💻 Huang quits Nvidia, Ukraine talks move to Dublin

Back-office boom: Britain's economy grew 0.7% between July and September, its fastest pace in more than two years, official figures showed on Thursday. Services drove it, and within them computer programming grew at its fastest rate in three years on cloud and AI spending.

• Why it matters: The figures put the UK on course to be the second-fastest-growing G7 economy this year, despite energy prices pushed up by the Iran war.

• Looking ahead: Jake Finney of PwC expects growth to slow unless energy markets stabilise, with a sharp rise in household energy bills forecast for January. Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the Office for National Statistics, warned that prices might soon rise faster than wages.

• Furthermore: John Healey, the chancellor, said on Wednesday that the Treasury is discussing "worst-case" energy support for households.

The Brexit they voted for: Andy Burnham, the prime minister, said in Dublin on Thursday that a "win-win" deal with the EU could be done, "more like the Brexit that people thought they were voting for in 2016". The UK-EU summit on 20 November is meant to sign agreements on food and drink checks, emissions trading and youth mobility.

• Important note: The sticking point is tuition fees. The EU says the food and drink and emissions-trading deals may not enter into force unless European students pay domestic rates; Burnham called it a package but would not say whether he accepts the link.
• Big picture: The government claims the food and drink deal will eventually be worth £5.1bn a year. Burnham has ruled out rejoining the single market or customs union before the next election, while saying he will weigh the long-term options.
• What they're saying: Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, said she would like Britain back in the EU but warned that negotiations would not be easy after the "trauma" of Brexit.

Tearing up Pip: Alan Milburn's review of youth unemployment, due on Tuesday, is expected to recommend that under-25s no longer be able to claim personal independence payment (Pip), the main disability benefit, or the health element of universal credit. They would instead get a youth allowance at the standard universal credit rate.

• What happened? Those with the most severe disabilities would keep protected support, others could apply to a local fund for specific costs, and Milburn admits some existing as well as new claimants would get less. He promises 440,000 job and education opportunities by 2036.
• Why it matters: Just under one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training. Labour MPs rebelled against welfare cuts under Keir Starmer last year; this time Meg Hillier, who led that revolt, is giving Milburn "a fair wind", while Bell Ribeiro-Addy is not sure she can vote for cuts to existing claims.
• Looking ahead: The exact amounts will not be clear until legislation is published early next year.

Spies for hire: Two Iranian men were convicted at Woolwich Crown Court on Thursday of assisting Iran's intelligence services by spying on London-based journalists of Iran International, the Persian-language broadcaster. Police said it was the first time Iranian nationals had been convicted under the 2023 National Security Act.

• What happened? Mostafa Sepahvand, recruited through social media and directed by a Revolutionary Guards commander, used ChatGPT to find a journalist's home address and hoped to be paid £150,000 to "finish off" his target. Farhad Javadi Manesh was cleared of preparing an attack; both will be sentenced next month.
• Furthermore: A US indictment unsealed on Tuesday links two allies of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, an Iranian-Iraqi held in New York, to Iran-linked plots in Europe, one of them accused of orchestrating the September incident at RAF Fairford.

Who speaks for Europe: EU leaders went into a summit in Dublin on Friday still divided over who should represent the bloc in talks to end the war in Ukraine. The row follows Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's envoy, saying on Thursday that "we cannot conclude this deal without Europeans being at the table".

• Behind the scenes: Diplomats told Politico the bloc has split into at least three camps over its representative. Estonia's prime minister, Kristen Michal, joked that "you could even have a TV show about it" at a summit that was not meant to be about Ukraine.
• Big picture: Axios reported on Wednesday that Washington has asked Moscow to propose a new security agreement with Europe, a Russian aim the US has rejected in the past. Russia says it will not consider a ceasefire until its demands to redraw Europe's security architecture are addressed, and European leaders have rejected that push, the Financial Times reports.

War reaches the Gulf of Finland: Ukraine's SBU security service says its drones hit the Russian corvette Naro-Fominsk in the Gulf of Finland on Wednesday, and Finnish officials have confirmed that a Russian warship was attacked there. It is thought to be the first Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian ship in a stretch of the Baltic open to civilian traffic.

