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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleNov. 23, 2025, 8:53 AM ESTBy Rohan Nadkarni and Andrew GreifBy the end of last season, the Minnesota Vikings had three quarterbacks on their roster: Sam Darnold, who started every game during a 14-3 regular season, Daniel Jones, who the team signed last November after he was released by the New York Giants, and rookie J.J. McCarthy, who missed the entire year after tearing his meniscus.After Darnold lost his last two starts — a regular season game that decided who won the NFC North, and a playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams — the Vikings determined he wasn’t the long-term answer at the position. Minnesota also didn’t see enough from Jones in practice to retain him.Darnold signed with the Seattle Seahawks in the offseason, while Jones signed with the Indianapolis Colts. Minnesota, meanwhile, handed the keys of the franchise to McCarthy, who in his last collegiate game completed only 10-of-18 passes for 140 yards.In Week 1, the Vikings looked like geniuses after McCarthy led a come-from-behind victory against the Chicago Bears.Entering Week 12, Minnesota may be second-guessing its decision, as Darnold and Jones have their respective teams near the top of the standings while the Vikings are floundering — with McCarthy a significant part of the problem.“Coming in here, I was taught how to play quarterback in a very different way,” McCarthy told reporters this week about his transition to being an NFL starter. “And that’s expected going into the league, going into any new team, any new system.”He added that injuries — McCarthy also missed time this season with a high ankle sprain — have robbed him of valuable practice time. As a result, Minnesota’s starter is learning on the fly.“It’s really hard,” McCarthy said. “You’re rewiring neurological pathways, and that’s not something that happens overnight. Just understanding and giving myself that grace, that patience, that I might not have it today, but it’s something that I’m gonna continue to strive after, day after day, rep after rep, and get to the place where we all want me to be.”A learning curve for a young quarterback is nothing new, but the Vikings’ struggles are tougher to swallow after the team was tied for the second-most wins in the NFL in 2024. Minnesota is currently 4-6 and on the outside of the playoffs in the NFC. McCarthy is 2-3 as a starter. What stings even worse for the Vikings is how well Darnold and Jones have played for their new teams. The Seahawks are 7-3, tied for the second-best record in the NFC, while the Colts are 8-2, a half game out of first place in the AFC.Compared to Darnold and Jones, McCarthy has thrown far fewer touchdowns, has been more turnover prone, and has a much worse passer rating. Minnesota, of course, was likely thinking long term by opting for McCarthy. And Darnold and Jones will still have to prove themselves in the postseason, while their teams will also have to decide how much money to commit to them in the near future. (McCarthy will be relatively more cost-controlled for three more seasons on his rookie contract.) For now, though, the Vikings have a built-to-win team with a star receiver in Justin Jefferson, a competitive defense coached by Brian Flores, but an offense averaging less points (21.8 compared to 25.4) and throwing for less yards (193.0 compared to 237.8) than it did a year ago.

- Latest News - November 23, 2025

By the end of last season, the Minnesota Vikings had three quarterbacks on their roster: Sam Darnold, who started every game during a 14-3 regular season, Daniel Jones, who the.

