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President Obama holds a year-end news conference for reporters ahead of his annual holiday vacation with family in Hawaii. Join the conversation and share your comments on Facebook and Twitter using #cspanchat.

The FBI said Friday that North Korea is responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures that led the studio to cancel the release of a movie. Confirming what government officials were saying privately for days, the FBI announced that is months-long investigation concluded that North Korea was behind the attack, based on technical similarities to previous attacks. A statement from the FBI said investigators found “significant overlap in the infrastructure” used in the Sony hacking and in previous attacks. The agency said there were also similarities in technological tools used in this attack and an a cyberattack in March 2013...

Today, the FBI would like to provide an update on the status of our investigation into the cyber attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE). In late November, SPE confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber attack that destroyed systems and stole large quantities of personal and commercial data. A group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace” claimed responsibility for the attack and subsequently issued threats against SPE, its employees, and theaters that distribute its movies. The FBI has determined that the intrusion into SPE’s network consisted of the deployment of destructive malware and the theft of proprietary information...

Activists warn that sweeping anti-terrorism laws pose a draconian threat to civil liberties and freedom of speech

The Daily Beast has unearthed several emails that reveal at least two U.S. government officials screened a rough cut of the Kim Jong-Un assassination comedy The Interview in late June and gave the film—including a final scene that sees the dictator’s head explode—their blessing. The claim that the State Department played an active role in the decision to include the film’s gruesome death scene is likely to cause fury in Pyongyang. Emails between the Sony Entertainment CEO and a security consultant even appear to suggest the U.S. government may support the notion that The Interview would be useful propaganda against...

Eight siblings have been found stabbed to death in a house in Australia. The children, aged from 18 months to 15 years, were discovered by an older brother, aged 20, who arrived home to find them dead. The mass killing is not believed to be terror-related, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that “these are trying days for our country.” The tragedy comes just days after an armed siege in Sydney claimed the lives of two hostages and the Islamist hostage taker.

#BREAKING New message to @Sony top execs from hackers: "very wise" decision to scrap movie from theaters via @CNN @brianstelter #SonyHack

Ben Carson, on his first visit here, tells ‘Post’ he is not sure that a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria ‘makes sense,’ and that Israeli settlement construction is ‘blown out of proportion.’ Retired neurosurgeon and aspiring US politician Ben Carson could walk down the streets of Jerusalem, shout at the top of his lungs “I am Ben Carson,” and almost no one would know who he is. At least not yet. But that could change very quickly as the 2016 US presidential campaign picks up speed, and Carson gains traction. And if recent polls are any indication, the 63-yearold...

President Barack Obama has broken two barriers: Being the first black president -- and becoming the first Latino president, according to Tom Perez, Obama’s labor secretary. Perez made the comment a day after Obama’s shocking shift to take steps to normalize relations with Cuba and a month after the president’s executive actions on immigration that had widespread appeal among Latinos. “When I reflect on the breadth and depth of what he has done for Latinos, it really makes him in my mind, and in the minds of so many others, the first Latino president,” Perez said Thursday, according to Politico....

The State Department's Rose Gottemoeller, under secretary for arms control and international security, spoke at the Brookings Institution Thursday where she reaffirmed the United States' "unassailable" commitment to putting the nuclear weapons genie back in the bottle. Gottemoeller told the attendees at the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative-sponsored event that "the U.S. commitment to achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons is unassailable." She went on to note that the nation's stockpile of active weapons is down 85 percent from maximum cold war levels, falling to 4,804 in 2013 from a high of 31,255. But, she...

On Thursday’s Hugh Hewitt radio show, conservative commentator Mark Steyn, author of “The Undocumented Mark Steyn,” said the actions by Sony Corporation not to face down apparent threats from North Koreans was a bad sign for the so-called power of American pop culture in its current state.

Putin Spokesman Confirms Kim Jong-un Invited to Visit Moscow Reuters Dec. 19 2014 16:21 Last edited 16:23 Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Moscow next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the Kremlin's spokesman said Friday. It would be Kim's first foreign visit since taking the helm of the reclusive east Asian state in 2011. His personal envoy came to Moscow last month in the framework of efforts by the two Cold War-era allies to improve relations. "Yes, such an invitation was sent,"...

