Shawn Mendes posted a “FREE PALESTINE” statement on Instagram on Thursday, calling the war in Gaza a “genocide” and urging fellow artists to speak out. He pointed followers to groups he said he had already donated to.

Senior White House officials are discussing whether Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick should be pushed out after the Nvidia spy scandal, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Trump was said to retain complete confidence in him.

Hillary Clinton said on her High Stakes podcast that President Donald Trump will ask Xi Jinping whether alleged Chinese spying in the Nvidia case is true, accept a denial, and repeat it publicly, as he did with Vladimir Putin.

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth awarded Spc. Thomas Iglesias the Joint Service Commendation Medal a day after the Army sentinel called for silence at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

An IRGC Aerospace Force missile-launch commander said U.S. and Israeli strikes hit only a tunnel entrance and left Iran’s missiles and underground sites intact, a claim that cannot be independently verified.

Mercedes-Benz said Thursday it was halting all further investment at its German sites and reviewing possible plant closures after months of cost-cutting talks with workplace representatives failed to produce an agreement.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday in Dublin that he would “always be at the service” of negotiations with Russia if asked to serve as Europe’s envoy, but only after EU countries first agree a common position on Ukraine.

Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority is expanding a $3,500 voluntary-departure grant to nationals of all African countries, Haaretz reported, in a bid to reverse a drop in assisted departures.

Israel said Thursday that it had barred French left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise parliamentary chair Mathilde Panot from entering the country.

Democrats aim to strip “Department of War” language from the annual defense bill and target President Donald Trump’s Trump-class battleships after midterm victories, The Wall Street Journal reported, ahead of taking control of Congress in January.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that Tim Cook of Apple should replace Jensen Huang as Nvidia’s chief executive, after the chipmaker named Colette Kress interim CEO.

The French frigate Surcouf called at Syria’s Latakia port this week, a stop French and Syrian officials described as the first visit by a French military vessel to the country, without specifying a period.

Companies tied to Alice Huang, the alleged Chinese spy at the center of the Nvidia scandal, invested in DeepSeek during its second funding round and promised to supply Nvidia Blackwell chips banned from sale to China, The Information reported.

Colette Kress, named Nvidia’s interim chief executive on Thursday, has long coordinated with the chipmaker’s Israel operations, which Globes reported employed almost 6,000 people earlier this year.

Most of the dozen confidential settlements ranged from $2 million to $2.5 million. About 9,800 personal injury cases remain pending against Meta, YouTube, Snap, and TikTok.

Nvidia’s board said Thursday that founder Jensen Huang has resigned as president, chief executive and a member of the board, effective immediately, and named chief financial officer Colette Kress as interim CEO.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 45% of registered Republicans rated Marco Rubio an excellent candidate and 43% said the same of JD Vance. Among registered Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigieg each scored 29%.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on Thursday that Moscow wanted any Ukraine settlement to be an “eternal peace.”

Michigan Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said in an NPR interview Thursday that he will likely swear on a Quran when he takes his Senate seat in January, though he has not yet chosen which copy.