Morning Brief, Saturday 7 November

Paraguay's Senate refused to let Santiago Peña leave by resignation alone. Senators continued the impeachment trial and removed him on Friday with 44 votes in a 45-seat chamber, after Ueno Bank collapsed and left almost three million customers without immediate access to deposits. The Central Bank has started refunds through the deposit guarantee fund, and crowds of savers, pensioners and students celebrated outside Congress after the vote.

Prosecutors issued an arrest order requiring Santiago Peña to be held at his home before transfer to a specialised economic-crimes and anticorruption unit. Police carried out the order on Friday evening in Asunción, and officers are also searching for former economy minister Carlos Carvallo. Santiago Peña lost the special court protection he held as a senator for life, so the legal case now moves faster than his attempted political exit did. Santiago Peña framed his departure as an effort to steady the country.

“I do not want my presence to be a reason for greater division or instability. My responsibility is to put the country above my personal destiny.”

Pedro Alliana, also from the Colorado Party, took the oath before Congress and said his government would move immediately to repay depositors, first those with the least means. Pedro Alliana asked ministers to limit foreign travel, report daily on their work and cut superfluous spending. He is due to complete the 2023-2028 term.

Donald Trump named Stephen Miller White House chief of staff in a Truth Social post on Friday, moving his deputy chief of staff into the most powerful staff job from Monday, 9 November. Stephen Miller replaces Susie Wiles, who has held the post since Donald Trump's inauguration and will shift to the president's political operation outside government. Donald Trump called Stephen Miller one of his most trusted advisers and said Susie Wiles had done an outstanding job.

The promotion follows Republican losses in the midterm elections, which cost the party its majorities in both the House and the Senate. Officials are preparing for Democratic investigations and more turnover in the West Wing and the cabinet. Two senior Justice Department officials are also leaving, which adds to the sense of a government bracing for hostile oversight rather than another easy year of unified control.

Stephen Miller has been part of Donald Trump's circle since 2016 and is widely credited inside the movement with designing its hard immigration line. Susie Wiles, the first woman to hold the top West Wing staff job, helped run Donald Trump's 2024 victory and backed the appointments of Marco Rubio at State and Scott Bessent at Treasury. Officials described Susie Wiles as trying, mostly at the margins, to shape decisions on immigration and other core issues. Donald Trump had recently cut Susie Wiles out of some hiring decisions and criticised her in front of aides, including over choices he had already approved.

Donald Trump met Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin envoy, at the White House on Thursday evening and then described a coming agreement whose scope he left vague. No Ukrainian delegation attended that meeting. Donald Trump told reporters that the arrangement would stretch well past the battlefield in Ukraine.

“It's going to involve more than Ukraine, and I could even say it might involve all of Europe.”

That wording unsettled European governments because it suggested Washington and Moscow might discuss the continent's security architecture before Europeans had seen any detailed American plan.

Jared Kushner later wrote that Washington was working with all sides on practical arrangements covering security guarantees for Ukraine and a wider European security architecture. He cited meetings in Brussels with Ukrainian, NATO and European representatives and pointed to Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November for the next trilateral round with Ukraine and Russia, the first such format since February. European officials said NATO allies had not been briefed on the American plans in advance, and one official called Jared Kushner's post a complete surprise.

Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, answered with the simplest European red line.

“Putin does not have a veto over European security.”

Reports citing Financial Times sources say Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to hand over the unoccupied part of Donbas before any ceasefire and expects further concessions in a broader deal. Those sources expect no breakthrough in Abu Dhabi and consider a quick ceasefire unlikely. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has separately opened the door to online voting so that front-line soldiers can take part in elections, and he has said Russian security concerns could be part of a peace agreement.

Bomb threat emails forced evacuations at several Irish news organisations on Friday morning, widening a campaign that had already disrupted flights across Europe. Staff left RTÉ, the Irish Independent, Newstalk, Today FM and Virgin Media, while police dogs searched RTÉ's Donnybrook building for more than three hours. One email to RTÉ said a bomb would explode within 45 minutes; no blast followed, and police found no explosives at any of the sites.

