Thursday☕️🌎

Snapshot:

• November 11, 2026 — Indonesia’s Nusantara Atlas satellite-monitoring project said fires had burned 2.88 million hectares (about 11,120 square miles) by late October; rain slowed some blazes, but haze reached Malaysia and Singapore.
• November 11, 2026 — Ukraine said Russian forces struck six power substations and a heating plant, cutting heat in Kryvyi Rih, damaging rail facilities and injuring at least 14 people.
• November 11, 2026 — Saudi Arabia raised October crude output to 10.563 million barrels daily as OPEC+ added 2.04 million barrels daily, increasing oil available to importers despite shipping risks.

Geopolitics & Military Activity:

• November 11, 2026 — Russia and Ukraine agreed in principle in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to a large prisoner exchange after U.S.-mediated talks. They still disagree on territory, security guarantees and a ceasefire, and the exchange numbers were not settled.

• November 11, 2026 — Moldova said two Russian cruise missiles crossed its airspace near Tudora, Moldova, during attacks on Ukraine, then returned to Ukrainian airspace within minutes. Moldova continued monitoring its skies; no strike inside Moldova was reported.
• November 11, 2026 — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected an unfinished naval base on North Korea’s east coast and ordered faster construction. State media did not name the site, and the base remains under construction rather than in service.

Economics & Markets:

• November 11, 2026 — Germany’s cabinet approved a strategic reserve of 24 terawatt-hours of gas, about 10% of national storage capacity. Trading Hub Europe, the gas-market operator, is to build it from 2027; the government estimates household gas costs would rise 0.3–0.5%.

• November 11, 2026 — Chinese carmakers exported about 927,000 passenger vehicles in October, 62.3% more than a year earlier, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry group, said. Electric and hybrid vehicles led export growth while domestic passenger sales fell 27.4%.
• November 11, 2026 — India’s Union Cabinet approved ₹62,370.02 crore in subsidies for 28 types of phosphorus- and potassium-based fertiliser for the 2026–27 winter crop season. The funding is ₹24,417.73 crore above last winter’s amount and is meant to help keep supplies affordable for farmers.
• November 11, 2026 — At the London Metal Exchange in the United Kingdom, aluminium for immediate delivery traded $151 a tonne above three-month contracts, the widest gap in more than 30 years. Stocks backing those contracts were at their lowest since 1990, raising costs for buyers that need exchange-deliverable metal now.

Business:

• November 11, 2026 — FTI Consulting, receiver for David Jones, began consultation on closing 19 of the department store’s 38 outlets in Australia and New Zealand. The stores will keep trading for now but are expected to close by year-end, affecting staff at those locations.

• November 11, 2026 — Lithium Americas, developer of the Thacker Pass mine in Humboldt County, Nevada, United States, raised Phase 1’s estimated cost to $3.83 billion from $2.93 billion. It expects to need $995 million more while keeping its late-2027 construction-completion target.
• November 11, 2026 — Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker, dropped a planned factory-production overhaul at Wolfsburg, Germany. The decision ends the project in its original form; the works council says it may conflict with 2024 investment and job guarantees.
• November 11, 2026 — COSCO Shipping Development, a Chinese ship-leasing company, signed a 13.43 billion yuan ($2.01 billion) order for 16 ultra-large oil tankers to be built in Dalian, China. Delivery is due in 2029–30, adding future rather than current crude-shipping capacity.

Politics & Society:

• November 11, 2026 — The European Commission proposed a Digital Fairness Act in Brussels, Belgium, aimed at hidden fees and manipulative online sales tactics. The plan would give it stronger powers in major cross-border cases, but EU countries and Parliament must still approve it.

• November 10, 2026 — Israel’s newly elected 120-member Knesset was sworn in in Jerusalem, Israel, while Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, tried to form a coalition. The parliament can begin oversight and pass private bills, but Benjamin Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister.
• November 10, 2026 — President Félix Tshisekedi signed a law in the Democratic Republic of the Congo setting rules for constitutional referendums. Critics say it could be used to change presidential term limits; Tshisekedi denies seeking a third term, and no referendum has been scheduled.
• November 10, 2026 — Republican lawmakers in Washington, United States, chose Senator John Thune as their Senate leader and Representative Jim Jordan as House leader for the next Congress. Jordan defeated Representative Steve Scalise; both Republican groups will be in the minority from January.

Environment & Weather:

• November 11, 2026 — Manjara Dam in Latur district, India, held only 5.06% of its usable capacity, down from 100% a year earlier. It supplies Latur and nearby communities, leaving less water for homes and farms.