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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleNov. 23, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Kevin CollierIt’s not just you — internet outages severe enough to disrupt everyday services for many people have become more frequent and wide-ranging, experts say.When internet services company Cloudflare crashed Tuesday — prompting significant, hourslong disruptions at companies ranging from X to OpenAI to Discord — it was the third major internet outage in the space of about a month.While there’s plenty of finger-pointing to go around, two things are clear: Popular consumer businesses increasingly rely on a handful of giant companies that run things more cheaply in the cloud, and when one of those companies isn’t extraordinarily careful, an obscure software vulnerability or tiny mistake can reverberate through to many of their customers, making it seem like half the internet has been unplugged.“This spate of outages has been uniquely terrible,” said Erie Meyer, the former chief technical officer of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Biden administration. “It’s like what we were told Y2K would be like, and it’s happening more often.”It’s become a common enough occurrence that jokes about the failures, rooted in an understanding of the basics of internet infrastructure, have become popular memes in the computer science world.Major cloud companies are often referred to as hyperscalers, meaning once they have established a viable business, it can be relatively straightforward to rapidly build out their infrastructure and offer those services at competitive prices. That has resulted in a handful of companies dominating the industry, which critics note creates single points of failure when something goes wrong.“When one company’s bug can derail everyday life, that’s not just a technical issue, that’s consolidation,” Meyer said.Outages are as old as the internet. But since late October there have been three major ones — an unprecedented number for such a short span of time — that caused serious problems for wide swaths of people.The first was Amazon Web Services on Oct. 20, taking with it many people’s access to everything from gaming platforms Roblox and Fortnite to Ring cameras. It reportedly kept some from being able to operate their internet-connected smart beds.Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a long-standing critic of the tech industry, wrote on X after the AWS outage that it was a reason “to break up Big Tech.”“If a company can break the entire internet, they are too big. Period,” she said.Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, went down on Oct. 29, rendering a host of the company’s services inoperable around the globe just before its quarterly report. Those two outages each caused major headaches for at least two airlines, preventing passengers from checking in online: Delta, which uses AWS, and Alaska, which uses Azure.Then came Cloudflare’s disruption Tuesday, which CEO Matthew Prince said was the company’s worst since 2019.“We are sorry for the impact to our customers and to the Internet in general,” he wrote in a technical explanation after the outage. “Given Cloudflare’s importance in the Internet ecosystem any outage of any of our systems is unacceptable,” he added. “That there was a period of time where our network was not able to route traffic is deeply painful to every member of our team. We know we let you down today.”The three companies each dealt with different issues. Cloudflare initially thought it was under a massive cyberattack, but then traced the issue to a “bug” in its software to combat bots. AWS and Microsoft each had different issues configuring their services with the Domain Name System, or DNS, the notoriously finicky “phonebook” for the internet that connects website URLs with their technical, numerical addresses.Those issues come a year after a particularly unusual case, in which companies around the world that used both Microsoft-based computers and the popular cybersecurity service CrowdStrike suddenly saw their systems crash and display the “blue screen of death.” The culprit was a glitch in what should have been a routine CrowdStrike automatic software update, leading to flight delays and medical and police networks going down for hours.Ultimately, each was an instance of a minor software glitch that rippled across those companies’ enormous systems, crashing website after website.Asad Ramzanali, the director of artificial intelligence and technology policy at Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, as well as the former deputy director for strategy at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Biden administration, called the tendency for giant companies to experience such wide-ranging outages a national risk. “This concentration is both a market failure and a national security risk when we have so much of society dependent on these layers of infrastructure,” he told NBC News.James Kretchmar, the chief technology officer of Akamai’s Cloud Technology Group — another cloud services giant — said that it is always possible for a cloud company’s engineers to reduce outages’ likelihood and severity, but that companies need to use them strategically.“You don’t have infinite nerds. But it’s not like this is something where you would have to throw your hands up and say, ‘There’s just no way,’” he said.There’s also some growing push for these outages to be treated as more than minor nuisances or the cost of doing business in the digital age.J.B. Branch, the Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen, a progressive nonprofit that advocates for public interests, called for more government regulation of the cloud industry.“There needs to be investigations whenever these outages happen, because whether we like it or not, the entire infrastructure that our economy is kind of running on, digitally at least, is owned by a handful of companies, and that’s incredibly concerning,” he said.Kevin CollierKevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology policy for NBC News.

- Latest News - November 23, 2025

It’s not just you — internet outages severe enough to disrupt everyday services for many people have become more frequent and wide-ranging, experts say

