Morning Brief, Sunday 15 November

The FAA lifted its nationwide stop order on Saturday morning after communication problems halted US air traffic shortly before 16:00 on Friday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said planes were again leaving gates, taxiing and taking off, but he warned that delays and cancellations would continue while airlines rebuilt schedules and moved crews. FlightAware counted 9,202 cancellations on Friday and 6,467 on Saturday, with another 760 already cancelled for Sunday. Roughly 1.1m to 1.3m people were affected across hubs including New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles and Baltimore.

Investigators traced the trouble to maintenance by L3Harris at a remote FAA facility, where old copper lines were being replaced with fibre-optic cable. Bryan Bedford said the system never fully collapsed, but frequencies cut in and out and the agency switched between primary and backup systems before isolating faulty equipment about 45 minutes after the first anomalies. Officials said they saw no evidence of a cyberattack or of a link to artificial intelligence. Duffy asked Congress for $50bn to upgrade aviation and wider transport infrastructure, a demand lawmakers are already treating warily.

United, Delta and American said they would waive ticket-change fees. European passengers may recover documented expenses such as hotels, meals and alternative flights, though claims specialists said compensation is not due because the halt came from US authorities. Eurocontrol members had suspended US-bound traffic at the FAA's request, and Milan Malpensa cancelled three flights. Officials want normal service back before Thanksgiving on 26 November.

Russian officials circulated a 10 November non-paper at talks in Abu Dhabi asking NATO to return to its 1997 positions, rule out further expansion and stop military activity in Ukraine, eastern Europe, the southern Caucasus and Central Asia. The New York Times obtained the unsigned paper, which also calls for an end to Western arms supplies to Ukraine and says Russia would accept Ukraine joining the EU only if Kyiv stayed outside the bloc's common defence policy. Bild reported that the rollback would cover Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin and then Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin before the paper emerged. Negotiators reportedly floated a Donbas withdrawal by Ukraine in return for NATO membership, but Zelenskyy said Ukrainians would have the final word only after a security package with firm guarantees. He ruled out legal recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Donbas. Russia still occupies about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including most of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz rejected talks with Russia on Europe's security architecture, saying the structure already exists and Russia has violated international rules. Maria Zakharova answered in Moscow by saying Europe would probably be safer without NATO, which she called a toothache draining resources. European leaders say no negotiation can decide Ukraine without Ukraine or European security without Europeans.

Starship lifted off from Starbase in Texas on Friday at 4:47pm local time on its 15th full-scale test flight. The Super Heavy booster was supposed to return to the launch tower about six minutes after launch, but it detected a guidance and navigation problem, abandoned the catch, diverted offshore and exploded just before reaching the water. SpaceX's Kate Tice said the engines stopped firing too soon, and engineers are still investigating the failure.

The ship kept climbing, reached orbit and released 26 advanced Starlink satellites. Reports differ slightly on the orbital profile, with AP giving 15 laps at about 275km and the Independent counting 14 laps at about 265km. SpaceX said the spacecraft's heat shield and other systems appeared to work well. The previous successful orbital test in September had ended with a splashdown in the Pacific about three hours later.

On Saturday the ship returned to Starbase and the launch tower's mechanical arms caught it, the first capture of a Starship flying back from space. The catch came roughly 20 to 22 hours after liftoff. NASA welcomed the result because it is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the Moon later this decade. SpaceX says recovering both stages would cut launch costs and support frequent flights to the Moon and Mars.

Elon Musk said on X that he had signed a petition calling on Nvidia's board to reinstate Jensen Huang while an independent investigation runs. Huang resigned on 12 November after acknowledging a relationship with Alice Huang, a woman suspected by US intelligence of working for China and the chief executive of Singapore-based Megaspeed International. China denies the spying allegation, and Donald Trump said Huang had no idea the woman was a spy. The petition's organisers claim more than 100,000 signatures, including 51,000 shareholders and 5,100 current employees, but those figures rely on signers' own declarations and the organisers have started removing false or suspicious entries.

Washington's export-control fight broke into the open. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he was frustrated that the Commerce Department had not moved faster to restrict Nvidia chip exports to Megaspeed, even though the State and Defense departments and the US Trade Representative had backed action for months.

Nvidia shares fell 12.75% over the week, wiping out about $600bn in market value and pushing the company below $4trn. Colette Kress is serving as interim chief executive while a successor search continues. Investors now face the first earnings report without Huang in charge, and the call will put pressure on Kress to explain the internal investigation and the company's China exposure.

An independent expert commission reporting to the Pan American Health Organization has concluded that the United States no longer qualifies as a country that eliminated measles, according to reports citing CNN, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. The designation had stood since 2000. The panel reportedly found that the virus has circulated continuously in the US for more than 12 months, though PAHO had not made the decision official in the latest accounts.

CDC data cited in the reports put confirmed measles cases in 2026 at 5,412, compared with 2,289 for all of 2025. Adnkronos reports that measles, mumps and rubella vaccination coverage among US children fell from 95.2% to 92.4% over six years. Five deaths were recorded in November in Pennsylvania, New York and Wisconsin, while other reports count ten measles deaths across several states this year. Experts warn the true number of infections may be higher because mild cases often go undiagnosed.

Italian infectious-disease specialist Massimo Andreoni called the US decision a warning for other countries, including Italy, where he says booster uptake is falling.

French protesters marched for a fifth consecutive weekend on Saturday, though turnout fell from the previous round. The Interior Ministry counted 106,000 people nationwide, including 24,000 in Paris, while organisers claimed 200,000. The ministry had counted 146,000 a week earlier, and the movement's peak in mid-October reached about 565,000 people. What began in September as a student protest over teacher shortages and poor school facilities has widened into complaints over living costs, public services and police violence.

Police recorded 219 arrests nationwide by 18:00, including 45 in Paris, and said ten officers suffered light injuries. France deployed about 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, the same level as on the three previous Saturdays. Officers fired tear gas in Paris, Bordeaux and Nantes after some protesters set off fireworks. In Lyon, local authorities said protesters attacked a BFMTV news team at the edge of the march, and police intervened to protect the journalists.

Several groups oppose a bill that would presume legitimate use of weapons by security forces, a measure human-rights organisations describe as a permit to kill. The government has offered a 0.6% rise in the minimum wage, which unions dismissed as crumbs, and announced about €5bn for school renovation. Polls put Emmanuel Macron's approval at its lowest level since he took office in 2017, while the far right leads ahead of next year's presidential election. Unions have called another national strike for Tuesday.