• What happened? The strike was part of a wider drone raid on Russia's Ust-Luga oil export depot, where several storage tanks are thought to have been hit and fires were visible from Estonia. Estonia's defence minister, Martin Herem, said the ship gave off smoke and headed back towards St Petersburg.
• Important note: One drone briefly entered Estonian airspace from Latvia. NATO aircraft were airborne but judged it unsafe to shoot the drones down, and Kyiv called Russian claims that it used Baltic airspace "baseless".
• Why it matters: Finland's foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, said marine traffic faces no threat. Finnish defence officials are nonetheless understood to have reminded Kyiv that the gulf is a narrow waterway used by oil tankers and crossed by subsea data cables.

Spain strikes over rents and wages: Spain held its first general strike in 14 years on Wednesday 11 November, over soaring rents and stagnant wages, less than three weeks before the snap general election on 29 November. Unions said millions of workers took part, and the government counted 120,000 marchers in Madrid alone.

• What happened? Riot police pushed hundreds of demonstrators off Madrid's Gran Vía. In Barcelona, a masked group broke away after the march, smashed shop windows and tried to storm an Apple Store.

• Looking ahead: Housing has become a central issue of the campaign. The People's Party and the far-right Vox could form a rightwing coalition after the vote, the Guardian reports.

Magyar's dividend: The European Commission is expected to approve almost €10bn … later this month, with its assessment potentially published as early as next week. The money was frozen under Viktor Orbán and is being released after Prime Minister Péter Magyar's government pushed through sweeping rule-of-law and anti-corruption reforms.

Judo for the centre: Teddy Riner, the 37-year-old judo champion and one of France's most popular athletes, announced this week that he will run in next spring's presidential election. He is unlikely to win, but his entry shows how badly centrist voters want a fresh face five months before the vote.

• Zoom out: Marine Le Pen of the far right has held a commanding lead for months, reinforced by weeks of protests marred by violence. Édouard Philippe, the leading centre-right candidate, has faded in the polls.

• Why it matters: As things stand, the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon looks the likeliest to face Le Pen in the runoff. A Le Pen victory would give France its first far-right president of the postwar era.

Huang steps down: Nvidia announced on Thursday that Jensen Huang had resigned as chief executive and left its board, ending a 33-year run at the chipmaker he co-founded, after reports of two extramarital affairs. One was with Alice Huang (no relation), a former Megaspeed executive whom US intelligence suspects of spying for China. He also leaves the board. Colette Kress, the finance chief, is interim CEO, and Harvey Jones, a former Synopsys boss, becomes Nvidia's first board chairman.

• What happened? Huang admitted on Sunday to having been "unfaithful". On Wednesday The New York Times reported a second relationship, with Kimberly Powell, a senior executive who reported to him, and the board met that day to consider removing him.

• Why it matters: Nvidia shares closed Thursday down 4.3%, about 11% for the week, and the stock is heading for its longest weekly losing streak since 2012. Roughly $1.6tn has been erased since early October, a slide that began before the scandal amid worries about higher interest rates. Its first results under Kress are due on Tuesday 17 November.

• The quote: "There is only one man to take his place, TIM COOK of Apple. A Legend replaces a Legend," Donald Trump posted. Cook stepped down as Apple's chief executive on 1 September and became its executive chairman.

Congress seeks Huang's testimony: Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, asked Huang on Thursday to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on 3 December and warned that a subpoena could follow. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also been asked to testify on 10 December. Three House committees, on intelligence, foreign affairs and China, want Huang for a closed-door interview on 1 December.

• Behind the scenes: The New York Times reports that Lutnick repeatedly clashed with other officials over tightening controls on Nvidia's chip sales to Asia. Megaspeed, the Singapore firm where Alice Huang was a top executive, is suspected of smuggling Nvidia chips to China. The paper also reports that Trump was told of the suspicions around Huang last year.

• What they're saying: Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, said the administration must account for what it did once it learned of the relationship. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Justice Department had drawn no conclusions on espionage, China calls the allegation a smear, and Nvidia says it has no reason to believe secrets were compromised.

Cindy High Prices: Democrat Scott Colom won the Senate race in Mississippi, a state Trump carried by more than 22 points in 2024. He was leading Hyde-Smith by 49.2% to 48.7%, a margin of about 4,700 votes, when the Associated Press called the race on Wednesday. He will be the first Black senator from Mississippi since Blanche Bruce, who served from 1875 to 1881 and was chosen by the state legislature rather than by voters.

