Global and U.S. News

Alphabet shares fell 12.6% on Thursday, the company's worst day on record, erasing about $500 billion of market value, the second-largest one-day loss for any U.S. company after Nvidia's in January 2025, NBC News reports. Quarterly revenue missed forecasts as executives said Google's AI Mode shows fewer ads, while investors balked at commitments of more than $1 trillion to AI infrastructure and planned spending above $200 billion this year. The sell-off pulled the Nasdaq down 1.4% and hit data-center suppliers such as Caterpillar, and Amazon shares fell after hours on its own results.

Why it matters: The market is now punishing hyperscaler spending when revenue does not keep pace, the first sharp test of the AI build-out's financing.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Thursday she will step down on February 7, about nine months before her eight-year term ends, on the day the bank left rates unchanged. The timing lets EU leaders, Emmanuel Macron among them, choose a successor before France's presidential election in April, which polls suggest Marine Le Pen is favoured to win; a German MEP warned that tying the exit to national elections damages trust in the bank. Markets were largely unmoved, and AFP sources say leaving gives her more freedom to speak, including about a possible role in French politics.

Real GDP rose at a 3.4% annual rate in the third quarter, up from 2.2% in the second, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said in its advance estimate, driven by investment in inventories and computer equipment, consumer spending on services and government outlays. Final sales to private domestic buyers grew 4.9%. The release came a day after the Federal Reserve held rates, and five days before midterm elections in which many voters rate the economy poorly, the Times notes.

A jet-powered Russian drone hit a platform at Dnipro's main station as a train prepared to leave for Zaporizhzhia on Thursday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 14, six critically, Ukraine's state railway and regional governor said. Russian attacks killed at least 19 across Ukraine that day, including in Chernihiv and Kremenchuk, while a local ceasefire around occupied Oleshky held. Volodymyr Zelensky called the strike horrific and tied it to the lifting of sanctions on some Russian oligarchs and energy firms.

France's anti-terrorism prosecutor Olivier Christen said Kévin T., 39, admitted choosing victims who looked Muslim, African or North African when he fired a submachine gun from a car in Trappes and La Verrière on October 23, killing a 26-year-old man and wounding seven, among them an 11-year-old. He was charged on Thursday with murder and attempted murder linked to a terrorist enterprise; investigators found he had assembled the weapon in September and kept a silencer and a copy of Mein Kampf. Macron called the attack terrorist and racist, and authorities banned a far-right 'remigration' event.

Opposition leader Sali Berisha and Democratic Party lawmakers stormed Albania's parliament on Thursday, setting off flares and smoke bombs in a failed attempt to stop a vote on a new central-bank law. The disruption escalates months of student-led protests, the country's largest in decades, against Prime Minister Edi Rama since he gave preliminary approval in May to a luxury resort linked to Jared Kushner; hundreds have been injured. Rama refuses to resign and has introduced fines above $6,000 for joining protests that turn violent.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, director of strategy, plans and policy on the Joint Staff, on Thursday; Pentagon officials said he met journalists to leak classified information on the Iran and Ukraine wars and failed three polygraphs, claims CBS sources dispute. Spokesman Sean Parnell said an Air Force investigation preceded the decision and the case was referred to the Justice Department. Sylvia, a 32-year veteran and former 101st Airborne commander, is the second officer in that post ousted under Hegseth.

The Justice Department has issued grand jury subpoenas to local election officials in California, the New York Times reports, widening an effort to support unsubstantiated claims of large numbers of illegal voters in the state days before the November 3 election.

Alaska's Republican governor Mike Dunleavy directed the state public safety department to investigate whether Democrat Mary Peltola's Senate campaign broke state law by helping recruit a second candidate named Dan Sullivan, after a New York Times report drew on her former campaign manager and internal messages. ABC News reported that the Justice Department issued subpoenas in response, and President Trump called for Peltola to be removed from the ballot and prosecuted. The Times noted that ballot stacking is common and not itself illegal; the election is Tuesday.

DoorDash signed a definitive agreement on Thursday to buy Instacart for about $17 billion, combining the largest U.S. restaurant-delivery service with the biggest online grocery platform. DoorDash will keep Instacart's brand, app and retailer technology, and the companies will operate separately until the deal closes, which TechCrunch says is expected between late 2027 and the first half of 2028. The long timetable points to antitrust review; earlier merger talks in 2021 reportedly foundered on competition concerns.

Intel shares tumbled after it forecast fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 25 cents a share on revenue of $15 billion to $16 billion, against analyst expectations of 45 cents and $17.29 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. Amazon's stock dropped on a Wall Street miss even though cloud growth was its fastest in years; quarterly net income topped $20 billion while free cash flow plunged.

