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The Daily Context

The Daily Context: Today's briefing

Saturday, November 14, 2026

A Starship Super Heavy booster descending on a column of orange flame beside the tall steel launch tower at Starbase, Texas, at dusk, with smoke clouds and marshland in the foreground
Technology

SpaceX catches Starship from orbit for the first time as booster is lost

SpaceX caught its Starship upper stage with the launch tower's arms at Starbase, Texas, on Saturday, 14 November 2026, after about 22 hours and 14 orbits in space. It was the first time any Starship has been recovered from orbit. But the Super Heavy booster aborted its own tower catch on Friday and was destroyed over the Gulf of Mexico, so the first full recovery of the rocket will have to wait.

Kabeer Ahmad7 min read

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The Microsoft logo and name on a low stone sign in front of Building 92, a glass-fronted office building on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington, under a clear blue sky
Technology

Microsoft 365 outage hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot worldwide

A global Microsoft 365 outage that began on Thursday, 12 November 2026, cut many business and consumer users off from Outlook email, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Copilot. Microsoft says a large number of servers unexpectedly failed health checks and went offline, overloading the rest; recovery was still partial early on 13 November.

Kabeer Ahmad10 min read
A large grey Mercedes-Benz factory building with a three-pointed star logo on its roof, seen across an empty road in Sindelfingen, Germany, in February 2021
Business

Mercedes-Benz halts new investment in German plants and weighs closures

Mercedes-Benz's management board has stopped all further investment at its German sites and says it will now examine plant closures in concrete terms, after cost-cutting talks with the works council and IG Metall stalled. Executives want longer working hours without extra pay and cuts to bonuses; no plants have been named.

Kabeer Ahmad7 min read
Michael Carrick, wearing a black Middlesbrough training hoodie, looks to one side outside a stadium in April 2025, when he was Middlesbrough manager
Sports

Manchester United sack Michael Carrick, with Pochettino set to take over

Manchester United sacked head coach Michael Carrick on 12 November with the club 18th in the Premier League after one league win in 10 games. Reports from the BBC, the Guardian and AP say USA coach Mauricio Pochettino is finalising a deal to replace him, though neither club nor federation had confirmed it at the time of writing.

Kabeer Ahmad9 min read
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, in dark suits, talk with Vladimir Putin in a Kremlin room with red patterned wall coverings during an earlier visit in September 2026
World

Putin meets Witkoff and Kushner in Kremlin, proposes Kostiantynivka evacuation

Vladimir Putin met US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin for about two and a half hours on 12 November, a day after the Abu Dhabi talks. In public remarks he proposed a humanitarian evacuation of civilians from Kostiantynivka in Donetsk region and repeated hard lines on territory and foreign troops, while the envoys said they hoped to announce a new round of talks that could include Europe.

Kabeer Ahmad9 min read
Aerial view of the rusting ocean liner SS United States, its two funnels faded, being pulled from its pier into the Delaware River by two tugboats, with the Philadelphia skyline behind
Lifestyle

SS United States sunk off Florida to become world's largest artificial reef

The SS United States, the 990-foot liner that still holds the transatlantic speed record set in 1952, was deliberately sunk in the Gulf of Mexico about 22 nautical miles off Destin, Florida, on Wednesday 11 November. Okaloosa County says it is now the world's largest artificial reef and plans to open it to divers once a survey confirms where it rests.

Kabeer Ahmad7 min read
Two smiling women wearing 'Pick Another Senator Instead – Mississippi 2026' T-shirts at an outdoor gathering in Corinth, Mississippi, in a black-and-white photo
World

Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate seat, ousting Hyde-Smith

Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi by about 4,600 votes out of roughly 962,000 counted, after eight days of ballot counting. He will be the state's first Black US senator since Reconstruction and its first Democratic senator elected since 1982; results stay unofficial until counties certify on 13 November.

Kabeer Ahmad8 min read
Entrance of a Muji store at Grand Front Osaka with the brand's Japanese name on a dark red fascia above shelves of luggage, clothing and homeware
Technology

Muji apologises after 1.09 million card numbers it should have deleted were exposed

Ryohin Keikaku, the company behind Muji, apologised on 12 November for keeping about 1.09 million full MUJI Card numbers it should have deleted years ago, which may have been accessed in an October cyberattack. It will pay reissue fees for about 345,000 cards that are still valid, while its Japanese online store remains offline after a separate wave of credential-stuffing logins.

Kabeer Ahmad7 min read
Official portrait of Indonesian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka in a black peci cap, dark suit and red tie, standing in front of the red and white Indonesian flag
World

Indonesia's Vice President Gibran formally resigns: what happens next

Indonesian Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka formally resigned on Thursday 12 November, handing his letter to the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) after court rulings undermined the school documents behind his 2024 candidacy. President Prabowo Subianto must now nominate two candidates, and the assembly has up to 60 days to elect a successor.

Kabeer Ahmad8 min read

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