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The Comlumen briefing 46 stories · 6 desks · UTC

Friday 6 November.
The latest edition.

Every story published on Friday 6 November 2026, UTC, under its desk. Each one links to the full story and its sources.

World

Desk

  1. Kenyan court jails preacher Paul Mackenzie for 200 years over Shakahola starvation deaths

    The High Court in Mombasa on Friday 6 November sentenced Paul Mackenzie to an aggregate 200 years in prison over the deaths of 191 people, 190 of them children, rejecting a prosecution request for the death penalty.

  2. Eisenkot leads Netanyahu in recommendations as Herzog weighs who forms Israel's government

    Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot finished President Isaac Herzog's consultations with 67 recommendations to Benjamin Netanyahu's 46, after the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism declined to back the prime minister. Herzog has said he will name a candidate to form a government on Sunday.

  3. Hoax bomb threats disrupt at least 27 flights across Europe in second wave this week

    Emailed and telephoned bomb threats forced diversions, fighter escorts and searches on at least 27 passenger flights across Europe on Thursday 5 November, two days after a smaller wave. No explosives were found and no one has claimed responsibility.

  4. Hundreds of thousands march in France as unions strike over wages and schools

    France's interior ministry said 575,000 people joined strikes and marches on Thursday 5 November over pay, living costs and school conditions; unions put the figure at 1.6 million. Most rallies were peaceful, but 448 people were arrested.

  5. Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong jailed for 10 years for colluding with foreign forces

    Hong Kong's High Court sentenced the pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong to 10 years in prison on Thursday 5 November after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the national security law.

  6. Paraguay's president Peña offers resignation and is impeached after Ueno bank collapse

    Santiago Peña announced his resignation on Thursday 5 November, two days after the central bank seized the digital lender Ueno, and the lower house voted 78-0 to impeach him minutes later. A vote on the resignation collapsed for lack of quorum, so he remains president while the Senate tries him. No verdict had been reported as of early Friday 6 November.

  7. Death toll from Russian strike on Ukrainian aid centre in Komyshuvakha rises to 43

    President Zelensky said on Thursday 5 November that 43 people had been killed when Russian bombs hit an aid distribution point in a school in Zaporizhzhia region on Monday. Police said up to 33 more may still be under the rubble.

  8. Iranian official says Tehran sent the US a nuclear proposal via Qatar as Iran reports tanker fires in Hormuz

    A senior Iranian official, speaking anonymously to Reuters on Thursday 5 November, said Tehran had passed a nuclear proposal to Washington through Qatar but would discuss it only once the US meets seven demands. Neither the US nor Qatar has confirmed it. The same day, Iranian forces said several tankers caught fire in the Strait of Hormuz.

  9. Ethiopia and Sudan shut each other's consulates in row over rebel support

    Ethiopia ordered Sudan's consulate in the border town of Asosa closed and its six staff out, and Sudan retaliated by shutting Ethiopia's consulate in Gedaref, Sudanese officials said on Wednesday 4 November, as each accuses the other of backing its armed opponents.

Politics

Desk

  1. Democrats win control of the House and Senate in midterm elections

    Democrats took both chambers of Congress from Republicans in the 3 November midterms. Two Senate races and dozens of House seats were still being counted on 5 November.

  2. Mississippi Senate race still uncalled as Colom leads Hyde-Smith by about 1,800 votes

    Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith with thousands of mail and affidavit ballots still to be counted. Both parties have sent lawyers.

  3. Alaska Senate race heads for ranked-choice count as Peltola holds narrow lead

    Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by about 600 votes. The result may turn on ballots cast for a second candidate named Dan Sullivan, whom the Justice Department tried and failed to make the subject of a federal lawsuit.

  4. Democrats flip governorships in Texas, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa and Nevada

    Democrats won at least five governorships held by Republicans, including Texas, where Gina Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott. Kansas and Alaska were still unresolved.

