Hegseth, FBI Nvidia probe, Anthropic valuation (Updated)

Hi, I'm Kim Vannell, in Wanganui, New Zealand. And I'm Christopher Walgesper in Chicago. It's Tuesday, November 10th, today. Pete Hegseth calls impeachment threats a farce. Trump says the FBI is looking into Nvidia's Jensen Wang's affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. While anthropic scales back its IPO valuation expectations. And Ukraine peace talks, the first since the Iran War began, get underway in Abu Dhabi. This is Reuters' World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. But one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting, is not oversight. And it's not accountability. It's a political spectacle. U.S. defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, dismissing efforts to impeach him by Kentucky Republican congressman Thomas Massey. It's a farce, and it's a stunt. And everybody knows it. Hegseth faces eight charges, including starting a war with Iran without congressional approval, and failing to minimize civilian casualties, extrajudicial strikes on boats in the Caribbean, and kidnapping Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro. Hegseth says the allegations are meritless, and do not constitute high crimes and misdemeanors. Sources say the impeachment vote could pass in the House, even with Republicans in control until January. But conviction is unlikely in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is needed. It's also possible Republican leadership could try to avoid a straight vote on impeachment by trying to dismiss it with a procedural motion. Hegseth, though, says he's ready to defend himself, and Trump is standing by him. You're going to be in trouble if you're going to be in trouble. One, two wars. He was in charge. We all won. Royce's Pentagon correspondent Phil Stewart says just getting to this point puts the Hegseth case in rare territory. I think what you're seeing right now is potentially a preview for what you will see, especially if Hegseth survives conviction, and the Democrats want to try again, or they want to, or bring them up and hold hearings and bring, you know, uniform military officers to testify to the veracity of these charges. That could be quite embarrassing for the administration, it could be quite damaging for Hegseth. The question really comes down to what kind of pain threshold does the Trump administration have when it comes to impeachment of his cabinet secretaries? The personal scandal surrounding Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is putting his relationship with US President Donald Trump under new scrutiny. Nvidia is investigating whether Huang was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. a New York Times report said he had a relationship with a Chinese businesswoman who U.S. authorities believe may be a Chinese spy. The Times also said Trump was briefed about the intelligence findings a year or so ago, and chose not to act. When asked when exactly he was told of potential issues with Mr. Huang, President Trump declined to give specifics, but did say a probe is underway. "Well, I've been hearing about it and I've been reading a little bit about it over a period of time, but not too long ago, and then we'll look into it. I know the FBI's looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he'll be in good shape." Wang has admitted to having an affair, but did not give details. President Trump says he spoke to Wang directly. "I asked him today because I didn't speak to him today just to see if he's feeling all right. How you doing?" about that. And he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy. Royce's reporter Courtney Rose and covers tick from Washington and says Wang is a regular in the president's orbit. Jensen Wang has been trying over the last couple years to persuade the Trump administration to allow chip sales to China into Chinese companies. Jensen Wang often appears at White House events. He traveled on the plane to China when President Trump went to visit the country in May. The two men often exchanged phone calls. One Reuters reporter saw Jensen's name pop up on President Trump's phone one day. While it's not clear how much of a role that direct line played, the pair's relationship has seen favorable policies for Nvidia get over the line, including the relaxation of some chip exports to China, including the powerful H200 chips of which Washington takes a 25% cut of sales. In video says national security has not been compromised, although Courtney says calls for further investigations could find support among Democrats poised to take control of Congress. And they've talked about how investigating tech executives is one of their broad goals for the new Congress. We'll be watching to see if these NVIDIA accusations and the allegations against CEO Jensen Huang will be part of those investigations and if there will be legislation or other congressional response to all these accusations. Now as NVIDIA navigates fall out from the scandal, Anthropic has set the price range for its expected blockbuster IPO at $70 to $78 per share with an expected $1.4 trillion valuation. That's lower than previous expectations that at one point saw the AI giant worth $2 trillion. The company could go public later this month and what many see as a bellweather for the AI sector as a whole. The timing isn't ideal. Political pushback on data center buildouts across the US has created a sense of unease in the industry. And recent enthusiasm for AI investment has been tempered by the amount that AI companies are plowing into infrastructure during a period of elevated interest rates. And that's not going away anytime soon. US consumer prices increased more than expected in October, which could push the Fed to more aggressively raise interest rates in next month's meeting. In California, voters have defeated Prop 40, a one-time 5% levy on billionaires assets. Supporters say it would have raised $100 billion, mostly to backfill health care funding under President Trump's tax bill. But the measure fell apart after billionaires poured hundreds of millions of dollars into ads warning it would chase wealth out of the state. Now, the first such talk since February before the U.S. and Israel launched the war in Iran. European officials are also going, although they won't be taking part with Kiev expected to brief them separately. Ukraine correspondent, Olena Hermasch says Ukraine is not expecting any immediate breakthroughs. From what we hear from Ukrainian peace negotiators and also President Zelensky is that they will discuss security guarantees, prosperity plan for Ukraine, and also they would like to discuss potential energy ceasefire and potential truths on the Black Sea. But more they look at this meeting and these talks as preparatory meeting, first of all, to restart the dialogue and secondly, to lay groundwork for potential meeting between the leaders, between Russian President Putin, Donald Trump and Zelensky. Olena says Zelensky has been lobbying for that meeting for a long time, because the Ukrainian and Russian positions remain far apart. There is still no science of any compromise around the territory, and the territory is actually a major sticking point in all these talks. So, Zelensky was hoping that this difficult and sensitive issue of the territory could be discussed by leaders themselves. President Donald Trump says he's holding off on new strikes against Iran for now, after appeals from Gulf countries to avoid further escalation. But the naval blockade and the Strait of Hormuz remains, and US and Gulf officials are playing down hopes of an imminent peace deal. The FDA is requiring GLP-1 drug makers to add a warning about a rare, but serious eye condition potentially linked to the popular weight loss drugs. The condition, known as NAIN, that's non-artoritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, can cause sudden vision loss or even blindness, which can be permanent. A large 2025 study found that after two years, people with diabetes using semglutide, the active ingredient in drugs, including ozempic and wigovii, had more than twice the risk of developing NAIN compared to patients taking other diabetes medications. Novo Nordisk, which manufactures ozempic and wigovii, says it does not believe the data establishes a cause-and-effect relationship. 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