FIVE MINUTE DAILY

A stunning election result is reshaping the Senate, while uncertainty at Nvidia raises questions about the future of the AI powerhouse. Scientists are also revisiting a landmark image of a black hole, and states are taking different approaches to immigration enforcement in schools.

Most engineers are stuck babysitting AI one prompt at a time. A handful have figured out how to build agents that plan, execute, and self-correct on their own.

Sign up for The Code newsletter and get access to The Complete Playbook for Agentic Engineering. Claude Code, subagents, MCP, all of it.

Claim your free playbook

Democrat Scott Colom defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the closest Senate race in the country after more than a week of counting absentee and provisional ballots. He becomes Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction, and his win gives Democrats 55 Senate seats, with Alaska's race still uncalled.

Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, made the cost of living the centerpiece of his campaign in a state President Trump won by 23 points in 2024. He won 49.2% of the vote to Hyde-Smith's 48.7%, a margin of fewer than 5,000 votes, and she conceded in a video Wednesday.

The House passed a package of veterans bills on Veterans Day aimed at boosting compensation for an estimated 58,000 veterans medically retired because of combat injuries, by an average of about $1,450 a month. Those retirees with less than 20 years of service now give up part of their retirement pay when they also receive disability compensation.

Republicans would help pay for the boost by changing how the VA rates tinnitus and sleep apnea, which would lower compensation for some future veterans, a trade-off Democrats overwhelmingly opposed. The bill passed on a voice vote after no Democrat asked for a roll call, and Republicans accused Democrats of being asleep at the wheel.

Nvidia's board was reportedly weighing whether to remove CEO Jensen Huang after reports of a second extramarital affair, this one with an executive who reports directly to him. Huang had already admitted to being unfaithful amid reports of a relationship with a businesswoman US intelligence officials believed was a Chinese spy.

Nvidia shares fell more than 8% in after-hours trading Wednesday, extending a slide that has wiped out more than $450 billion in market value since the company announced its investigation into Huang. No obvious successor has emerged, though analysts have pointed to Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress as a possible interim choice.

Rolling blackouts are leaving some Kyiv families without power for up to 20 hours a day as Russia intensifies attacks on Ukraine's energy grid ahead of winter.

A Chilean mother reunited with two sons taken from her as babies in an illegal adoption under Pinochet's dictatorship after the men grew up in the United States.

Four Ugandan schoolgirls aged 9 to 11 died after eating oranges shared by a classmate as police investigate suspected poisoning at a Kampala school whose head teacher was arrested.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's group was scolded by a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier guard after a loud laugh broke out during Veterans Day photos.

The White House warned House Democrats that planned investigations of the administration may amount to blatant criminality in a letter to the likely Oversight Committee chairman.

Upstate New York and northern New England face the season's first significant snow as a nor'easter is expected to lash the I-95 corridor with rain and wind.

Costco declared a $30-a-share special dividend worth about $13.3 billion and authorized up to $4 billion in stock buybacks as its shares climbed near their 2026 high.

Battered CoreWeave shares surged 24.7% after the AI cloud company said it expects to turn an adjusted profit in the first half of 2028, easing fears about AI spending.

Goldman Sachs added a March rate hike to its Fed forecast after hot October inflation as markets fully priced in a quarter-point increase on Dec. 9.

Getting the nutrition you deserve doesn’t need to take up all your time. CookUnity delivers fresh dishes handcrafted by award-winning chefs, ready to heat in minutes. Build a custom menu for your entire week, so you can spend your evenings on your terms—not scrubbing pans. Skip, pause, or change your plan size anytime.

Build Your Weekly Menu

Current policies put Earth on track for 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 in a new report warning that climate action has stalled for a fifth straight year.

A new obesity definition beat BMI alone at predicting death risk by adding measures like waist size in an analysis of more than 800,000 people published Wednesday.

The first black hole image held up as an independent team reanalyzing the original data largely corroborated the ring-shaped shadow that some researchers had doubted.

Victor Wembanyama scored 32 points as San Antonio erased a 22-point deficit to beat Chicago 124-119 for its 10th straight win and close out a 4-0 road trip.

Houston snapped Golden State's eight-game winning streak 115-108 after Stephen Curry left in the first quarter with abdominal soreness as Kevin Durant led the Rockets with 20 points.

Jacob Misiorowski and Cam Schlittler won unanimously as the Brewers and Yankees right-handers took the Cy Young awards after their first full seasons in the majors.

Nikita Kucherov had a natural hat trick in the third period as Tampa Bay pulled away to rout Buffalo 8-3 less than two weeks after he requested a trade.

Rapper Yella Beezy was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole for hiring the gunman who killed rapper MO3 on a Dallas interstate in 2020.

Frankie Muniz was released from the hospital after a practice crash at Daytona International Speedway knocked him out of a Veterans Day benefit race for military charities.

Stacy Keach died at 85 after a career that ran from Mike Hammer to Hamlet on stage and the Cheech and Chong comedy Up in Smoke.

What it is: At least 23 states considered proposals this year governing federal immigration officers and K-12 public schools, a new analysis found after reviewing state legislation. The push followed the Trump administration's decision early in its second term to rescind a policy that had protected schools and other "sensitive" places from immigration enforcement.

The detail: Of the 40 proposals reviewed, 35 sought to limit federal officers' access to campuses and students, while only one, in Mississippi, sought to make sure schools cooperate with ICE. Mississippi passed it. Several of the proposals to limit access would require officers to have a warrant. Only 11 of the 40 proposals had become law by the start of this school year, and pushes in West Virginia, Hawaii and Kansas to designate campuses as sensitive locations failed.

Why it matters: Many states have no clear policy for what happens when immigration officers show up at a school, leaving educators to rely on a patchwork of state and district rules. The Department of Homeland Security says ICE does not raid or target schools, but agents were reported on school grounds several times last academic year, and some school leaders say the crackdown has led to enrollment drops.

What to watch: Some states have also weighed letting public schools charge tuition to students who aren't citizens or legal immigrants, a direct challenge to a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that guarantees all children a free K-12 education. As of July, at least two states were considering such proposals.

Are you ready? As revealed in our holiday playbook, Roku Ads Manager lets you easily set up, measure and optimize your self-serve holiday ad campaign. You can even create a shoppable ad unit that lets streamers buy directly from their remote.

Set up your campaign today.

Manhattan's barn owl family moved to Central Park after construction exposed its water tower nest as both parents and all five young owls were accounted for.

A Jeopardy! champion wagered nothing on Final Jeopardy and won anyway when the closest challenger bet big and missed a liquor-brand clue whose answer was Bacardi.

Detroit women veterans are selling military-style dog tags honoring women who served to raise money for a shelter for homeless female veterans and their children.

The frozen body of explorer Robert Falcon Scott is found in Antarctica (1912) · Actress and future princess Grace Kelly is born in Philadelphia (1929) · A Tokyo war crimes tribunal sentences former Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo to death (1948) · Ellis Island closes after processing millions of immigrants (1954) · Tim Berners-Lee publishes his formal proposal for the World Wide Web (1990)

"For God's sake look after our people." — Robert Falcon Scott's final journal entry, found with his body (1912)

That's a wrap on today's news. Thanks for spending five minutes with us, and don't forget to pass it along!

—The Five Minute Daily Team