• Zoom out: The result gives Democrats 55 of the 100 Senate seats when the new Congress meets in January, with Alaska still uncalled. They also flipped seats in Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa.

• Behind the scenes: Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, visited all 82 counties and attacked Hyde-Smith's support for tariffs. She had told voters worried about beef prices to "pick another protein".

Schumer gets a challenger: Chris Van Hollen, a senator from Maryland, said on Thursday he will run against Chuck Schumer, Democratic leader in the Senate since 2017, for majority leader. The secret-ballot vote among Democratic senators is due next month. Van Hollen claims more than 10 of the 55 senators and senators-elect, calls himself the underdog and frames his bid around bringing down costs and ending the war with Iran.

• What they're saying: Bernie Sanders and Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan's senator-elect, back Van Hollen. Schumer, 75, says he has the votes to stay on.

Borderline disturbing: US consumer prices rose 0.4% in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Tuesday, against forecasts of 0.3%. Housing, food and energy drove the rise. No annual headline inflation rate was published because October 2025 survey data were unavailable following the federal shutdown.

• What they're saying: Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chicago Fed, called the data "borderline disturbing". Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, has raised the prospect of a supersized rate rise at the December meeting.

• Why it matters: The two-year Treasury yield jumped 17 basis points on Tuesday, its biggest one-day rise since April 2025, and the 10-year yield is back above 5%. Higher borrowing costs are among the concerns weighing on debt-funded AI investment, including Nvidia's customers.

A radar in Bahrain: Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Friday it had targeted a US early-warning radar in Bahrain. It called the strike retaliation for what it described as an air attack on Thursday on a telecommunications tower in Sirik, in Hormozgan province. According to Reuters, it is the first Iranian claim of an attack on US military assets in a Gulf country since early September.

• What happened? The IRGC-affiliated Fars agency said the radar was "targeted and destroyed", and the Guards warned they stood ready "to engage without limits" if the "aerial provocations" recurred. Washington and Manama gave no immediate comment. Bahrain hosts the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, which was hit in the opening hours of the war on 28 February.
• Zoom out: Trump said he had held off further strikes on Iran at the request of Gulf allies. Israel's security cabinet has ordered the army to step up preparations for a possible attack on Iran, according to the public broadcaster KAN.

Trump says no Iran deal needed: Donald Trump said on Thursday that the US no longer needs a deal with Iran: "We've got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we've got their Strait." He posted it after reports that Vice President JD Vance could meet Mohsen Rezaei, Iran's security chief. The same day Iran said four tankers had caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz.

• What they're saying: Tehran has rejected transferring 60% of its enriched uranium to a third country and says Washington must now decide on its latest proposal. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker and lead negotiator, told Al Jazeera the strait will never go back to how it was before the war. On Friday he said the US had asked Vladimir Putin to mediate, and that Rezaei had briefed Putin on Iran's demands.

• Why it matters: Brent crude was hovering around $90 a barrel on Tuesday, more than $20 below late October, on a returning supply surplus and hopes of a deal. Türkiye is still paying for the strait. Fatih Karahan, the central bank governor, on Thursday raised the year-end inflation forecast to 29.5% from 28%. He cited oil prices and fading hopes that shipping through Hormuz will normalise.

Deadly strike on Nasser hospital: An Israeli air strike on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis shortly after midnight on Thursday killed six people, including the surgeon Rizq Abu Shaira, and injured about 30, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. The hospital attack was the deadliest single Israeli strike since Israel’s October election, AFP reported. Israeli fire killed at least 11 people across Gaza on Thursday, health officials said.

• What they're saying: The Israeli military said it targeted Mohammed Abu Ismail, commander of Hamas's Khan Younis Brigade, and fighters using the hospital as a headquarters, and that it gave advance warning. The hospital's director, Ahmed al-Fara, says no warning came. Hamas called the account "false narratives".

• Why it matters: Nasser is the largest hospital in southern Gaza, serving almost a million people. The strike put its surgery department and intensive care unit out of service. It is the seventh time the hospital has been hit since the war began, more than a year into the US-brokered ceasefire.