The sender used the name Mikhail Andropov and claimed a link to the group behind this week's aviation threats. A further email reportedly warned of attacks on aircraft, cruise ships, metro stations and trains. The claim remains unverified. A misogynist extremist group cited in earlier Italian airport emails denied any role, while authorities in several countries are still trying to establish whether the threats were coordinated.

The aviation disruption continued to look like a campaign built for panic rather than explosives. At least 18 flights were affected on 6 November across nine European countries, including routes touching Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Hungary, Cyprus, Romania, the United Kingdom and Portugal. All aircraft landed without incident. Hungary scrambled fighter jets three times, and NATO ordered patrols near the Serbian and Romanian borders after civil aircraft left Hungarian airspace.

Dublin now has the awkward job of preparing for a European Political Community summit and an informal European Council on 12 and 13 November. Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the threats appeared coordinated, and police are drawing up security protocols for the Irish EU presidency events.

Iran's armed forces said on Saturday that they had shot down a US drone over Qeshm Island, near the Strait of Hormuz. State broadcaster IRIB identified the aircraft as an MQ-9 hit by Iran's integrated air defence network, while the Revolutionary Guards described it as an MQ-1 and said it was the sixteenth drone of that type downed since the war began. No casualties had been reported at the time of the Iranian claim.

Donald Trump told reporters on Friday that US forces had carried out another limited strike on an Iranian air defence system and called the action minor. He first declined to discuss the reported attacks on Qeshm, then gave a short account of the operation.

“they built a little bit of an anti-aircraft device and we knocked it out in about 15 minutes, maybe five”

The US military had described earlier strikes on Monday as defensive, after explosions were heard on Qeshm, Hengam and near Bandar Abbas.

Iranian media reported two explosions in the Suza area of Qeshm overnight from Friday to Saturday. Tasnim said early reports pointed to two missiles hitting the island, while IRNA cited residents who heard an aircraft before two projectiles struck. Explosions were also reported near Bandar Khamir, though officials did not say whether those reports were linked to the island incident.

Qatar said reports that US-Iran talks had failed were false and misleading, and Donald Trump said mediators were still talking to Iran. US Central Command separately offered a reward of up to $20m for information about Iran's nuclear programme, while the State Department warned citizens in Gulf countries to prepare for possible flight disruptions from airspace closures.

Anthropic is still preparing to list before the US Thanksgiving holiday even after a bruising sell-off in technology stocks cut the company's expected valuation. The Nasdaq Composite closed down 5.5% on 5 November, putting it in correction territory and almost 12% below its 6 October high. The Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4%, and US stocks lost $3.2tn in a single chaotic session before recovering some ground on Friday.

The valuation talk has moved fast. Some bullish investors had hoped for $2tn entering October, then around $1.5tn in mid-October. After the sell-off, discussions reportedly fell as low as $1tn, while Bloomberg cited investors putting the company between $1.1tn and $1.3tn. Several investors said Anthropic still expects to raise $80bn-$100bn at a valuation of $1.25tn-$1.75tn, above its current $965bn level.

• Early Oct target2
• Mid-Oct estimate1.5
• Post-selloff low1
• Bloomberg low1.1
• Bloomberg high1.3

Investors are also questioning the spending demands behind the story. Anthropic has nearly $900bn in computing and infrastructure commitments involving Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Broadcom, which ties its prospects to chipmakers, power suppliers and data-centre builders. The Democratic midterm sweep also weighed on sentiment because candidates had promised to slow data-centre construction. Stephen Myrow of Beacon Policy Advisors said confidence in exact pricing looked heroic.

“How people can legitimately say that they can confidently value Anthropic right now is nuts.”

OpenAI has also struggled to complete a private funding round, cutting the valuation it seeks from $1.4tn to $1.25tn and the round size from $30bn to $20bn. More than half a dozen investors said Anthropic would still go public even if Dario Amodei accepts a price cut.