The Brief

Hurricane Isaias, the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2026 season, has strengthened into a Category 2 storm and is on track to make landfall along the Gulf Coast between Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle as early as Friday night. Alabama, Florida and Georgia have all declared states of emergency, and mandatory evacuations are in effect in some areas as forecasters warn of dangerous winds, life-threatening storm surge and up to 10 inches of rain.

Officials are also weighing how the storm could affect a major Georgia-Alabama college football game Saturday night, which President Trump is scheduled to attend.

Christa Pike, a Tennessee death row inmate convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, regained consciousness after surviving two doses of lethal injection in a botched execution attempt. Her attorneys say she developed pneumonia and was unable to move her arms in the days after, but as of Thursday — a week after the attempt — she has begun walking with help and eating again.

A judge has ordered the state to preserve evidence from the execution attempt, and it remains unclear whether or how Tennessee could attempt to execute her again. Pike's lawyers say prison officials delayed their access to her for more than two hours after she regained consciousness and describe her as angry and confused as they pursue a legal fight over what happens to her next.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army major convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people, will be public, and a Pentagon official later confirmed the U.S. military plans to livestream it. The execution is scheduled for Dec. 3.

"We'll make sure that people are able to watch it," Hegseth said Thursday.

Student groups at Cornell University held a seven-hour sit-in to protest the school's handling of a reopened investigation into an alleged 2024 gang rape at a fraternity house. The accuser's attorney, Thomas Giuffra, says she has received multiple threats since the case drew renewed attention, and now says Cornell's police department misled her into believing a criminal investigation was still active. CBS News has also obtained hundreds of pages of internal documents detailing the allegations, the campus police investigation and the responses of some of the accused fraternity members.

The Ithaca city council has passed a moratorium on new event permits for Cornell, and one of the accused fraternity brothers, Gillio Lopes, has denied the allegations through his attorney, who called the university's punishment of a suspension and essay "unfair."

Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed a new indictment Thursday adding charges of conspiracy to commit torture against former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The new charges relate to the alleged torture of U.S. citizens held in Venezuela during Maduro's time in power.

The torture allegations add to an existing case against the couple, who already face charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and possession of machine guns and destructive devices.

The Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a federal program that helps H-1B visa holders obtain green cards, accusing the company of fraud in its use of the visa program for skilled foreign workers. Vice President JD Vance announced the suspension, which the White House says follows a fraud investigation.

The broader visa probe is also targeting Adobe and some universities over allegations they exploited international students and foreign workers to reduce U.S. wage costs.