The Treasury Department was hacked.

Donald Trump lost an appeal.

And there was some major drama in the world of chess.

That's some of what we'll get to on the seven from the Washington Post.

I'm Hannah Jewell.

It's Tuesday, December 31st.

And this is our last podcast of 2024.

Let's get you caught up with today's seven stories.

Number one. The U.S. Treasury said it was hacked by a China-backed actor.

The department said yesterday that Chinese state-sponsored hackers had gained access to government

workstations and unclassified documents in what it called a major incident. The department was

notified of the breach on December 8th by a third-party software provider called Beyond Trust. That

company said a hacker had gotten access to a security key,

and that allowed the intruder to override certain security protocols. A Treasury spokesperson said

that the Beyond Trust service has been taken offline, and that there is no evidence the hacker

still has access to Treasury systems.

The hack seems to be part of long-running Chinese espionage efforts against the U.S. government.

The Treasury Department and the FBI are investigating the breach.

Number two. Donald Trump lost an appeal in his civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll.

In May 2023, jurors in New York found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.

She was awarded $5 million.

Trump appealed that decision. He argued that the judge in the case admitted evidence that he should not have. That includes an Access Hollywood tape first reported

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