“Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time.”

Eighteen months ago, Allison Ellsworth had a huge payday when Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand she founded with her husband, Stephen, was acquired by PepsiCo for $1.95 billion. Now she’s launched her next venture.

For decades, office parties have run on finger foods, sweet treats, and pizza. But ahead of the holidays, people are turning to a different type of snack.

The scandal engulfing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is no longer simply a question of whether one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful men had an affair with a suspected Chinese spy. It’s also a question of what the White House knew—and what it might have chosen to overlook.

Booze brands are hopeful that help is on the way for their industry—and they need it. Tariffs and declining drinking habits have weighed heavily on beverage companies over the last two years, but a change in control of Congress may signal near-term relief. 

Amid the excitement of the blue wave’s flashier victories in last week’s midterm elections—Blexas, Bliowa, and Blansas, anyone?—Democrats also quietly set themselves up for one of the biggest potential changes in the history of American politics: ending the Electoral College.

While Nvidia has launched an independent investigation into bombshell reports that Chinese intelligence targeted CEO Jensen Huang—and that Huang had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy—early indications suggest that the company’s board may be unwilling or unable to challenge its rock star CEO.

Americans have handed the new Congress its marching orders: Tackle the affordability crisis that’s keeping so many young people locked out of the housing market.

Superman, Batman, and the rest of the DC heroes are getting a new boss, yet again.

Visa released its 2026 Holiday Spending Outlook report, and it found that while consumers put travel at the top of their holiday shopping list, they plan to spend the bulk of their money this season on gifts.

Elon Musk has had a rough week. His nearly half a billion dollars in midterm election spending on Republican candidates went to waste as a blue tsunami swept the nation. Stocks for his companies Tesla and SpaceX fell in the wake of the election. And to top it off, Musk announced that Tesla would be “winding down” production of its infamous Cybertrucks by the middle of 2027.

Free in-flight Wi-Fi is nice. So is a complimentary cocktail at 35,000 feet. But Delta and T-Mobile aren’t done finding ways to make their customers happy.

With public anxiety growing over mounting reports about out-of-control artificial intelligence agents, the tiny U.S. government division charged with assessing the safety of new AI offerings lacks a permanent leader and has stopped publishing its research.

Officials with the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, or CAISSI, an independent division of the Commerce Department, recently were asked to informally report to an office of the White House. That’s according to two former government officials with knowledge of the ongoing conversations who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions for current staffers.

The new arrangement concerns some critics, who worry that the executive branch might be politicizing decisions that could affect everything from cybersecurity to bioweapons and that the center’s findings could be altered or muted in deference to the tech industry, which has been largely entrusted to police itself.

“These are really powerful institutions that can drastically improve our lives, or the alternative. And the hope is that you can put in nonpartisan or bipartisan technocratic experts to enact policy in a way that best serves the American public,” said Caroline Siegel Singh, an AI and emerging technology program manager for the Federation of American Scientists.

Others argue that bringing AI safety officials closer to the orbit of President Donald Trump, who has taken an outwardly hands-off approach to the issue, could give the division more prominence — and perhaps more funding.

The center, which has experienced departures and until recently was called the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation, is allocated $10 million per year. That’s about one-eighth the annual budget of its counterpart in the United Kingdom, which is far less celebrated for its frontier technologies.

In April, the division’s director was hired and then fired within days. His replacement lasted a few months before he resigned, and the center has been without a permanent leader ever since, although the head of its parent institute doubles as its acting director.

In August, Congress started asking why the center suddenly stopped making public its reports about how safely certain AI systems were performing. San Francisco giant OpenAI also had chimed in by then, asking policymakers to throw more money and support behind the division.

The White House didn’t respond to specific questions about CAISSI. But it said in a statement that Trump had formally established his new Super Intelligence Force — the president’s preferred term for artificial intelligence. Trump has commissioned a report on risks from his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and will ensure “continued U.S. leadership on SI for the benefit of the American people,” the White House said.

Outdated power grids are a major hurdle in the transition to renewable energy, since older systems often can’t absorb all the electricity from new, cleaner sources.

This threatens global efforts to curb climate change by reducing fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy such as solar and wind. At U.N. climate talks kicking off this week, co-hosts Turkey and Australia want more ambitious goals to slash fossil fuels, install renewables and upgrade grids.

Grid concerns are gaining urgency this year as nations race to improve their energy security following the Iran war. The U.N. recently launched a new initiative to rally funding for grid upgrades in Africa and Southeast Asia.

“There needs to be a massive, massive, massive scaling up of investments into grids if we are going to get close to meeting our climate, energy and development goals,” Selwin Hart, special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general on climate action, said.

When Americans need to do their taxes, many go to H&R Block, which has thousands of locations across the country. But some may have noticed that H&R Block’s retail presence is not as robust as it used to be, as the company has notably closed tons of physical locations in recent years.

Most leaders are pretty good at adding things. There’s always room for another initiative, another “important” meeting, or some new process or tech that’s supposed to make everyone’s life easier.

People who work in cybersecurity or work on the fundamentals of digital infrastructure do not want to live in “exciting times,” but right now, they don’t have a choice.

Binance was just hacked in what is, so far, the largest cryptocurrency heist in history. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, narrowly averted a major attack through a third-party extension that would have allowed hackers to upload worms to the affected computers. A number of major airlines were affected when the Spanish travel-tech company Amadeus was hacked, leaking customer information on the web (mercifully without payment info, this time). At the center of this are generative AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, which all at once are empowering hackers while billing themselves as the only line of defense. They’ve found a new niche, and it’s to become a protection racket.