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Nov. 23, 2025, 12:31 AM EST / Updated Nov. 23, 2025, 12:46 AM ESTBy Sahil KapurLAS VEGAS — Max Verstappen won the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Saturday night, capturing the lead from championship leader Lando Norris at the start and never looking back.The F1 cars blasted down the Las Vegas Strip at breathtaking speeds of over 215 miles per hour, delivering thrilling wheel-to-wheel racing under the bright lights for the third year.Yet despite finishing in second place, it was a good outcome for Norris in the battle for the 2025 world championship because he extended his lead over his nearest rival Oscar Piastri, who also drives for McLaren and finished fourth.Norris now has 408 points, while Piastri has 378. Verstappen, who races for Red Bull, sits third in the standings with 366.“Simply lovely, that!” Verstappen said by team radio.McLaren’s British driver Lando Norris waves after finishing second during the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix on Saturday.Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty ImagesThere are just two Grand Prix left in a 2025 season full of twists and turns — next weekend in Qatar and the weekend after in Abu Dhabi. The Qatar race features a shortened “sprint” race, too, so there are a maximum of 58 points still up for grabs.“It’s still a big gap,” Verstappen said of the title fight in a post-race interview. “The upcoming weekends we’ll again, try to win the race, and at the end of Abu Dhabi we’ll see where we end up.”Norris started first but lost two positions in the opening corners after making an aggressive move to defend his lead, but ran wide on the first turn and got overtaken by Verstappen and George Russell. He eventually overtook Russell of Mercedes but couldn’t get close to Verstappen, and he was forced to slow his pace toward the end due to an issue with the car. Russell finished third.“I just braked too late. It was my eff-up,” Norris said of the start in an interview broadcast on F1TV. “I just wanted to put on a show, right? That’s why we’re in Vegas!”An economic boost for Las VegasLocal leaders hope the race weekend will provide a much-needed boost to the Las Vegas economy, which has struggled this year due to high costs and declining tourism, among other issues. Last year’s Las Vegas Grand Prix delivered an economic impact of $934 million, according to one estimate.“It’s a very important event. And I fully support all of our special events. We’re not just the entertainment capital, we’re the entertainment and sports capital,” U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., who represents parts of the city, told NBC News ahead of the race. “So having a marquee event like this on the Las Vegas Strip is great, and it does a lot for our economy.”F1 is looking to build on its momentum with American fans, having secured the races in Miami and Las Vegas — in addition to the longstanding Grand Prix in Austin — on the calendar for the long haul. It signed a five-year deal with Apple, which will take over the U.S. broadcast rights from ESPN starting next year.Jay-Z and Beyonce arrive in the Paddock prior to the F1 Grand Prix of Las Vegas on Saturday in Las Vegas.Alex Bierens de Haan / Getty ImagesCelebrity sightings included musicians Beyoncé and Jay-Z, actors Ben Affleck, Michael Douglas and Naomi Campbell, NBA all-stars Magic Johnson and Jimmy Butler, and tennis player Taylor Fritz. Actor Catherine Zeta-Jones waved the checkered flag.The top three finishers were driven to the podium, which is located on the Strip at the Bellagio Fountain Club, in a pink LEGO-built Cadillac car.Before the race, Ferrari superstar Lewis Hamilton took Beyoncé on a hot lap around the circuit, a team spokesperson confirmed,. as she was decked out in a Louis Vuitton custom racing suit. The two stars were spotted watching the race from the Ferrari garage.Also in attendance Saturday were Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel, who were given a tour of the paddock by F1 officials.