegal forced captive audience meeting is not only union-busting, but an example of psychological warfare. We commend the NLRB for recognizing captive audience meetings for exactly what they are: a direct violation of labor rights." 

Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the NLRB, urged in a memo in April that the NLRB should find mandatory meetings, where employees are forced to listen to an employer speak about their labor rights, a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. As Bloomberg notes, successfully arguing this in a case against a company would represent a change in precedent, as the meetings have previously not been considered a violation of the law.

Apple's retail chief, Deirdre O'Brien, told workers in May that they have a right to unionize, but they also have a right to decline union membership, Bloomberg reports. The company's relationship with its employees is based on "open and collaborative direct engagement," she said in a video address to staffers, according to the report.

"And I worry about what it would mean to put another organization in the middle of our relationship," she said, per Bloomberg. "An organization that doesn't have a deep understanding of Apple or our business, and most importantly, one that I do not believe shares our commitment to you."

CWA said in its press release that the evidence of anti-union practices at the Apple store in Atlanta "affirms that mandatory meetings to discourage union memberships are considered a direct violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which could help set a precedent for future infringements on workers' rights."

The Atlanta Apple Store in Cumberland Mall became the first Apple retail location to file for a union election in April. The employees in Atlanta eventually withdrew their call for a union vote days before the election, alleging intimidation from Apple. 

Apple's Penn Square store in Oklahoma City and its store in Townson, Maryland have both voted to unionize. The CWA has also filed unfair labor reports related to the Oklahoma City store against Apple that it's waiting to hear back about from the NLRB.

• AST SpaceMobile deployed a 693-square-foot communications satellite into orbit called BlueWalker 3.
• Astronomers say it's as bright as some of the brightest stars, and warn it could impact their work.
• The company plans to orbit hundreds of others to provide a space-based broadband network.

In November, AST SpaceMobile unfurled an apartment-sized satellite complete with solar panels and a giant antenna into low Earth orbit.

It is now one of the brightest objects in the sky, outshining stars, the International Astronomical Union said in a statement last week.

—Dr. Jessie Christiansen (@aussiastronomer) November 28, 2022

The 693-square-foot satellite, BlueWalker 3, is designed to provide cell phone service from orbit to Earth. AST SpaceMobile bills it as the "largest-ever commercial communications array deployed in low Earth orbit."

It's one of more than 100 satellites the company plans to launch in the next two years in order to form a constellation-like fleet of satellites moving together.

The IAU shared images that show the bright trail the giant satellite leaves across the sky:

At its maximum brightness, the satellite was almost as bright as Antares and Spica — the 15th and 16th brightest stars in the night sky, respectively — according to observations from IAU astronomers.

Astronomers are also concerned about the potential for radio interference from these "cell phone towers in space," which the IAU warned could disrupt radio astronomy research.

"We are eager to use the newest technologies and strategies to mitigate possible impacts to astronomy," AST SpaceMobile said in a statement shared with Insider. "We are actively working with industry experts on the latest innovations, including next-generation anti-reflective materials."

"We are also engaged with NASA and certain working groups within the astronomy community to participate in advanced industry solutions, including potential operational interventions," the statement read.

Satellite debris can clog our view of the cosmos and create hazards for spacecraft

Over 5,500 satellites already litter low-Earth orbit, according to a recent report by the US's Government Accountability Office. Some estimates suggest 58,000 satellites will be launched by 2030, mostly driven by swarms of satellite constellations.

Leading the way is SpaceX, which already maintains more than 3,000 satellites and may top 12,000 in the coming decade to provide low-cost internet to remote locations.

The mounting number of satellites launched into orbit also adds to dicey close encounters that happen with other orbital debris, such as defunct satellites, hunks of rocket parts, and spacecraft. In October, the International Space Station had swerve to avoid collision with a piece of Russian satellite debris.

Astronomers are also concerned about how satellite constellations contribute to the loss to "humanity's ability to experience the natural night sky," according to the IAU statement.

Already, pristine night skies are diminishing due to light pollution from satellites and other human sources. A September 2021 study found that global light pollution from satellites increased by 49% from 1992 to 2017.

When we look up at night sky, many of the bright lights might not be stars — but satellites.

• The Lensa app creates face-changing effects using machine learning and photos uploaded by users.
• Some users have received images of themselves portrayed in the nude thanks to AI-generated edits.
• The company says Lensa can be tricked into making nudes but some users say they didn't upload NSFW images.

The trending Lensa app — currently the top photo app in the Apple and Google Play stores — generates artistic edits based on user-uploaded reference photos, but its machine-learning technology appears to be creating unintentional nudes of its users.

"Ok so I put my hottest 20 pics into lensa instead of just the first 20 selfies I could find & it came back with a bunch of ai-generated nudes," one user wrote on Twitter. "To be clear, NONE of the photos I submitted included nudity, which the app specifically prohibits!"

That sentiment was echoed by dozens of others, mostly women, saying the app had automatically generated sexualized or outright nude photos of them, despite avoiding not-safe-for-work reference photos in their uploads.

While Lensa parent company Prisma Lab's CEO and co-founder Andrey Usoltsev told TechCrunch such images "can't be produced accidentally" by the app, he said it could be provoked to create nude images through "intentional misconduct," such as uploading nudes against the terms of service (which prohibit uploading content that is "obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, suggestive" or otherwise sexualized).

Though it is unclear how often the app generates nude imagery without prompting, multiple users report this was the case for them. 

"Strange thing is I didn't submit any nudes since it would go against this Lensa app's policy yet it ended up generating nudes anyway???" another user posted on Twitter.

Of particular concern among some users are whether the app somehow accessed photos from internal storage that hadn't been uploaded and if the app's privacy policy allows data generated by the app to be used by third-party companies like Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.

"Lensa users: Did you receive a highly sexualized image in your avatar package?" one troubled user wrote on Twitter. "I received a topless, full-frontal nudity image in my package, and I'm concerned. I'm worried about whether the app accessed other images on my phone and about the rights to that image."

Usoltsev told TechCrunch the tech being used to generate the photo edits is learning as it goes and — though it has some content moderation practices — can still be outsmarted by users or act in unpredictable ways, resulting in the output of nude edits.

"We specify that the product is not intended for minors and warn users about the potential content. We also abstain from using such images in our promotional materials," Usoltsev told TechCrunch. "To enhance the work of Lensa, we are in the process of building the NSFW filter. It will effectively blur any images detected as such. It will remain at the user's sole discretion if they wish to open or save such imagery."

Representatives for Prisma Labs did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.