  5. Kansas governor's race goes to a close-race audit with Holscher narrowly ahead

    Democrat Cindy Holscher leads Republican Ty Masterson by about 5,600 votes, or 0.51%. She has declared victory, but the race is uncalled and Masterson has not conceded.

  6. Speaker Mike Johnson steps aside as Scalise and Jordan vie to lead House Republicans

    Johnson will not seek a leadership post in the next Congress after Republicans lost the House. Republicans choose their leader on 10 November, and Hakeem Jeffries is running for Speaker.

  7. Abortion-rights side wins in Nevada, Virginia and Missouri as Idaho measure fails

    Voters backed abortion rights in three of four states on 3 November but turned down an Idaho measure that would have eased its near-total ban. Missouri voters also rejected a Republican-drawn congressional map.

Business

Desk

  1. Japan protests as Putin puts Japan Tobacco's Russian factories under temporary state control

    Japan on Friday 6 November demanded that Russia withdraw a decree, signed by President Vladimir Putin on 5 November, placing Japan Tobacco's four Russian manufacturing businesses under the temporary management of a Russian company.

  2. Bank of Japan holds at 1.25% but says inflation has reached its 2% target

    One board member voted for a rise on 30 October, and most economists expect the Bank to raise rates in December.

  3. Wall Street has its worst day since April 2025 as chip stocks lead a post-election sell-off

    The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5% on Thursday 5 November and entered a correction as AI and semiconductor shares tumbled, and the selling spread to Asian markets on Friday.

  4. Bank of England raises interest rates to 4% as energy prices push inflation higher

    The Bank's first rate rise since 2023 was backed by all nine policymakers on 5 November, and one wanted a bigger increase. Staff expect inflation to reach about 5% by the middle of next year.

  5. ECB holds rates as Lagarde says she will step down nine months early

    The European Central Bank kept its deposit rate at 2.5% on 29 October, the same day its president said she would leave on 7 February. A week later, euro zone inflation reached 4%.

  6. Fed holds rates at 3.75%–4% as two policymakers vote for a rise

    Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack wanted a quarter-point increase on 28 October. Figures published the next day showed the economy grew at a 3.4% annual rate in the third quarter.

  7. Healey's first Budget doubles the bank surcharge to fund £100 energy payments

    Chancellor John Healey's Budget on 28 October also raised tax on savings and property income. The OBR cut its 2027 growth forecast to about 1% and said inflation would average 3.5% that year.

  8. Oil swings after US midterms as traders weigh Iran war and Hormuz disruption

    Brent crude fell 8.7% on 4 November on hopes the election result would speed an end to the war with Iran, then rose back towards $100 a barrel after new tanker attacks.

Technology

Desk

  1. US tech stocks lose more than $2 trillion as investors weigh Democratic wins on AI

    The Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5% on 5 November 2026, its worst day since April 2025, as chipmakers led a sell-off driven by fears that a Democratic Congress will slow the data-centre build-out behind the AI boom.

  2. AMD reports record $13.4bn quarter as data-centre sales nearly double

    AMD's revenue rose 45% in the third quarter of 2026 and it forecast about $17 billion for the fourth, but its shares fell 17% two days later in a broad chip sell-off.

  3. SpaceX picks Qualcomm to build Starlink Mobile's ground-based 5G network

    The multi-year deal, announced on 4 November 2026, covers base-station chips for tens of thousands of US sites from 2027 and moves Starlink closer to competing with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

  4. Hackers tamper with fridges storing France's blood plasma; alarms prevent losses

    Attackers raised temperature settings at three cold-storage sites of France's national blood service overnight on 1 to 2 November 2026, through a refrigeration contractor. The service says no blood products were lost.

  5. Google, Meta and TikTok sue to stop California's under-16 social media law

    The companies filed separate lawsuits on 5 November 2026 against AB 1709, which would bar autoplay and personalised feeds for under-16s from 1 January 2027. They argue it breaches the First Amendment.

  6. OpenAI releases GPT-6 Cyber to vetted security teams after rating it 'Critical' risk

    OpenAI's new model for finding and exploiting software flaws went to a small group of approved customers on 5 November 2026. The company says it found 81 previously unknown high-severity bugs in Firefox.