Without North Korea, Hollywood Is Running Out of Politically Correct Villains by Ben Shapiro 18 Dec 2014 With Sony’s decision to pull the Seth Rogen/James Franco starrer The Interview from circulation following a brutal hack attack by the North Korean regime, Hollywood finds its list of acceptable villains growing shorter and shorter. Not only did Sony pull The Interview thanks to intimidation at the hands of Kim Jung Un – the film was about reporters trying to kill the evil dictator – they also pulled a slated Steve Carrell movie, Pyongyang, about the regime.

Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky is breaking with many members of his own party and other potential Republican candidates for president in 2016 in offering at least some support for the president’s opening to Cuba, highlighting yet another area where he seems likely to offer a contrast but which is also likely to become an area of attack against him in a primary race: Sen. Rand Paul broke with other likely Republican presidential contenders on Thursday by saying that opening up more trade with Cuba “is probably a good idea” and declaring that the US embargo on the country “just...

In July 2013, I had the opportunity to speak with two prominent Cuban dissidents, Elizardo Sanchez and Guillermo Farinas. Both men had been supporters of the Castros—Sanchez as an academic, Farinas as a soldier—but had come to realize the real brutal, authoritarian nature of their Communist regime. Farinas, for example, spoke of the moment of clarity he had the first time he read Animal Farm during the 1980s, in Russian because he was in the Soviet Union receiving specialized military training.Sanchez and Farinas painted a grim picture of life in Cuba, which they said had become “a big jail” since...

"..........This systematic pusillanimity is not a new phenomenon. Other examples: the refusal by the Obama administration to criticize the Iranian regime when it put down the “Green Revolution” in 2009; the administration’s eagerness to “reset” relations with an increasingly hostile Russia; its secret negotiations with the Taliban even as the group continued its attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan; the refusal to meet with any Egyptian opposition groups other than the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama is hardly the first president to seek rapprochement with our adversaries and reconciliation with our enemies, of course. But his determination to make nice—even in the...

PepsiCo wants in. So do Caterpillar and Marriott International. Within hours of President Obama’s historic move to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba, companies in the United States were already developing strategies to introduce their products and services to a market they have not been in for the better part of 50 years — if ever. “Cuba is a potential market for John Deere products and services,” Ken Golden, a spokesman for Deere & Company, a leading maker of farm and construction equipment based in Illinois, said by email. But while there may be robust opportunities for some companies, especially...

Coming to a theater near you: Al Sharpton.​ Hollywood ​came to the Rev. Al Thursday as embattled Sony exec Amy Pascal ​met ​privately with the ​black leader for 90 minutes ​in a bid to fix the fallout from the ​cyberhacking ​leak of embarrassing, racially charged emails. Pascal agreed to let Sharpton have a say in how Sony makes motion pictures, in an effort to combat what he called “inflexible and immovable racial exclusion in Hollywood.” “We have agreed to having a working group deal with the racial bias and lack of diversity in Hollywood,” said Sharpton. He said Sony would...

Okay, everyone. Calm down. There are a lot of reasons to be worried about the president’s decision to normalize relations with Cuba. Not least among them is that this is the least-adept foreign policy team in post-Cold War history (yes, I include the Carter and Bush 43 White Houses in that evaluation), and after six years of being taken to the cleaners by bad regimes, it feels like it’s happening again. It also looks too much like a quid pro quo for the release of an imprisoned American. And it’s being rationalized by the president himself in terms that show...

An Egyptian court sentenced 40 backers of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to up to 15 years in jail Thursday for violence including torching churches, a judicial source said. Followers of Morsi have been the target of a relentless crackdown by the authorities since he was deposed in July 2013 by ex-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The criminal court in Assiut in southern Egypt sentenced two defendants to 15 years each, while the others were given jail terms ranging from one year to 10, the source said. They were accused of taking part in acts of violence...