“I’ve always kind of been a NASCAR fan and been learning a lot about F1 the last couple of years. And we’re excited to see everybody race,” Noem said, adding that she was getting a tour of the McLaren garage. Patel called Formula 1 “one of the greatest sports,” saying he’s a McLaren fan.Rain brings chaos in qualifyingThe Friday qualifying session was thrown into chaos due to rain, which extracted every ounce of skill from the 20 drivers just to stay out of the barriers. The track, already known to have low grip even in dry conditions, was slippery and treacherous for most of the session.“You’re just trying to keep it on the track. Not crash. Not take yourself out,” Norris said after taking pole position. “One day, I just hope — apart from having a two-seater F1 car — people can get that sensation of just how nerve-wracking and scary it can be at times. How unpredictable. You know, like we said — we’re surprised that no one really had a crash.”And the Las Vegas paddock was abuzz with internal drama among several teams during the weekend.Piastri was asked about recently reposting an Instagram post that quoted F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone claiming McLaren “prefers” Norris because of his “high star quality” and “marketing appeal.”Oscar Piastri of McLaren looks on during final practice ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Las Vegas on Friday.Chris Graythen / Getty ImagesAsked about the repost, which was highlighted online by F1 content creators, Piastri told reporters it was an error.“I don’t know,” he said Friday after deleting it from his feed. “I woke up this morning and saw it. So I don’t know, maybe I accidentally did it. Obviously, it was not intentional. But yeah, I didn’t know what had happened.” Instagram has one-click reposts — unlike X, which requires users to click twice to confirm — making it easy to erroneously repost something while scrolling. Still, it added to a drama in which the Australian driver’s fans have theorized that the British team favors his British teammate, a claim that McLaren firmly denies.Ferrari’s two drivers downplayed recent comments by Ferrari chairperson John Elkann, who said they should “talk less and focus on driving” — remarks slammed by critics as a gratuitous dig against Leclerc and Hamilton after Ferrari’s decision to build a new car for 2025 (rather than upgrade last year’s version) backfired and led to a winless season so far.“I’m always willing to do less media,” Hamilton quipped.Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari arriving to the paddock during qualifying ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Las Vegas on Friday.Peter Fox / Getty ImagesThe seven-time world champion told reporters it’s “not really” possible to focus any more on driving than he already is. “I wake up thinking about it. And I go to sleep thinking about it. And I think about it while I’m sleeping,” Hamilton said.Leclerc said the comment was a product of Elkann’s ambition to maximize the team’s potential. “He loves Ferrari. I love Ferrari. We all love Ferrari,” Leclerc said. “When he called me, he told me what were the intentions of these words, and that was very clear. It was a positive message, trying to be positive.”Ferrari currently sits fourth in a close battle for second in the team championship, behind Mercedes and Red Bull. While the driver’s title carries more glory, the constructors’ championship is the one that awards cash prizes. Ferrari finished runner-up to McLaren last year in a close battle.Hamilton started 20th, but had a strong opening lap and fought his way back from last to 10th.Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.