Knesset first, cabinet later: Israel's new Knesset was sworn in on Tuesday. The opposition immediately requested a vote to replace the speaker, Amir Ohana, a Netanyahu loyalist, so it can steer legislation even if Gadi Eisenkot fails to form a government. Eisenkot's four-party bloc holds 48 of 120 seats, Benjamin Netanyahu's 53, and the two Arab-led alliances a record 19.

• Behind the scenes: In his swearing-in speech Netanyahu warned against any government dependent on "supporters of terror". Yet Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab List (Ra'am), confirmed that Netanyahu's long-time associate Natan Eshel had contacted him before and after the election. Eshel asked whether Ra'am would back Eisenkot and a law barring indicted politicians from serving as prime minister. Likud denies the approaches were authorised.
• Looking ahead: Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister. After repeated requests he gave Eisenkot a two-hour security briefing on Thursday. The caretaker defence minister, Israel Katz, said the outgoing government needs no approval "from the opposition or any legal authority" to order strikes, as Eisenkot urged restraint.

Damascus eyes Yemen: Syria is weighing whether to send thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia and Yemen to support the kingdom in its war with the Houthis, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing Syrian and Yemeni officials. No decision has been taken. A Yemeni official has since said reports of a deployment "do not reflect current reality".

• Important note: Syria says its military cooperation with Saudi Arabia could eventually lead to membership of the Mecca defence pact, which Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed in August. That would put Ankara's newest alliance, indirectly, into the Yemen war.

• What happened? On Thursday the Houthis claimed drone and missile strikes on Pumping Station No. 7 of the East-West pipeline and on an oil facility at Yanbu. The pipeline allows Saudi Arabia to export crude through the Red Sea, bypassing disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. The coalition said it intercepted two drones.

• Zoom out: Riyadh is pressing the EU to list the Houthis as a terrorist group, but the step needs all 27 member states and only a few back it, six European officials told Reuters. The UN says more than 333,000 Yemenis have been displaced since August.

The referendum route: DR Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi has enacted a law that eases the rules for holding a referendum on constitutional matters, announced in an order read on national television overnight on Tuesday. The opposition calls it the first step towards a third term. The current constitution requires him to leave office at the end of 2028, when his second five-year term ends.

• The backstory: Tshisekedi, 63 and in power since 2019, said in May that he had not planned to seek a third term but would accept one "if people want me to". Opposition protests against a "constitutional coup" in June and September drew modest crowds and ended in clashes; the UN counted at least one death in June.
• Zoom out: The eastern rebellion now has a political face. Former president Joseph Kabila, sentenced to death in absentia for treason and under US sanctions, last month took charge of the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), which replaced the Rwanda-backed AFC/M23, and has vowed to end "tyranny" by force if needed.
• Why it matters: The opposition platform C64 has rejected Tshisekedi's offer of a national dialogue and condemns both a third term and any armed seizure of power. Diplomats fear any dissent could now be painted as support for Kabila's rebellion.

Axes in Lagos: Men armed with axes, clubs and machetes stormed a Lagos rally for Peter Obi, the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) presidential candidate, on Thursday. They attacked supporters and journalists, and the fighting spread into the street for more than an hour before police dispersed it with tear gas. The election is on 16 January 2027.

• What they're saying: Obi's supporters blamed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Its spokesman, Felix Morka, rejected the claim for lack of evidence. The NDC also accuses the government of leaning on venue owners to cancel its events, which the government denies.
• Furthermore: Sam Adebanjo, a reporter for TheCable, said he was hit with an axe, beaten and robbed of his equipment. Police said they were absent because they had not been notified of the event.
• Big picture: President Bola Tinubu launched his re-election manifesto on 10 November, promising 6% annual growth by 2031, 78,000 more security personnel and 200,000 affordable homes. Inflation was 14% in September, down from 34% in 2024, but the removal of the fuel subsidy still squeezes households.

MSF warns of gaps in Ebola response: Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that Congo's Ebola outbreak "remains out of control" six months on, and that hundreds of millions of dollars in aid are not reaching the front line. More than 5,400 people have died and more than 11,000 confirmed cases have been reported since May, which makes it the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak on record.

• What happened? MSF describes unpaid and untrained health workers, ambulances out of fuel and surveillance teams "that exist on paper" only. Two-thirds of deaths are occurring in communities rather than treatment centres, and in one part of North Kivu close to three-quarters of patients caught the virus in a health facility.

