Chris Pratt revealed opened up his early days in the industry as he revealed that he almost went by a different name.

The 46-year-old actor said he once seriously thought about going with Christo, a nickname he got while working at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in Maui.

His name tag had the last letters rubbed off, so it just said Christo and everyone at work started calling him that.

He told the story on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz.

Pratt said the nickname stuck with him for a while and he even considered keeping it when he moved to Los Angeles to chase his acting dreams.

In the end, the Jurassic World actor kept his real name as his first role came in 2000 in a short film called Cursed Part 3 after director Rae Dawn Chong spotted him at the restaurant.

Pratt also talked about artificial intelligence in movies where he criticised the AI actress Tilly Norwood, saying that he doesn’t think machines can replace real actors.

However, he called it fake and said human talent will always matter no matter what.

Whereas Tilly’s creator, Eline van der Velden, defended while saying that the AI was made for creative tools like puppets or animation, a new way to explore stories without replacing real performers.

• USS Abraham Lincoln moves from Asia-Pacific: US officials.
• Say other assets to arrive in ME in coming days.
• Trump says Iran ‘can’t do the nuclear’.

WASHINGTON: A US military aircraft carrier strike group and other assets will arrive in the Middle East region in the coming days, two US officials said on Thursday, even as President Donald Trump voiced hopes of avoiding new military action against Iran.

US warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, several destroyers and fighter aircraft, started moving from the Asia-Pacific last week as tensions between Iran and the United States soared following a severe crackdown on protests across Iran in recent months.

One of the officials said additional air defence systems were also being considered for the Middle East. The United States often increases troop levels in the region at moments of heightened tension, something experts note can be entirely defensive in nature.

However, the US military staged a major build-up last summer ahead of its June strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme, and later boasted about how it kept its intention to strike a secret.

Trump had repeatedly threatened to intervene against Iran over the recent killings of protesters there, but demonstrations dwindled last week and Trump’s rhetoric on Iran has since eased. He has shifted his focus to other geopolitical issues, including his pursuit of Greenland.

On Wednesday, Trump said he hoped there would not be further US military action in Iran, but said the United States would act if Tehran resumed its nuclear programme.

“They can’t do the nuclear,” Trump told CNBC in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, referring to major US air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025. “If they do it, it’s going to happen again.”

It has now been at least seven months since the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, last verified Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium. Its own guidance says such checks should be carried out monthly.

Iran must file a report to the IAEA on what happened at the sites struck by the United States and on nuclear material believed to have been there, including an estimated 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% weapons-grade level. That is enough material, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear bombs, according to an IAEA yardstick.

It remains unclear whether protests in Iran could surge again. The demonstrations began on December 28 as modest protests in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar over economic hardship and quickly spread nationwide.

Microsoft is hit by a major outage that has crippled its 365 products for thousands of users.

The outage affected business communities widely.

Reports of technical failures began coming in early afternoon on Thursday, January 22, impacting core productivity platforms such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Teams.

The DownDetector confirmed over 45,000 reports were recorded for Microsoft 365 and around 40,000 for Outlook.

This hindered sending or receiving emails, accessing files, or joining team meetings.

The outage is confirmed by Microsoft officials.

The company’s 365 X (formerly Twitter) account stated that investigators “identified a portion of service infrastructure in North America that is not processing traffic as expected.”

Officials added that the team is working to restore the infrastructure to recover the service traffic.

Prior to one day, users experienced a similar outage that was attributed to a third-party networking issue.

As of now, Microsoft support teams are working to resolve the issue for the affected systems; however, a specific timeline has not been provided yet.

Microsoft advises its customers that updates are available on its official Cloud status webpage.