- Latest News - November 23, 2025

Max Verstappen won the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Saturday night, capturing the lead from championship leader Lando Norris at the start and never looking back.

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Nov. 22, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Aria BendixAt least four families have sued infant formula maker ByHeart saying their babies contracted botulism from contaminated formula, as the company faces ongoing scrutiny from federal investigators and a separate class action lawsuit filed last week.In the lawsuits, affected families described harrowing days or weeks in the hospital with their babies, who were placed on IVs and feeding tubes. Many said they had chosen ByHeart’s formula because it contained organic whole milk and minimal additives, making it seem like the healthiest option.The company said in a statement Wednesday that laboratory tests had identified Clostridium botulinum spores in samples of its formula. ByHeart told NBC News that it could not comment on pending litigation and that “the company is focused on the recall and root cause investigation at this time.”According to the Food and Drug Administration, 31 infants who consumed the formula have suspected or confirmed botulism. The cases span 15 states, and all have required hospitalization. No deaths have been reported.ByHeart recalls infant formula sold nationwide due to serious health risks02:03The bacteria that causes botulism can grow in foods that aren’t properly canned or preserved, and it produces a toxin that attacks the nerves. The resulting illness can cause difficulty breathing, muscle paralysis or death.ByHeart said on its website that it has not identified the root cause of the contamination but has shared its test results with the FDA.“We immediately notified the FDA of those findings, and we are working to investigate the facts, conduct ongoing testing to identify the source, and ensure this does not happen to families again,” it said.In an interview with NBC News, Hanna Everett said she started giving ByHeart formula to her daughter, Piper, at around 2 months old. By early this month, Piper was constipated and drooling excessively, and her left eye seemed droopy, Everett said. A friend sent her a link to the ByHeart recall.“Sure enough, the can she had just finished that day was the exact lot number that was affected,” said Everett, who lives in Richmond, Kentucky.Piper was admitted to a children’s hospital on Nov. 9, where she was diagnosed with botulism. Everett said the sight of doctors and nurses struggling to administer IVs and a feeding tube made her throw up.Hanna Everett’s daughter, Piper, in the hospital.Courtesy Hanna EverettTwo friends had to physically prop her up, she said, “because I was just bawling.”“They’re holding your child down that’s not even 4 months old technically at the time, and she’s just screaming bloody murder. And there’s nothing you can do,” Everett said.Piper was given a botulism antitoxin via an IV drip. The treatment isn’t readily stocked at hospitals, so it had to be flown in. Everett said Piper’s condition has improved; she was released from the hospital roughly a week ago.Hanna Everett with her daughter, Piper.Courtesy Hanna EverettBut Everett is still wracked with guilt.“It feels like I let her down when I know that’s not the case. It’s hard to tell yourself that as a mother, because you’re going to blame yourself,” she said.Everett and her husband, Michael, sued ByHeart last week, seeking damages for medical expenses, pain and suffering.“It makes me more angry and just sick to my stomach that it took them as long as it did to own up to this,” she said. “It’s almost like too little, too late.”Everett said she messaged ByHeart about the recall while Piper was in the hospital, and it offered to send her more formula cans.Darin Detwiler, a professor of food regulatory policy at Northeastern University, agreed that ByHeart should have taken comprehensive action more quickly.“They should have identified this on their own, and they should have been forthcoming immediately,” he said.After the FDA alerted ByHeart to the potential link between its formula and the botulism outbreak, the company initially recalled just two lots. The following day, ByHeart posted on its website that there was not enough evidence to link its product to the illnesses because a sample that had tested positive for botulism bacteria came from an opened can, which “can be contaminated in multiple ways.”In court filings, parents suing ByHeart have described states of terror.In the latest suit, filed on Wednesday, a Washington state couple said their daughter had chronic constipation, difficulty feeding and extreme fatigue while taking the formula. She was admitted to the emergency room at 2 months old, the filing says.The family left the hospital on Wednesday, according to the suit. The mother, Madison Wescott, said she doesn’t produce enough milk to satisfy her daughter’s needs without formula.“Knowing that I can’t fully feed my child, and I can’t trust formula companies has really taken a toll on our family,” Wescott said in the suit.In California, Anthony Barbera and Thalia Flores exclusively fed their son ByHeart formula after he was born, according to their lawsuit. By the time their son received the antitoxin for botulism at the hospital, he was no longer eating, connected to multiple IV lines and too weak to cry, their lawsuit says.Arizona parents Stephen and Yurany Dexter said in their lawsuit that their daughter stopped eating altogether in August, refusing the bottle of formula as soon as it touched her lips. She was transported by air ambulance to a children’s hospital. The couple said they feared she might die or never recover fully.Bill Marler, a lawyer representing the Dexters, Wescotts and Barbera and Flores, said ByHeart has “a lot to answer for.”“If there’s a product that should be safe, it should be infant formula,” he said.Before this, no botulism outbreaks had ever been linked to infant formula in the U.S. Formula makers aren’t required to regularly test for Clostridium botulinum, but they must follow sanitary control practices to prevent contamination and are subject to FDA inspections.Most of the major formula recalls in recent years — including the 2022 Abbott Nutrition recall, which contributed to a national formula shortage — were because of potential contamination with a different bacteria, Cronobacter sakazakii. ByHeart also recalled batches of its formula in December 2022 because of possible Cronobacter contamination.In 2023, the FDA sent a warning letter to ByHeart describing “significant violations” at its manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania. The FDA said that ByHeart attributed a batch of formula that tested positive for Cronobacter to a laboratory error, though the lab denied that that was the case. The agency also said there were two water leaks at the facility, and that ByHeart did not evaluate a potential link between the leaks and formula that later tested positive for Cronobacter.ByHeart’s website states that it “undertook action to address the issues and there are no open issues from that warning letter.” The Pennsylvania facility was not involved in the production of formula in the current recall, the company said.Abigail Snyder, an associate professor of microbial food safety at Cornell University, said an FDA warning letter like the one ByHeart got is “pretty unusual,” though there was increased regulatory activity around infant formula after the Abbott recall.“Fewer ingredients and whole milk is a different attribute than microbial safety, unfortunately,” she said.Aria BendixAria Bendix is the breaking health reporter for NBC News Digital.Kenzi Abou-Sabe contributed.

- Latest News - November 23, 2025

In lawsuits against infant formula maker ByHeart, families allege that their babies contracted botulism from its contaminated products. More than 30 infants have been sickened in the botulism outbreak.

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