• The backstory: Last month Africa CDC said $700m of the $962m disbursed to organisations running the response was unaccounted for. The Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccine, and MSF wants wider use of Ervebo, the only Ebola vaccine available at scale. Although licensed for another Ebola species, Ervebo is being studied for potential protection against Bundibugyo.

• Furthermore: The latest IPC analysis estimates that 28.8 million people in DR Congo face crisis-level or worse food insecurity between September and December 2026. That number is projected to rise to 30.3 million in January–June 2027. North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri are the hardest-hit provinces.

Neither war nor peace: Ethiopia's federal army now holds Mekelle and Tigray's other main towns after the war with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) resumed in late September, but residents told the BBC this week that fighting continues in central, northern and north-western Tigray. They report heavy artillery near Sheraro, close to the Eritrean border.

• What they're saying: Getachew Reda, a former TPLF leader who is now an adviser to the prime minister, says the war is over. The TPLF spokesman, Mikael Asgedom, calls the retreat from the towns tactical and promises a major counteroffensive.
• Why it matters: Analysts point to defections, arrests and infighting that have hollowed out the TPLF. Hundreds have died in this round, many in drone strikes, in a region where the 2020-2022 war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

Triple or nothing: The Trump administration has demanded that Japan triple what it pays to host American troops, to more than ¥3tn ($19bn) over five years from the 2027 financial year, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Tokyo is considering raising the payment substantially, to roughly ¥1.5tn.

• Furthermore: The yen weakened past 160 to the dollar on Friday, its lowest since early September, on bets of more aggressive Federal Reserve rate rises. Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said Tokyo would coordinate with Washington and act if necessary, the language that preceded last summer's joint intervention.

A trillion and counting: China's trade surplus reached $1.04tn in the first ten months of the year, ahead of last year's record pace, the customs administration said on Tuesday. October alone added $105.3bn, with exports up 35.2% and imports up 41.6% on a year earlier.

• Why it matters: The war has been good for Chinese factories. Dearer oil has lifted demand for its solar panels and electric cars, and data-centre equipment for the global AI build-out is selling strongly, while imports jumped on crude purchases and chips for China's own AI push.
• The backstory: The figures came a day after Washington and Beijing took steps to ease tariffs and limit export controls until 10 January, putting into effect an agreement reached in late September.

Shenzhen guardrails: Beijing announced on Friday that Xi Jinping will chair the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' meeting in Shenzhen on 18-19 November, China's third time as host. A foreign ministry spokeswoman said China was in contact with "relevant parties" about a meeting of Xi, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

• Behind the scenes: According to the South China Morning Post, negotiators have dropped Ukraine and North Korea from the planned three-way agenda and are working on a mutual pledge to restrict artificial intelligence in nuclear command systems, plus a declaration that a nuclear war cannot be won. Russia has been wary of formal curbs.

Najib moves to house arrest: Najib Razak, the former Malaysian prime minister convicted over the 1MDB scandal, left prison on Tuesday under a royal pardon that lets him serve the rest of his six-year sentence at his Kuala Lumpur mansion. The 49,000-square-foot property was declared a federal prison the previous Friday.

• Looking ahead: House arrest is expected to run until August 2028, after which Najib is due to begin a 15-year sentence on separate 1MDB charges and pay a $2.8bn fine. He is appealing that conviction.

• The backstory: $4.5bn vanished from the state fund he founded and oversaw; the scandal cost his coalition power in 2018.

Kremlin, then Dublin: Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's envoys, spent about two hours with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on Thursday, a day after US-mediated Russia-Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi ended, then flew to Dublin to brief Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky said Russia had agreed to what would be the largest prisoner exchange of the war, and that European representatives would sit on the negotiating team at the next round.

• What they're saying: "We cannot conclude this deal without the Europeans being at the table," Kushner said; the Japan Times reports Putin accepted European participation after Kushner told him Washington had detected "a big change" on the European side.
• Zoom out: On substance Putin gave no ground: he insisted on full control of the four Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed, warned that Russia would target any foreign troops sent to Ukraine and offered only a short ceasefire in a key frontline city.
• Important note: The same day Zelensky said Ukrainian units were recording "systematic speed restrictions" on Starshield, the military version of SpaceX's Starlink used to intercept Russian drones; SpaceX called the claim false.

