Supreme Court lets Big Bend border-wall construction resume
The Guardian reported that Nvidia and its chief executive, Jensen Huang, have been accused of defrauding shareholders in a lawsuit it described as concerning the Chinese spying scandal engulfing the $4.3tn company. Separately, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to suspend a lower-court order that had temporarily stopped construction of a border wall in Texas’s Big Bend region, including parts of Big Bend National Park. Opponents have argued that the project threatens wildlife and public lands and could destroy “iconic sections” of the Rio Grande’s protected river corridor.
The legal action against Nvidia came as Donald Trump said the FBI was investigating Huang’s affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Little public information was available about Alice Huang, which the report said had added fuel to claims that she is an intelligence asset. Rebecca Bailey assembled what is known about her, while Aisha Down and Dan Milmo examined how the affair may have harmed U.S. security.
Kentucky Republican lawmaker Thomas Massie introduced eight articles of impeachment against U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in an effort to force a vote. Massie accused Hegseth of illegally waging war without congressional authorization and abusing his powers.
The U.S. military was reported to have evacuated aircraft from a second airbase in Britain after a threat from Iran. Two U.S. refueling tankers that were using RAF Mildenhall military base diverted to Germany on Monday morning, while several other tankers at the base were moved to Germany and other locations later in the day.
France said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were behind “unprecedented” cyberattacks on supermarket fridges in the country last month. In the newsletter’s lead reporting on the Iran conflict, Trump said at a White House press conference that the U.S. war on Iran was “effectively over.” He said Israel and Gulf allies in the region were well protected from Iran and that escalation was not needed, while the U.S. remained “locked and loaded, ready to go for any reason.” Trump added: “We’re seeing momentum toward the end of this conflict. I think it’s going to be ending fairly soon.” Oil prices dropped after his remarks, with Brent crude below $90, its lowest level since August.
A Massachusetts judge cleared the way for Lindsay Clancy to be tried again on murder charges for killing her three young children. The judge said a retrial would not unconstitutionally subject Clancy to double prosecution for the same crime and rejected an attempt by her attorneys to have the case dismissed. In September, the judge declared a mistrial after the jury reported that a holdout juror was preventing a unanimous verdict; March has been floated as the timing for a second trial.
Russell Brand was sentenced in London to more than 10 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. The report said Brand had recently tried to reinvent himself as a Christian influencer and had been a featured speaker for a Maha group allied with RFK Jr. The British judge described him as a sexual predator who had used his fame and power to carry out crimes and protect himself.
Boeing will cut about 5% of its commercial plane workforce through a mix of layoffs and attrition. Joe Biden will undertake only limited promotion of his upcoming White House memoir because of advancing cancer, the former president has said. California voters failed to pass a proposed one-time tax on billionaires’ wealth. Hungarian authorities have detained Viktor Orbán’s brother as part of a people-smuggling investigation.
An Ohio State fraternity has been suspended after a viral video showed two men on fire. The university and police are conducting investigations over the “extremely concerning incident.”
Death records leaked from Russia’s state statistics agency, Rosstat, have revealed losses since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began that were unprecedented in Russia’s modern history. The report came as talks were beginning in Abu Dhabi, with U.S. officials seeking a “final end” to the war and a new “long-term security architecture” between Moscow and Europe.
The only known handwritten final draft of MLK Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech is to be auctioned. The document is expected to fetch more than $10m, and its proceeds will be donated to several charities.
M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize for The End of Everything, a post-apocalyptic novel set on a near-future Kent coast in England. At 81, Harrison became the oldest winner in the award’s history and the first science-fiction author to win it.
Andrew Lawrence said The Greatest, a straightforward retelling of the boxing champion’s life, had some small pleasures but little that most viewers had not seen before, adding that at least it was not All’s Fair. Lucy Mangan gave season one zero stars and season two one star, and expressed doubt that the show was getting good. Grand Theft Auto 6 will arrive next week; the newsletter’s writer said they had already devoted five minutes to clearing storage on a PS5, while Christian Donlan examined the phenomenon of the series.
KFC will open its first high-altitude restaurants on the slopes of Cortina d’Ampezzo and Madonna di Campiglio in the Dolomites. A prominent local businessman has threatened legal action. In Dortmund, a crowd stormed a kebab shop offering introductory meals for the equivalent of $1.10, and police were attacked.
The report said soaring oil and gas prices following the war in Iran had encouraged people to look beyond fossil fuels, leading to an easing of climate-damaging carbon emissions this year. Based on data from the year so far, carbon dioxide emissions from oil, gas and coal were forecast to flatline for 2026.