November 12, 2026

MIDDLE EAST WAR | Day 258.

• Mohsen Rezaei, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said yesterday that Iran has rejected a U.S. proposal to transfer its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to a third country, and that Russia, which had offered to store the material, has been informed of the decision. Rezaei also warned that Iran would respond to any U.S. attack on Pickaxe Mountain by targeting U.S. military bases, including those in European countries. [more]
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly ordered the Israeli military to prepare for possible new attacks on Iran. Related reporting in Israeli media came after opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot, who has been tasked with forming Israel's next government, urged Netanyahu not to deploy the military "without a direct and immediate threat" until a new government is formed. [more]

UKRAINE | Today is day 1,720 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here are your updates:

• Two days of U.S.-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, ended yesterday with an agreement on a large-scale prisoner exchange, but no breakthrough on ending the war. U.S. envoy Jared Kushner said there is currently no trust between the two sides and that territorial issues will be the hardest to resolve. [more]
• U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow today for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the results of the Abu Dhabi negotiations. Kushner says the envoys will seek to have European countries added to the talks before traveling on to Dublin, Ireland, to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. [more]
• Leaders from more than 40 European countries, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are meeting in Dublin today for a European Political Community summit, with Europe's security and the U.S.-backed push to end the Russia-Ukraine war expected to be among the main topics of discussion. [more]
• Russia's Defense Ministry says it carried out large-scale strikes on military factories across Ukraine overnight, including on a rocket factory in Kyiv, where the city's mayor says a Russian drone hit an apartment building, killing one woman and injuring five other people. [more]

MISSISSIPPI | Democrat Scott Colom was declared the winner of Mississippi's closely contested U.S. Senate race yesterday after a days-long count of absentee and provisional ballots, defeating Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and becoming the state's first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction. Hyde-Smith conceded the race yesterday afternoon. [more]

U.S. PUBLIC LANDS | The Interior Department released a new five-year strategic plan this week that calls for selling federal lands to states, local governments, and tribes to "decrease the size of the federal estate," with a portion of the proceeds going back to the buyers for conservation elsewhere. The plan also calls for land exchanges and transfers to support energy production, and for focusing Land and Water Conservation Fund spending on easements on private land, which it says will ensure the federal estate "does not continue to grow." [full plan] [more]

NEW YORK | At least two people were killed, and 17 others were injured, yesterday when a three-story apartment building in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn collapsed into an adjacent construction site. Search-and-rescue efforts at the site are ongoing, and the cause of the collapse remains under investigation. [more]

GLOBAL CLIMATE | In a speech to world leaders at the COP31 U.N. climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, yesterday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for a new "climate justice compact" to speed the transition away from fossil fuels and increase financial support for poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change. [full remarks] [more]

ITALY | More than 6,300 schools across Italy received an e-mailed bomb threat yesterday, prompting evacuations at hundreds of them, though Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says law enforcement checks found no concrete threat. Reports note that similar threats were sent to schools in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland, and that the incidents came amidst a recent series of threats against European airlines and broadcasters. [more]

U.K. ECONOMY | New data from Britain's Office for National Statistics shows that the U.K. economy grew 0.7% in the third quarter of 2026 – up from 0.5% in the second quarter and the fastest quarterly growth in two and a half years. Growth was driven mainly by the services sector, where the statistics office cited "widespread strength in industries which may be related to artificial intelligence." [full report] [more]

SPAIN | Hundreds of thousands of people are estimated to have taken part in demonstrations yesterday as part of Spain's first general strike in 14 years, held over the country's housing crisis. Reports say dozens of people were arrested across the country and that police in Barcelona used tear gas to disperse masked protesters who set fires and smashed shop windows. [more]

CHINA AND TAIWAN | Speaking in Beijing today, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said Taiwan's "reunification" with China "must be realized, and it will certainly be realized," while calling for a peaceful process and making no mention of the use of force. Taiwan's government rejected the remarks, saying the territory's people cannot accept the "one country, two systems" model Beijing has offered. [more]

MORE CHINA AND TAIWAN | Introducing Acer founder Stan Shih as his envoy to next week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said today that Taiwan is taking part in the summit on an "equal basis." China's foreign ministry says Taiwan's representatives can attend "as normal" as long as its participation follows the "one-China principle." [more]

ISRAEL AND GAZA | Palestinian health officials say an overnight Israeli airstrike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few functioning hospitals left in Gaza, killed six people and wounded at least 20 others. The Israeli military says it targeted a Hamas commander who had turned the hospital into a "headquarters." [more]

CONGO | Civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province say at least 22 people were killed, and at least 10 others abducted, this week in attacks by the Islamic State-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces group on eight communities near the country's border with Uganda. [more]

PERU | Calling Peru his "homeland," Pope Leo XIV, who spent more than two decades in the country as a missionary priest and bishop, arrived in Lima yesterday for the final leg of a three-nation South America tour. The Vatican estimates that some 3 million people lined the route of his motorcade into the city. [more]

AI INDUSTRY | Reports say Nvidia's board met late yesterday to weigh the future of co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang after The New York Times reported a second extramarital relationship, with a company executive who reports directly to him. Nvidia's shares fell more than 8% in after-hours trading. [more]

BASEBALL | Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Jacob Misiorowski won the National League Cy Young Award yesterday and New York Yankees pitcher Cam Schlittler won the American League's – both by unanimous vote. [more]

HOCKEY | Canadian sports officials said yesterday that Russian players will not be allowed to compete in next month's world junior hockey championships in Alberta. The decision came despite a Court of Arbitration for Sport order for the International Ice Hockey Federation to allow Russia, banned since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, back into the tournament. [more]

TODAY IN HISTORY | On this date in 1970, the Bhola cyclone, considered the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history, struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and India's West Bengal, killing an estimated 300,000-500,000 people in the densely populated Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. [more history]