Payday, then the freeze: Nearly half of Paraguay's population woke on 3 November, a day after payday, unable to reach their bank accounts as Ueno, a bank that had grown exponentially under President Santiago Peña, sat at the centre of a crisis that pushed the banking system to the brink. Peña was removed from office by the Senate on 6 November, a Guardian explainer published on Tuesday recounts; a judge has since ordered him held in pretrial detention at a military facility.

• Why it matters: The Guardian puts the share of adults locked out of their accounts at 60%; protests spread nationwide, some with violent clashes with police, as impeachment proceedings moved within three days.

Get Cuba done: Donald Trump said on Thursday he would "certainly consider" military force against Cuba and wants to "get Cuba done" before he leaves office in 2029, in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt. Politico reported it was the first time he had put a timeline on a possible operation.

• The backstory: Cuba has been under a de facto US oil blockade since January, after US forces seized Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Venezuelan oil to the island stopped; it has brought repeated nationwide blackouts and fuel and food shortages.
• Furthermore: Washington announced new sanctions this month on 10 people and entities tied to the government, military and oil industry; Havana calls the blockade "collective punishment".

Prosecutor who aided CIA flees Mexico: Guillermo Zuany Portillo, the former Chihuahua state prosecutor who let CIA officers train and accompany Mexican forces on counter-cartel missions for more than six months, has fled to the United States and is under US government protection, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Mexico had issued a warrant for his arrest on charges tied to his work with the agency.

• The backstory: The operation came to light in April when a car crash killed two CIA officers; President Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly said US forces must not take part in ground operations in Mexico, calling it a breach of sovereignty.

• Behind the scenes: According to the Times, the US had revoked Zuany's visa over suspected cartel ties only months before the CIA chose him as a partner.

Yerevan loses its vote: Armenia has been stripped of its voting rights in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the Russia-led military alliance, under Article 25 of its charter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, citing years of unmet obligations.

• The backstory: Yerevan effectively froze its participation in the CSTO in February 2024 and stopped paying dues after the bloc ignored its requests for help against Azerbaijani incursions in 2021 and 2022; last week Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Armenia's interest in the CSTO "has run its course".

• Looking ahead: Pashinyan says Armenia could formally apply to join the EU in 2027 or 2028, though his former Security Council secretary, Armen Grigoryan, now calls the bid unrealistic.

Outlook goes dark: A Microsoft outage that began on Thursday knocked out email, calendars and parts of Teams and Copilot across the world, with Downdetector logging nearly 140,000 Outlook problem reports from 74 countries at its peak. Services remained disrupted on Friday morning, although Microsoft said some servers were returning to service.

• What happened? Microsoft ruled out a cyber-attack and blamed "elevated load": a large number of servers became unexpectedly unavailable, pushing traffic onto the rest and straining them.

• Zoom out: OpenAI and Anthropic reported knock-on problems, and the Singaporean government and Australia's spy agency said they were affected; Microsoft says more than 430 million people use its 365 apps.

900 million galaxies: The European Space Agency on Thursday released the first big data set from its Euclid telescope: about 13 months of observations, 1.7 petabytes, covering more than 900 million galaxies across a patch of sky some 9,500 times the size of the Moon.

• Why it matters: The release includes about 15,000 potential cases of gravitational lensing, where mass bends light from objects behind it, one of the main tools for mapping dark matter and testing dark energy.
• Looking ahead: Euclid, launched in July 2023, aims to finish a 3D atlas of more than a third of the sky, reaching back 10 billion years, in 2031.

The colleague on the call: The FBI said on Thursday that North Korean state hackers had stolen more than $400 million in cryptocurrency over 18 months with a scheme it calls FaceStealer, and the US Justice Department seized the cloud infrastructure behind it, including more than 900 webcam videos of victims.

• What happened? Targets were invited to fake Zoom, Teams or Google Meet calls in which a recording of a previous victim they knew played; a staged audio fault then prompted a "fix" link that installed malware and harvested new contacts.
• Furthermore: The department also won court approval to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion taken in the record $6.3 billion Binance hack in late October, which US agencies attribute to separate North Korea-linked hackers; Pyongyang denies involvement.