  7. Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro goes on sale with an OLED display

    The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, announced on 28 October 2026, reaches customers on 6 November. It starts at $2,899 in the US and uses Apple's M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

Science

Desk

  1. Greenhouse gas levels reached new records in 2025, WMO bulletin says

    Carbon dioxide averaged 426.8 parts per million at the Earth's surface last year, the World Meteorological Organization said on 27 October, with methane and nitrous oxide also at record highs.

  2. More US newborns are missing the vitamin K shot, and bleeding risk is higher, study finds

    A JAMA study of more than 5.2 million US births found the share of newborns not given vitamin K more than doubled between 2017 and 2025, and those infants had higher rates of bleeding, including bleeding in the brain.

  3. NASA's Swift observatory falls to Earth after failed rescue attempt

    The gamma-ray observatory re-entered over northern Sumatra on 4 November, almost 22 years after launch, after a commercial mission to raise its orbit was called off.

  4. Explainer

    Voyager 1 will be one light-day from Earth on 18 November: what that means

    NASA's most distant spacecraft is about to sit so far away that a radio signal takes a full day to reach it, weeks after a brief loss of contact and a power-saving overhaul.

  5. Lancet Countdown calls climate change a health emergency as heat deaths hit record

    The 2026 Lancet Countdown report estimates that heat was linked to about 710,000 deaths in 2023 and, for the first time, attributes more than 70% of that toll to human-caused warming.

  6. Base editing corrects alpha-1 antitrypsin gene defect in a patient's liver, case report shows

    A one-off infusion of an experimental base-editing therapy corrected more than half of the faulty gene copies in a 66-year-old man's liver. The peer-reviewed evidence so far is that single case.

  7. NASA asks industry how it could boost, upgrade or safely retire Hubble

    With the telescope expected to fall back into the atmosphere in 2033 or 2034, NASA issued a request for information on 29 October. Responses are due on 30 November.

  8. ESA's Hera probe sees the asteroid DART struck as a separate object for the first time

    Europe's planetary-defence spacecraft resolved Didymos and its small moon Dimorphos from about 1,280 km away, and ESA plans to release the first detailed images of Dimorphos on 25 November.

Culture

Desk

  1. Feature

    Milwaukee turns out in vast numbers for the Brewers' first World Series parade

    Police estimated more than 750,000 people at the parade and rally on 30 October, two days after the Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays to win the first championship in the club's history.

  2. Dickens's writing chalet and Hastings Castle join England's heritage at risk list

    Historic England added 197 sites to its annual Heritage at Risk Register on 5 November and removed 85 that have been rescued, including Edward Jenner's vaccination hut.

  3. Juan Atkins, the Detroit producer who helped invent techno, dies at 64

    A founder of Cybotron, Model 500 and the Metroplex label, Atkins died in Mexico City on 1 November, his agency said. He had been booked to DJ there that weekend.

  4. Patrick Stewart, Picard of Star Trek and Professor X of X-Men, dies at 86

    The Shakespearean actor who became Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier died at his home in Los Angeles on 28 October. His spokesperson said he had been living with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia.

  5. Philippe Jaenada wins the Prix Goncourt for a true-crime novel about an unsolved Paris murder

    France's most prestigious literary prize went on 3 November to *L'Inconnue du quai de Javel*, Jaenada's investigation into the unsolved killing of a Montparnasse artists' model. The Renaudot, announced the same day, went to François-Henri Désérable.

  6. Feature

    Sydney's A$915m Powerhouse Parramatta opens with its chief executive still sidelined

    The largest museum ever built in New South Wales opens on 7 November while a government misconduct investigation keeps its suspended chief executive, who denies any wrongdoing, away from it.

  7. Herbert Blomstedt, conductor whose career spanned seven decades, dies at 99

    The Swedish-American conductor, who led orchestras in Dresden, San Francisco and Leipzig and was still on the podium in May at 98, died at home in Gothenburg on 4 November.

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