Polymarket put its international exchange into cancel-only mode on Thursday after users reported funds withdrawn without permission; the company said a third-party provider was compromised, the matter was referred to law enforcement, and affected users will be made whole. Blockchain analysts at Arkham traced about $2.65 million to a suspected attacker wallet, and Hudson Rock found a script that sold logged-in users' positions and moved the proceeds. It is at least the third security incident at the prediction market this year.

Thrive Holdings, Josh Kushner's permanent-capital company, agreed to buy home-security group ADT for $10 a share in cash, valuing its equity at about $7.6 billion and the business at $15.3 billion including debt, ADT said in a filing. The price is 45.6% above ADT's unaffected October 27 close, financing comes entirely from Apollo-managed funds, and ADT may seek rival bids until November 28. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.

China's Communist Party closed a four-day plenum on Thursday by electing Gen. Zhang Shengmin, the Central Military Commission vice-chairman who has led the military's anti-graft drive, to the Politburo, which had no serving officer until now, NPR reports. The meeting adopted a resolution on party discipline; the New York Times reports it confirmed the expulsion of 33 officials, among them former diplomat Liu Jianchao. Analyst Neil Thomas put attendance at 74%, the lowest since Mao, a year before Xi Jinping is expected to claim a fourth term.

A Chinese businesswoman with a close relationship to Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang was found to be passing intelligence to Beijing, the New York Times reports; President Trump was briefed and took no action.

With more than 99% of ballots counted, Netanyahu's bloc holds 53 of the Knesset's 120 seats and Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc 48, with Arab-led parties holding the other 19, Al Jazeera reports, citing Haaretz; results are due to be certified next week. Likud is pressing claims that the election was 'stolen' with foreign help, and the head of the Central Elections Committee, who said he could not verify the suspicions, referred them to the Shin Bet. Eisenkot, who has ruled out partnering with Arab parties but cannot govern without their support, met other opposition leaders on coalition options.

The Treasury Department imposed new sanctions on Rwanda, accusing it of undermining the U.S.-brokered peace agreement by supporting a rebel group in eastern Congo, a conflict President Trump has declared ended, the New York Times reports.

The Trump administration agreed to send armored personnel carriers to Cameroon under a deal in which the country accepts deportees from third countries, and the equipment will go to a unit accused of war crimes, the Wall Street Journal reports.

President Trump ensured that Flávio Bolsonaro, who lost Brazil's presidential runoff and faces several criminal investigations there, could enter the United States, U.S. officials told the New York Times.

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council moved the first round of presidential and legislative elections from December 13 to July 18, 2027, with a runoff and local votes on October 4, 2027. Fewer than 900,000 of the 6.5 million Haitians with the necessary ID cards had registered, as gang-held roads cut off registration centres, Al Jazeera reports, citing the Miami Herald. Haiti has held no election since 2016, and 5.94 million people face acute hunger.

Japan's defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi said after meeting Pete Hegseth in Cebu that the allies will set up a final assembly and inspection plant in Japan for AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, which arm F-35 fighters, under an effort called Operation Supercharge, NPR reports. Koizumi said the two shared 'a sense of crisis'; on Thursday he flagged three Chinese destroyers and a coast-guard ship transiting the Osumi Strait, a formation his ministry had not seen before. The Wall Street Journal ties the move to dwindling U.S. missile stocks.

An antiterrorism court sitting inside Rawalpindi's Adiala prison sentenced human rights lawyers Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chattha to 10 years for removing road barriers on the England cricket team's route in Islamabad in 2024, an act the judge called ordinary yet intended to spread terror. Amnesty International called the verdict an indictment of Pakistan's justice system, and the defence will appeal to the Supreme Court. The couple have been held since January in a separate social-media case.

Researchers who found thousands of dead Adélie penguins on Antarctica's Danger Islands in 2024, more than 537 on one landing ramp, expected H5N1 bird flu but found only low virus loads; tissue analysis showed the bacterial disease avian cholera, NPR reports of a study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The strain closely matches one on Île Amsterdam, about 5,000 miles away. The findings matter as H5N1, apparently from Antarctica, reached mainland Australia in June.

Physicists at the Mainz Institute for Theoretical Physics and NYU Abu Dhabi tested whether dark matter could be made of 'stupendously large' black holes above 100 billion solar masses, which would make the cosmic microwave background grainy on large scales. The background shows no such graininess, so these objects cannot be a significant part of dark matter, they report in Physical Review Letters. Smaller, asteroid-mass primordial black holes remain a candidate the team is now testing.