WORLD IN A DAY · THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2026
In today’s World in a Day: Nvidia’s board meets to decide its founder’s fate, Iran’s navy keeps mining tankers in the Strait of Hormuz despite talk of peace, and physicists get independent proof that the first picture of a black hole was real.
Update: Nvidia Board Weighs Ousting Jensen Huang After Second Affair Report
Nvidia’s board is preparing to meet Thursday to decide founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s future, the Wall Street Journal reported, with his dismissal among the options and no clear successor identified. The New York Times first reported that five Nvidia employees suspected Huang of an affair with healthcare vice president Kimberly Powell, citing a March incident at a San Jose hotel. The report compounds an earlier matter: Huang had told staff he was involved with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive suspected of ties to China’s Ministry of State Security, prompting Nvidia’s board to open a formal investigation into him last week. Shares fell more than 9% in late trading Wednesday, extending a sixth straight weekly decline.
Why it matters Nvidia supplies roughly 90% of the world’s AI computing chips, so a leadership change at the top would unsettle the entire AI buildout at a moment when the stock is already down sharply and no obvious successor is waiting in the wings.
Source: SiliconANGLE
Update: Iran Denies US Talks, Says Hormuz Stays Shut as Tankers Hit Mines
Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei denied Tuesday that Tehran and Washington are holding talks, calling reports of negotiations in Qatar “a pure lie,” and said the Strait of Hormuz stays shut until the US meets seven undisclosed conditions. His comments came hours after Trump called the war “effectively over” following a meeting with Qatar’s prime minister, and as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said three tankers caught fire after striking mines on an “unauthorized route” through the strait’s eastern waters. UK maritime authorities separately reported a vessel struck by an unidentified projectile near Oman. Monitoring firms counted at least 37 attacks on shipping in and around Hormuz in October, the highest monthly total since the nine month war began.
Why it matters Washington has been signaling momentum toward a deal, but Tehran’s public denial and the surge in mined shipping suggest a conflict still capable of disrupting Gulf oil traffic no matter what diplomats say about where the talks stand.
Source: Al Jazeera
New Imaging Method Independently Confirms the M87 Black Hole’s Shadow
A machine learning technique called GenDIReCT re-analyzed 2017 to 2021 Event Horizon Telescope data on the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 and reproduced the same ring shaped shadow first published in 2019, this time without relying on the calibration assumptions the original method required. Researchers S. Lai, N. Thyagarajan, O. I. Wong and F. Diakogiannis combined a diffusion model with a neural network to analyze closure invariants, quantities less sensitive to measurement error than raw data. Their reconstructions consistently produced ring shaped images and estimated the black hole’s mass at roughly 6.5 billion suns, close to the original estimate. The result lands days after a separate landmark physics claim from CERN. The paper appears in this week’s Nature.
Why it matters Independent confirmation, using a method immune to the calibration quirks critics said could bias the iconic 2019 image, strengthens the case that the picture hailed as the first direct view of a black hole really is one.
Source: Nature
Genetic Study of Nearly 100,000 Americans Finds Widespread Drug Response Variants
A University of Pittsburgh led analysis of genetic data from close to 100,000 participants in the NIH’s All of Us Research Program found every person carried at least one variant in 16 genes that affect how the body processes medications, and about one in four had taken a drug the variants could affect, including SSRIs, statins, chemotherapy and the blood thinner Plavix. The study drew on one of the most ancestrally diverse datasets assembled, turning up thousands of variants missing from less diverse databases such as the UK Biobank, a similar diversity push behind a recent dementia risk study. Senior author Philip Empey said genetics is “one reason that may suggest where there may be differences” in how patients respond to treatment.
Why it matters Matching prescriptions to a patient’s genes rather than one size fits all dosing could cut down on side effects and treatment failures, but the program’s funding has dropped 80% from its 2023 peak, putting follow up work at risk.
Source: STAT
Egypt Presses for Affordable Climate Finance as COP31 Leaders Meet in Antalya
Egypt’s Minister of Local Development and Environment, Manal Awad, representing President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, told the COP31 Leaders’ Summit in Antalya on Wednesday that negotiators must move from pledges to real implementation on four fronts: expanding clean electricity, moving away from fossil fuels, providing affordable climate finance for developing countries, and strengthening resilience to warming. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan opened the two day leaders’ summit, two days after COP31 convened in Antalya with a narrower agenda than past years. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres attended, along with representatives from 95 countries, and the Turkish presidency is drafting an “Antalya Declaration” meant to turn existing commitments into action rather than add new targets.
Why it matters Developing nations have spent nearly every COP since Egypt’s own 2022 summit pushing rich countries to turn loss and damage promises into money they can actually access; Awad’s remarks signal that fight is far from settled even as this year’s hosts try to shift the focus from pledges to delivery.
Source: Daily News Egypt
AI Training Startup Mercor Raises $750 Million, Doubling Valuation to $20 Billion
Mercor, the AI training marketplace that pairs outside experts with AI labs needing human judgment to evaluate and refine their models, closed a $750 million Series D at a $20 billion valuation, double its October level, the company said Tuesday. The round included participation from Nvidia, Salesforce, Zoom, Benchmark, Felicis, General Catalyst and others, plus an employee tender offer, part of the same AI funding boom that lifted a $240 million round for engineering software startup Nominal last week. Mercor, co-founded by 23 year old CEO Brendan Foody, says its network now includes more than 5 million experts and will use the funding to expand infrastructure for model evaluation, post-training and the reinforcement learning environments where AI agents practice complex tasks.
Why it matters The round is another sign investors see human expert labeled training data, not just raw compute, as the scarce resource in the AI race, even after a data breach this year briefly cost Mercor one of its biggest customers.
Source: Unite.AI
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