News From Around the Web
#1 Howard Lutnick Agrees to Testify as Bipartisan Pressure Grows Over Nvidia Scandal - Kyla Guilfoil for NBC News, Fox News Politics, Axios/Chris McGuire, POLITICO, Erin Burnett OutFront, and Dittie on X
Facing bipartisan pressure, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick agreed Thursday to testify before Congress over national security concerns regarding the expanding Nvidia scandal. The announcement comes after Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., chair of the Senate Banking Committee, sent letters Thursday to Lutnick and Jensen Huang, who resigned as Nvidia’s CEO earlier in the day after reports that he had an affair with a suspected Chinese spy. “Secretary Lutnick has proactively agreed to appear voluntarily before the Banking Committee to address their questions,” Kristen Eichamer, a spokesperson for Lutnick, told NBC News...
#2 Who Is Colette Kress, Nvidia’s New Interim CEO? - Jane Lytvynenko for NBC News, Tech Funding News, Chris Harihar, AIFinInsights, MicNguyenn, and Eric Smith on X
For 13 years, Colette Kress helped manage the company’s transformation from a graphics-chip maker into the company at the center of the artificial intelligence boom. Now, she’s being asked to lead it through one of the most turbulent moments in its history. Kress, Nvidia’s chief financial officer, was named interim CEO Thursday following the abrupt resignation of Jensen Huang, who co-founded the company and led it for 33 years. Huang’s departure comes amid revelations of extramarital relationships with an alleged Chinese spy and one of his own reports...
#3 Van Hollen Will Challenge Schumer to Lead Senate Democrats - Erin Cox and Theodoric Meyer for The Washington Post, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Chuck Schumer, Cheyenne Hunt, The New York Times, and Nick Field/Jayson Frascatore on X
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said Thursday that he is challenging Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to be majority leader in the next Congress, triggering an internal power struggle barely a week after Democrats recaptured the Senate in the midterm elections. Van Hollen’s move will test support for Schumer among Senate Democrats more than a year after Schumer angered many activists who wanted him to fight harder against President Donald Trump. In an interview, Van Hollen acknowledged that defeating Schumer would be an uphill fight but said the election results demanded the party take a new direction...
#4 Jeffries Shredded Over Hegseth Impeachment Snafu as Dem Jockeys for Speaker’s Gavel - Elizabeth Elkind for Fox News, Drew Grimaldi, SteelerD, AtomsDNA, Scooter45ACP, Raffaele La Ciura, and John E Tiffany on X
Back-to-back blunders on the House floor are raising questions over whether Democrats are ready for primetime as they're poised to take over the majority — and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., makes a bid for the top role. Democrats are projected to win 255 House seats, with 12 races yet to be called, and Jeffries is running to be Speaker of the House following the sweeping victories last week that saw the party make gains even in traditional Republican strongholds like Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, and South Carolina. But some have questioned whether the recent snafus signal that Jeffries and other leaders may not be ready to be in command of the House majority...
#5 Hegseth Awards Medal to Soldier Who Chastised Him - Kate Bartlett for npr, Mercury News, Azat TV, Ulrich, Stars and Stripes, and McGill Media on X
Coming out of the bruising the Republicans suffered in the midterms, this week was bearing up to be a bad one for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Many thought he'd be the first in the administration to be fired for his support of the Iran war, which proved unpopular with voters. Then a member of his own party called for a vote to impeach him and, in an embarrassing incident that went viral, he also got chastised for poor decorum when visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Still, he managed to survive the former – except for Thomas Massie, who sponsored the resolution to impeach him, all other Republicans in the House voted against it – and sought to turn the latter into a PR opportunity.
#6 Microsoft Outlook Outage Updates: ‘Progress Toward Recovery’ as Email Disruption Now on 2nd Day - ABC News, Luke Elin, Gunther Eagleman™ The Fault Line, Tom “not Tom” Myers/Cyber Security News, and Fox News on X
A widespread outage involving Microsoft's Outlook email and other applications stretched into Friday morning as the company said it was working to restore service and that they are "seeing early stabilization and capacity improvements as recovery actions continue." The tech giant first posted a statement on social media saying it was "investigating reports of users experiencing issues" accessing online mailboxes shortly before 1 p.m. ET Thursday. Downdetector, which monitors outages, reported issues with Outlook, Teams, and other products as Microsoft attempted to deploy several fixes...
#7 Kushner Says Europe to Join Next Ukraine Talks, but Putin Stands Firm on Territorial Demands - CNN, THE VAINOR INDIA | NEWS, MFA Russia, RTRussia/Oswald Jensen, Visegrád 24/Jon Bronson, and Master Lee/Kafir on X
European delegates will join the next round of peace talks with Ukraine and Russia, US envoy Jared Kushner says, after a brisk day of diplomacy saw him and Steve Witkoff meet both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. After speaking to Putin in Moscow earlier, Kushner said: “Both sides have now agreed to expand the next round of negotiations to include our European partners.” “This will allow us to address the broader postwar European security agreements alongside the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia,” Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law who acts as one of the country’s top diplomats despite holding no official role within the administration, posted on X on Thursday...
#8 FBI Says It’s Recovered $1.2 Billion Worth of Cryptocurrency Stolen From Binance - CBS News, inside predict, Finance Culture, NBTC, REAL· X, and Unlock Blockchain on X
The FBI said Thursday that it had seized more than $1.2 billion of cryptocurrency reported stolen last month from Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. The theft of about $6.3 billion from Binance is regarded as the biggest crypto heist in history, and the FBI has previously attributed it to a North Korean hacking group known as TraderTraitor. The U.S. government and private sector have so far combined to freeze more than $2.7 billion of the stolen funds, and the Justice Department said Thursday that it has now obtained court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion of that total. Typically in those situations, the U.S. government will file a claim of forfeiture with a judge, who will then determine who has a legitimate claim to the recovered funds...
#9 Trump to Senate GOP: Pass Military Funding Bill - Charlie McCarthy for NEWSMAX, , TWAUORG, Mahalaxmi Ramanathan, Worldwide News Network, MrDuckyOfWindsor, and Economic Times on X
President Donald Trump on Thursday called on Senate Republicans, in their final weeks as the chamber's majority, to "move on" a $350 billion reconciliation bill that would fund the military. In a Truth Social post, Trump warned that Democrats, who will take control of Congress in January, would seek to block additional defense spending and undermine his administration's efforts to rebuild the military. "I rebuilt our Military in my First Term, and we're doing it AGAIN, bigger and better than ever before!" Trump wrote...
