Thursday, November 12, 2026
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.
Emailed bomb threats reached about 6,300 state schools in Italy and hundreds more in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland on Wednesday, 11 November 2026, prompting precautionary evacuations. Police in every country involved said the threats were not credible, no explosives were found, and investigators are trying to trace the sender.
Millions of workers in Spain joined a 24-hour general strike on Wednesday, 11 November 2026, the country's first since 2012, to protest against soaring rents and house prices. Unions and tenants' groups put participation at about 4 million, and the stoppage lands less than three weeks before a snap general election on 29 November in which housing is a central issue.
US consumer prices rose 0.4% in October 2026, more than the 0.3% economists expected, with core prices up 0.3% for a third straight month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on 10 November. The BLS published no annual inflation rate because last year's government shutdown left no October 2025 data, but economists estimate it at about 3.9% to 4%, and the report has strengthened expectations of a Federal Reserve rate rise in December.
Storm Charles reached mainland Portugal on Wednesday, 11 November, after battering Madeira overnight, prompting the first nationwide closure of Portugal's schools for a storm, hundreds of flight cancellations and the cancellation of Web Summit's second day. By mid-afternoon local time, authorities had logged hundreds of incidents, mostly flooding and fallen trees, but reported no deaths or serious injuries.
Two days of US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi ended on 11 November with an agreement in principle on a large prisoner-of-war exchange, but no ceasefire or deal on territory. US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff say they will meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow on 12 November and then brief Volodymyr Zelensky in Dublin.
Malaysia's former prime minister Najib Razak left Kajang Prison on 10 November to serve the rest of his 1MDB-linked sentence at his Kuala Lumpur home, after a High Court order ended a dispute over his royal pardon. Transport Minister Anthony Loke resigned in protest the same day.
Anthropic has launched the roadshow for its Nasdaq listing, offering 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each alongside a $26bn private placement with chip and cloud partners. At the top of the range Reuters puts its fully diluted value at about $1.4tn, below the $2tn some investors had discussed.
Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Luxembourg have urged EU leaders to link Britain's return to the EU's internal electricity market with a UK contribution to the bloc's cohesion funds, while pressing for the talks to be concluded quickly. UK ministers say they have not accepted the link but will discuss it after the EU-UK summit on 20 November.