• November 11, 2026 — The UK Chief Veterinary Officer ordered poultry keepers in England, United Kingdom, with 50 or more birds, or those selling birds or eggs, to house them from November 13. All keepers must immediately follow stronger hygiene rules after more bird-flu detections.
• November 11, 2026 — November 11, 2026 — Spain’s weather agency kept red warnings in Cáceres and Ávila, Spain, as storms Charles and Bruna brought heavy rain and high winds. In the Canary Islands, Spain, classes were suspended on Tenerife, La Palma and La Graciosa, and 12 flights were cancelled at La Palma.

Cyber:

• November 11, 2026 — Romania’s intelligence service said it stopped a late-2025 intrusion by the Russia-aligned Turla hacking group that collected NATO and European Union email at a Romanian government institution. It said the effects were fixed.

• November 10, 2026 — The Philippines’ privacy regulator said 10 government agencies filed breach notices after cybersecurity incidents. The tax bureau said some taxpayer profile data may have been exposed, but filing and payment records were not affected; the regulator is reviewing the cases.
• November 10, 2026 — The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency added actively exploited Cisco BroadWorks and Openwave messaging flaws to its urgent-fix list. Federal agencies must patch by November 24; the Cisco flaw could let outsiders read sensitive files.
• November 11, 2026 — Maersk, a global shipping company, said someone accessed and extracted data from one local system it acquired. The company said its shipping operations and connected customer systems were unaffected while its investigation continues.

Science & Technology:

• November 10, 2026 — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a chip maker, approved US$40.93 billion for new capacity, advanced packaging that links chips together, and research in Hsinchu, Taiwan, through 2027. This authorizes spending, not finished new capacity.

• November 11, 2026 — Google DeepMind, Google’s AI research group, released AlphaGenome 2 worldwide for non-commercial research. The model predicts how DNA changes may affect specific cell types, helping scientists choose experiments; it is not approved for diagnosing patients.
• November 11, 2026 — IBM, a computing company, announced in Yorktown Heights, United States, that its planned Nighthawk r3 quantum processor is designed for 10,000 operations across 520 programmable qubits, the basic units in a quantum computer. It is a 2027 plan, not a delivered computer.
• November 11, 2026 — MIT and Northeastern University engineers in Cambridge and Boston, United States, reported lab tests of 3D-printed materials with networks of differently sized beams. The samples withstood impacts better than ordered designs, but helmets or armor have not been made from them.

Space:

• November 10, 2026 — Anduril Industries, a U.S. defense technology company, said its Anduril-216 satellite completed a test of a heat-sensing camera 590 kilometers above Earth. The sensor can track spacecraft in Earth’s shadow, where visible-light systems can lose sight of them.

• November 11, 2026 — China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation launched the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ four Pathfinder-1 satellites from Jiuquan, China. They will test instruments and formation flying for four planned space observatories due by 2030.

Trends:

• China’s carmakers exported 927,000 passenger vehicles in October while sales at home fell, showing a stronger reliance on foreign buyers. Russia and Ukraine agreed in Abu Dhabi on a prisoner exchange, but attacks still damaged Ukraine’s power and heating systems. Google DeepMind released AlphaGenome 2 for research, widening access to a tool that can help scientists choose biology experiments, not diagnose patients.

• What to watch: Watch whether Chinese exports keep rising as overseas trade barriers grow; whether the Russia–Ukraine swap is completed while heat and power repairs hold; and whether scientists can turn AlphaGenome 2’s research predictions into useful experiments. None of these steps alone proves a wider change.

Statistic of the Day:

• The U.S. Census Bureau projects that American Samoa’s population will be 61 percent smaller in 2100 than in 2026.
• A population projection estimates the number of people likely to live in a place in the future using assumptions about births, deaths and migration. This estimate is not a count of people living there now.

History of TSMC and the dedicated chip-factory model:

• Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, changed chip making by becoming a factory that works for many chip designers instead of selling competing chips of its own. Founded in Taiwan in 1987, its model helped smaller design firms use advanced manufacturing without building their own costly plants.
• 1987: 1987 — Morris Chang founded TSMC in Hsinchu, Taiwan, with government, Philips and private investors. It was the first dedicated chip factory: it made chips designed by customers, avoiding the cost of building their own factories.
• 1988: 1988 — TSMC opened its North American unit in San Jose, United States. The office gave chip designers in a major customer market direct access to sales and technical support while production remained in Taiwan.
• 1994: 1994 — TSMC listed its shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Public funding gave the young manufacturer another route to raise money for increasingly expensive factories and equipment.
• 1997: 1997 — TSMC listed American Depositary Shares on the New York Stock Exchange. That made its shares easier for United States investors to trade and widened access to international capital.
• 2020: 2020 — TSMC began high-volume production of its 5-nanometre process, a method for making denser, more power-efficient chips. The advance supported products such as phones and high-performance computers, showing how the foundry model now serves many industries.

Image of the Day:

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