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Todd Blanche takes over the Justice Department after a razor-thin overnight vote, while Congress makes an unusually early move to head off another shutdown.

Abroad, Russian drones bring fresh devastation near Kyiv. Plus: a secret CIA push on Cuba, lunar factories, and Burger King’s comeback.

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The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general 50-49 in an overnight vote. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the only Republicans to break ranks.

Bill Cassidy cast the decisive yes after Blanche promised in writing to scrap a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund." Blanche, once Trump's personal defense lawyer, has run Justice in an acting capacity since Pam Bondi was fired in April.

Senators passed a stopgap funding bill 90-6 overnight, keeping agencies open through Dec. 11. Acting nearly two months before the deadline is unusual, and two shutdowns in the past year explain why.

Democrats blocked new money for Border Patrol and rejected $1 billion for a "Trump-class" battleship. House members still have to pass it after a five-week recess.

Russian drones destroyed a home in the Brovary district, killing two grandparents and a toddler. Zelensky said six ballistic missiles struck civilian infrastructure inside Kyiv, killing at least one more person.

Ukraine's air force downed 135 of 151 drones overnight, but Patriot interceptors are running short. Kyiv struck back at two Russian refineries, and fires burned in Holosiivskyi district after debris fell.

Ningbo shut schools and docked roughly 800 ships as Typhoon Dolphin tracks toward Zhejiang and northern Fujian. Forecasters expect up to 400 millimeters of rain, with landfall late Sunday and Shanghai in the path.

Italy imposed fresh border controls after roughly 78,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, with Rome bracing for onward movement into the EU. Spain has answered with its own checkpoint tightening, straining Schengen's free-movement backbone at one of its most politically flammable points.

Nearly 10,000 Punjabi soldiers who died fighting for Britain in World War I have been added to official casualty records for the first time, more than a century late. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission acknowledged the omission was tied to colonial-era racial hierarchies that classified Indian dead as less deserving of formal remembrance.

The remains of 56 people were found improperly stored at a Chicago funeral home run by a couple previously linked to a shuttered crematory. Officials described "deplorable conditions" and are contacting families whose loved ones may be among the dead.

The administration will invest $3 billion in domestic minerals projects tied to defense supply chains, aiming to refill weapons stockpiles depleted during the Iran conflict. The target: U.S. dependence on Chinese processing of rare earths, lithium and cobalt.

Former federal prosecutor Will Rosenzweig sued the Justice Department over his dismissal, which he says followed a right-wing influencer's public accusation of disloyalty. The suit joins a growing docket of legal challenges from ousted federal law enforcement staff.

Burger King overtook Wendy's as the second-largest U.S. burger chain by system-wide sales, reclaiming a spot it lost more than a decade ago. It caps a multi-year turnaround under parent Restaurant Brands International and leaves McDonald's still very lonely at the top.

Live-shopping platform Whatnot was valued at $20 billion in a new funding round as live commerce keeps eating a bigger slice of U.S. e-commerce. The QVC-for-Gen-Z model, huge in China, is finally getting real traction stateside.

Rockstar Energy founder Russ Weiner has amassed 12 million shares of Celsius Holdings — about 4.7% — and told CNBC he wants the CEO chair. Celsius has wobbled this year as growth cooled, giving activist-style pitches a hearing they wouldn't have gotten in 2023.

Elon Musk said SpaceX is seriously planning lunar factories, declaring "it's going to happen" as Starship testing continues. The claim leans on a Starship cadence SpaceX hasn't yet demonstrated, though NASA's Artemis timeline gives the pitch some regulatory tailwind.

Engineers built a battery-free sweat sensor that measures levodopa levels in Parkinson's patients through a fingertip patch. Real-time monitoring could end the guesswork behind dose timing, when meds can fade abruptly and let symptoms flood back before the next pill.

Portuguese director Edgar Pêra premiered Asphalt Guerrilla at Locarno, a film that blends AI-generated imagery with live footage to examine political radicalization. Pêra says he's using AI precisely because he's alarmed by it — a fight-fire-with-fire pitch that keeps splitting the festival circuit.

The Los Angeles County medical examiner ruled that Memphis Grizzlies forward Brandon Clarke died from the combined effects of heroin and cocaine. Clarke was 29. He'd spent his entire six-year NBA career in Memphis.

The Athletics parted ways with general manager David Forst, ending a 26-year run with the franchise and a decade atop baseball operations. His successor inherits an imminent move to Las Vegas, a stripped-down roster, and one of the sport's thinnest farm systems.

Tarik Skubal's trade to the Dodgers shifted him to the National League and leaves the AL Cy Young race — which he'd won every year since 2023 — to a two-man fight between Dylan Cease and Cam Schlittler. Cease brings the strikeout crown; Schlittler brings a rookie ERA that's making Yankees fans nervous in a good way.

Olivia Rodrigo debuted material from a project she called "pretty sad" at a 1,100-capacity surprise show at Brooklyn's Warsaw, announced hours earlier on a punishingly humid Thursday. The venue is roughly 1% the size of the stadiums she just finished touring — a deliberate temperature check for a new album cycle.

Amanda Knox responded to a petition demanding the cancellation of her Edinburgh Fringe show "Cartwheels", saying the piece "honors Meredith Kercher's memory." Nearly two decades after her wrongful conviction was overturned, she's still fighting over who gets to tell the story.

Sam Neill completed his role in the live-action Legend of Zelda film before his death last month at 78, meaning he'll appear on screen when the adaptation lands next year. The New Zealand actor's late-career pivot into blockbuster franchises had picked up real steam right before his death.

What it is: The CIA has quietly established a dedicated Cuba task force designed to concentrate financial, human and technical intelligence resources on the island. The unit is meant to speed up the agency's ability to act on Cuba as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on Havana. Its creation signals that Cuba is moving higher on Washington's national-security agenda, with intelligence gathering increasingly tied to a broader effort to influence the island's political trajectory.

The detail: The task force's explicit goal is to create fissures inside Cuba's political elite — a Cold War-flavored objective the CIA hasn't openly pursued on the island in decades. It consolidates work that had been scattered across regional desks into a single, better-funded operation with direct lines to senior White House officials. Centralizing those capabilities could allow analysts and operatives to move faster on intelligence about leadership rivalries, military loyalties, economic pressure points and potential fractures within the government.

Why it matters: Cuba is deep in its worst economic crisis since the Soviet collapse, with blackouts, food shortages and record emigration straining daily life. A more aggressive U.S. intelligence posture — combined with tightened sanctions and travel restrictions — raises the odds of either meaningful political change or the kind of destabilization that sends another migration wave north. Any internal rupture could also become a geopolitical contest if Moscow or Beijing decides preserving Havana's government is strategically important enough to justify additional financial or diplomatic support.

What to watch: Whether the task force's activities stay covert or bleed into public view through leaks, sanctioned individuals, or intercepted communications. Also worth tracking: Havana's diplomatic response, Russia and China's willingness to backstop the Cuban economy, and any congressional pushback from lawmakers wary of a return to 1960s-era regime-change playbooks. Cuba's own security services will likely intensify their hunt for suspected U.S. contacts, raising the stakes for dissidents, officials and intermediaries caught between Washington's pressure campaign and Havana's efforts to preserve control.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team